Author Archive
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Assembloids Released
9th Dec 20121
Back in May 2010 we released the game Quartet. The aim was simple – you had to put together the robots faces as quickly as possible. The more accurately you assemble them, the more points you get. As you progress the game gets faster and faster until eventually you’ll end-up putting a piece in the wrong place. It was a simple little game that Ilija and I put together over the space of a few days, but it has since been converted and revamped for the Commodore 64. Yes, the C64.
Called Assembloids it was an entry for the RGCD C64 Cartridge Challenge. Here is what they had to say about it: “Assembloids is all about assembling faces against a tight timer. Featuring high score verification codes and full screen open-border presentation (on both PAL and NTSC) there’s a lot going on behind the simple design. Using player feedback, the team are already finalising a retail version with some nice improvements. Expect to hear more news on this one soon!”
Ilija did all the graphics and Enthusi and Conrad handled the coding and music respectively. I just watched on in admiration as it all come together at the very last moment 🙂 It’s great to see our game on another platform, especially one as cool as the C64.
Download Assembloids from CSDb (who also made the great animated gif above)
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RealTime Kiwi Fusion Christmas Video
23rd Nov 2012A quick summary of what’s going on right now:
Realtime Contest
First of all we’re happy to be one of the judges in the Realtime xRTML 3 contest that is now running. As their name implies Realtime provide some very smart web tech for real time push based messaging. This has massive application in HTML5 based multiplayer gaming. From a simple shared cursor experience to a proper full-on game. There are plenty of code examples on their site – and don’t be put off by the ‘enterprise’ focus either, the free tier has plenty of room to power a popular online game.
Talking at the BBC Fusion Games Summit
I’m pleased to be talking at the BBC Fusion Games Summit next week. I’ll be covering some of the stark realities of building for the mobile web and things to take into consideration when commissioning or pitching for HTML5 game projects. Although my talk is sold-out, if you’re attending the event then please come and say hello!
Sign-up for the Kiwi.js launch
We are getting increasingly close to a release of Kiwi.js, our HTML5 game framework built specifically for mobile browsers. It would be great if you could sign-up on our launch site and help to spread the word. The moment it goes live you’ll be first to know and we may even be throwing in some special offers too 🙂
My onGameStart presentation is up on Vimeo
Back in September I gave a talk at onGameStart about making money from your HTML5 games. The talk was called ‘Insert Coin to Continue’ and much to my dismay they filmed it all and put it online 🙂 So feel free to watch me nervously trying to explain how to get your game sponsored. Despite my obvious nerves in public speaking the feedback I’ve had has been great, so it was worth it! Of course you should also check out the rest of the great videos, especially Rendering Voxel Worlds by Jonas Wagner, if only to see his priceless reaction when his brand new MacBook Pro falls off the lecturn 🙂
Storming Christmas Cards
We just had a bunch of company Christmas cards printed (by the ever excellent moo.com) featuring a cute new piece of pixel art by Ilija. We’ve had more printed than we need to send to clients and don’t want the rest to go to waste. So drop me a line with your name and postal address, and tell us what your all-time favourite game is (and why). Come December we’ll shove one into the mail for you, subject to quantity!
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We’re Hiring an Intern / Junior Developer and looking for additional freelancers
16th Nov 2012Since starting to run Photon Storm full time earlier this year I always told myself I was going to keep things small. A micro-business if you will. Just myself handling development, my wife handling projects and we outsource the rest. But we’re at the point now where we are turning down considerable projects every week just because there are not enough hours in the day.
While we could pass them on to other companies that doesn’t do anything to bolster our portfolio or create relationships with clients. I also don’t want to expand too fast, so it’s a careful balancing act. But after much discussion we’ve decided that we definitely need to recruit some part-time help. To that end we’re looking to recruit a remote working part time intern / junior developer. We’re also looking to bolster the number of freelance JavaScript developers on our books, so if you fall into that camp too then please read on.
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Looking for RPG / Strategy / Choose Your Adventure Game Designers
11th Nov 2012
If I had to put my finger on one specific type of game that I enjoy the most it would have to be the humble RPG. From the classic Ultima and Curse of the Azure Bonds style games through to Skyrim and Witcher 2 I enjoy them as much as time allows. For a while now I have harboured dreams of making a game in this style but several things have held me back.
First is all of the rules and stats needed to make the game fair but fun. When do characters level? How much XP should items provide? How easy is Monster X to kill? And secondly is the setting itself. Coming up with fun quests to embark on. Towns, cities, destinations they’ll want to explore. And characters you care about. These are all skills I’m well aware that I don’t posses. So I’m posting this in the hope that there are some budding game designers out there who perhaps have the opposite problem: stacks of ideas, but no skill/time to turn them into an actual game.
So I’m putting this post out in the hope that you may be such a person.
If you’ve got a burning game concept you’d like to see made, that falls somewhere into the realms of an RPG game, a card game, a turn-based game, a fantasy strategy game or even a choose-your-own-adventure style game, then I’d love to hear from you. I’m open to exploring all styles and genres, within reason, although I’ll be honest and confess I do have a particular love for the stock Tolkein, but that won’t prevent me from looking at others.
I’m not expecting you to just hand over your game design and be done. We will treat this as a proper business deal and agree terms that benefit us both. But if this sounds even slightly interesting to you, or maybe someone you know, then please get in touch. All I ask is that you actually have a game idea ready formed. We can take it from there together.
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Mobile Device stats from my HTML5 Games
8th Nov 2012Given the incredible number of new devices being released at the moment I was curious to see what people playing our HTML5 games were actually using.
So I took the combined stats from 3 of our games over the past 3 months. That’s from 1st August 2012 to 31st October 2012. I discounted stats before this as I wanted a current snapshot of the state of the market. Here are the results. Update: These stats are pulled from Google Analytics, so are at the mercy of however Google handles device detection.
Total Unique Plays: 1,146,132 (3 months)
Device Breakdown
As you can see it’s a battle between Android and iOS only. The percentage of people playing HTML5 games on BlackBerry devices is actually 0.17% and on Windows Phone it’s a paltry 0.095% (!)
Having said this there are an increasing number of Windows 8 based phones entering the market right now, so it will be interesting to see how this statistic changes over the coming quarter. As for BlackBerry however that to me just looks like a lost cause.
So let’s dive into the devices a bit deeper:
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