The Three Game Challenge – Part 3 – The Family Jewels

Well this is it! I have completed the third game in my three game prototype challenge. (first game, second game)

With this one I wanted to try my hand at a very popular game genre at the moment, match-three. Because this is a rather simple style of game I thought it would be really easy and fast to make. Wrong. I spent hours without touching a keyboard trying to come up with some novel twist on the genre.

I toyed around with a gem dropping mechanic but that didn't work so well, then I thought about how someone interacts with match-three games on mobile, by dragging the icons around. So I decided to base my game play on dragging gems around until they make a match.

I originally wanted a "mindless" match-three game like Montezuma, one where you play it as fast as you can without thinking too much about the moves. As I started developing the game play for this one however it seemed to fit a puzzle like game better so that's what I ended up with.

 

 

Anyways give it a go and let me know what you think:

Play The Family Jewels



This one took a little less time at the others at 31hours over 7 days, as per the other two I recorded my time spent:

17th April
11:00 - 12:00
15:00-18:00

20th April
10:00-12:00

21st April
13:00-17:00

22nd April
11:00-13:00
14:00-16:00
20:00-21:00

23rd April
11:00-16:00

24th April
11:00-16:00
18:00-21:00

25th April
11:00-12:00

Well that's the end of my challenge! Im surprised I managed to do it. A little over a week per game seems like hardly any time at all but having that time restriction really is good as it helps to limit your scope, preventing the game from ballooning out into something that could otherwise have taken months and still not have been any fun to play.

As for the tools I used. I used Richard Lord's excellent Ash Game Framework to develop them all alongside Starling with Feathers on top of Flash for the rendering. For rapidly prototyping games they have been excellent. Now im more familiar with Ash I may write a post or two about how to go about structuring certain parts of a game in an enitity-component like manner.

But for the next week or so I need to finish my packing before my mammoth trip to Central and South America.

 

The Three Game Challenge – Part 2 – A Cunning Plan

Another week, another game completed as part of my three prototype games challenge (part one, part three) I set myself at the start of this month.

For this one I decided on a type of game that I have been wanting to make for a while, a turn based strategy game. Many moons ago I used to play a J2ME (shudder) game called Ancient Empires. It was a great little game with lots of depth and replayabliltiy and I think it deserved a remake of sorts.

So here is "A Cunning Plan":




You can play the game here:

Play A Cunning Plan

This game was far more complex to create than Latesha's Crib and hence I spent about 43 hours over the last 9 days making this one.

I was able to save some time by reusing parts of the rendering and hopping logic from Latesha's Crib. As usual I used the  Ash Framework with Adobe Starling and Feathers. To code the AI for the computer player I used Tim Conkling's Excellent Godmode Behaviour Trees library which is truly an excellent AS3 library. The way Behaviour Trees work is really cool, I strongly recommend checking them out if you are going to design any sort of AI.

Special thanks go to Mike Rigby for helping with play testing and Ian Callaghan for suggesting I check out Behaviour Trees :)

Let me know what you think of it, if people are feeling it then I may turn it into a full-blown mobile game!

Again I recorded the my time spent making this one, heres the log:

4th April
9:30am - 2pm
3pm - 7pm

5th April
9:30am - 10:30am

6th April
12:00pm - 4pm (-1 for josh, -1 for lunch & spanish)

7th April
2pm - 19:30pm

8th April
1pm - 3:30pm (-1 spanish and lunch)
4pm - 6pm

9th April
3pm - 7pm

10th April
12pm - 7pm

11th April
9am - 10am
1pm - 6pm;

12th April
10am - 1:30pm

Artificial - Argon Isotope

I decided to take a little break from the coding and over the past few evenings I have put together a new mix.

Out of all of the mixes I have done Argon is probably my favorite and was pretty much the soundtrack to my  trip to Vietnam in 2011. As that was two years ago now I thought it was time I refreshed and updated it with the my current personal favorites in the tech and progressive house / trance world.

Argon is a lighter element than Iridium and hence the tracks have a smoother simpler progressive sound. Because this mix is in the same vein as Argon I have decided to call it Argon Isotope.

Argon Isotope by Artificial on Mixcloud

Tracklist:

1. N'to - Trauma (worakis remix)
2. Microtrauma - Circulate
3. Dominik Eulberg - Sansula (Max Cooper's Lost in Sound Remix)
4. Unknown
5. Breakfast - Through the Night (Naden Remix)
6. Worakis - Souvenir
7. Eleven.five - I Sense Danger
8. Boom Jinx & Andrew Bayer - To The Six (Matt Lange Remix)
9. Parker & Hanson - Afterthought (Soundprank's Deep 04 Mix)
10. Andain - Promises (Soundprank Remix)

The Three Game Challenge - Part 1 - Latesha's Crib

Well I have just finished off the first of my three prototype games challenge (part two, part three) that I set myself last week.

For this one I started off with an idea that I wanted to make a time-based puzzle game. Well it didn't turn out that way, also somewhere along the way I discovered an Ebonics Translator so I decided I would incorporate that for a giggle.





Anyways see what you think:

Play Latesha's Crib

In total I spent 31 hours over the last week making this over the past week:

26th March
3pm - 5pm

27th March
10am - 12pm
1pm - 5pm

28th March
10am - 11:30am
3pm - 8pm

29th March
2pm - 5pm

1st April
2pm - 6pm

2nd April
8am - 12pm
2pm - 3pm
5pm - 8pm

3rd April
9:30am - 10:30am
12:pm - 1pm

It was good fun tho I reached a point where I think I had sufficiently prototype the game play so it was time to move onto the next game :)

Let me know what you think. If people really like it then I may turn it into a full-blown mobile game!