Chopped - a new word game

It's time for a brand new word game on Flash By Night.

In Chopped, the player is given a set of eight letters and you need to cut the letters out in such a way that they form a word of four letters or more. You'll need to be fast to beat the timer, which goes faster every round. You get bonuses for longer words or for finding a word quickly.

Play here: www.flashbynight.com/chopped 

Some screenshots:

Oligarchy - a game for capitalist pigs

Time for a new game release...

Oligarchy is a Monopoly-style game where you compete against two computer controlled players, buying property and trying to put them out of business.

Where Oligarchy is different from Monopoly is:

• you can build houses before you have a full set
• you can 'turn over' a property; get it from your opponent if he doesn't own the full set
• money is limited; spend and strategise wisely
• there are trivia and puzzle challenges where you can earn extra money for your war chest

You can play Oligarchy at: www.flashbynight.com/oligarchy

Screenshots:

HTML5 Multiple Choice Quiz Tutorial

I remember when I started working with HTML5 and I was surprised I couldn't find a decent tutorial for making a simple MCQ quiz. So now that I've gotten more confident with the technology, I've decided to publish my own. Putting together a short quiz is an excellent project for someone starting off with a technology, and it's great for someone crossing over into HTML5 from Flash.

The tutorial is here: http://www.flashbynight.com/tutes/html5quiz/

And it includes all the code and artwork you need for the project.

UPDATE: I have produced a simpler version, see here: http://www.flashbynight.com/tutes/mcqquiz

and a version with pictures here: http://www.flashbynight.com/tutes/pixquiz

The new versions will work on phone screens too.

UPDATE 2: A version with a varied number of options:

example: http://flashbynight.com/tutes/mcqquiz/example2/
source: http://flashbynight.com/tutes/mcqquiz/example2/source.zip

HTML5 - Prevent that green highlight on an Android touch event

The Android operating system puts a green highlight around certain items when they are selected. Now, if you are creating, say, a quiz on the HTML5 canvas, you don't want that. What's more, I believe the iPad displays an orange highlight.

To get rid of all these nuisances, put this line of code in canvas element

-webkit-tap-highlight-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);

Get an April hi score

The way the hi score tables work on Flash By Night is that they are reset every month. Some games also have all-time hi scores.

So here we are on April 1, and the hi score tables have been reset. If you want to try to get your name on the high score list, this would be a good time, since the barrier would still be low.

The games are here:  www.flashbynight.com

Enjoy.

Parents be warned: Video games may encourage your kids to read!

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of parents out there who think gaming is a completely unhealthy activity. I always argue strongly against this position and recently, after playing Skyrim and Mass Effect 3, it struck me that games can encourage teens to read.


1) In Skyrim, there are quite a few quests that involve collecting books and you can pick up books everywhere. These books can be opened and read, and have stories and lore about Skyrim. Each one would be about three or four pages of an actual book, but there are hundreds of them in the game. Just to recap, the game presents finding and reading books as a fun activity.

Reading a book in Skyrim

In Mass Effect 3, you explore a vast and rich universe as Commander Shepard of the Normandy. Again, as you explore, the lore and background story are revealed as updates to the 'codex'. A careful reading of the codex brings you more deeply into the game

Mass Effect Codex

Many other games have a background story revealed through in-game books, journals or a codex.




2) Game Fiction


After enjoying a game, many gamers aren't ready to give up on the experience and can't wait two years for the sequel to come out. A game like Mass Effect spawns books written about characters in the Mass Effect universe. Most of these books are very suitable for teens.

And then there's fan fiction... fiction written about Mass Effect or other games, by fans. Some of it is amateur and some of it can be pretty good.




So there you go, that's how gaming can help to encourage a reading habit. I'm a gamer and I usually read about two books a month.


And remember, as well as encouraging teens to read, games can also encourage them to write - they may want to try their hand at fan fiction. And games can stimulate teens to try their hand at art - just look at all the game-based fan art on DeviantArt.com for example.


So I hope you can agree with me that encouraging reading is just one of the ways that gaming can be healthy for young (or old) minds.

Staxx - a challenging word game

Here is a brand new game on Flash By Night.

It is called 'Staxx' and the aim of the game is to form words of 3 or more letters. You can click on the letters to slide them around and in each level, you are given a time target and a target of how many words to find.

Play it here: www.flashbynight.com/staxx