GameDevBlog

The Launch Of Happion Laboratories - And Giveaway

Ta da.

Welcome to my new company, Happion Laboratories. It's atomic!

And yeah, basically right now it's just a URL and a dream. Guy Kawasaki wrote once that when you're creating a new company, the first thing you should do is make business cards. But he wrote that years ago. I think in this day and age, he'd probably say the first thing you should do is create a website.

I almost created a brand new website but then I thought - Wait a minute. I've already got a website with a page rank of 5 that gets hundreds of hits a day. Why would I want to start over?

So - GameDevBlog is now the official Game Development Weblog of Happion Laboratories. Thoughts and opinions voiced here are the thoughts and opinions of Happion Labs. 

 

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY!

I'm borrowing a trick from my wife's Etsy friends. You can win a Rhodium badge for sixty second shooter (and the 500,000 points of energy that go along with that.) I'll be giving away ten badges to randomly selected entrants. Each of the things you do on this list earn you an entry into the contest:

• Join our mailing list
• Like HappionLabs on Facebook 
• Follow @HappionLabs on Twitter 
• Retweet this announcement
• Share the announcement on G+

Deadline to enter is 11:59 PM PST May 23rd - the giveaway ends right before the #BecauseWeMay promotion starts.

 

[Random side note:

I'm not going to make a G+ fan page, but you can always add me (Jamie Fristrom) to your circles on G+. (Not part of the contest.)]

 

Expect happy things. The future begins tomorrow.

#BecauseWeMay

sixty second shooter is totally going to be in the upcoming #BecauseWeMay promotion.

BecauseWeMay.com.

 

Tournament Results 5/13/2012



Tournament Results, 4/22/12

I remembered to take the screenshot but forgot to post it. Here it is.  Are scores trending up? Hard to tell - this is better than two weeks ago, but there have been weeks just this good in the past...

Tournament Results, 4/15/12

Whoops - swamped with grading I forgot to take a screenshot.

Anyhow, it looks like it was Joseph7099 with 5242065, followed by heibenator in second with 3518004.

Leaderboards 4/8/12

sixty second shooter Strategy Guide

Joseph7099, sixty second shooter champion, wrote this strategy guide:

This game is fun just to play. For example, I am an adult student, so I will study and take a break with this game. For fun and practice, just play without boosters!

For ultra high scores, it needs to be a little more systematic. If you're not practicing or playing for fun, you must have boosters before you start the game. Also to get ultra high scores you need a mouse and a keyboard so plug a mouse into your laptop's USB (if applicable)! I use the letters as my arrow keys rather than the arrows as well.

The two boosters are Start on level 4 (400) and bonus multiplier (200).

Another thing to note is, you can play two identical games the best you have ever played and your scorecan vary +/- 3,000,000 points, the reason for this is there is a random algorithm to powerups during game play.

There are only three powerups worth getting and in this order:

1. Multiplier - multiply points gained
2. Down level - increase baddies so more points available
3. Hourglass - this is insurance against death, it helps so you won't die to hurt your multiplier and time.

The hourglass is a distant third, the multiplier and down level are the most important.

Therefore when you're playing all other powerups need to be ignored until you get one of the three listed above and in that order if possible. If there are none of the three listed powerups are on the screen, get whatever is not too far out of your way, this will increase the chances that one of the three will appear.

You want to stay central and do circles or diagonals try not to go to the outlier unless it is not out of the way or you are getting one of the three listed above.

Also don't bring out the red bomb missles in full force until after 35 seconds at the earliest because it kills too many baddies when you don't have enough multipliers built up for it to mean anything. Of course a bomb to reach a multiplier before 35 seconds or to save your life is fine.

The rest of the skill you will need to hone with learning how baddies move and your own reflexes!

Hope this helps, happy shooting for 60 game seconds!

 

So - as game designer - I'm disappointed that the other boosters and power-ups are valueless.  It's also troubling that you can't get a high score without the boosters - I do want non-paying players to have a chance at the top.  That said, I'm going to leave it this way for now, because what's the point of publishing a strategy guide if nobody can benefit from it?

I have a tip of my own: if you don't have a 4:3 display, don't play fullscreen - play in a 4:3 window. You'll see the furthest that way.

Tournament Results, 3/25/12

I think Joseph's just toying with us this week.

Good News and Bad News

The Good News, if you've noticed that sixty second shooter was crashing - it's  not crashing anymore.

The Bad News is it's over quota and I don't know when Google is going to let me upgrade the billing - so even though you can play, you can't get on the leaderboards. (Until tomorrow when it resets - but then by the end of the day it'll probably be over quota again.)

(More Good News is I guess it's kinda popular?)

 

Artist Statement

I just submitted sixty second shooter to Indiecade, and they asked for an 'artist's statement' ... I don't really consider sixty second shooter 'art' but here's what I came up with:

sixty second shooter was intended to be the sort of game that rapidly induces a "Csikszentmihalyi flow state" - that state of mind where the player is focused on just the game and the rest of the world fades into the background - and also to cause frequent heart-racing adrenaline rushes, by mashing up the retro ‘twin stick’ (although sixty second shooter uses keyboard and mouse) arena shooter genre with the sixty-second time limit games popular on Facebook.
Like the hardcore shooters of yesteryear, repeated plays build player skill, reflexes and hand-eye coordination; but the strategy is not as simple as shooting anything that moves: understanding of the game mechanics are required to maximize your score. In fact, if you excel at the game’s strategy, you can keep the game in a slow-motion mode that ‘levels the playing field’ - so someone with mediocre hand-eye coordination and reflexes (like myself) can still earn a top spot on the leaderboard.
sixty second shooter was also intended to be a perfect low-friction 'coffee break' game; a player with only a few minutes of spare time can open their browser and, after a nearly instantaneous load time, are playing a short game that they know will be done before their next appointment. They can get in, improve their standing on the leaderboards, and get out.