Snap
Cards
Inspired by one of the mini games in the New Super Mario Bros. for Wii, I though I would create a simple Snap game. It was made over three evenings and isnt particularly complex. An array is defined at the top containing the 13 different symbols. Then two cards are placed for each symbol and given individual names. When two are turned a function checks if they are the same or not. Theres some listeners controlling the time that the tick and cross icons are up and some tweening. I am hoping that I can reuse this code later on and make the snap game a mini game within a larger game. I have been planning on making a small Zelda inspired adventure game. Perhaps the Snap game will appear there.
Helicopter Hell
Action, Side Scroller
One of the truly classic Flash games out there is Copter. Ive always enjoyed the fact that it is so simple and yet so addictive. So here is my attempt at recreating it. The levels are randomly generated with a number of variables controlling the difficulty. I went for a simple colour scheme and some token sound effects. In comparison to the original, it perhaps doesnt feel as fluid but I prefer the simple graphics in my version to the cartoony style used in the original. Ive had to be careful not to fall into the trap of making it too hard. Of course through testing I have become an expert! Also, this is a great example of simple controls as well. Just one button is used. Hope you enjoy it.
Old Skool Pong
Sports, Retro
I know I already created a pong game in the mini game series, but this version has the look and feel of the original. I bought a pong game for a pound from a boot fair when i was a kid. By then I'd already played on a SNES so I wasnt exactly bowled over by the graphics. But I did have a fun few afternoons playing it until I got bored. Mini pong lacked two things. A single player mode with a CPU player and a variable angle of bounce. I recently read an article explaining how to make the CPU player work. You simply move the CPU paddle vertically to the same vertical position of the ball. The trick to this is only moving it when the ball crosses the middle line. You can control the speed of the CPU player. In theory you could set the difficulty by increasing the speed of the CPU player (though this might be a bit frustrating for the human player if its too fast) or you could change the game so that the CPU player can react earlier, when the ball crosses a point further away from. Very simple! Also, now when the ball strikes a paddle, its angle is dependant upon the point on the paddle it hits. Further to the edge of the paddle will produce a more obtuse angle. It seemed silly to leave mini pong in its previous state, so Ive upgraded the code in there aswell! Have fun and dont't get too nostalgic!
Repeater
memory
This game took all of two hours to create. Its a very simple game based on the classic Simon electronic game. The Math.random() function is used to fill an array and then setInterval is use to call a function and display the contents of the array both audibly and visually in order. The player then repeats the sequence and the code checks that a mistake isnt being made. This game is addictive and challenging and took me just two hours to make. I have no doubt that someone else could create it even quicker. The original game was created in 1978 and sold millions. This shows the importance of a good underlying idea behind a succesful game.
Hamdemic: The Game
First Person Shooter, Cartoon
At the height of the panic over swine flu I had a free saturday so I spent six hours creating this game. Its a very simple first person shooter and uses similar principles to the b3ta snowball fight. Enemies will pop up at random and will sneeze at random. The player has to hit the pigs on the nose with a mask before the pigs can sneeze on them. The idea behind the game was to see how quickly I could produce a "topical" game from scratch and also served as a chance to try out an advertising API. In this case i chose newgrounds as I am already a member. The game wasnt particularly well recieved on the portal. To be fair its pretty boring and simple and so was seen by only enough people to earn me 1 cent in advertising revenue. I uploaded links to digg and reddit but these werent dugg or upvoted. The lesson for me was that its is not a simple case of throwing together a game and reaping the rewards. Although it may be stating the obvious, it proved that games must be appealing and must be well distributed to pick up advertising hits.