Monday, December 18, 2006

Presents Panic: A Christmas game!

I've been very slack - I should of posted about this game weeks ago, but I've been putting it off.

The game was finished weeks ago. I did it in my spare time, a combination of time off with no money to do anything and the gaping hole of free time that giving up warcraft has left. I submitted it to a flash games competition, which I didn't get a prize for. Unfortunately this meant a week of dicking around waiting for the judging to be finished before I could do anything else with it. So I've only just put it up somewhere.

So far the reaction has been fairly luke-warm, which is frustrating because I really like the game. The most common complaints have been that it's too hard and the controls are confusing. In it you have to use the keyboard and mouse and I think that's just a bit much for people when they are coming into it for the first time. The fact that it looks very familiar to other games also means that a lot of people don't bother reading the instructions, then find out that they don't know how to play.

It's a common problem with web games - people don't give them as much time as they would if the game was offline, so you have to design them a little differently. Put it this way: The competition I entered, I fully believe that my game was much better than any of the other games (well, I haven't seen the 1st prize yet, but the other entries anyway), but I can understand why I didn't win anything. With web games they really have to be instantly accessible, and if someone doesn't get the game in the first 30 seconds you've probably lost them. I'm not sure what my next game will be. I have some ideas for some one liner gimmick games. At least then I won't be conning myself into thinking I'm doing something good.