I began playing with Flash in 2003, finishing my first full animation that year; my mock trailer for the then in-production Star Fox: Assault (simply Star Fox 2 or Armada) which I submitted here a number of months later. Since then, I have had great aspirations of full-sized games and entire animation series, most of which I've done a considerable amount of work on. I finished a second full-length animation a year later which I have not and will not post here. In 2006, I graduated Marist College and began working as a Flash programmer and animator at a very small media company with 4 other employees at the time. During this time, I've built dozens of flash-based web games and e-learning courses for dozens of clients. We've also produced a number of animations amongst ourselves for various contests. We are now at +50 employees, and we've recently released our first in-company game; Roll: Boulder Smash, for iPhone/iPad and Android devices. Check out the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_EqMzdqog.
Anyway, my point is, growing with this company for nearly 7 years has had its advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, as a small company, we've had to work harder than everyone else to get where we are now. This, coupled with me, well... not being very talented, means that I, as well as all of us at work, have to dedicate a large portion of our time to staying educated, staying skilled, staying relevant in our fields, and making sure we produce the same quality of work that's put us where we are now. On the other hand, I've learned (and continue to learn) new things almost every day since I started; things that most of my planned projects would be impossible without.
Of course, this is also a double-edged sword. With every day, my aging projects look like they could use more and more of my current knowledge, and many have received countless workovers. On top of that, I've fallen into the trap many artists here probably know well: starting too many new projects before finishing old ones. As bad of an illustration artist I am and as mediocre a programmer, I can't stop coming up with ideas I want to see realized. Earlier this year, I made a list of my current games. I narrowed this list down based on several criteria.
1. Games I actually would want to play.
2. Games I believe I currently have the ability to finish from a programming standpoint.
3. Games I have made actual progress on besides concepts.
When I was done, I was still left with 23 games. Flash-games alone; not counting planned Unity projects, or console-based games. Twenty-three flash games. As my activity here is proof, I am one of many artists who has trouble finishing things they start. Once I get a good way through a project, I begin to think that I could do much better, and I just start getting ideas. It has to stop at some point, and I've decided to take a number of measures to see these projects through. Besides this list, I've also begun creating schedules and assigning priority to certain projects.
I have a few things I'm doing for friends right now, but once they are done, I plan to finish the first game I ever started. I believe this will help get the ball rolling, and I really feel like with each game finished, things will go exponentially faster. I don't intend to finish these projects in the order they were conceived, as I tended to plan things well beyond my abilities early on; things quite ambitious even for Flash standards today. I also think that finally making my projects known to more than just the few people I talk to will help give me greater motivation towards finishing them, and that's what this process is all about. In the next few posts, I'll be highlighting a single game per post; not all of them, just a choice few that I've either got a larger amount of visual work done on, or I'm exceptionally excited about. As I've mentioned before, my skill-set lies more on the programming and animating side, so most of what I'll be showing will be more conceptual. Many of the games I've started are still using temporary visual assets with the majority of the work done on the engine itself. All of the games I'm currently working on, (all 23) have extensive and detailed design documents with a mostly clear view on how I expect gameplay to flow.
One of my fears has always been revealing ideas before I've a finished product. I'm always afraid of coming up with something and someone with more ability deciding to do it first. It may seem egotistical, but it has happened to me before, both by coincidence and intentionally. I think I can put this fear to bed with my flash games however. After all, who's going to steal my stupid ideas when there are probably a lot of people who, like me, barely have enough time for their own ideas? In the unlikely occurrence someone does steal one though... I'm still going to try to finish all of these games. I mean... they're free flash games. What are they going to do, sue me for not making any money on a game they stole from me in the first place? Whatever, the possibility is better than me taking all these ideas to the grave with me.
Anyway... here's the majority of that list I mentioned, with even more truncated descriptions, as well as the year it was started in. Many of these obviously are not final titles.
Beach Head (2009) - Remake of the Commodore 64 game. Staying as faithful as possible.
Futility (2009) - Side scrolling puzzle platformer featuring comedic and nonsensical characters.
Hell-Razors (2007) - Side scrolling shooter/beat em up, featuring many unique boss battles in a similar fashion to Alien Soldier.
Keith and Jay Rock Your Face (2008) - Beat em up starring myself and someone from work. Ego-trip? Perhaps.
Killzy (2009) - Side scrolling run and gun game using mouse and keyboard controls.
Monster Squad (2011) - Beat em up mixed with shooter, something like Narc meets Final Fight.
Muay Thai (2008) - One on one fighting game inspired by games like Best of the Best (NES) and Star Rank Boxing 2 (C64).
New Testaments (2004) - Secret of Mana based beat em up. Also the first real Flash game I ever started.
Red Ground (2011) - Small scale RTS game with RPG system.
Scoundrels (2010) - Side scrolling adventure game focused on navigation, stealth, platforming, and puzzle solving. Inspired by games like Prince of Persia.
SF Scroller (2004) - Mission-based side scrolling shooter with a heavy focus on stealth and cover-based combat.
SF Shooter (2005) - Third person shooter with mock-3d perspective. Same game as the one above but with an entirely different play-style. Something of an experiment in doing one game in two different styles.
Shifters (2006) - Side scrolling hack and slash featuring characters with transformative special abilities unique to each other.
Smash Comrades: VS (2006) - One-on-one fighting game based on an old SSB fanfic I used to write, featuring an original take on Stamina mode.
Space Looters (2010) - Side scrolling survival horror with experimental play style.
Star Fox TDS (2010) - Vertical top down shooter in the style of Xevious, featuring classic Star Fox mechanics augmented to fit the style of a vTDS game.
Valkyrrim (2010) - Side-scrolling flying shoot-em-up similar to Super R-Type with customizable weapon load-outs.
WarHawks sRPG (2009) - A turn-based strategy RPG game, similar to the Shining Force games. Based on a console game idea that came to me in a dream around 2002.
Zombo House (2008) - Beat em up with a non-linear, dungeon-like navigation system.
Maybe in another 30 years, I'll release them all as a collection.
- J
