New Blogger

Meman32 is now officialy two people!!!! Gamer94 is now doing app reviews, the last post was his. If it's an app review, it's probably his work, if it's anything else, it's probably mine. Make sure to comment your opinions on his last review, car jack streets.

Car Jack: Streets

Car Jack: Streets was released by Tag Games on April 28, 2009. This is the closest thing that you will get to Grand Theft Auto on the iPhone. But don't get your hopes up, no 3D graphics for this one. The graphics are cartoon and are not very realistic but it's a refreshing change not to see an attempt at "realistic" graphics. This app sells for 4.99 USD. But don't fret, there is a shorter lite version. In my opinion, this game was not worth the 5 bucks. However, it is a long game depending on how much you like to play. One bad thing about this game is that it basically forces you to play every week buy making payments. I give this game a 4 out of 5 stars. Click here to buy Car Jack: Streets

Flash Games and Joysticks

I bought a used game pad (a Microsoft Sidewinder Freestyle Pro to be specific) today. Why would you care? Simple, I discovered a really easy way to get game pads to work with flash games.

Which Game Pad Should I buy?
Lot's of options here. I'd recommend you don't go with a Microsoft Sidewinder Freestyle Pro, while I'm happy with mine, the sensitivity is a bit odd. I know that xbox 360 controllers work well with computers. I think they'd be a good choice since they have dual game pads (one for the mouse, one for the arrows). You can pretty much go to a local computer store and pick anything off the shelf. They usually cost 50-100$. Just do a bit of research, which ones have motion sensitivity, which ones have dual analog sticks, etc.

Setting it Up

1.  Plug it in. You may need to install some drivers, depending on what type of controller it is.If you're using an xbox 360 controller with bluetooth google a tutorial about it, I don't own an xbox, so I can't be much help here.
2. Download JoyToKey. It will let you map keyboard presses and mouse movement to the controller. It also has nice features like automatic rapid fire.
   
3.  Put JoyToKey in a folder on your desktop or something so that you can save configuration files.
4. Choose a game. I tried frantic 2 and Death Vs. Monstars. Death Vs. Monstars seemed to work a bit better, simply because it's a smoother game overall.
5. Figure out the controls, then map them to buttons on your controller.
6. Play the game.
7. If you're struggling, leave a comment here.

Posting Schedule

I'm not guaranteeing I'll post this often, but my goal is to have 6 posts a week, every day except sunday. If I'm busy, that may drop to 5 posts a day.

Developer Profiles Part 1: Nitrome

Website: http://nitrome.com/
How Many Developers: 9, but they work in groups of two, which in my opinion means their still indie.
Games: Cave Chaos, Twinshot 2 (their first game using microtransactions), Final Ninja Zero, Flipside, Twang, and Mutiny. This isn't anywhere close to a full list, it's just the best games on their site. They have around 40-50 more on their website, so go there.
Location: London, England
Bio:
Ok, I don't know quite when nitrome originated, but I know it was around 4 years ago. They started by making mobile phone games (according to the unofficial Nitrome Wiki), but then transferred into online games. You may not have heard of them because they mainly put their games on two sites, the games sponsor and the nitrome site.Often the games are sponsored by miniclips or mtvarcade. Their games use pixel art to incredible effect and have an unusual amount of pink in them. They used to have extroardinary gameplay ideas, but lately they've gone down in quality a bit. They seem to be making sequels instead of new original ideas. They have made an unusual amount of multiplayer hotseat games, they're one of the few companies who bothers to do this. They also are one of the few companies to not try making a tower defence (personally, I think a Nitrome tower defence would be awesome...)

Games Of The Week

Yesterday I posted the best games of all time, but today I want to mention a few games you may not have heard of that I think are awesome..

Wake Up The Box

This is an odd game, but I really enjoy playing it. You're goal is to wake up a box that's sleeping, but you can't do something boring like dumping water on his head, instead you have to use physics to launch him around a bit. In other words, throw him into the air and watch his face as he flies towards the ground. I enjoy it just because creative physics games are becoming rare, alot of good ideas have already been used. I'm not sure when this was released, but I'm going to post it anyway. Here's the link.

Google Chrome OS

In case you haven't heard of chrome OS yet, here's the rundown of stuff you should know: Its free, it turns on in under 60 seconds (I think I heard 30 somewhere), and the entire OS is a web browser. The way I've heard it is that you click the on button and in 30 seconds you're browsing your facourite site (my blog? I wish). So why am I posting about this on a site about online games? First off because I think it's interesting news, but secondly because it will help you to get to online games faster. Why am I posting about it now? Simple, it's supposed to come out in a week (according to tech crunch).

By now you probably have one of two question. Either "who cares?" or "how can I get it?". If you're thinking the first question Click the lame button at the bottom of the post and go to a different post. If you're thinking the second question here comes my best answer.

The World's Best Indie Games

I decided a good way to start the blog would be a list of the best indie games of all time, after this I'll try to talk about more recent games, but I want to have an opportunity to mention some classics. I'm going by subgenre, and this list is long, so it could take you a while to get through them all.

Physics Games

 This is a fairly new genre, a few old ones exist, but they're mainly taking off now. Quite a few classics are of this genre:

 Line Rider

This game is a classic. Probably the most famous flash game. Unfortunately, it has become unindie (if that's a word), it was bought by InXile, who has ported it to iphone, wii, and ds. It's an incredibly original physics sandbox. Highly recomended. Click here to play.



Fantastic Contraption
Yet another incredibly successful flash game. This one's not as well known, but it's in my opinion much more fun. InXile also bought this game, and have ported it to iphone as well as making a new version called Fantastic Contraption Prius Edition which is in my opinion not as good, but it also comes with a free level editor. Anyways, here's the original.

Define "Indie Game"

Hey, look, a new post ahead of the one post a day schedule. That means I'm in a good mood.

I decided that since the entire blog is about indie games I should probably tell you what an indie game is. This isn't the actual definition, but it's what I'm basing the blog on.

First off, a few basic guidelines:

-if it's free, it's probably an indie game, there are exceptions (battlefield heroes for example), but most free games are indie (but a game doesn't have to be free to be an indie game)

-if it's made by a team of less than 5 people it's almost definitely an indie game, I haven't heard of many indie teams bigger than that (while nitrome has 6 people, they still work in groups of two, making them indie developers)

-in general indie games are more original then normal video games. Companies like ea are too worried about profits to try much experimental stuff

A few well known types of indie games are flash games (bloons, flash element tower defence, fantastic contraption, desktop tower defence, etc.), iPhone games (not all iPhone games are indie, ea has made a few, but most are), and gamemaker games (less well known, you can download these (and make them) at yoyogames.com).

Finally, the actual definition: "an indie game is a game that is not made by a company", in that definition, I do not include small groups like nitrome or ninjakiwi as companies.

I just want to remind you that this isn't an actual definition, it's just what I'm using to decide what to post here (although there will be some non-indie game stuff here)

About Me

Ok, tommorow I'll try to make a post you actually care about, but I'm busy today and am making this on an iPod touch, so it might be short.

First off, my name is meman32. No, that's not my real name, but that's what I call myself.

I've been designing games for around 5 years, but only in adobe flash for around 5 months. I use adobe flash because more people will play my game and I will earn more money (that's what it all comes down too, money). I've made 5 games, you can google them (or go to my kongregate account "dimblenut" which is an older screenname, meman32 is new). I can't make these into links because I'm on an iPod (meman32.newgrounds.com has 4 of my games, I remember that URL). The games are space laser dodge (kongregate only), laser dodge 2, indirect assault, physics flyer, and indirect assault 2. I also have a new one over halfway done.

In my games I try to include atleast one thing diferent from all the other games in the genre. The laser dodges being exceptions since they were my first flash games. I suck at graphics, so whenever possible I pay a graphics designer, so far I've only done that for indirect assault 2.

I used to own www.calibercoliseum.com, but I sold it, so now this is my only website, I'll probably make a new one soon.

Currently I'm working on 2 flash games, and I'll put up a beta for one here soon.

Edit: that wasn't short at all...