Zip-Zap Games

Bottle Bank Arcade

Dejv — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:11:38 +0000

I like to find games in strange place, like toilet game I wrote about two years ago. Some guys behind this game thinking why people don’t recycle glass bottles and came with idea that they should create some arcade game about that and put it on the street. During first day there was 100 different players who returns bottles. Ordinary you’ve got about 2 people by day, so it was great success and it also fun.

Real-World Interface

Dejv — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:01:00 +0000

Arcade cabinets all well known for their use of different kinds of control devices. Things like light guns, moving turret tower or even horse. I stumble upon video of nice vintage cabinet from early 90’s: it use a real cue stick and ball to play some kind of billiard game or just balls for few other games. Enjoy the video.

VideoTrace

Dejv — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:55:41 +0000

Today post will not be directly about games, but this tool is just awesome and I want to share it with you.

Upgrade Complete

Dejv — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:01:49 +0000

Today I will write about first game I ever play, where core game isn’t matter. This game is Upgrade Complete and it is all about upgrades. You start with crappy game, well you start without any game at all and you need to buy menu and gameplay itself for some start money. Then you control small space ship and will just killing some opponents space ship like you did in games like Xenon. Failing the level do not matter, you just restart it and play again and again.

As I say, the core of this game is to upgrade everything: you will buy upgrades for you ship (buy and upgrade your guns), you will also upgrade graphics of the game itself: from ASCII art to something better, you can see second upgrade of the game and you will also upgrade menu screen and logo of the game. Game is fairly short, it takes me just 30 minutes to get all badges, but it is kind a fun. I will not play this again, but this is not purpose of this game.

Play this game here

This is the only level

Dejv — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:43:21 +0000

Name of this game sounds crazy, but game is much more craziest then you think. Concept is simple: you have one elephant, button, few traps, kind of doors and pipe. Your objective is to go through level to the pipe. After you do that, your elephant is respawned on the start of level and you must go to the pipe again, but with different gameplay rules. Controls could change, physics (like gravitation, tile dropping) could change, maybe you will don’t see anything or you will need to press suicide or visit credits page. Everything is possible in this game. Big hint is the name of the room on the bottom of screen.

Maybe it looks weird, but this is the most suprising game I played for a while and I must recommend you to try it.

Play this game here

First Persona 3 portable teaser trailer

Gee — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:40:12 +0000

There’s not much to tell about this conversion yet, so just enjoy this trailer and look forward to the game. The only thing we can be sure about for now, is a new female lead character. Because I’m only DS owner, I’m kinda jealous of the PSP:o)

Memory Game

Dejv — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:17:18 +0000

Kongregate seems to be unlimited source of new games. Most of them fall into category for hardcore gamers with a lot of blood, noise and probably some dexterity required. Another game genres doesn’t fit great into this community and they don’t perform well in terms of ratings or number of game plays. But I like diversity and also simplicity of flash games, so I am glad to write about this little game.

Game is very simple, in each level you will need to remember sequence of colors and then you just click on correspond buttons. During the gameplay there are few twist like you need to click on buttons backwards or there are some confusing elements like different colors of names and types.

I don’t like fact that all levels are hard coded = you will get same sequences each time you play this game and there are also very limited pool of levels so it is very easy to finish this game. I think that it will be very easy to code some level generator, maybe it will be implemented in some kind of sequel.

Play this game here

Sad game endings

Gee — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:11:33 +0000

Because it’s holiday in here, I’ve got a lot time to play now. And as I grow old, my gaming habits change. For example I rather finish one game, than start three and throw them away a few hours after. And after finishing a game lately (I don’t want to spoil anything, so take it just as an example) I was pretty surprised to see a sad ending.

You know, it’s hard for me to accept an ending like this after 30+ hours of playing. I lived the story with the character, the story pushed me forward and even if I was able to clear all the things a game prepared for me, there was a bad ending. And I don’t mean anything like death of main character, his sacrifice for a higher good. This would mean that at least the idea I was fighting about was successful. But the ending where you didn’t accomplish anything at all. All the time was for nothing.

For example – all the game you’re after a killer. And the end? You captured the killer, but there’s no evidence, so after the court, he’s gonna be free again. Your little sister is in the hospital and may die (of course you don’t know, how it’s going to end, ‘cos it’s the end of game) and you move away, so you won’t see your friends (that helped you all the time) again.

I do understand sad endings in movies, but it’s different in games, cause in some way, you’re the hero in here. And of course you spend a lot more time playing a game than watching a movie.

What about you? Do you enjoy even sad endings in games, or are you disappointed as well?

Pyro 2

Dejv — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:03:07 +0000

I spent this morning observing Kongregate for new interesting games and it looks like we have kind a new game genre, which I start calling throw-out-the-thing. First two games we mention are two sequels of Gravitee. This game is kind a similar.

You have some fireball floating in the room and you need throw it and burn one or more torches. And that’s it. In fact I do not enjoy this game as much as Gravitee, but if you like this game genre you might enjoy it and if you find yourself bored you can crate your own levels or try levels from another player (some of them looks very interesting).

Play this game here

Multitask

Dejv — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:22:59 +0000

After few posts about game development is time to actually play some game again. It is quite hard to find something creative and novel in this flood of tower defense games, but I was lucky today. Multitask is very simple game in term of graphic visuals: just few basic colors and geometric shapes, but this is biggest advantage of flash games: you don’t need to create stunning graphics and add tons of content to be author of memorable game.

This game is about multi tasking, which means that you will need to split your focus between couple of different tasks. You start with one task: just balance the ball, then you will get couple of others, like avoiding the arrows or collect the squares.

I am very one thing focused person so this game was very hard for me and I can’t play it very well, but it was fun and I can imagine that you will perform much more better then me.

Play this game here