Tag Archives: videogames

Luftrauser

Posted on by tjkopena

I stumbled across this game Luftrauser from Vlambeer the other day.  Personally I think the imagery trends just a bit too much toward glorifying the 3rd Reich—and the sequel Luftrausers they’re ostensibly working on is much, much worse in that regard—but there’s no denying the gameplay is very very good.  There are some weird jags in the motion every now and then, but otherwise the planes fly super smoothly, the controls are intuitive yet interesting, and within a super limited aesthetic they create some really neat effects, like the water spray when you fly too close to the deck.  Definitely worth giving it a spin.

HTML5 Game Markets

Posted on by tjkopena

Rich over at PhotonStorm posted this the other day:

Insert Coin to Continue: The HTML5 Game Sponsorship Market

It’s a very good rundown of the HTML5 game market.  Most important to me was I finally understand a bit of the distinctions and pros and cons between “app” games versus mobile HTML5 games like he’s talking about.  It seems like for the former you’re either selling the app outright, and competing against some heavy hitters, or going for micro-transactions, which can also be pretty hard and unpredictable.  The latter is in some ways much more like the Flash market, where portals want to host your game so they can get eyeballs on their ads.  I’ll have to think a bit about what this means for the Haxe app based approach we’ve been focusing on here.

Perfect Mission

Posted on by tjkopena

Tonight I was looking for a good game to play for a few minutes and then I realized, “Oh hey, I know one!”  Jumping into the cockpit, I quickly realized I was on a roll.  Check out the achievement on the far right:

The perfect mission: It is possible!

It was good to finally confirm that the final achievement—a full mission, with no player deaths—is realistically feasible in the current/final mission script.  As a side note, not a single mission objective target escaped either.  Having now done it, I think the Gold Leader achievement’s actually not that hard as long as you aren’t overly conservative with the powerups, don’t risk collisions by going after enemies that don’t matter, and take frequent brief shooting pauses to recoup a couple shield points.

More than that, it’s pretty great to have a game that I actually really enjoy playing and find replay value in.  I was pretty burned out on it after extensive playtesting for the last round of revisions, but however this turns out in the end it’s at least a game I really enjoy.