Latest Posts

By Rich

Tags

collab, fantasy, rpg, strategy

Posted in

Game Development

3 comments

Looking for RPG / Strategy / Choose Your Adventure Game Designers

11th Nov 2012

3

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.
By Rich

Tags

android, iOS, OS, stats

Posted in

HTML5

9 comments

Mobile Device stats from my HTML5 Games

8th Nov 2012

9

Given 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:

Read More
By Rich

Tags

app, kickstarter

Posted in

Software

3 comments

Objecty – A 2D Game Dev Toolset

7th Nov 2012

3

I came across Objecty on Kickstarter today and I pledged before even watching the video. It’s a Windows and Mac app dedicated to easing 2D game dev by bundling a raft of common tools together. At the moment they claim to have in a Texture Packer, Sprite Animator, Skeletal animation, Tweening and keyframe editor, Hotspot editor, Tilemap editor, Physics / Collision editor and others. It’s all wrapped up with LUA export scripts, so you can tailor the data it outputs to your own game engine with ease, if it’s not one of those already supported.

Now I don’t know if SKN3 are capable of finishing this app of course, but I do know that something like it is needed and for that I was willing to risk some of my own money to see it happen. They are about 6% funded right now so I’m posting this just to do my bit and help them out. But as with all Kickstarters you do so at your own risk. Personally I thought the video was too long and cheesy and should have just focused on the app features up front, but hey, at least they actually have a video (*cough* Elite *cough*).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skn3/objecty-2d-game-development-made-easier
By Rich

Tags

magazine, Retro

Posted in

Geek Shopping

0 comments
Retro Fusion Issue 3

1st Nov 2012

0

Retro Fusion is a 72 page full colour magazine dedicated to retro and homebrew gaming. The first two issues were published years ago but it has recently enjoyed a revival via a successful IndieGoGo project that we were happy to support. My printed issue arrived today and it’s a great read. Some of the features include:
- Jon Hare talking about the ‘Over Use of Sci Fi’ in games
- A detailed look back on the Alien films and the games associated with each episode
- The Top 10 SCI FI Robots and Cyborgs within Film
- The best of the SCI FI related games
- From Screen to Toybox – a look at the most popular toys that have been spawned by movies
- Plok – a look back at a forgotten Pickford Brother’s classis – includes interview with Ste Pickford
- A brand new SCI FI game by Jonathan Cauldfield written especially for the issue with a background ‘epic’ story – the game is called Encyclopaedia Galactica.
We also took out a rather fetching half-page advert, so if you buy a copy look out for that 🙂

http://www.retrofusion.me.uk/
By Rich

Tags

BBC, CBeebies, children, kids, The Numtums, TV

Posted in

Clients

0 comments

Introducing our 3 new HTML5 games for the BBC

26th Oct 2012

0

It’s always a good feeling when you release a new game. A heady mixture of the elation of having finished combined with the daunting high of knowing that people are now actually playing it. So when you release three games on the same day the feeling should be 3x greater, right? 🙂 That is what happened today when three of our HTML5 games went live on the BBC’s CBeebies mobile web site.

CBeebies is the brand under which the BBC release TV programmes aimed at children aged 6 and under, so from baby and toddlers to pre-school. Supporting the TV shows are a wide range of activities and games on the main web site. But like many organisations they identified the need to offer content to the increasing numbers of visitors hitting the site from mobile and tablet devices.

Working closely with the CBeebies team they selected three popular Flash games from the main site that we rebuilt in HTML5 for the mobile audience. The games included two titles based on The Numtums show: Poppedy Pop and SwipeTum, and one from the Andy’s Wild Adventures series called Run Sengi Run.

Read More