New Game: Binkos

I've just released a new game: Binkos.

Background.
Back in 2007 I started working for Gamesys, specifically in the Bingo team. After more than 2 and a half years of working and speaking only about bingo, bingo balls and bingo calls I decided to move companies.
My time in Gamesys was great, I met and worked with lots of nice people, many of them were really talented and to pay my respects I created Binko.
As you can see, some typical elements in a bingo game are there: 90 bingo balls, a dabber and a jackpot. The idea was to hit the jackpot to get a prize, randomly selected from 6 prizes (one for each member of my team).

Many people might think the game is just another Peggle's clone, however, I was actually inspired by Players Plinko, one of the first mini-games I worked on in Gamesys but I won't deny there's an obvious Peggle influence as well.

That was just over 2 years ago, so yeah, the game engine is a bit old already. 

Revamp.
Last year while having a chat with one of my current work-mates (Zuzanna Kucharska) I mentioned the game and talked to her about FlashGameLicense.
She started working on the graphics, I updated the code and a few months later we had Binkos ready to be sold.

 
Despite the fact she did a great job, the game couldn't get any bid higher than $500 with some bids as ridiculously low as $80.
This is an early stages video of Binko's game-play:

First there was only one background and the player would have 25 balls to start with. Later on we added particle effects, different backgrounds for the 5 different levels (from late night to early morning) and the number of balls changed to 7 per level, carrying over any balls not used in previous levels.
After about 6 months we tried the Quick Auction option with the same results. Pathetic low bids.
We couldn't sell the game, so, I decided to release it as a Games-Garden game.

Release.
The first site I uploaded the game to is obviously Games-Garden.
Now the game has been released in:
- Newgrounds.
- Kongregate.
- Mindjolt.
Some other websites have taken the file from Newgrounds already so the viral distribution has already started.
I'll be releasing a Mochiads version of the game soon and see how it goes.

Tech-talk.
Some of the 3rd party libraries I used in Binkos are Box2D library for the physics in the game. Tweener, as usual, for all other animations like the boat going from side to side, points update, etcetera. Flint Particles library for the particle effects when the ball hits the tokens. Playtomic for the game analytics. Leaderboards are from MochiMedia and of course I'm using CPMStar and MochiAds for in-game advertising.

Now, if you're curious about the game and haven't played it yet, go and play Binkos at Games-Garden.

New Game: Emotiblocks

Just had a quick look at my forgotten blog (yes, the one you're on now) and noticed it's been a while since I mentioned any of my works.

Well, I've been busy doing games and other experiments mixing many technologies as usual.
Anyway, I want to introduce you to my latest released game: Emotiblocks.

It's a match 3 type of game with power-ups and 1 minute levels.
If you don't feel like playing it now, maybe this video from early development stages will tease you enough to try it for yourself:



And if in case you feel like adding it to your site, just download the .zip file from Games Garden 'Games for your site'.

Widget: Play Random Game

I mentioned this widget on my previous post however I think it deserves it's own post.

I've made this widget in order to improve Games-Garden Bounce Rate and to allow people to discover games they might have not played before or might have forgotten about.

This is the widget's description:

Do you want to discover the best games on the web? this button lets you find them and takes you to a different game every time!

The general idea is to keep users (players or visitors) for as long as possible on your site and Games-Garden offers different options for it which include showing the top 15 games and other games in the same category so when people get bored of playing the same game they can choose similar games.
However having an option to play a game in a sort of "blind date" I think could do a better job.

Give the widget a go, I'm sure you will find a cool game behind :)

Widget: Newest Games

Taking the same "feed" from Games-Garden Latest Games as the one used for the Featured Games Widget but displayed in a different way, this is my first Flex Widget:

Newest Games

I haven't uploaded it into any widgets distributor yet as I still haven't found a way to pass variables into the widget (to change colours for example) so at the moment there's no design but the default components skin from Flex 3.

I must say I love how easy is to work with Flex and my new homework is to do some changes in the PHP side of Games Garden to create an API that will provide feeds for most of the different categories of the site. The next one is "Top Players" which I won't be releasing as a widget as is only important in the website itself.

Play around with Newest Games and play some games as well! come on, you deserve a 5 minutes break ;)

Widget: Featured Games

Back in business! :)



Killing 2 birds with the same stone I've created this widget called "Featured Games" which pulls .xml data from Games Garden, parses it and shows it as an "iTunes" like widget.

What are these Featured Games anyway?
well, almost everyday I add a couple of new games to Games Garden and PHP creates the .xml for this so to be honest the widget should be called "Games Garden Latest Games" but... you know... a bit of marketing ;)
The games added are hand picked so only the best games make it to Games Garden and therefore to the widget.
The widget shows the game name and a game icon which you can double click to go to Games Garden and play that specific game, otherwise just click on the "Play Game" button that does the same trick (gets you to play the game).

Just if in case anyone is interested...
What's going on in my life?
well, since I opened Games Garden I've been extremely busy learning PHP & MySQL, making more flash games (I'll speak about them later) and learning Flex (expect my first Flex widget soon!)

Anyway, give Featured Games a go, play some games and if you like the widget, add it to your site ;)

cheers!

Games Garden public beta release

Games Garden, has finally opened to the public after a week of private beta testing.
The website is still in beta so expect some minor bugs and take into account that some components will eventually be moved around; the casual games portal will be adding more and more features these coming days including free downloadable games and widgets.

Quoting from the site:

Welcome to Games Garden, a games portal which offers you the latest games that you can play, share, and bookmark for whenever you feel like taking a break and have some fun!

At the moment you don't need to register to play as any new visitor has 200 tokens which is enough to play many of their games :)
All the games are powered by MochiAds, meaning, are completely free to play and are good quality "sponsored" games.
Thanks to MochiAds, games developers are getting some extra cash from their work and effort which is helping the games developers community to grow up producing better quality games as they are now able to afford different tools to improve them.

If you want to know more about what Games Garden has to offer, check out the ABOUT US section.

salut!