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I just started playing Bookworm on iPhone/iPod Touch. This is the famous and successful online PC game that was launched many years ago by Pop Cap. This is a word game like Scrabble but differs in the way of making words and has different gameplay mechanics that are simply not relevant to Scrabble.

When I saw this game many years ago, I wasn't too interested to try it simply because I wasn't a fan of word games. Even today I don't consider myself a fan but I like unique games, even word games and Bookworm offers this unique experience. Besides being a fan or not, word games are good when you want to play a relaxing game that doesn't raise your stress level during play time, like Majhong for instance.

So, to summarize the game, it consists of forming chains of letters to create words. The chains can be created with any adjacent letters. The more your word is long, the more you gain points. The same goes for letters; rare ones like W are worth more points. But that's the whole story, indeed you have to deals with some dangers. The game throws on the board letters in fire from time to time. These go down after each created word. When one of them touch the ground, fire is propagated to the library, which makes the game over. So you're better using these letters to form words before it's too late. Other gameplay includes levels, bonus for proposed words and other bonuses for words that are part of a collection.

So this game is definitely worth bying. And even at 3$, it's not a high risk!

According to spokesman Harald Ebert interviewed at Gamescon, the Nintendo 3DS design is not final. No information was revealed from Ebert but we know that there has been rumblings from Capcom that the D-pad is not final, and will be tweaked accordingly before its launch. Keep in mind that such statements are not from Nintendo and should be taken with a grain of salt.

What does "not final design" mean? Does it imply hardware changes, look and feel or both? What seems pretty sure though is that those design changes couldn't be major since that would have too important impacts on game developers. Changes such as screen resolution or important GPU design changes would be too risky for developers at this time since the 3DS release date will be out by March 2011.

What are your predictions? We should know much more on September 29th when Nintendo will announce the 3DS release date and price with apparently surprises! 

Hi,

I'm playing zelda for a while. What a hot game one more time! This is the second game on the DS and I can say that it's even hotter than the first one. And I'm happy that the game no longer has this design issue: in the first game, you were forced to replay over and over again the same levels to reach newer ones. Another issue was the pacing; sailing was fun in the beginning but it quickly became repetitive. While there was variants, it wasn't enough to be really enjoyable. Spirit Tracks still has some pacing issues when traveling by train but this time the gameplay aspects are much more fun.

What's more, Spirit Tracks provide the player with lots of new and fresh gameplay. You come up with this ascertainment: wow, they managed to find that much new gameplay! And I must confess, driving a train is really new and therefore adds to it.

Definitely a must buy for any RPG like fans!

Hey There,

I wanted to share with you how it's going with new greedy snakes. I wasn't able to spend a lot of time in the last weeks but when I work on it, it progress very well. Here is what I accomplished:

• The entire game was ported toSlick. 
• I created a new font that is really cool. That adds to the great atmosphere of the game.
• The player now has 2 lives and each of them has 3 sub-lives. This is in line with the "super mario bros" life concept I want to implement. You're going to save the game only at major game gates. You'll also be able to gain lives by doing great scores with conerning time and eggs, to name a few ways.
• The resolution was lowered to 640 x 480 to make sure everyone can play the game without screen resolution issue.
• Another great change is that now colliding with a snake tail hurts. This adds more strategy to the game, which is quite fun.

Hi,

you may have notice that I was completely silent a couple months? That's because I took a break of game development.

Recently I came back by releasing a new version of Incredibuilder that doesn't add any new new content or feature, I just removed the Java security popups due to Java 6u18 and later by using the latest LWJGL Applet release. I also took the opportunity to update the game to the latest Slick release.

My other activities are now concentrated on the development of my new game new greedy snakes. This one will be a much more elaborated version of the 4K version (http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=296). You can also expect better graphics and added sounds.

Stay tuned about development news of this game.

Hi,

I'd like to talk about my latest game: Greedy Snakes 4k. It's a game based on the classic snake game where you have to eat eggs or something else (don't remember exactly the object). In the classic, each time you eat an egg the snake's tail grows, which increases the game difficulty. Also, hitting your own body or an obstacle causes death. In my my game, which is a variation of the classic gameplay, I wanted to offer a different challenge. You still eat eggs but you're not alone; you must compete against your rival snake. So you'll not only have to be quick but also to have some strategy to eat more eggs than your rival. Because eating more eggs is necessary to win a level. But eating is not the only difficulty; you'll also have to watch out for collisions with walls, border and your rival too as in the classic version. The exception is that you have 2 chances (life line) before dying.

You might wonder why the 4k in the game name? That's because the game fits in a 4 kilobytes size limit. Why that limit you ask? Because I developed this game in the context of the java4k 2010 contest. Any game you submit to the contest musn't exceed 4k. I can tell you, 4k is very small to fit a complete game, yet enjoyable. So because of this very restrictive limit, you can't really deliver real graphics. By real I mean graphics built with external images and such. Doing so would simply blow the game size limit, as you may already have guessed. So in my game, I generate all the graphics and images at game start up time. Sure they are basic and simple but I still managed to deliver a stylish look and cool atmosphere. I'm somewhat proud of what  I came up with. The sound? There is simply none because there was no room left.

There's only one issue with my game: there's only 10 levels due to lack of time. I had only 1 month to develop the game. And of course I couln't work full time on it; just a small portion of time  per week. But rest assured, I plan to deliver another version of the game that will contain much more levels! And with more gameplay features.

So, don't rest on your seat and have fun with Greedy Snakes 4k! You can play it at:

java4k.com

Here at Fun Toboggan

Hey, I'm going to enter the Java4K contest this year. This is going to be my first participation. If you don't already know the contest I suggest you to consult and play a a lot of very cool games at java4k.com. It's truly amazing what can be done in a game with only 4kb (4096 bytes) of size! Believe me, I browsed all the games for this year and past years and I was simply stunned by the quality, playability and fun factor of a lot of them. But, yes there's a but, don't expect full fledged games there of course. Some have multiple levels (many here means different content and not just increased difficulty in levels) and you can play those ones for up to 1 or more hours. Again, you know that these games can't be compared to normal PC games and not even casual online games, even those crappy-marketing purpose games. The comparison doesn't stand here because of the limit of size of 4k games.

Talking about size, since 4k is a very small size (that wasn't the case in the vic-20 era), the typical developer makes every possible attempts to save space. This makes room for more content, better graphics, etc. To save space, many compression techniques can be used such as pack200, lzma and gzip. An obfuscator can also be used to further compress the code. But before applying these techniques, the developer must take great care about how he codes his game to try saving space. Such code design or style I should say implies for instance having only one class, which is named with only 1 character. Other guidelines are:

• avoid creating methods
• avoid instance variables
• instance variables should be named with 1 character
• and more

I'm going to start coding my first 4k game very very soon (since the contest ends in about a month or so). The game concept is based on the snake game. In a summary, you - the snake, have to eat the highest number of eggs before time is over and by competing with other snakes. Your snake never stops moving. He must avoid walls, blocks and his rival snake otherwise his life decreases.

My last point I wanted to cover about 4k games is how fantastic it is as an exercise of prototyping game concepts/ideas. Because of the size limitation, you're forced to focus on gameplay to achieve a complete game. Having less emphasize on graphics and sound keeps you concentrated on the most important thing in a game, the gameplay. Sure you have to spend time on byte saving but I guess it's a question of getting used to.

So stay tuned about my 4k game I'm starting developing. Before leaving you, here is a small list of impressive and great 4k games this year:

Assassins 4k

http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=284

Don't Reach The Square

http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=271

Falcon4k

http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=268

GTA4K

http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=280

Hi,

this is just a quick update on what's going on with Incredibuilder. I'm completing the development of the next version. It's a been a long time since the last one but the next version is coming soon. The swap tool and free tool were put on hold because they cause significant gameplay design issues. I might reconsider them later though if I find good solution to fix the issues.

Also, expect new levels and a redesigned double knife tool for a much better gameplay.

Stay tuned!

Hi all,

the last weeks or last month have been really busy for me. My day job prevented me to progress on my game. Before this I had developed a new tool called the swap tool. It allowed to swap 2 blocks and was supposed to be used with hammer to remove used blocks. Well, this tool may seems fun but the design of levels for it is more difficult than planned. And the fact of switching tools with space bar doesn't fit very well the hand position in my opinion.

So I put the swap tool on hold and decided to go with a new one called the free knife. This tool is like the simple knife except that you're not penalized using it, but if you put blocks in the trash can then you lose 3 seconds (this is to discourage cheating with the trash can). I already have planned for 10 levels in which most of them will use the the free knife. So with this tool, you'll build much more detailed structures like a human face with multiple colors for example. This will open the gameplay for more detailed levels with more colors without making levels too difficult since you'll be able to move blocks without penalty. You can see this tool as a way to draw things in a funny and challenging way.

So stay tuned with the progress.

Hi All,

I'm playing the latest Mario & Luigi game. I wanted to take the time to write about this wonderful game. I played the 2 previous ones and enjoyed them a lot, a bit less concerning the second, but the last is completely amazing! It's the story of Mario and Luigi that have been aspirated by Bowser in his body. Once inside him, Mario and Luigi visit his body parts fighthing various enemies trying to find the exit for the sake of saving the Toad kingdom, among other missions.

The game plays not only as the brothers but also as Bowser a lot of the time. The main adventure is in 2D, like a traditional platformer, which makes it different compared to the previous games in the series. Once outside Bowser, the game plays in an isometric view. Bowser is also played in isometric view.

What is so fantastic about this game is not only the ever new brother attacks and the inventive game play, but also how you play as Bowser. For the first time in the series, you make attacks using the stylus! It's not the first stylus game of course but it's so well exploited and uniquely used that the game is incredibly fun and addictive. The stylus is also used in boss fights but by holding the DS in the vertical way.

The game also gives a lot concerning the RPG aspect. There's so much to buy and try that the game play can last a lot more if you wish.

I'm going to leave you there because I'm too eager to continue the game. :D

Go buy it, you won't regret it!