Rick Triqui: my first PlayCrafter game

You should remember my post Create a Flash game in minutes with PlayCrafter.

Well, I made my first game with this tool, and I want to share with you my opinions about the editor.

First of all, play Rick Triqui and rate with 5/5 :)

Then, read my comments

The idea

After playing some PlayCrafter games I found most developers modders used it like a sandbox, putting in every asset the editor offers.

So most games suffer the problem they are filled with everything kind of asset, and the final result is bad, it’s like adding all effects to a Photoshop layer. The result won’t look good.

So I designed Rick Triqui as a Rick Dangerous tribute, at that time level design was so interesting that some spikes and a couple of ladders could challenge an expert player for hours.

So this is my first advice: dont’ fill a level with every asset, in my game I only used solid blocks, destroyable block, spiked balls and plasma cannons. The less items you use, the more you must focus on level design.

Making the game

Making the game itself was like playing a game. I moved any kind of object, adjusting its position, cutting, pasting, and so on. The editor is very powerful, you’ll enjoy making your game

Downloading the game

Let me warn you: if you want to make some bucks out of your game, you must download it and upload on revenue sharing sites such as Kongregate or on a web page with ads in it. In order to do it, you need a premium account.

Using PlayCrafter without a premium account means just using it like a sandbox. Now, the first bad new… due to the large amount of silly games, in order to download a game even if you have a premium account, you’ll need at least 25 plays and 3 likes.

There isn’t a large amount of people in the portal (I counted 28 to 32 people in the chat) so it took me a couple of hours to get such visits, and I had to beg for plays in the chat (shame on me).

Then, once you can freely download your game, you’ll notice you can’t get the game in real time… you’ll have to wait for PlayCrafter to send it to your email

I got my game in a couple of hours but I think this may change according to your timezone and the time you upload the game.

Uploading the game

Finally I was ready to upload the game, and I have to say PlayCrafter guys did a great job embedding Kongregate API’s and clear instructions about their configuration in the portal.

On request, they can add a MochiAds to your game and you’ll get 10% of the revenue, and if you want to use your game for commercial purposes (to advertise a commercial product, etc.) then it’s $100 / game.

Final considerations

Try to create a decent game because like it or not all PlayCrafter’s games look very similar, and I saw some comments on PlayCrafter games saying “stolen” or “stop publishing crappy PC games” and so on.

Last but not least, even if I have a premium account there are two features I’d be willing to pay for:

* Adding external links to game assets – with about a 10% clickthrough it would be interesting

* Using my own MochiAds. With 10% of the revenue (that means 5% of Mochi’s income), it’s quite senseless wasting time uploading the game anywhere

That’s it… now give me some feedback about Rick Triqui.

** edit **

I’ve just received an update from Mathilde Pignol from PlayCrafter

If you would like to use your own MochiAd, that’s no problem. Please PayPal the $100 to cm[at]playcrafter.com and send me the MochiAd ID that you want to use. I will compile it in to your game and send you a new link.

Create a Flash game in minutes with PlayCrafter

Today I am going to talk about a revolutionary way to make quality Flash games: PlayCrafter.

I must admit I am overhelmed by the enormous amount of options of this tool, but I’ll try to be as much clean as I can in my review.

Tired of making online games? Make a game online

First, PlayCrafter is an online tool. You don’t need to install any software in your computer. And this is the first great feature, because this means you don’t even need a computer to make a Flash game, you can just sit in an internet cafè and make your game in a matter of minutes.

The power of drag & drop

In PlayCrafter, you don’t need to write a single line of code. You just drag and drop elements to the stage, designing your level in a few clicks.

Any element has its own features, so a turret will automatically fire, a car will skid, a space trooper will jump and fire bouncing bombs, and so on.

The engine that handle physics is the famous Box2D so expect accurate physics simulation.

New elements are added frequently so you’ll never run out of ideas.

You can even edit your element or import your own graphics.

The Community

There is a quite big community behind PlayCrafter. You can play, rate and even edit games made by other players.

When you game receives a good feedback from the community, you can export your Flash game and publish it on game portals

The price

PlayCrafter is free to use, but you can pay a monthly fee ($4.95) to upgrade your account to “Premium” and unlock exclusive features such as raising the limit of levels to 100 and exporting the games to Flash portals.

Moreover, some assets in the game cost an a mount of Pips, the PlayCrafter’s currency. You can buy Pips with real money or you can have for free if your refer users.

The limits

At the moment, the most important limits are the fixed stage size and the lack of scrolling. In my opinion, if PlayCrafter guys do not add more and more assets this will cause a large number of games with no difference among them.

Monetization

I am going to test the monetization of this tool very soon, meanwhile play Matcheroo to see a nice game made with this tool.

Final considerations

I strongly suggest to try PlayCrafter even if you are an experienced developer… you know… at school or at work you can’t install Flash… so why don’t you make a game between a task and another?

Expect a game made with this tool very soon…

Play Mazeroll, my latest Box2D game

After SamePhysics, I made another Box2D game called Mazeroll.

You have to drag a maze to made two circles touch, collecting as much red orbs as you can, before time reaches zero.

You can find some clues about the making of this game reading The magic of compound objects with Box2D and Perfect maze generation – tile based version.

I simply put together these two concept and added some gameplay.

As you can see there are some in-game banners, and there is room for two more banners in the rotation, so starting from June 29, when the game is supposed to have been widely published, I will insert two (and only two) more ** LIFETIME ** banners for as low as $100 per banner.

Drop me an email at info[at]emanueleferonato.com if you want to be one of the lucky two people that will get these banners.

The MochiAds funnel

This is a post I always wanted to write, but I waited until I had some numbers big enough to make sense.

Before I start rambling, please notice I never put fancy MochiAds banner here and there, without any sense like I do, in example, with AdSense ads.

I simply put links to MochiAds in posts where I talk about game monetization.

So we can say people click on my link only when they read the post, not just to see what’s beyond that banner.

So, my Mochi referral stats say I sent them 4,520 visitors. 668 of them signed up and 33 reached the minimum $100 payout requirement.

What does this mean? That if you aren’t afraid of learning some Actionscript and game design (and in this blog there is a lot to learn), you can be in that 5% group that sign up and monetize Flash games.

5% is an interesting ratio, and I think it will raise as soon as all people just a few bucks away from $100 will reach the goal.

It would be interesting to know your ratio… and if you haven’t signed up yet… sign up to MochiAds!!

Win up to $7000 with “Word Play” Flash Game Contest

Dictionary.com and MochiAds are bringing you a completely new contest for summer 2009 with $15,000 in prizes.

Beside the cash, this is a very interesting contest because you must use words, and this will require a lot of game design skill to procude something different than Scrabble.

Another interesting thing is Dictionary.com is even providing a word list to help you get started! The only rules for using this list is to mark on the Title Screen of your game that it is being powered by “dictionary.com”.

You can download the list at this link, and in the zipped file you will find a .eps file with the logo and a list of 147,306 (!!) words.

I will made a couple of tutorials about the use of these words during next days, meanwhile let me talk about the prizes:

1st Place – $7,000
2nd Place – $4,000
3rd Place – $2,000
Honorable Mention (x2) – $1,000 each

Start Date: June 9th, 2009

End Date: August 14th, 2009

Contest Criteria:

* Must incorporate the MochiAds Version Control and Encryption service
* Must be distribution-enabled and use MochiAds Leaderboards
* Must run MochiAds advertisements
* Must be a word game or a game themed around words and puzzles
* Must be entered in MochiAds before midnight August 14th, 2009 PST
* Must be tagged with “dictionary.com”

Check the official page for all information.

The end of GameJacket?

I blogged about GameJacket about a year ago in the post Monetize your Flash game with GameJacket.

I never tried, but it was the biggest MochiAds competitor

Sadly, today I received this email:

« Last month, GameJacket learned that the funding round it had engaged it had failed with the proposed venture capital investor withdrawing its offer due to the uncertain current economic climate. Since this time GameJacket’s management has been actively seeking a buyer for the continuation of the business. Despite initial strong interest, all active lines of enquiry were concluded yesterday resulting in no buyer being identified.

We’re sorry to report that GameJacket ceased to trade as of yesterday and the company will make a further announcement in due course.

The employees and management of GameJacket have worked tirelessly to build and maintain the GameJacket concept and we’re disappointed in this outcome. The company would also like to take this opportunity to thank developers for their generous support and to apologise for the inconvenience this situation will cause. »

As said, I never tried it but I am a bit worried because it was a company operating in the casual games market that seems to be the new Eldorado.

I would like to hear someone having an active balance on GJ.

Case history: creating a successful niche Flash arcade site

This is the interesting story of Michael Edlavitch from Hooda Math, a 10,000 visitors/day successful niche Flash arcade site.

If you are an arcade site owner, you can’t miss this:

« Before Walmart moves into a small town they offer classes to the small business owners on how to keep their businesses a float. What do they teach?
Don’t be like us, find your niche. Read more

Fifteen Million Plays Club membership

Some months ago, my second game, Christmas Couples, joined the Ten Millions Plays Club.

I am happy to inform you now I am in the Fifteen Million Plays Club.

This is my most successful game, in terms of games played.

What’s yours?

Got funds for my project with My Micro Fund!!

Just a few days ago I blogged about (try to) Get funds for your project with My Micro Fund.

Today I am glad to announce Alex from My Micro Fund liked my proposal and gave me some money to start the project I submitted.

I am proud to say another reader of this blog got the funds necessary to start his project… I would ask him to unveil something more, but now it’s time to share a couple of points with you:

How to ask for a Micro Fund

Alex is a nice person but he won’t give his money to anybody. That’s how I asked for my funds

Introduce yourself: yes, your first and last name, the country you live in and all these kind of annoying information. If you have a webpage with something about you, then just give him the link and you’ll save some “tic-toc-tic” on the keyboard

BRIEFLY explain your idea: the keyword is “briefly”. This means “The next big Flash game” is not the way you should explain your idea, and starting with the story of Macromedia Flash becoming Adobe Flash with all difference between AS2 and AS3 will be quite boring to read. That’s how I explained my idea:

The idea is making a Flash Sokoban game with thousands of levels that can be played also on Facebook

followed by a quick summary about monetizing a Flash game (I have to say, I sent him the link to the experiment).

Provide a timeline and your motivation to complete the project: nobody wants to wait for years for your next big thing… so tell when will your project will be finished and explain why you should be the right person to manage the project. In my case, being the project a Flash game, I showed some games I made. I wouldn’t be able to get the funds if I wanted to make the next World of Warcraft competitor…

Time to talk about money: ask how much do you need for the project and how will you spend the money. Remember Alex isn’t paying you to make a game, he is giving funds for your project… so if you are developing an iPhone application, you must specify you need (example) $1000 for a Mac.

In my case, I explained I need a professional logo, a solid hosting plan, and some money for the promotion.

Try to be clear about the refunding process, even in the worst case… shoud your project be a failure.

Why did I ask for a fund?

Interesting question… I can afford this project but I asked for funds anyway. Why? First, I wanted to test this system, but mainly I am messing around with Sokoban since 2004… having someone waiting for the project to be live shortly and spreading this through the net will motivate me to complete the project and wipe out some vaporware out of my life

(try to) Get funds for your project with My Micro Fund

« Do you require funding for a business idea? Share with me your story and business proposal and be considered for micro funding in the form of a grant or a goodwill loan – basically you pay back what you can. If I like your idea you will receive between USD $500 to $3,000. »

This is how Alex from My Micro Fund introduces his idea.

You can get funds for your next project following these steps:

1) Submit your proposal, with all relevant deltails such as how much do you need for how long, a simple business plan what is your plan to repay the fund if your venture is successful and what do you intend to do to replenish the fund if your venture is NOT successful

2) Get the money, anywhere in the world(*)

(*) That’s what Alex says, but I don’t really know if he’s really able to make you get the money if you live in a sanctioned Country.

3) Work on your project keeping Alex updated regularly as you execute your business plan so that he can share your experience with his readers

4) Repay the fund based on your goodwill… nothing is legally binding and everything is based on mutual trust and due diligence.

The project sounds really interesting, at the moment I am sending an email to Alex to have a loan for a project. It’s a project I can afford by myself but I really want to try the service and share this experience with you.

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