Quake3World

http://www.simonoc.com/pages/design/games/flipper.htm

I know this is not strictly quake related news, but most of the people that hang out here know who I am anyway and I thought you might be interested. Last summer I created a small wacky puzzle game called Flipper. It contains 30 levels, 7 tutorials and an in-built editor so that you can create your own puzzle goodness.

If you have any comments, feedback or suggestions on the game, please let me know here or on my email address (check my website for details)

Enjoy
Sims

Im sure there is a bug lurking in the code somewhere, fingers crossed its all good!

I bet moderators will lock this topic.

D/L'in now.
Feedback later if I can understand the rule.

BTW, sock, are you digibob?

Oh man, I wish I'd found this at the beginning of my lunch break and not the end... It's exactly the sort of obsessive pattern puzzling I like.

I was hoping you'd get around to this, sock.

a13n wrote:I bet moderators will lock this topic.

Nope.
(Well...not unless a hell of a lot of people gripe about it, and I don't anticipate that.)

a13n wrote:BTW, sock, are you digibob?

They're conjoined twins. They're two people, but they share one lower body, and one set of legs and naughty bits. It's kind of weird.

pjw wrote:

a13n wrote:BTW, sock, are you digibob?

They're conjoined twins. They're two people, but they share one lower body, and one set of legs and naughty bits. It's kind of weird.

What makes it even more strange is that even though they're conjoined, they live on 2 different continents.

obsidian wrote: What makes it even more strange is that even though they're conjoined, they live on 2 different continents.

They are e-conjoined of course!

Nice to see you're *finally* releasing this Simon! BTW, read your postcard... hope the "missions" are going well.

not bad... hope you won't be offended if i give it a 3/5... which is not bad in my books - meaning it didn't make me cry, which most games do - so good job! (for the record, i give bioshock a 4/5 and halo3 got about 15 minutes of my attention)

now for some real feedback

all that excessive tile flipping grew pretty annoying... mainly because it was slow to flip. it felt like i was at the mercy of the game, like miniature loading (i know it's not actually loading) every time i flipped a piece. since it's a puzzle game, i don't want to wait... i want to spend time trying to solve each puzzle. maybe it's my ADD, but my impatience lead me to stop playing after the second tutorial.

it's quite similar to another flash game i played, but i'll be damned if i can remember the name. the cool things that were new in this were the idea of unique puzzle pieces (the other one had multiple levels of color, also) which were kind of cool. i liked that it introduced the element of having to figure out the best way to approach them. though i believe it does tend to create a lot of "i seen that pattern last puzzle" situations.

that being said... i'm not sure why you would use the torque engine for this, instead of simple flash? as far as distribution goes, you could easily put it on many flash game sites (like http://www.kongregate.com) and see how it compares to other games - you could even make some cash from these sites if you make the game of the week/month, etc.

i'm stretched for suggestions on the game, but i feel like i should spend a minute thinking about it... so here goes (that was my disclaimer that the suggestions I come up with are likely going to suck):
- speed it up
- those grey tiles are dull, i would rather not draw any tiles that won't come into play... if there is a square that will come into play, make it empty - plus it makes each level look more unique when they have different overall shapes
- was there supposed to be music? i didn't have any
- you could always add interesting backgrounds (maybe quake map images or !boobies! pictures or show quotes from ancient art of war) and reveal the picture as the blocks are eroded
- action puzzles... maybe as time goes on, some puzzle pieces are given life and incremented in color, which might make some shortcuts possible or make attacking some parts of the puzzle time based
- the previous idea could tie into a theme of the game
- combat puzzles... you versus computer - he is incrementing, you are decrementing... fight for the unique pieces to gain advantage on the battlefield (could add settlers of catan style elements or RTS elements or hell... even bingo elements)

yeah, those are pretty crappy ideas, but maybe they'll spring some ideas
-

This isn't the type of game I usually like, per say, but I found Flipper fun and pretty addictive. The concept is simple yet the gameplay is very engaging. I got to level 21 before I finally put it away for the night

I agree with wattro that the flipping of the tiles could be a little faster, but it isn't horrible now. I do however like having the grey tiles in the unused spaces and I like how they flip even though they aren't used.

The only real complaint I have is that there are no sound effects. Music I could take or leave in puzzle games, but effects are nice.

Very nice game, sock.

a13n: Ummm have you stopped taking your tablets again! :P

Shallow: Looking forward to seeing what you think.

pjw, wviperw: Hope you like the newer puzzles in the later levels. Especially lvl 21

wattro: I'm not offended, some cool feedback. Tile flipping/random tile thing I can fix with an options menu. (I got this feedback from another forum, seems like there is a lot of impatient people around! :P ) Yeah the game is pretty generic with coloured tiles but I thought the special tiles really make the game shine as different. I did try to pace the game and gradually introduce more and more elements, I am glad someone has seen this.

I used the torque engine because I wandering across the site but there is a full story to the development of Flipper on my site. I never really made this game for money, it was all about doing something creative and having fun for me.

I am going to add an options menu to speed the game up with tile flipping, reset etc. The grey tile are there for a reason, to stop the player being distracted with flashy background. The main focus is the coloured/special tiles. Also the grey tiles are used later on by special tiles, it would be weird to remove them because the coloured tiles would be popping in and out all the time.

The game has no music/sfx. I did buy some sound libraries to include in the game, but ended up just wasted a lot of money on extremely crap stuff. I might add something later if I can find stuff that is royalty free, not too expensive and good. For the moment just play your favourite music in the background while you are thinking about the puzzles.

phantazm11: Thanks for the comments, I'm glad you like the game.

Thanks everyone
Sims

Looks cool man. Good job! Gonna show this to my dad definetly. He loves a good mind trim. (that, and the challenge-maps in portal ofc )

Maybe make it so you can use the arrow keys? Makes it better for notepad i imagine and you can only move vertically and horizontally so there wouldn't be any problems.

like the arrow keys idea.

also something else that might be cool, just for visual kicks, is to make the background / grey tiles flip in the direction that you mouse-over them. and then for some reason i started thinking of a memory / reveal game (since you usually flip something over to get to the other side or see underneath it).

one thing i kinda noticed as i went back to play it (home sick from work today) is that i'm not sure I am learning anything about solving the puzzles. maybe i am an idiot!! but i thought it might be cool to have an undo button with multiple layers. the only reason i wanted this is that i really don't like having to reset the puzzle and flip through all the previous pieces again. it seems to me that the balance between thinking about how to solve the puzzle and waiting for pieces to flip conflict.

oh and 3d logic is a cool puzzle game - what about flipping tiles on a 3d cube instead of a flat plane?