With the photoreal graphics around in the console world starting to slip their way into the casual gaming realm, I find it quite necessary to produce a game based on more abstract graphics. When the camera was invented, painters such as Picasso changed their style to a more abstract mode. This was in reaction to the realness of photography. The same should happen in the game world. As games become more real looking, we should see indy developers seeking to develop abstract games that bear little resemblance to reality.

In Elecktra, the player is stuck in a fixed location. Fleets of block shapes edge their way towards the player, and the goal is to destroy them before they hit. The only way to do this is by launching “electra hooks” at the enemies. These can be launched in only four directions, thus imposing limitations on what the player can do.

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Another game of pure arcade action. Fly around and save your soul from the enemies from Hell. Fire in 2 directions as the hoards of Hell appear from underground. They swoop and swarm around you, seeking to destroy your soul. A wonderful classic arcade gameplay makes this game another instant hit.

This game incorporates my “bit blitzer” effect, which shatters enemies into strip pieces when they are hit. This effect creates a lot of movement on the screen and heightens the excitement of play. The effect was modeled on a similar effect found in the classic Robotron 2084 game by Eugene Jarvis. Its wonderfully arcade in style and fits this type of game perfectly. Definitely an effect that I will play with in future games.

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More than just another banner game, Def-Logic presents “Skyhigh”. This game has been designed exclusively for well known casual game review site www.jayisgames.com. In Skyhigh, the player is taken through an adrenaline rush ride through the clouds. Rapid level advancement make this a thrillride that every visitor to jayisgames will enjoy. Use Arrowkeys to pilot your ship and Z key to fire. Destroy the ice creatures before they freeze the Casual Gameplay logo. Rescue the jayisgames review team. Navigate a suborbital maze. Survive and get to the end.

I was asked to design a banner game for the Jayisgames review site. Most banner games are simple “shoot at the target” type games, but I wanted to do something more extensive. The result is Skyhigh. Its a mini-game, but it contains all the elements of a complete arcade game. The only difference is the rapid pace at which the player progresses through the levels.

One of the challenges in designing this game was the limited playfield size. Normally I work within 640×500 (sometimes 800×600), but for this game I was required to work with a 750×150 size game. I made use of the length of the game play area by making this a side scrolling game. The limited height came in useful for some levels where enemies attack from above. It created a good challenge for the player, who would have to hover as far down to the bottom of the screen as possible to avoid getting hit.

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Again, like Snapple, the plan is to provide the player with a quick action game involving the mouse. I went a bit further with this and gave the player keyboard controls to move the ship around. I thought it would be a nice innovation to have the missles launch as soon as the enemy is targeted with the mouse. This means the player doesn’t have to constantly hit the mouse button.

Quite a nice wee game, based on the Flatland style graphics, Cortex lets the player seek temporary shelter from enemies by hiding behind the shields protecting the crystals.

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The plan here was to combine some quick action “screen cleaning” gameplay with color matching gameplay. The difference between Snapple and a classic color matching game is that the colored creatures exhibit a primitive AI. They move towards apples, and the game ends when all the apples have been eaten. Its the same as having colors rise to the top of the screen (as in “Collapse”) or towards the bottom of the screen (as in “Popaloon”).

A straightfoward concept, Snapple gameplay contains the arcade action that we have come to know and love. It has extremely simple controls–mouse movement. You don’t even need to click the mouse button. The speed and action gets quite intense in this one.

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This is a piece of fun. I liked the idea of the player being pursued by a hoard of creatures. A pretty basic concept, really. Giving the player a small gun added to the fun factor. In many respects, this game is just another scrolling shooter. The difference is that the player is running away from the enemies rather than flying towards them (which is normally the case in this type of game).

I had fun adding a couple of visual effects to this game. First, the lightning bolt, which flashes the screen. A simple effect, but I think it adds a lot to the feel of the game. Second, the tunneling creatures. They move underground until jumping to the surface. To make this look good, I move tiles of moved dirt onto the screen so it looks like something beneath has been moving it. Nice effect, really. I saw this done on an arcade game called “Equites”, which came out in 1984. I always liked the effect, and now here it is again.

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I have always enjoyed the visual aspect of the classic Vector graphics arcade games. There is something appealing about watching objects that are composed of nothing more than simple lines. So I decided to do a game in that style. This is not actually vector graphics. I guess I could have used SVG to do this, but it seemed quicker to simply use sprites. The imagery looks the same.

There’s a lot going on in this game, especially on later levels. And I’ve used sound effects too, which means the game may lag on older machines. You can switch the sound off with the S key, which may help. We will soon do a Flash port of this game, and I suspect that it will not suffer from the same performance issues. In the meantime, enjoy the dhtml version

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The new series of Doctor Who inspired me to write a game featuring Daleks–one of the all time great enemies. Apart from the name of the game and the appearance of the enemies, this game has nothing to do with Doctor Who. In fact, the Daleks only bare a slight resemblence to Doctor Who’s nemesis.

Writing this game involved a few new challenges. The main challenge was designing the sprites to have more of a 3d look than normal. Also, getting them to move in a slightly 3d’ish environment held a few challenges–ensuring that their z position was correct and that they did not overlap each other too much. This is not 3d. It is 2d that has a slight 3d effect. Its not quite a flat top-down view, nor is it a side on view. But it is not 3d. Nevertheless, getting the sprites to look and move correctly was more difficult than usual.

I don’t think this game is as addictive as some of my others. There is something missing. I’m not sure what. It is fun to play, but doesn’t quite capture me as much as Swarm or Replicator. Still, it is a nice diversion, and manages to serve its purpose as an arcade-style casual game. Give it a go, and let me know what you think

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I came up with the idea for this game while playing classic Gyruss. I wanted to do another fast action shooter (since not many are being released at the moment) and I wanted to ensure that it stayed true to the arcade genre. Playing Gyruss, Galaga, and my own Replicator gave me the idea for Swarm. Its based on my theory that addictive gameplay comes about through the action of “cleaning up” the screen. In this game the player gets two ways to “clean up” the screen. First of all, the player needs to destroy the swarm, which look very cluttered on the screen. There is satisfaction in cleaning them up. The player also gets to return the central matrix back to its original color (the swarm change it).

When I originally planned this game, the player’s ship was going to move around the outside of the screen, just like Gyruss. It looked quite good, but I had trouble getting the game difficulty pitched right. It was either too hard or too easy. There seemed no middle ground. I solved the problem by giving the player more movement freedom. The player can move anywhere on the screen. The only thing is that the player is always targetting the center of the screen, so the shots always head towards the matrix. I think its a good effect and provides a level of originality in the game.

This is a fast paced game, and the enemies move in fast scripted waves (very fast in later levels). To add emphasis to the speed I found a couple of nice fastpace tunes on the internet. I don’t know who sequenced them unfortunately. They fit the game very well.

I put together an effective flashing transition between the levels. During test playing I found that sometimes the flashing would match the timing of the snare buildups in the backing music. The effect was fantastic and having seen it I became determined to somehow use it. The problem was that it was impossible to guarantee that the flashing would start exactly when a drum roll was occuring. My first solution was to insert a sound effect of a snare build. It sounded and looked quite good, but I decided that I needed a more abstract sound effect for the transition. Luckily I found one in a classic arcade sound effect folder. It is an effect that is percussive, and by getting the script to switch it off and on when the flash starts, stops, and starts again, the effect is impressive. When it finishes I use a nice little electronic ‘veeb’ sound to complete the stage transition.

Read the jayisgames review on Swarm here: http://jayisgames.com/archives/2005/07/swarm.php
2009 update – This game has been ported to iPhone by Cerebral Fix

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I was asked to write a game with similar gameplay to the 1986 arcade game “Gauntlet”. Dark Age is the result of that request. In order to give it a point of difference, I made this a fixed screen game (Gauntlet was a scrolling game). One of the challenges in designing this game was the birds-eye perspective for sprites. Often top-down view games have sprites on a sort of 3/4 angle view (pseudo 3D). But I wanted a true birds-eye view. The challenge here was designing sprites that looked like real creatures. I didn’t realize how limited a top-down view is for putting detail in characters. You really only see their heads and shoulders. I’m very pleased with the graphics I came up with, however. They look pretty cool. I’m particularly happy with the exploding zombie (from level 2). It looks great.

Another challenge in the design revolves around maintaining speed with so many moving screen elements. Part of the character of this game is the fact that the screen (after a while) is packed with enemies. It makes for a fun game, but (as always) speed is an issue. I think it performs quite well on Internet Explorer. I have tested it on a 1.5Ghz machine and it runs fine. Firefox is slow, but I am confident that the next release of Firefox will be a lot faster.

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