It’s been ages since we released a game and we’ve had this little doozy up our sleeves for some time. Finished way back in 2011, Falling Elephants is a very simple yet highly addictive casual game.

We made it for a bit of fun and knew it would be a struggle to find much interest from sponsors. So it’s been sat gathering dust on a virtual shelf… Until now!

Taking a break from the development of Bad Eggs, we knocked this out in about a week, basically as an exercise in making a simple and fun high score based matching game in as little time as possible, but retaining a certain sense of humour and polish. We think it turned out pretty well. It’s actually quite an addictive little time waster, especially if you want to set a decent score. My parents and grandparents love it!

So what are you waiting for. Go and drop some colourful elephants on top of other coloured elephants. Simples.

Music comes courtesy of the fantastic Mr Gee who composed us this hilarious original track. It gets annoying after a while but make sure you listen to it through at least once.

Come September, Rob and I have been invited to speak at the sophomore year of Mochi London. Set up in 2011 by Chris Jeffrey and Ernesto Quezada, this 2 day event aims to offer a unique and first hand perspective on some of the key topics facing developers in the flash games community. A great way to meet your fellow developers and with some great speakers lined up, this year’s event is shaping up to be even bigger and better than last year.

Rob and I will be talking about our experiences with our multiplayer game Bad Eggs Online , with particular focus on the importance of the role of the community in multiplayer gaming and our thoughts and observations on how to make micro-transactions work for you. (This will be a our first talk mind you, so forgive the nerves)

Whether you make flash games or just have a passing interest, we encourage and recommend you to come on down and get involved. We look forward to meeting lots of like minded folk and it should be a lot of fun for everyone. Registration for the event is free and open here: http://mochilondon2012-estw.eventbrite.com/.

For the last several weeks we’ve been stuck in development limbo, desperately trying to come up with our next game idea. We haven’t made much progress. We prototyped a couple of ideas  and talked our way out of a few others but still nothing to write home about. So rather than waste time trying to force the next big idea (trust us, it’s going to be amazing), we needed to do something constructive. What better way than to revisit our beloved Bad Eggs Online.

It was about time we launched a new weapon pack anyway. Just when you think you’ve totally exhausted every possible idea for a weapon and couldn’t possibly manage any more, we always manage to squeeze a few out. This time a genius weapon idea came from one of the unlikeliest sources, my flat mate. Usually he doesn’t have much to offer on the gaming front, but one night after work we were discussing it and he casually remarked, “What about an egg timer which counts down? When it reaches zero, a random egg just dies”. Thus the Egg Timer of Doom was born. In principle it works slightly differently but the gist of his idea was enough. Credit where it’s due.

While working on the update, I was having a good old rummage through the game assets. Some of my old art, particularly on the background/foreground terrains left a lot to be desired. In the heat of the moment I decided to redo one of them just because I could. But once I’d done one the rest suddenly felt inferior. I could have just left it. It’s been fine for ages. But the bee was under my bonnet and I couldn’t stop myself. Four days later, several 4am late nights and working over the weekend, I’d finally overhauled the whole lot. It felt good. Everything looked so much better. I just felt so much happier about them so all in all it was definitely worth it. One thing is for sure, my graphics skills have come on such a long way in the last 6 months. I have posted a few images below for a quick side by side comparison.

So worth it

What happens when the world’s Super Villains follow through on their threats of world destruction? Well boredom mostly. Now the Villains and their dutiful minions roam around in Cloud Cities in the sky, all that remains after blowing up the earth. All that’s left to do is pummel each other into submission in an epic last-man-standing Battle Royale, to determine once and for all who is the greatest.

Our latest is an intense, action packed frantic sci-fi arena shooter with loads of enemies, upgrades, bullet time, boss fights and minion helpers. Inspired by Frantic Frigates and Death Vs. Monstars, we set out to make an arena shooter with as much mayhem and destruction as we could fit on the screen (without causing Flash to stop running).

I’d had this idea of creating a game where rather than playing the hero, you took on the role of the villain, but wasn’t sure how best to implement it. At first I wanted it to be an RPG where you had to commit villainous acts and earn notoriety, with the aim of world domination. At the time it felt a bit ambitious. But we liked the theme so began running with the idea. We tried molding it into a launch game but that felt forced. So we settled on a shooter. “Easy to pick up, difficult to master”. Shooters are the very definition of what makes a classic Flash Game.

Creatively we decided a side view arena shooter worked best, over a top down angle. Additionally, allowing the player to fly rather than walk over the ground felt more fluid and in touch with fast paced nature of the game. Rob came up with the cool idea of epic fights in cloud cities. We were always wary of opting for a space theme as its been done so many times so this provided a perfect alternative. In the end, we threw in a space level in anyway, but the variety in the background design gave it a different feel to similar games of this type.

Upgrades are always popular in Flash games so adding those in was a given from the start. There are only so many ways to upgrade your player in these shooter games – fire rate, weapon, speed you move around, money magnet etc. – so these come as standard. As such we wanted to bring something extra to the table that hadn’t necessarily been done before. Out of this we created Minions, little furry helpers to assist you on your Villainous rampage.

As usual, one the hardest aspects of the games development was the balancing. Too hard and you put people off before they’ve had a chance to dip their feet in, too easy and the seasoned gamers breeze through it in no time at all and complain it was too short. In the end, we toned down the difficulty slightly so it could appeal to a more general audience. But for those that want the challenge there is an Endless high score mode to keep people coming back for more.

Go forth, kick some ass and be the Baddest Villain you can be. Play Game.

TRAILER:

We’ve been thinking about releasing some official Bad Eggs Online stash for a while now but have only just got round to putting it into action.

We’re using a site called Spreadshirt to allow us to provide this service which means that all printing/payment/delivery is handled by them (so any complaints on that side of things must go to them, we’re just providing the designs).

There are currently two designs (we may add more if people like them) in a big variety of colours as well as male/female tees.

There are several different stores depending on where you are based. Please click the correct version that most applies to you:

US store

UK store

Europe store

“One of the best physics puzzles to come out in a while” Jay is Games

“Very visually appealing. 8.5/10″ FlashMush

Ninja Bear once swam across the Atlantic Ocean on a brick. He squeezed blood out of a stone. Even Chuck Norris sleeps with him on his pillow. Here, with his trusty sidekick Purple Teddy, Ninja Bear must save the day from the monsters under the bed.

Ninja Bear is the fourth collaboration for the brothers Donkin and marks the first time all three brothers have made a game together. My youngest sibling George joined us this time round by lending his wonderfully varied and charismatic vocal talent. His humorous voice sound effects really bring the characters to life which makes for a much richer game experience.

Ninja Bear is a physics game with an emphasis on solving puzzles rather than skillful shot making. Rather than just aim and shoot we wanted to to create a physics game which made you think a little. Taking inspiration from Portal 2, we developed a set of weapons designed specifically to interact and alter the playing environment.

The Icifier turns blocks to ice and makes them slippy, the Bouncifier covers everything in bouncy blue goo and the Disintegrator disintegrates anything. Using these we were able to craft levels based on using the right weapons in the right order on the right object. We also added ropes, moving platforms and pivots, opening up endless options for level design, which we had great fun with. Putting the trickier levels together proved a challenge, ensuring there was only one solution and no shortcuts. The problem is once you get your set method of solving a level into your head you don’t see other ways it can be done.

From a design perspective the most interesting challenge was making it so that every weapon affected every element of the level in the same way. So no matter where you shot your Icifier, whatever it hit turned into ice. Similarly if you want to disintegrate Purple Teddy you can. This meant a lot of work on the art side, drawing and animating the various effects on every object available in the game. But I’m very happy with the results.

Ninja Bear starts out simple but gets progressively difficult across 44 levels with a fiendish secret level for players who collect the 24 Yin Yang symbols dotted around the game. Once you’ve completed it, give your hand a go at creating your own levels and see first hand how tricky it is to make one with only one solution.

Finally here is a poem I wrote about Ninja Bear and Purple Teddy:

The Legend of Ninja Bear And Purple Teddy

Every night children sleep,
Unaware that monsters creep.
Weary eyes droop and fall,
Slumber beckons to them all.
Evil things haunt their dreams,
But nothing’s ever as it seems.

Unbeknown to kids across the land,
Their Teddybears take a stand.
Two silent heroes of the night,
Act in secrecy and take up the fight.
These noble warriors are at the ready,
They are Ninja Bear and Purple Teddy.

Bad Eggs Online is now out of beta and in distribution. We’ve taken on board all the feedback, fixed numerous bugs, added a multitude of new features and hopefully improved the playing experience for old and new players alike. We think so. So thanks to all our beta players for helping us get the game to the stage where it is ready to be unleashed on the internet. Fingers crossed we’ll be looking to post to the major portals in the very near future. Looking forward to seeing what happens.

So far we’ve received predominantly positive feedback from everyone. A massive thanks to fellow developer Photonstorm for his glowing review, calling it an “immense amount of fun” (read here).

Mochi Games featured us as their Flash Game Friday winner on their mochiland blog. Read their review and an interview with my developing partner Rob Donkin (here).

Please feel free to add Bad Eggs Online to your own site. Download the zip package directly from mochi here. If you are interested in site locks or licensing options please send an email to john[at]johndonkin[dot]com.

Bad Eggs Online has just launched in Beta and we need your help ironing out any bugs and providing last minute feedback on anything we might be able to do to improve the game before launching it in full.

Bad Eggs Online is the first multiplayer game created by my brother Rob and myself. Bad Eggs is free to play, easy to pick up and above all else, terrific fun. Some might even say it’s “eggciting”. The game features a turn based combat system in a series of Egg vs. Egg death matches to find who should be crowned the baddest egg of them all.

TRAILER:

We’ve added in loads of cool features that can be unlocked along the way as you level up your Egg. Some of these features include:

• A huge selection of different weapons.
• Egg shells. These are different egg characters, each with their own unique personality and look.
• Over 100 Egg trials. With each trial you unlock a new badge to show off to the Bad Eggs community.
• Terrain editor
• Player stats.

So come and join us over at badeggsonline.com. Set up and account, get your friends involved and challenge them to war.

Please note that during this beta period we will not be advertising the game to large numbers of people, so if no one is online to play against, please be patient. If you can’t wait then get a friend to join you. Before long you’ll be egg bashing along with the best of them.

We look forward to hearing your comments and feedback and hopefully with your help we can get the ball rolling, smooth out the user experience and get as many people playing as possible.

“Om Nom Nom Nom” cries the great beaver before charging head long into battle, axe raised high, with vengeance in his eyes. Welcome to our latest game Battle Beavers,  a button bashing beat em up full of exciting beaver on beaver action (excuse the pun).

Play Game

The story follows a courageous peaceful beaver named Bold who suffers at the hands of the evil tyrant Rangor, a beastly raging, battle-hardened beaver with a penchant for taking rather than giving. He pillages and burns the plains, and kidnaps Bold’s son. Now it’s payback time.

As you fight your way through Rangor’s hordes there are stats to upgrade, plenty of enemies to fight, magic attacks, combo moves and a large variety of weapons, shields and outfits to try out. Work your way up the ranks to become a Ninja Beaver and kick Rangor’s ass.

It’s taken a while to get this one into the ether. Finally though it’s out and looking forward to seeing the reaction. We really enjoyed making this one, developing costumes, battle arenas and special moves. It was only in the latter stages that we decided to flesh out the story and the idea of a comic strip following Bold’s adventures seemed quite apt. Taking inspiration from numerous films, in particular 300 and The Lord of the Rings, it took a while to draw all the panels but definitely worth it in the end. Check out one of the panels here:

Anyway what are you waiting for. Start Beaver bashing using the play game link above. Or watch the promo trailer:

TRAILER:

My first flash game. Hopefully the start of many. The Adventures of Red is a quaint point and click puzzle adventure about a little yellow explorer called Red.

Wandering through the forest one day, Red comes across a sign for free Muffins. Red loves nothing better than a delicious chocolate muffin and having missed breakfast is feeling rather peckish. He skips along the path and comes to a castle. Unfortunately, this muffin isn’t just waiting for him. Red must navigate a series of rooms, each with increasingly tricky and difficult puzzles that block his path, to earn coloured keys and work his way through the castle. Never one to give up our pint sized hero is up to any challenge thrown at him…

This was a collaboration with my brother Rob who has been making flash games now for the past 3 years. As a newcomer with lots to learn, I couldn’t have hoped to make anything quite so impressive at my first attempt working on my own. So to be able to leap frog a few stages and produce something beyond my wildest expectations has been fantastic.

When we first agreed to make a game together we sat down and began brainstorming ideas. I’m naturally quite artistic and creative so the plan had always been for me to do the artwork but I was keen to be involved on the coding side as well. As a beginner I had taught myself the basics but wanted to be able to put what I had learned into practice. As a result we settled on the idea of a puzzle game, each one a separate mini game within the main adventure. This progressed quite naturally into this idea of a castle with lots of different rooms. We liked the idea of a non linear route so we added in the concept of locked doors and coloured keys. We then had to map a layout that meant players had to visit every room but not necessarily in turn and avoid getting stuck. This was a lot harder than we anticipated (Even when the game was released, frustratingly there was a small mistake that meant it was possible to get stuck.)

Rob built the main framework and set up the doors and keys. I began the process of creating the artistic elements and visual style for the game – Red started out as a primitive sketch on the back of a cocktail napkin at Pizza Express. Then we began thinking up ideas for puzzles and implementing them into the game. Each room had its own separate class, which enabled me to code some of the more basic puzzles. I’ll tell you right now, coming up with 28 puzzles is not an easy process, never mind trying to balance the difficulty. In the end I think we got it about right – some people complain it’s too easy, others it’s impossible (clearly it isn’t), but you can never please everyone. We threw in a lot of classics (if it ain’t broke don’t fix it), some with our own playful twist and added some humour here and there.

In the end the main question everyone’s asking is ‘Why is Red yellow?”. I could tell you the answer but that would spoil the fun.

Thanks to my brother Rob for getting me on board and a huge thanks to Armor Games for the sponsorhip and to Jon Sayles for letting us use his wonderfully appropriate music in the game.