We’ve been hard at work for the last couple of weeks putting the finishing touches to the first in our new series of circus mini-games, going under the name ‘Circus of Idiots’.

The idea was to make a series of amusing one-button circus mini-games. Each game will be based around a single incompetent performer in the world’s worst circus. The player’s job is to make their act last as long as possible before their inevitable demise.

In this first game in the series, you take to the trapeze. Press Space to jump, but make sure you time it right though.

You can play Circus of Idiots – Trapeze here.

If you want to add it to your website, download the game pack here.

We’re already planning the next game in the series and have a load of ideas for others. So hopefully we can keep these coming for a while.

Updates include, faster gameplay, much improved AI, much improved collision detection/response,  improved interface, modified difficulty curve and more.

If you already have this game on your website the new update should get rolled out automatically via the Mochi Live Update system, so no need to update the file.

If you don’t already have it, please feel free to download the Supercar Road Racer game pack for your website.

We are also selling ad-free sitelocked licenses for this game, so if you’re interested in one of those, please get in touch to discuss the details.

As I mentioned before we’ve got 2 more games currently in development (a new puzzle game and an Operation Wolf style retro arcade shooter) which will likely take us up to the end of the summer. I’ll try and post details as and when, so check back for updates.

After giving it some serious thought we’ve decided to put out a major update to the original game to make it even better. In the early stages of developing the sequel it became apparent we’d just be effectively making the same game all over again, just with different visuals. There was also the problem that I don’t think we could improve on the track designs of the first game. For these reasons we’re putting the sequel on hold for a serious re-think and will probably revisit it at a later date.

Over half of the intended updates are now complete and I’m hoping to get the new version of the game out at the end of next week. All existing versions of the game will update automatically via the Mochi live update system.

Updates include faster gameplay, more code optimisations (for more consistent frame rate on slower computers), improved car AI, skid marks on track (finally got this working properly and looking good without hogging CPU) & minor bug fixes (including collision problems under bridges).

We’ve got a couple more new games lined up to start development in the next week or so as well. One action shooting game and an innovative new puzzle game (which we’re hoping to release as both a Flash game and an iPhone app).

There’ve been a few minor bug fixes and tweaks since the beta. Thanks to everyone who gave their input, much appreciated.

It also now features some great new retro style music by the extremely talented Dave Cowen. He’s done a great job on capturing the style of music from classic Amiga racing games such as Supercars 2 that inspired me to make the game in first place.

The game seems to be getting a fairly good reception, with around a quarter of a million plays since the beta was released a few weeks ago. The only exception being people that clearly don’t understand the upgrade system, wanting to spend all their winnings on extra speed and then wonder why they can’t control their car anymore.  For those people, it’s called strategy. Try spending some of your money on tyres and/or brakes as well, depending on how you like to drive.

I’m already planning a sequel which is going to add more features and gameplay elements. I also plan to overhaul the existing game engine to further optimise it and tweak a few things. Look for some details of that in the next few months.

It’s just over 5 months since I started work on our new retro top view Flash car racing game Supercar Road Racer. It’s been delayed a few times by other projects, but I finally got a full week to work on it as soon as I got back after Christmas and New Year. So, the beta is finally here.

I’ve already done the first round of revisions, mostly minor tweaks to gameplay rather than bug fixes. So if you have any suggestions, please feel free to let me know (just post a comment here). I’ll be doing a few more rounds of revisions and any last minute bug fixes, if anything comes to light that I’ve missed, over the next week or so. Any feedback is welcomed. I’ll read all comments and respond to any suggestions.

There’s still background music to go in, which I’m hoping to get done soon. Other than that it’s extremely close to the finished product. Enjoy!

Play Super Car Road Racer Here.

A couple of months ago we were asked by USA based information security specialists Intrepidus Group to design and develop an online eductional quiz, to incorporate into their Phishme training programme. This was the result.

We were given the challenge of developing, illustrating and animating the fish quizmaster character, as well as putting the quiz together in a format similar to the American gameshow Jeopardy. As well as putting together the Flash game front end we needed to provide integration with their existing backend control panel system, to allow dynamic delivery of the quiz content.

We’re pretty pleased with the results, why not check it out. You can play a public demo version of the Phishme quiz here.

Been busy tidying up our new Supercar Road Racer Flash game. As promised I’ve just uploaded a playable alpha demo of the game that you can play now HERE. (You’ll need to click on the game window before playing to activate it).

There’s one track to drive around in this demo. Although the code is in to do it, laps aren’t counted so the race is never ending.

Controls are A to accelerate, S to brake and arrow keys to steer. You can also toggle the various car performance upgrades using 1,2,3 & 4 to try them out. Obviously you’ll have to buy those in the garage in the finished game, but it’s good to check out the different configurations.

It’s still a fair way off finished, but the basic game mechanic is certainly getting there. A lot of the major glitches have been ironed out, although it is still quite buggy. I’m very conscious of making this game play as good as it can. So please come back and post any feedback in the comments after you’ve played the demo. Any suggestions are welcome.

Hope you enjoy it. I think the next version will probably be a fully working beta sometime around Christmas. Then testing can start properly, with the completed game hopefully being released late January 2011.

Anyway, I’d better get back to coding!

At last I’ve managed to find some time to focus on Supercar Road Racer, after having to spend a couple of weeks on another project.

I’ve made some good progress putting the computer controlled cars and AI in. The cars now detect and navigate the track, without any predefined paths. It took some time to get it there, but other than a few minor glitches it’s working great. Basic overtaking has also been included, so the cars move around others to get past.

There’s still some tweaking to be done and a few more things to add yet. I’m quite conscious of making the CPU drivers too smart though. It would be really easy to overdo it and make them impossible to beat, so I’m planning on leaving a level of stupidity in the AI so they do make mistakes, crash etc.

I’d estimate there’s a good, solid 3 weeks work left before the game is anything like finished. I’ve got another project to juggle as well, so I may have to leave this alone again for a couple of weeks.

I’m hoping to be able to get to a point where I can post a playable alpha version of the game soon, just so you can have a go at racing one of the tracks. Look out for that in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, check out the new video above.

Been busy for the last 9 days Photoshoping the final track artwork. All 12 tracks are now complete, including rocks, bushes and trees. The trees and bushes from the last screenshots have been completely re-done as I wasn’t happy with the roundness of them, they look much better now. It’s all coming along nicely now as you can see from the new video.

I’ve tried to include a good taste of the different tracks in the video without giving too much away. It’s all playing pretty well and I think the progression of difficulty between the tracks is about right.

After giving it some thought and realising 15MB is going to be way too big for a Flash game, I’ve tweaked the image compression. Originally I wanted the quality of the track artwork to be virtually untouched, but 12 large track bitmaps at minimal compression was pushing the file size over what’s even remotely reasonable. Load times would have become a serious issue at that size and I don’t want to risk players moving on before it’s even loaded. Another issue is quite a few games portals have filesize limits and I really didn’t want to risk limiting the final game’s distribution. Anyway, I think I’ve made a good compromise. There are a few tiny visible compression artifacts, not ideal, but most players probably won’t even notice, especially as the track is moving most of the time. The overall current file size is down to a more reasonable 7.5MB now, leaving around 2MB for additional artwork and sound to keep it under my new 10MB limit.

Back to coding now. Priorities are sorting out a few glitches in the track detection, implementing visible tyre skid marks and sorting out lap detection for each track.  After all of that’s sorted out I can start to put the computer controlled cars and AI in.

The plan is to really spend quite a lot of time putting together and tweaking the AI. I’m pretty happy with the way it’s looking so far and I want to make sure it plays as good as it can. So there’s going to be lots of testing and tweaking until it’s all just right. Basically, there’s a long way to go yet, a bit more front end artwork and a few weeks coding before it’s anywhere near ready.

Once it’s just about ready to go I’m going to put it up for Beta testing for a few weeks, via this website. Again to make it as good as it can possibly be I’m going to need your input, so look out for that over the coming months.

I’m also (maybe prematurely) already seriously thinking about a sequel. There’s some things I know I can do differently next time around to make the visuals even better. Plus there’s a whole load of extra features that got ditched this time around (just because the game would have taken months longer to put together) that should be in the sequel.

I’m hoping to spend the next few weeks finishing off the track artwork, then it’s back to coding, putting in the computer controlled cars and AI. There’s still a considerable amount of work left before it’s anywhere near finished. Here are a few screenshots of how it’s looking so far, the dashboard artwork still needs some work: