Come2Play - Casual Multiplayer Gaming

More Turn Based Inspiration!

noreply@blogger.com (YoniG) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:03:00 +0000

I was looking around for some additional game concepts and came across these sites. Instead of bookmarking and forgetting about them I figured I would share:

Free-Games.com.au - Good list with some MMOG games thrown in

Free Ware Genius - Lots of cool strategy war games here. Great explanantion and links to play

Free Games 14 - Solid list with some standard online flash games

Turn Based Inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (YoniG) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:23:00 +0000

Here are a bunch of great games that can be created as turn based multiplayer games.

If you have any ideas for other games, feel free to post them in the comments!

Strategy – Land Grab
Proximity
World Wars
Hex Empire
Warfare 1917

War Games
Tactics 100 Live
Castle Wars
InuYasha
1066

Board Games
Big Bucks
Rabbit Race

Card Fantasy Battles
Magic and Tactic
Corporate Bloodbath

Tycoon Games
Racehorse Tycoon
Grand Prix Tycoon
Railway Valley
Shopping City

Brain Duel

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:55:00 +0000

The Brain Duel, generally inspired by the successful Brain Training phenomenon from Japan, is a game of fast perception and evaluation that can be played single player for training purposes and in one-on-one duels.

The game is composed of 4 mini-challenges:

1. A random item or abstract form is shown in 4 positions. 3 of them are (randomly) rotated versions of the same shape, while the 4th is both rotated and mirror-flipped. The player has to single out that 4th one.

2. Again, 4 items or shapes are shown, more complex in general than those in 1. They are all rotated and also, in one of them, the item has a minor difference inserted into it. The player has to figure out the different item.

3. Two stacks of coins are shown next to each other. They are composed of random coins of 4 different values - 1, 2, 5 and 10. each coin has a different face, and also - the more valuable coins have a larger diameter. The piles have different values in total, different but close in value. The player has to point out the pile with the greater value.

4. A mutitude of different colored fish are swimming in an aquarium - a random number of fish. Four numbers are presented, only one of them is the real number of fish in the aquarium. The player has to pick that number.

Single player, each of the challenges can be played on its own for training purposes. The success level of the player on each game is tracked with a graph. A single challenge consists of 10 questions - the faster the player answers correctly, the more points he earns. There is a time limit of 10 seconds for question - if you don't answer within this time, you fail. Failing does not incur a penalty, just gives you no points. Answering incorrectly however, costs you points.

The two-player duel is composed of all mini-games in order, ten questions for each. The first to answer correctly wins a point. Answering incorrectly takes away a point.

Weekend Game

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 09:05:00 +0000

I bumped into this game lately. In fact, i remember playing an identical game somewhere before, but i never saw a 2-player version. It's a fast turn-based game played on a checkered board. The squares come in two colors and nine values: each is rated from one to nine, while one color indicates the value is positive and the other color indicates a negative. At the beginning of a game a row is chosen randomly. The first player chooses a square in this row, and the value is added or substracted from his points total. The chosen square disappears. Now the second player has to choose a square from the column of the square chosen by the first player. Alternating turns, the first player is limited to picking squares from the row of the previous move and the second player is limited to picking them from the column of the previous move.

The players move over the board like that, each pulling and planning towards a route that will reward him with maximum positive points and penalize the opponent with maximum negative points. The winner is the player with more points when there are no more legal moves to make. Confused? Just play it.

A multiplayer version will have a tight time control, about 10-15 seconds for a move (and a legal square is chosen randomly if no move is made during that period). You can also build in a Marathon mode where the game doesn't end after one match, but new boards keep appearing until one of the players reaches a specified point goal, or his point total drops below 1. You can enchance the game experience by adding a visual representation of ths players' respective points. This depends on the theme you choose - for example, a tower for each player that gets constructed when you earn positive points and demolished when you collect negative points, or a man that gets fatter and thinner, or a pile of treasure that gets richer and poorer. It should, in any case, allow anyone looking to see at a glance who's in the lead.

Build & Destroy with Physics

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 06:55:00 +0000

Physics are fun. Here are two quick ideas for two-player physics fun:

1. Sky Tower: the purpose of this game is to use a pile of blocks to build a skycraper reaching up to a certain height. The exact height may be based on the players' rating - the higher the rating, the higher they are required to reach.

Each player sees both his and the other player's screen. The screen contains a pile of blocks and a line indicating the height to reach. The players drag and drop their blocks, placing them one atop the other. The first player to have a balanced structure standing for five seconds above the line, wins.

2. Castle Battle: the goal here is the other way around - instead of constructing, each player throws blocks towards the opponent's castle with the aim of inflicting maximum damage,

The game is built of 2-3 rounds, with the first to win 2 rounds the overall winner. Each of the players has a block castle standing at opposite edges of the game screen. The castle structure is different for each round, but the same for both players.

Players get one block at a time to throw at the rival castle. A red line, a little beyond their own castle, indicates their control zone - they cannot drag the block beyond that line. Throws are handled by holding and dragging the block. When released, the block keeps on flying depending on last speed and trajectory.

Hopefuly the block will hit the enemy structure with the force and positioning to send blocks flying. A damage algorithm measures the damage done by each side. There are different algorithms possible, for example, depending on the current distance of each brick from its original position in the castle and on the current height of the top blocks of each castle.

The player to have caused more damage in 30 seconds is the round winner.

Turn-by-Turn Football

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:43:00 +0000

Still in an athletic mood, this concept is based on a sort of board game/table football combo i've spent many a good moment on during childhood, even though i never was a big football fan.

Football (or soccer, for you US readers) is always very popular. What we want is a leisurely game that can be enjoyed without lags and is more strategic and less reflexes based.

Before a match begins, each player chooses his team's formation from a list. Some are more aggresive, some more defensive, others balanced.

Each side's players, small football puppets, are placed on the pitch in accordance with the chosen formation. The players are static and will not move during a game. The only possible change in their positions can happen during half-time, where a player may re-deploy his players for the second half using a different formation.

The keeper is the only player to move. Both keepers move automatically from one end of the goal post to the other, reversing direction when they hit the edge.

As the opening whistle sounds, the ball is thrown high up into the air and falls down approximately at the center of the pitch. When it comes to a rest, it is drawn as if by magnet to the closest player, and that side starts the game.

When the ball is at one of your player's feet, you use mouse hold-and-drag to determine the direction and power of the kick, and release to shoot. The ball bounces from players and the sides of the pitch. It is also affected by pull - each player, friendly or rival, exerts a weak pulling force on the ball. When it finally comes to rest a player's feet the game proceeds. The only other option is that it bypasses the goalie and scores a point.

That's the simple billiards-meets-foosball core. The developer may also add bonuses that appear randomly on screen, and can be collected by the ball passing through them (the last player to kick the ball is the one gaining the bonus advantage). Example bonuses: more powerful kicks, rival keeper freezes in his tracks, friendly keeper moves faster, enchanced players' pulling force, red card temporarily removes a random rival player.

Another option is to make the controls more nuanced to allow more complex kicks. This can be achieved by adding aftertouch: moving the mouse right or left immediately after releasing the kick gives the appropriate spin to the ball.

Keyboard Athletics

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:02:00 +0000

In the spirit of the olympic events soon to open in Beijing, i want to suggest a multiplayer athletics competition, which is sadly lacking from the web. Multiplayer (hot-seat) multi-event sports games were very popular in the olden days of 8-bit - names like Epyx' Summer Games and Daley Thompson's Decathlon spring to mind. Today the gameplay is a tad simplistic for hardcore game systems, but perfect for a quick round on the web.

The olympic multi-event gameplay did evolve somewhat during the years, and especially lately on cellphones. While once upon a time much of the game was based on button bashing and joystick wrangling, a somewhat hardware unfriendly and inelegant interface, today that type of game has moved to being timing-based. So, instead of pressing keys repeatedly and as fast as possible, you have to press keys in time and rhythm with the event - be it running, swimming or long jumping.

The very best examples of the genre are to be found in Mr. Goodliving's mobile sports series, the Playman games, the lastest of which is Summer Games 3. You are strongly advised to try it and its predecessors out. In principle, an avarage event is based on pressing one or two keys when you pass the correct mark on the track - the more accurately you press, the more speed you get. Miss the mark by too much and you will slow down instead. Additional keys are used to jump or throw before the white line (at the right moment you start pressing the key. The jump or throw angle rapidly rises, and when you release the key you jump or the object is thrown at the current angle).

A multiplayer web version will allow players to freely practice each of the 5-10 events included, and to challenge 1-3 extra players for a competition that spans all events. A gold medal will be worth 3 points, a silver 2, a bronze 1 and fourth place earns nothing. An alternative scoring system can be based not on relative achievements, but on absolute achievements on each event. A formula will be needed that gives each event about the same importance.

Because many of the events are similar, the game won't need 5-10 different engines, only one engine (or maybe 2 or 3, for an ambitious collection of events) with support for different features, such as jumping for hurdles, throwing for javelin etc. Each player will play in his or her turn, and watch the other player's turns, so no lag problems to throw a spanner in the gears. This also means short events - 200 meter hurdles should still be ok, but 1500 meters is a little too much.

As well as winning competitions, players can aspire to be the record holders for an event, for the channel and maybe also globally. All records will be kept in the server, and you could also give each player an analysis of his performance compared to the avarage and to the top players.

Crazy Golf

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:49:00 +0000

It's a mini golf competition between two players (may also be suitable for up to four under certain conditions), with a few differences.

First things first: it's important to choose an attractive theme for your mini-golf course. Combine the theme not only visually but also functionally with the holes. Here's one game with a jurassic park theme. Digital Chocolate, a well known mobile developer, has a whole line of mini-golf titles with different themes: Beach, Carnival and Casino. A piratey theme, for example, would be most welcome.

Now change the rules somewhat, so that Par is much less important. What's important is scoring more points than your opponent. One important aspect of scoring is, indeed, getting the ball into the hole first. But you can also score critical bonus points by collecting gold coins strewn through the course, some two dozen per hole, and even the rare gem (two per hole, worth more). Points are constant through the 18 holes, with the player with lowest score going first on a new hole. You still get more points the less shots you use to get to the hole. You should also impose a 12-shot limit on each hole so that the game doesn't drag. A player that can't get his ball into the hole with 12 shots collects 0 points on his way out, or even a penalty.

Next, increase the interaction between players so that they can hit each other. By hitting your opponent's ball you can send it into a difficult corner or one of the traps that litter the course, sending him way back, throwing him into the water or miring him in slow terrain. Or you may screw up the shot and send him flying towards that valuable gem.

Finally, carefully place special power-ups and power-downs on each hole. Each player aims to collect the power-ups (deviously placed near edges and other dangerous bits) and bump his opponent into the power-downs.

Power-ups may include Heavyweight (much greater mass for ball-to-ball calculations), Great Attractor (attracts gold coins from some distance away), Jumpin' Jack (automatically jumps when a non-walled edge is reached, may save the ball and even provide shortcuts), Telekinetic (has limited control over ball direction after shot is made by moving the mouse right and left). Their duration can be shot limited or until the end of the current hole. Power-downs are similar, with examples being Drunken Meister (ball has slight random deviations from course), Aztec Curse (gold collected is deducted instead of added to score) and Hot Potato (ball turns into a time bomb: player has limited amount of shots before ball explodes and is teleported back to the beginning of the hole).

Games can be played over an entire course (18 holes), a half-course (forward or backward half), or up to a thousand points. In the former case, the winner is the one with more points at the end of 18 or 9 holes, and in the latter, the first to reach a thousand points.

Steal the Flag

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:25:00 +0000

Game idea of the day: an online version of the outdoors game known in some parts as "Steal the Flag".

It's again a competitive game for two players. Each player controls 3 children (boys and/or girls, his choice, no difference in abilities), and has to lead them to victory by snatching the enemy's flag and bringing it back to camp while defending his own flag.

The playing field is a randomly generated light wood terrain, cut up into hexes. In addition to the 2 camps, situated at opposite corners of the field, terrain features include trees (block movement and sight), fences (slow down movement), and bush (camouflage terrain).

Each flag is initially situated in the middle of the friendly camp. Friendly forces cannot enter a radius of six hexes around this initial position so as to prevent defending the flag by camping on top of it. Only a child with the enemy flag in his hands can enter this radius, and when he does, the game is won by his side.

The game is handled in turns. Each player in turn rolls two six-sided dice to create a number between 2 and 12. The player may now either move one child a number of steps equal to the result (taking into account that bypassing a fence takes up two points instead of one), or move two children, each of them half of that number of steps (rounded down).

Each player can only see enemy characters that are within the field of view of one of his children: no more than ten hexes distant, not directly behind a tree and not inside a bush. The visible enemies are updated continously, so that if an enemy enters and exits a child's field of vision in the same turn, you can still see him pass through it.

If a child moves into the location of an enemy child, the enemy child is "caught", and cannot be moved the next turn. The child that caught him cannot stay in the same hex and has to retreat immediately to a neighbouring hex. The caught child cannot be caught again before he recovers.

When a child gets to the enemy flag, it is captured and he begins carrying it with him, with the aim of bringing it into the friendly camp. To prevent that, the player whose flag was captured must get one of his children to the flag thief. If he manages that, the thief is out of the game until the player controlling it manages to get a double dice, after which he re-appears near the friendly camp. The retrieved flag is teleported back to its home camp.

Each time a player gets a double dice, he is rewarded one Command Point. A player may use those command points to activate special bonuses, shown as icons at the bottom of the screen. A special bonus may cost 1, 2, 3 etc command points, according to its power and balance issues to be tested during game development. You also get 2 command points whenever you snatch the enemy's flag.

Examples for special bonuses: Rapid Runner - one is added to the dice roll for the next round, Ninja Master - friendly children cannot be spotted from beyond eight hexes away instead of ten for the next three rounds, Lucky Luke - next dice throw is guarenteed not to have any ones in it.

Game of Many Things

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:57:00 +0000

Most of the game ideas presented in this blog so far have been borrowed from the classics or from casual mainstays of today, translated to a multiplayer one-on-one experience. The following is slightly more original while being very simple to understand and quick to play.

The game spans a few rounds, each lasting about ten seconds. Each round, a procedurally generated picture of multiple objects appears on screen (both players get the same picture). Example pictures include a pile of coins, a flight of birds, a field of flowers, a swarm of butterflies, a jar filled with bubble gum, wind sweeping away leaves or a child holding many balloons. The exact number of objects is random and may change from a few dozen to a few hundred.

Each player must estimate the number of identical objects and type it in before time runs out - a matter of a few seconds per round. The player closest to the actual number, or, if both players guessed identically, the player who entered his guess first, wins the round. At the end of the game the rounds are tallied and a winner, or a tie, is announced - with a few statistics thrown in just for fun (accuracy percentage for each player, avarage guess time for each etc).

For the game to work best it should have quite a variety of different scenes and objects, and also include a degree of animation and movement in later rounds to add to the challenge and the aesthetics.

Apocollapse

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:29:00 +0000

Collapse is another of those stupidly simple, dangerously addictive, criminally overused casual concepts. Random colored blocks rise out of the floor, the player clicks groups of three or more of the same color to remove them, blocks must not reach ceiling. That's it, with the pace accelerating gradually.

I'm not aware of a multiplayer version of collapse. Here is mine, and it's called Apocollapse.

In Apocollapse, each player has his own stack of blocks being slowly pushed up out of the bottom of the screen. Except these blocks are cubes of multicolored ice, and the bottom of the screen is the polar sea. So in fact what you're spending your time destroying are those very topical glaciers, see?

As you destroy parts of your glacier, you release water. The larger the group of ice cubes you destroy with a single click, the more water you have - four cubes release half as much water as three cubes, five cubes release one and a half the amount of four cubes, and so on and forth. Yep, it's not physics logical, but it's gameplay logical.

Now, what happens with the water you release is that it flows through a sophisticated set of pipes straight into your opponent's playing field, raising his sea level and therefore the base height of his stack of ice. And when that pile of icecubes reaches the top of the game window, that player has to shamefuly admit a worldwide catastrophe and defeat.

If you wish for a longer game with an added twist, you can add in a combo meter. This means that destroying same colored groups in succession raises your multiplier factor (a factor that reverts back to x1 over time). This factor ties in to the rate at which excess water is drained from your side of the board: the higher the multiplier, the faster your drainage pumps are working, balancing the sea level against the flow of water from the opponent's side. So you have to balance between clicking on large groups irrespective of color, the aggresive stance, and clicking on groups of same-colored cubes, the defensive stance.

Memory Duel

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:40:00 +0000

If simpler is better, today's idea for a multiplayer game should be among the best. Readers are probably already familiar with the widely popular basic gameplay. Several rows of cards are laid face down. The player can click two cards to flip them over. If the cards' faces are identical, both are removed. The game is won when all cards have been cleared from the screen.

The multiplayer version, more precisely the specific multiplayer version i'll describe, is just a bit more complex. Both players operate on the same screen with the same cards. At the beginning of the match, the cards show their faces for a short time, then flip over. The players now compete to reveal matching pairs.

If it would just be regular cards, and the competition was only focused on revealing the highest number of pairs, the game could become stale before long. However, a strategic element is obtained by having cards that depict different kinds of attacks or powerups. The exact graphics would ofcourse be determined by the chosen context: if we decide to create a modern war type duel, than possible pictures would depict tanks, artillery, missiles etc; a humurous bussiness environment context could have instead comical represntations of a salary raise, industrial espionage, corruption investigation etc.

Each pair of cards, when revealed, is cleared from the screen, awards some points, and affects the match in at least one additional and unique way. This special power of each card is naturally dependant upon the context we chose for the game and the specific picture on that card. In our war game from above, for example, matching two tank cards may "launch an armored assault" upon the game area, capturing a random 4-6 cards. These cards are now surrounded by the color of the relevant player, and locked so that only he can flip them over. The effect should last for a limited time only, with all unused cards reverting back to normal status when it ends.

More examples: clearing a pair of "Industrial Espionage" cards in the bussiness-themed game will give that player the option to see all remining cards exposed for a short 2-3 seconds; other possible effects are creating a scoring multiplier that will give you more points for clearing later pairs, handicapping your opponent in several kinds of ways (like making his cursor harder to control), multiplying your score total (or dividing the opponent's total) by a >1 value (a power that should be saved for the last stages of a match), granting the player x-ray vision so that he can see through the back of the card his cursor is floating on (necessarily a limited time effect), slowing down the flipping over animation of your opponent, being allowed to flip over 3 cards instead of 2 (if the first 2 to be flipped aren't a pair), etc etc, the possibilities are quite varied.

When all cards have been removed, the winner is the one with more "points" (or whatever thematically suits the game - money, love, rank) or less "damage", if you want to reverse the principle of accumulating points into that of causing negative points to the other side (more suitable for a war theme).

Note: You may wish to prevent cheating-by-screen-capture through eliminating the preliminary phase where the cards are shown face up. In that case the game creator will probably also take care not to include any powerup that directly exposes the location of a significant number of cards.

Warlike Bubbles

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:08:00 +0000

You may know it as Snoods, Bust-a-Move, Puzzle Bobble, Dynomite or Yeti Bubbles, among dozens of other names. Regardless, it is one of the most successful casual games of the last decade. And whether you must use bubbles, eggs, smileys or bombs, the goal of the game is the same: shoot colored objects into the game area so as to create same-colored clusters and clear the screen before it fills up. And while there may be a game or two of the type that offer indirect competition via a split screen, there is no real competitive head-to-head offering taking advantage of this popular gameplay type.

A true multiplayer Bust-a-Move can have each player control his own launcher at opposite ends of the game window. A wall of bubbles (or the round object of your choice) seperates the launchers at the center of the window. As the wall slowly grows from the inside out (new bubbles appearing in the center and pushing the outer bubbles outwards), the players compete to shoot and remove colored clusters. In addition to cutting down at the wall and earning points for removing bubbles, as each player clears clusters the wall's center is pushed towards the other player. The larger the cluster removed, the stronger the push is. The winner is the player to push the wall all the way up to his opponent's launcher, "suffocating" him.

Some possible extras:

Add some physics, a-la Splume.

Have power-ups appear from time to time inside random bubbles. The player who removes those bubbles wins a special effect of limited duration. Power-up examples: getting an aiming line for easier shooting, faster firing, two-colored bubbles, wind that slowly pushes the wall towards the opponent.

Draw My Thing

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:32:00 +0000

Here's a well done implementation of a classic party game, Pictionary. It's a four player drawing and guessing game. When it's your turn to draw, the game secretly presents you with a random word. You have to draw the word without actually writing it down, and the other players have to guess what it is. The first one to guess the word wins 2 points, while the player that drew the picture gets 1 point. If no one guesses correctly, no points are awarded.

The game is fun, challenging and cleanly presented. The only problem is that the rules concerning the usage of letters and other symbols aren't clear, and even were they to be defined the game would have no automated way of enforcing them. So it is up to the players to decide what can and cannot be drawn and stick to it.

Play Draw My Thing!

Tetris + Real Estate = Multiplayer Fun

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:46:00 +0000

Players love building stuff, as long as it's relatively easy and rewarding, and tetris pieces are the most succesful building blocks in gaming. A combination of house-building and tetris blocks is the basis for today's multiplayer game concept.

A screen is divided in two by a conveyor belt. Each of the sides contains a colored diagram of a house or other structure, built on a square grid. As the game begins, random tetris-like building blocks start rolling down the conveyor belt. The players can lift those pieces with the mouse, rotate them with the spacebar, and slot them into a free place in the diagram. The first player to finish building his house wins the game (or a game round).

To spice things up, several options are available:

First of all, the structure to be filled up is chosen randomly from a genrous list of pre-fabricated structures.
Structures may be colored in mutiple colors, and the blocks come in random colors. Slotting a block completely on squares of the same color gives that player a certain advantage - points, if points serve a purpose in the game, a bonus single-square block etc.
The conveyor belt may deliver special items from time to time: a bomb, used to clear an unwanted piece on your side of the board or blow up a part of the opponent's house; a joker block, used to fill up any generic enclosed space of up to five squares size; etc.

Brotherhood of Battle

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:09:00 +0000

Definitely not a casual game, but interesting nevertheless, Brotherhood of Battle is an attempt to adapt the canonical gameplay of classical strategy title Warcraft to a multiplayer flash environment. 2-4 players can do battle on different maps with different objectives, fighting over mines (gold resources) and upgrading their castles to produce better trained and equipped soldiers and wizards.

Each player has 60 seconds to go through his units, manually moving them with the WASD keys and giving them attack, capture and other commands by clicking the target of the command and then a suitable icon. The graphics are basic but clean, relying instead on the heroic music to create a suitable atmosphere.

Play Brotherhood of Battle!

Multiplayer Mahjong

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:07:00 +0000

Mahjong, or Chinese Dominoes, is a popular casual game and has many online versions. We have, however, to distinguish between two very different kinds of online Mahjong: the four-player version, somewhat of the chinese equivalent of poker, and the tile-matching single player game. The tile-matching game, where you have to click on two identical free pieces in order to remove them and pair by pair clear a multi-layered domino structure, is the game as it is known to most casual players in the west. From now on I will refer only to this type of game when using the word "Mahjong" (and click here to play Enkord's very well presented but typical sample).

As far as I know, there was no serious attempt up to now to transform Mahjong into a multiplayer game. The only multiplayer versions i'm aware of are only parallel-play, where players play side-by-side but without direct competition or dialogue (check out Wellgames' version for an example).

Here are some ideas about how a true multiplayer Mahjong might work:

The most straightforward way is to have both players play on the same set, competing to remove as many matched pairs as possible. Players get points for each pair they remove, and the highest scoring player when all tiles are removed wins the match. To make matters more interesting, specific tiles may have special properties that activate when cleared from the board: they may just be worth more points than usual, or, more aggresively, may reverse the rival player's controls for a short time.

The battle can also be given an atmospheric context instead of just being a race for points: for example, one player may be labled as the "Day Master", while the second one is the "Night Master". The game's initial background is sky at dusk, and the better each player performs, the more that background is pushed gradually towards a brilliant sunny day or a dark starry night. The game is over either when the board is cleared, or sooner if one of the sides manages to push the ambience completely into full night or day zone.

This concept may work well both in real-time or in short turns. The turn-based version will give each player about 10 seconds at a time to remove as many tiles as possible before switching to the other player. Here, special tiles may award the player with more time to use on the current turn.

A slightly more complex implementation I'll name "Fortress Fight Mahjong". In this game each player has his own set of tiles to clear, but can see both his and the rival's set, as well as a path that connects the two sets. These sets will have the general apperance of fortresses, castles, towers and miscellaneous military structures. The domino pieces themselves bear symbols of military units and weapons. Each player can only remove pieces from his set. When a pair is removed, the unit or the weapon inscribed on it is activated. A unit materializes on the path and moves towards the enemy's set/fortress, while a weapon immediately affects either the friendly fortress (if it is a defensive weapon) or the enemy's. Units may meet on the path and fight to the death using a simple random algorithm and based on a few parameters that define each unit. A unit that reaches the rival set and overcomes any defensive weapons it might be equipped with causes damage according to that unit's attack rank. As damage accumulates, the set slowly crumbles (visually, the domino pieces in the set develop ash marks and shock cracks). The first to destroy the enemy's set is victorious. If a player clears his set, he gets a brand new fortress/set in reward.

It's easy to build a long-term ranked competition around this game, as you can allow players to build their own "deck" (collection of tiles that is used to randomly draw pieces for the creation of that player's fortresses), and award winning players with new types of units and weapons. The concept does, however, begin to stray from the definition of casual, so you may want to keep it as simple as possible, at least for the majority of players.

Save the Battleships!

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:43:00 +0000

The classic Battleships concept has been poorly used in flash gaming. There are several clones floating (unintentional pun) around the web, but that is all they are - clones, adding nothing to the basic luck-based gameplay of the original. The most creative among those, and that is using the word generously, is Hasbro's official version, where every time you hit a square with an enemy ship you have to pass a small timing test in order to avoid a near-miss.

Taking Battleships' advantages - quick, simple gameplay, mainstream recognition - and adding some depth (unintentioanl pun #2), variety and audio-visual punch will result in a highly approchable, highly addictive game, especially for a title with multiplayer capabilities. To see a good example of such a Battleships upgrade it is necessary to peek at a different platform and check out Gameloft's mobile game, Naval Battle.

For a game of this type to be compelling, it has to stay simple while adding a good dose of strategy and audio-visual feedback. Here are some basics:

About 8-10 different types of ship. Each ship has its own look, size, shape and special attack.

Each ship also has its unique price. At the initial deployment stage, the players have 1 minute to choose and place ships on their respective side of the game board. They can create any kind of fleet they wish up to a total value of 1000 points. They can also press a button to allocate random ships in random positions.

Gameplay is similar to basic version, except a player may choose to use one of his ships' special attacks instead of the normal attack. There are two pre-conditions to launching a special attack: First, the ship providing that special attack has to still be afloat (it may be damaged, but not yet sunk); secondly, the Power (Glory, Prestige or whatever you want to call it) bar of the player has to be full. The power bar fills up by about 10 percent each turn where nothing is hit, by 25 percent when an enemy ship is hit, and by 50 percent when an enemy ship is sunk. After a special attack is executed, the power bar returns to zero - but may almost immediately re-fill due to the special attack hitting and/or sinking ships.

Example of special attacks: The sub can fire a torpedo that crosses a whole row or column of the player's choice, hitting the first occupied square on that row or column; The missile ship may fire a salvo of rockets that hit randomly around a chosen center.

Attacks, special attack, hits, sunken ships and the sea background itself will all be depicted with detailed animation, effects of water, smoke, sparks and fire, and warzone sfx. This will add greatly to general atmosphere, the satisfaction of winning and the anguish of losing.

Optional: each ship may also have a special attribute, which is active at all times depending on certain conditions. For example, a cruiser-type ship may have the ability to intercept and destroy any missile-based special attacks directed towards a spot in a specific radius around it. In this situation, it may have a 50 percent chance of destroying each individual missile or rocket that is about to hit inside that radius. This also, ofcourse, will have to be shown visually while not compromising the exact location of the cruiser.

Nano Wars

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:42:00 +0000

This addictive strategy game, currently in beta stages but working very smoothly, is an excellent example of casual strategy that can work like a charm as a multiplayer title. Created by Benoit Freslon, Nano Wars is an abstract, simple but compulsive game, where your goal is to expand the red colony to take over the playing field, while the AI controlled green colony is attempting the same.

The interface is very simple, and so are the rules, making Nano Wars very easy to get into. This simplicity does not trivialize the game's challenge, as beyond a good general strategy you need real-time logistical skills in order to insure that your forces are in the correct place at the correct time. Yes, the game is real-time, and it seems that quite necessarily so, but while many things may be happening all at once, the pedestrian pace of each individual action means that the usual lag shouldn't become an obstacle to a multiplayer implementation of the concept, or a similar one.

Some things that could be added to a multiplayer version:

1. The war could rage on a battlefield composed of several screens. When the game starts, it does so on the middle screen, a sort of neutral zone. The winner who conquers this screen then pushes the battle into his opponent's home screen. Winning here will make him the winner of the game, but losing will take the conflict back to the middle ground.

2. Battlefields could maybe be enchanced by introducing some terrain that affects movement speed and possible approach vectors. The developer would have to be careful not to damage the design's elegant simplicity.

Play Nano Wars!

Where is multiplayer Minesweeper?

noreply@blogger.com (ududy) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:11:00 +0000

Casual multiplayer gaming is in its infancy. Most casual, browser-based games don't include the option of playing against, or with, other players from across the web - even though the web is their natural medium. That's the opposite of what hardcore gamers have been used to for years - an integral or even exclusive multiplayer experience in the majority of titles.

Up until lately, the options for playing a Flash game against other people almost never strayed from the beaten path of classics like Chess, Checkers, Poker and other board, card, word and trivia games drawn from the living room environment. Development is only now beginning, slowly, to expand creatively towards a larger variety of multiplayer gameplay styles. There is great room for experimentation and discovery.

Some good, simple ideas for multiplayer fun have been laying under our noses for years. The famous Minesweeper, born in the 80's long before Windows introduced it into every home, is a widely recognized casual phenomenon, yet i know of no multiplayer implementations of the concept (except as a side-activity inside the Massively Multiplayer game Runescape).

A multiplayer Minesweeper can work in many different ways. One of the simplest ways to imagine it is as a one on one realtime competition on the same board. Each player is free to click squares he thinks are free of mines, and can also mark squares he suspects are mined (but these marker flags do not appear on the other player's board). You get points for clearing out free squares, and get seriously penalized for clicking a mine, and the winner is the higher scoring player after a fixed time or when the board is fully cleared. The gameplay subsists on a constant tension between the pressure of competition and the danger of hastily stepping on a mine.

The game could raise the stakes by dictating that a player who steps on a mine loses immediately, although that could make the players wary to a degree of slowing or even stopping the game. This could be solved by giving each player a few lives, and forcing them to move rapidly, either by requiring a move each x seconds, or by giving each player an energy bar that continuously depletes, and can only be recharged by clearing out more and more squares.

Another option to deal with stepping on a mine is to have the player's cursor virtually explode, slowly gathering itself back together over the course of 10 seconds or the like. During this time the player is forced to sit on the bench, while his rival keeps racking up points. Being kicked out of the game for a short period may be somewhat jarring, but may also be a more serious, tangible threat, considering the frustration of seeing your opponent free to operate while you look on helplessly.

Other things that could be considered are awarding more points for squares cleared inside a mine-rich environment, and having special hidden bonuses and powerups inside random squares. There is also the option of going back to the original concept of Minesweeper, where the player wasn't an abstract entity clearing the board from above, but actually a character (most likely a combat engineer) that had to cross the minefield one square at a time from one side to the other. In this variation, you could have each of the players start the game at an opposite end of the board. The first to reach the flag, treasure or whatnot in the middle is the winner.