Big Screen vs Small Screen

I often do some consulting and training work with a local college and I'm always interested in the students' attitudes towards technology.

Recently, I administered a computer test to around 150 students in batches of about 25. They would finish the test in under an hour and they had the rest of the hour to 'surf the internet peacefully' while the slower ones finished up the test.

So what surprised me was that even though they were sitting in front of a nice big screen, a good many of them pulled out their smartphones and browsed the internet on those instead.

It seems counter-intuitive to me, a big-screen fan. They preferred the smaller, more personalised internet experience to the larger more public one.

Other factors: Facebook was blocked on the desktops, as per the college policy, but I didn't see much Facebook use on their phones either. Also I'm quite sure many of their phones were new, so they may be in the gadget honeymoon phase - where they can't put it down for more than 5 minutes.

New game: Chesstastic - The Chess Mash-Up!

Chesstastic is a new game on FlashByNight.com that takes the concept of chess and mashes it up with new board designs, new set-ups and even levels where you take on two opponents at once. It's chess like you've never played it before.

Chesstastic is timed, so you have to make your move before the clock runs out or you forfeit your turn. There is an easy setting for beginners and there are 50 levels to play through. Once you beat a level, you get a 'skipcode' that you can enter on the home screen so that the next time you play, you can skip straight to that level.

You can try Chesstastic at: http://www.flashbynight.com/chesstastic

Screenshots:

Tablets, Smartphones, Flash, HTML5

It's tough for a casual game designer at the moment because Adobe Flash is by far the most powerful game design tool for casual games, but it has one major issue: it doesn't work well with phones and tablets. With Apple devices, although you can use Flash to create an app, Flash doesn't run on the browser at all.

Hence a lot of Flash game designers are turning to HTML5, an emerging technology that works well on mobile and desktop. Unfortunately, it is MUCH harder to make a game using HTML5. HTML5 is good for simple games but a royal pain to use to create more complex games. You need many more lines of code and there is no visual editor available. It is also more difficult to protect your games using HTML5. I want my hard work to be featured on my own site and not some Russian scam site.

HTML5 does have one great feature. You can create a game 'canvas' that adapts to the player's screen size. For example, the same game can be played on mobile and desktop and the screen size will adapt. This is called responsive design and I have done it with this game:

www.flashbynight.com/religionquiz

However, again, changing the game's screen size means you can only use this method for very simple games.

So where does this leave a site like FlashByNight.com? A lot of people visit the site on a smartphone or tablet.

The only way ahead that I can see is to feature some simple games for all platforms, while the more complex games will remain desktop/laptop only. Hopefully then, no matter how people log on, they can still have fun...  that's what games are all about.

Religion Quiz

I wanted to post a version of the quiz that the Pew Research institute carried out to test people on religious knowledge.

My version will keep a running average of scores and hopefully will be fun and easy to try!

This quiz is tablet and smartphone friendly.

Try it here:

http://www.flashbynight.com/religionquiz/


Screenshots:

Tunemaster Redux

It's really high time to make some games and content available to people accessing Flash by Night with a mobile or tablet browser.

So for starters, I have redone the Tunemaster quiz (www.flashbynight.com/tunemaster) in HTML5 so that it can be accessed on any size of screen. On a desktop, it should look and feel like a flash game, but the page will resize to be playable on a smaller screen.

It looks something like this on the desktop:

...and something like this on a smartphone:

 For those who are interested in such things, I used the kineticjs library to create a resizable canvas to display the game and I applied responsive design techniques to both the html elements and the canvas. i will be posting some tutorials and other info soon.

Nintendo Harlem Shake

I just can't resist posting this one:

The Nintendo version of the Harlem Shake

Splodge 2

Here's a new game. It's a fun and simple one with 25 levels. It's based on Splodge, and I just called it Splodge 2.

The gameplay is just like Splodge, but instead of each level getting faster and harder, each level brings a new challenge based on the basic premise.

The basic premise is this: Avoid the red guys and hit (splodge) the green guys!

Play Splodge 2 here: http://flashbynight.com/splodge2/

Screenshots: