Play AVOIDAL

Gameplay Trailer (watch me score 1.5 million points!)

Watch my TIMELAPSE

Play the LD48 Official Compo Version of AVOIDAL

Play the Original LD48 Compo Version

I had a lot of fun this Ludum Dare! After missing the past few it was good to participate again for sure. I’ve never done one of these post mortem entries but I enjoy reading the other ones people post so I thought I’d take a crack at it.

You can read my detailed post mortem below:

FRIDAY

I had an idea within two minutes of the theme announcement. This doesn’t always happen so I’m pretty excited.  I normally spend Friday night sleeping on the theme announcement after drawing a few mockups but this time was a bit different. I had an idea that I figured would be simple enough that I fired up photoshop and drew the following mockup:

I read over my notes and the concept felt solid for fun potential as well as being in line with the scope of a 48 hour competition. For my game studio work I typically develop within the 1 to 3 week time period but I’m familiar with the 48 hour marathon since I’ve competed in about 6 or more of these 2 day game competitions. I’ve also worked on learning my lessons (failures) well!

I refine the idea into a color mockup by doodling it again in photoshop:

You can see that I’ve got the basic enemy and player elements of the final game already in place. Spike and seeker type enemies. A large and silly player character that eventually becomes a stylized robot character. The gold stars as targets for the enemies to collide into.

Having fleshed the idea out more I’m ready to open up the Flash CS4 IDE and start implementing a graphical mockup:

Now the graphical assets above are all usable as initial art once I’m finished creating the mockup in Flash. It is a really cool thing about prototyping in an IDE like Flash that I can quickly put game logic into ActionScript 3.0 files behind each of those assets.

I work for about 3 more hours trying to get a first playable prototype. Getting the first playable prototype build is so crucial to iterating on the next part of the game that the earlier you can get feedback and play the game–the earlier you will be able to see how much more you need to implement. This couldn’t be more important than in a 48 hour game competition scenario.

I manage to post the following prototype build at 2am–four hours into the competition:

You can even play the first prototype here if you want to see what I started out with.

I was very happy with what I was able to come up with at this point. I was able to know that the game idea was solid and more importantly–already very fun!  I knew that I’d sleep well Friday night and was looking forward to beginning to iterate on Saturday with a good start in the competition.

Time spent at this point was four hours.

SATURDAY

I awoke Saturday morning after about 5 hours of sleep. I checked out the Ludum Dare blog and found that a few people had played my game already and had left some encouraging feedback. This was a big morale and motivational boost as it meant more than just myself found the game fun.  I also found I had been awarded two funny LD awards: One for “Flash prototyping like Flash!” by Zlash and a second “Silver Star for Prototyping goodness” by Tyler. Thanks guys–you really made my morning!

Now today I was also excited because I was going to be driving over to Portsmouth NH for an in person meetup with some other Ludum Dare participants I had never met before. I’ve been working on getting out more into the game community around the New England area and this was an excellent opportunity to meet some other people who enjoy making games.

We met up in an awesome cafe called “Me and Ollies” and found an entire downstairs community center with AC and wifi and plenty of nice seating!

That is me on the left and billkyne on the right.

Here is a short YouTube video filmed by Jonny D of the beginning of our meetup.

The meetup went really well. It was so refreshing to be able to see what others were working on and to just talk about game development and Ludum Dare related things. I also enjoyed the strange looks I got from others in the room when we would talk about our games to each other or when I would take photographs of my food:

I ended up getting less than four hours of work in on my game but the small lack of productivity was more than made up for by getting to meet Jonny D and billknye. I was able to post version two of my game from the cafe.

I had so much fun and was inspired to drive back home after 6pm to get cracking again on my game!

Once I got home I was finally able to decide on the name AVOIDAL for my game. It took me longer than normal to pick a name this time. I like picking out unique names as well as names that often have domain name availability.

Avoidal isn’t a real word but it is in use lightly on the internet and has Urban Dictionary entries strangely enough. I decide that the low Google search noise will allow my game to eventually place well in search results for Avoidal.

I discover that avoidal.com was available and I register it and quickly setup some HTML and CSS in place on my sever to hold the eventual competition game entry. Why go through this extra effort? I enjoy crafting the entire experience for the player and I like the elegance of the idea of having my competition entry hosted on a dedicated, short, and memorable domain.

Having prepared the final destination for my game I get back to work on the actual game itself. Here is a screenshot from version three:

I spend some of Saturday night implementing SWFStats gameplay analytics. I love using an analytics package like SWFStats so I can start getting valuable aggregated play testing data to help improve the game as early as possible. It allows me to track custom metrics like average scores over the various difficulty levels and highest chain multipliers reached. Stats like that help me see graphs of what the difficulty curve is and make intelligent decisions about the mechanics and settings. I can also analyze play length data and number of views versus plays to see if my game is holding player interest or not.

I then focus on getting the bulk of the menus and game flow logic in place. I know from past competitions that once Sunday rolls around my brain will be a chaotic and spastic place. I like to handle all the mundane things like online highscores implementation, preloader and initializer, game over screens, game state tracking, main menus, pause menus, sound mute widgets and all the other miscellaneous ephemera that goes into making a polished game. I enjoy putting a high level of polish into my games so it helps to still be fresh when I implement these things.

All told I put about four hours into my game getting all the non-gameplay stuff in place. I know that tomorrow will be reserved for final tuning, final graphics, sound effects, and music composition. I am preparing myself mentally for what I know will be a long day. I head off to bed and plan on getting another 5 hours of sleep.

That brings my Saturday development hours in at this point at about 8 and 12 total for the competition so far.

SUNDAY

Final day and I am PUMPED!  There is so much left to do to bring AVOIDAL to life and it’s time to get going.

I start off by redesigning the mine asset:

Those white spikes will become projectiles that eventually fly off if the player let’s the mine explode before destroying it. Those spikes also do the most damage of any of the enemies in the game.  I want the player to be motivated to destroy the mines with the other enemies so I do two things. First the the chain multiplier goes up each time you destroy a mine. A mine has a lifespan and will eventually explode if left alone for too long. When it explodes it releases the projectiles as well as resets the chain multiplier.  The second motivation for the player is that when the mines explode the spikes move pretty fast and in eight directions so they can be quite deadly. I’m hoping that this will be another aspect of excitement and tension in the game.

In order to get my coordinate offsets and angles correct I draw the following mockup:

This will let me spawn the mine tips at the correct coordinates when the mine detonates so that it will be a seamless visual effect of the tips of the mine sprite flying off. It ends up working quite well and my Sunday is off to a productive start.

I then go through and revamp all the graphics replacing all the placeholder art.  I pick new colors for some things while others remain more or less the same. I put in animations for most of the assets.

I then spent some time to tackle the main character design:

On the left is the placeholder art for the character from the prototype. Next to that is the character I had doodled in my original mockup. I still wanted to capture the light-hearted and goofy feel of that doodle instead of the cool mathematics of the pentagon.

I initially drew the third image overtop of the original sprite in the Flash IDE. This was so I would have the dimensions be equivalent so that gameplay wouldn’t change. I couldn’t get a freehand style I liked that I felt blended in well with the polygonal style I was already working with.

I scrapped the third freehand concept and started using basic primitives to sculpt out what would eventually become the little flying robot. I even sort of think of him in my mind as being named Avoidal.

Once I saw him animated I knew that I was happy with how I captured my original intentions with the doodle of the little flapping guy with the target on his chest.

I now had all my final art in place:

When I wasn’t working on the final art for my game I was playing it as much as I could and posted two more playable builds to get player feedback and start working out balance and difficulty issues.

Here is version four and version five for reference.

Now at this point I’ve been working since about 7:30am Sunday morning and I’m starting to really feel it. I find myself zoning off into space and starting to lose track of my train of thought.

I realize that I need to grab a quick dinner since I only have less than three hours remaining in the competition and there is still final menu polish, sound effects and music to create! I run out and grab some pizza and come back and inhale it. I didn’t even have time to take a photo because at this point the game is clearly the priority for me.

It may sound weird but participating in Ludum Dare competitions over the years has really helped me to remain cool under pressure when developing. When I feel the brain-tightening stress start I remember to relax and breathe in and out. I then refocus and keep working. I find using an online todo list web app really helps me stay on track.

With just a few hours remaining in the competition I fire up the web version of SFXR and start cranking out sound effects like a machine. During this part I keep a list of sound assets I need and the game playing in the background. I tab back and forth between SFXR and my game in the browser and imagine what kinds of sounds I am going for.

Then it is a frenzied mashing of buttons and hoping I get lucky on the randomize feature. I really love this part in that it feels like I’m fishing and I don’t know what I will catch.  I score some really lucky hits on randomize as well as some old standbys from the more normal themed buttons. I import them into Flash and tie them in with code. I even take the time to add some nice stereo panning to applicable sound effects based on sprite screen location.

I also have been taking care of various other tiny polish items from my todo list. I wanted to get a slight left and right lean to the robot sprite when the player is moving quickly back and forth. I also wanted to make sure to add an instructions screen in the event that someone gets stumped and actually decides to read the instructions (hardly ever happens I know…)

I now have less than 45 minutes remaining and I fire up Reason and use my Alesis midi keyboard to layout a quick menu chiptune loop.  I compress it into MP3 and put it in place in the game.

Holy crap only 15 minutes remains to do final screenshot and upload. I’m sort of a purist in I like to have my game fully submitted by the deadline. I managed to get everything filled out in the form and turned in with 5 minutes to spare.

Now comes the relief knowing that I’M FINISHED.

Total time spent on Sunday was over 14 hours–phew what a crunch!

Total game time spent developing was 26 hours. I’m getting faster…

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m really quite pleased with how my game came out and my weekend in general. I feel lucky to have come up with such a simple and fun idea very early in the competition. I had a playable prototype so early it really let me focus on polishing the heck out of this little game and putting in all the normal bells and whistles I’d put into a releasable Flash game from my studio. This has been my most successful Ludum Dare yet–now I just have to see how other players like it!

I have to really pump myself up sometimes to participate in something as demanding as the marathon that is Ludum Dare. I almost want to collapse or feel like I might vomit sometimes from the amount of strain and wear that hits me after working 25-35 hours straight over the two days.

Why do I do it then?

Despite the wear and tear it is just an amazing concept to participate in a global event with so many other passionate game developers. I have a strong sense of competitive spirit and I like the opportunity to demonstrate my skills and love for game development. I like feeling the inertia of 100s of other game developers trying their best and simultaneously creating awesome games!

Ludum Dare really teaches me how to distill a game down into what is critically important and make hard decisions about features and scope that I have found I can apply outside of the stringent competition to my normal game studio work.

I started my independent studio and returned to game development largely because of participating in Ludum Dare a few years ago. It will always hold a dear place in my heart because of putting me back in touch with mychildhood dream of game creation. I’m just glad it clued me into what a great game development movement was going on that I was unaware of.

I can’t wait to play all the other games here!

MY LINKS

Play AVOIDAL

Gameplay Trailer (watch me score 1.5 million points!)

Watch my TIMELAPSE

Play the LD48 Official Compo Version of AVOIDAL

Play the Original LD48 Compo Version

This is a little demo I made this morning as a way to get a viewport concept working for the latest game I am developing.  I’ve done a few viewport type projects in other languages but had not implemented one in Flash AS3 yet.

This demo creates 300 random balls and sets them in motion inside the world.  The world’s dimensions are four times larger than the viewport above.

You can click in the window above and use the arrow keys to move the viewport around the world.  The source files for this tutorial are available at the end of the article.

BACKGROUND

I needed to be able to have world coordinates for my latest game along with a viewport which follows the player.  All the objects in the world must move according to various physics and be able to be mapped into the current viewport for display purposes.  After hacking around for a while unsuccessfully last night on the game code I realized this morning that it would just be better to start fresh on a little proof of concept demo until I had it all working.

I thought I’d share some of the concepts in case it could help someone else as well as get any code or design feedback from anyone who may have implemented these in a different or more efficient way.  I can already think of a ton of improvements my rudimentary solution could use but I’ll add them as necessary.

BASIC DOCUMENT CLASS VARS AND CONSTANTS:

// Viewport related constants:
private static const VIEWPORT_WIDTH:Number = 350;
private static const VIEWPORT_HEIGHT:Number = 300;
private static const VIEW_STEP:int = 25;

// World related constants:
public static const WORLD_WIDTH:Number = 1400;
public static const WORLD_HEIGHT:Number = 1200;

// Current viewport coords:
private var viewportX:Number;
private var viewportY:Number;

INITIAL SETUP OF VIEWPORT AND CREATING CIRCLES WITHIN WORLD:

This snippet is occurring inside an init() function that is called from the document class constructor. This is all one time setup.

// set view port coords to middle of world:
viewportX = WORLD_WIDTH / 2;
viewportY = WORLD_HEIGHT / 2;

// create a bunch of random circles scattered across the world:
circles = new Array();
for (var i:int = 0; i < NUM_CIRCLES; i++) {
var circle:Circle = new Circle();

// grab random x that falls within world space:
var wX:Number = GameUtils.randRange(0 + (circle.width / 2), WORLD_WIDTH - (circle.width / 2));

// grab random y that falls within world space:
var wY:Number = GameUtils.randRange(0 + (circle.height / 2), WORLD_HEIGHT - (circle.height / 2));

// set the coordinates for our circle:
circle.placeInWorld(wX, wY);

// add our circle to the display list:
addChild(circle);

// push our circle onto our array of circles:
circles.push(circle);

SNIPPET OF HANDLING KEYBOARD INPUT TO MOVE THE VIEWPORT:

This snippet is occurring inside a keyDown listener function which listens for the user hitting the arrow keys.  Each time the keys are hit it moves the viewport in the appropriate direction while performing range checking with the world borders.

if (e.keyCode == 38) {            // UP
 viewportY -= VIEW_STEP;
 if (viewportY < 0) { viewportY = 0; }
}

MAIN PROGRAM LOOP:

This is a simple enterFrame listener that loops through all the active circles and calls their update method. After the update method we alter the coordinates of the parent display object (in this case the instance of our viewport) inversely with the viewport coordinates. This allows Flash to automatically handle updating all the positions of the circles which are children of our viewport instance. Thanks to draknek for this elegant suggestion!

private function enterFrameListener(e:Event):void {
	for (var i:int = 0; i < circles.length; i++) {
		circles[i].update();
	}

	// pan the viewport
	x = -viewportX;
	y = -viewportY;
}

CIRCLE CLASS VARS:

Here are the variables that define my circle class.  This class is pretty basic and nothing too special has to happen here with regards to the viewport. The class will have to perform range checking with the borders of the world.

// Velocity:
private var velX:Number;
private var velY:Number;

CIRCLE UPDATE METHOD:

Here is a snippet from the update method that gives the basic idea of how to adjust the coords while range checking against the larger world borders.

// Adjust the x coord by current x velocity:
x += velX;

// Perform boundary checking with world borders and adjust
// position and velocity direction accordingly:
if (x < (width / 2)) {
	x = (width / 2);
	velX = -velX;
} else if (x > ViewPort.WORLD_WIDTH - (width / 2)) {
	x = ViewPort.WORLD_WIDTH - (width / 2);
	velX = -velX;
}

So that is my concept of one way to do a basic viewport in AS3.  I am happy to get any feedback on this code and the way I solved this problem.  I know there are many ways to implement these things but this is what I am going to run with for now as it seems to be working pretty good!

EDIT: Thank you to Draknek (see comments below) for an elegant refinement to my code that allowed me to no longer have to track world coordinates on the child objects. Now I can just let Flash handle updating all the positions for me by moving the parent display object instead of manually doing that.

Download the v0.2 source files and fla for this tutorial

I have just completed a new Flash game called Worderfall this month with my good friend and fellow game designer Jeremy P. Bushnell.  This time around it is a word game that utilizes an extremely large database of valid English words.

The concept is a fairly simple one.  You have three minutes to create as many high scoring words as you can.  The game increases pace with each minute that passes.  There are a ton of game statistics that are tracked as well for those who would like to improve their scores or at least measure their progress.

Here is a game play video which explains how to play:

Here is a game play screenshot:

I welcome your feedback and thoughts positive or negative.  Thanks for giving it a try!

Description:

How good are you with your tongue? Got a bad case of scurvy?

See if you can handle the Orange Frenzy!

Orange You Glad features 20 levels of citrus madness. 10 special power effects and 25 unique and humorous items to avoid. Can you lick enough oranges on each level to advance to the next? It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Play Orange You Glad

Background:

This is my second Flash game and first ActionScript 3.0 game.  This is also my first foray into Flash sponsorship and licensing.  I am quite excited that after putting this game on Flash Game License as well as emailing marketing materials to over 50 sponsors I was able to secure both a primary sponsorship from Flasharcade Gamessite as well as a non-exclusive license from Big Fish Games.

I worked on this game during the month of March and the beginning of April.  It was a little slow going because I was under heavy learning curve from both ActionScript 3.0 and the Flash CS4 IDE.  This project was a great learning experience from both a technical and business aspect.

The game received a few different bids for primary sponsorship on Flash Game License and it only took about two weeks total from posting time till I accepted a favorable bid and delivered the sponsored SWF file.  Both Flasharcade Gamessite and Big Fish Games have been great to work with and I am quite happy with both deals.

My primary sponsorship allows my to sell non-exclusive site-locked licenses and keep my MochiAds which is one of the prime reasons that type of sponsorship model was promoted by Flash Game License.

I am very excited to see how my second game does out there in the wild.  It has been almost 6 weeks since I started this project and it is definitely a test of patience controlling your enthusiasm as you wait for the day you can release your game.

Here is level 4 from a new Flash game I am making with my good friend and fellow game designer Jeremy P. Bushnell. It marks the first collaboration Hybrid Mind Studios has done and I’m very excited about co-designing this game with Jeremy.

We’ve been working hard on this during the month of April.  I did an initial prototype in about 3 hours which I sent out to my play tester email list and initial response was very good.  Since then Jeremy has been working on creating 10 great levels, art assets, sounds, ambient loops, title and inter-level screens.  I have been programming the game engine and integrating all the levels and assets and coding in some nice animations for the different collectibles and units in the game.  We’ve both been playing the heck out of it too and working together to tune the game mechanics.

That’s all I’m gonna say about this new game for now but we plan to do another play tester release this weekend.  Probably on Sunday or Monday at the latest.  After that we will likely make any changes based on feedback and we’ll be posting it for developer review up on Flash Game License before finally opening it up to sponsor bidding.  You want to set the best first impression you can and make the best use of the sponsor’s valuable time when you are trying to monetize your Flash games!

I spent the weekend competing in the tri-annual Ludum Dare 48 hour game competition.  This was the 14th competition the site has hosted and there was a record turn-out!  121 games where created and submitted in a 48  hour period.  The theme was Advancing Wall of Doom. This theme was picked by the community through a system of voting during the week leading up to the competition.  Once the theme was announced on Friday night participants had 48 hours to create an entire game from scratch.  All content had to be produced by the participant during the competition.  The event ran from Friday night on April 17th through Sunday night on April 19th, 2009.

Fleedom is the game I managed to finish as my entry.  It is a Flash game so you can play it in your browser here. I’m fairly happy with how it turned out think it is a great base prototype for further improving into a really great game.  I will continue to work on it and turn this prototype into a finished Flash game.  I won’t know the final results for two weeks on how it did but the competition is so much fun that the results aren’t really the point.  I have participated now in about 5 or 6 of these 48 hr Ludum Dare competitions and I am the most happy with this game than any of my past ones.  I actually enjoy playing this one a lot so that is a good sign indeed. Creating a game in under 48 hours can teach you a lot about game design.

One of the last Ludum Dare contests I entered was a smaller version called a “Mini” Ludum Dare.  These happen in the 9 off-months that aren’t hosting a normal Ludum Dare.  They are hosted by veterans of the LD community and can have customized house-rules depending on the host.  A prototype I created for the theme Cryptozoology eventually became my first published Flash game TurnStyle.  So, I hope to take Fleedom Flies into a similar published future.

I’ll have more info and a big announcement once the game secures a sponsorship and/or is ready to be released into the wild.  In the meantime I’m going to be combing my list of sponsor email addresses encouraging them to take a look at my game over on FGL.

This is not only my first Flash game but also the first thing I have ever really released onto the internet as well so it has been a real interesting learning experience!

If you don’t care about tech mumbo jumbo if you skip down near the bottom you can see some funny stats from which countries are playing this game and my personal thoughts on my experience so far.

Distribution and Ad channel technology I used – MochiAds:

I decided to go with MochiAds to do my game distribution. It is non-exclusive and free so I am also able to make other deals as well. One of the main benefits they offer is that they “wrap” your Flash game in a preloader that contains customizable and controllable ads from their network. So, the further your game spreads on the internet the better for them and you. You get a percentage of the revenue from the “impressions” that the ads receive as people wait for your game to download. I like that people have the ability to skip the ad by clicking the ‘x’ because let’s face it- ads are annoying. I also then think that let’s face it, I have to eat too.

Another great free benefit that MochiAds provides you is that the preloader that wraps your Flash game is encrypted as well as version controlled. This means that I can update my Flash game with bug fixes, new links, new ads or whatever I want in ONE location and that anyone playing the file (even if they have downloaded or are linking to a SWF somewhere on a portal) will receive a “diff” of the changes in the version. All seamlessly while it downloads. This is really incredible in my opinion. It has been a joy to work with and I have made quite a few tweaks and changes to my game already and it is nice to see them being picked up by all the portals which have received a copy of my game. The encryption is a nice benefit too I would guess though I don’t know much about Flash obfuscation yet I just hear it slows down someone decompiling your code a little bit.

Along with the distribution channels your game is automatically placed in you receive a full stat report at your MochiAd dashboard page. This is where you setup all the keywords, game thumbnail, description, instructions etc. that are distributed when a partner of MochiAds receives your game. I have watched my game spreading to over 40 sites now all without me having to do any further work. They do this because they benefit as well as the developer the further the game gets. They also have a more detailed stat service through MochiBot which I also signed up for which provides further detail on people who saw more than the ad. In other words, people who actually played your game.

The stats are a blast to watch! Especially for someone who is a complete stat and number junkie like myself.

Other portals I have released my game on:

Kongregate:

Kongregate was the first portal I uploaded my game on myself. The submit process was very easy and only involved a few steps. You must have a Kongregate user account obviously but besides that it is really straightforward to get your game up there. You fill out the form with info on your game, upload a thumbnail, check any of the API options you may be using, and also let them know whether your game is “exclusive” to the Kongregate site or not. Options like this one, along with the stats API question control how much your percentage of the ad revenue will be.

Since Kongregate has a deal with MochiAds already they will suppress the display of your ads in your MochiAds preloader. The preloader download bar still works fine but no ads will display. They do this for many reasons and it seems to make fair sense.

Anyway, back to the percentage points: You get 25% of the ad revenue that your game receives just for uploading it to the site. If you also integrate either (or both) of their APIs (HighScore and Statistics) you receive an additional 10% for this bringing your total possible to 35%. Now, if you make your game exclusive to Kongregate you can receive a another 15% bonus bring the grand total to 50%. A nice thing about the exclusive is that they do let you turn that off if you ever feel like putting your game elsewhere and you will revert back to the 25% or 35% share depending on your other options.

Once your game is uploaded and published it will show up on their new games list. At this point it is up to the portal users to rate and view your game past a ‘under judgement’ period. The judgement period is a timeframe where you can’t view the rating of the game yet when you go to rate. I guess the idea is that this helps early reviewers judge with less bias. In actuality most early commenters during this phase like to post their ratings in the comment feed below the game. Once your game has received 75 ratings the rating number is revealed to all. If your game does well enough it will move through the rankings accordingly. TurnStyle seemed to fair pretty well for a first attempt. TurnStyle’s rating seems to fluctuate around 3.25/5 stars over there. It is ranked around 240/3200 in the puzzle game category currently on their site too. I guess that isn’t too shabby at all with everything considered. As of this post date my game was played over 3500 times, rated over 450 times, favorited 17 times, and earned me 1 fan.

Newgrounds:

This is the only other portal I have submitted to so far. Similar to Kongregate it followed a manual form submission process. Once your game is up on the site it also undergoes a judgement mode where people have to vote and review it for it to acheive it’s placement ranking. The system is similar enough to Kongregate’s that I won’t go into great detail here. They also offer an API but I haven’t looked into that yet. I am allowed to have my MochiAds viewed up there and they seem to get me a pretty good eCPM rate so far based on my MochiAd stats so that is good.

It seems TurnStyle faired a good deal better on Newgrounds than on Kongregate. My game got 7 reviews: 6 perfect “10s” and 1 “9″ for a review rating of 9.9. The voting system seems to indicate that my game has a vote rating of around 3.5/5 stars with 298 votes received and over 1200 plays.

The cool news was the first day I submitted it my game did well enough to get voted 6th Most Hottest Game for Monday! That was pretty exciting. I missed the coveted 1-5 spots that would have gotten my game even higher in views. It was still on the front page though just didn’t have the icon next to it. Oh well, pretty good for first Flash game I guess.

Traffic Stats and Ad Revenue so far:

So, I wanted to provide all the above data for context to what I will now share so that other developers can see how these stats relate to what distribution technology I used and where I have manually uploaded it. I will detail the rough number of hosts my game has reached (remember only two of which I submitted to myself) along with traffic numbers, impressions received, and revenue received so far. I do this because I have found it really helpful seeing the other Flash developers who have been transparent about this business space so that all may learn to be better.

TurnStyle Stats: 3 Days in the wild

Dates: Feb 28, 2009 – Mar 02, 2009
Ad requests
Total: ~15000
Impressions: ~10000
Skips: ~5000
Revenue: $2.40
# of Hosts: 42
# of Countries: 101

% of Plays by Top 5 Countries:
39% from Finland (this is crazy.. also almost half the leaderboard scores are from Finland too.)
20% from USA
7% from UK
4% from Canada
4% from Germany

I have also made about $3 dollars from my 3500 plays at Kongregate through their system.

So, while this game hasn’t been a financial success yet at a whopping $6 of ad revenue so far the education that I have received and continue to receive is fairly priceless. Also, ad revenue is more of a long tail approach as my game (and future games) spread through the internet. I try to visualize a day where I may have 10-20 games roaming about each bringing me a couple bucks a day potentially. Well, that ads up when these little critters can “work” 24/7. Heck, who couldn’t use an extra 10x $1 a day.. that’s almost $4k a year when you think about it. So, while $6 earned so far on 200 hours of work at least might initially discourage some- I believe that is a short-sighted reaction. There is also the idea that while most of your games will end up relatively “unplayed” in the scheme of things- you only need 1 or 2 to really “blow up”. I think the more quality games you can release over time the better.

In order to work on a different angle to monetizing the Flash business space there is also the world of licenses and sponsorship to consider. I have signed up for an account over at FlashGameLicense which lets you sell licenses to released games and find sponsorships of various types for unreleased games that portals buy. It allows bidding and reviewing and other matchmaking services to allow Flash developers to get a fair price for good work. I am excited about the potential that FGL offers to do this kind of work fulltime. I will be posting more experiences regarding those adventures in later posts!

Aside from all the business aspects and traffic aspects I’ll share a few personal joys from this experience:

The thought tickles me so that potentially 15,000 people have seen my illustrations and played my game. I can’t believe I didn’t do something like this earlier in my life because it is so much darn fun! There is something so tantalizingly weird about hitting refresh on your browser while watching your MochiAd stat page and seeing that every 5 seconds 20 more people have tried your game. It blows my simple mind.

I would also like to thank all my close friends and friends of friends that have played this game and offered their feedback. In the anonymous world of the internet it is still the opinions of those I am close to that I most value hearing. I can’t wait to make more games!

TurnStyle is a unique visual and memory based puzzle game where each of the 15 puzzles are original illustrations that follow a complete story arc over the duration of the game.

Every puzzle is made up of individual pieces which have been randomly rotated so that they are scrambled each time. You must work quickly and efficiently to rotate the individual pieces into the proper alignment before the timer runs out.

There are easy, medium, and hard difficulty puzzles mainly guided by the amount of individual image pieces that make up each puzzle and the way that I break up the images into pieces.

Personal best records are stored locally for score and rotation count per puzzle. Global high scores may be submitted to the Mochi Leaderboards at any puzzle progress screen. You are able to retry a level if the time runs out.

The original game play idea came from my Cryptid Puzzle Challenge entry in the Mini-Ludum Dare #7 competition back at the beginning of the month.

I will try to post more about my adventure in creating this game and learning Flash but for now this is finished!