The Official Jr. Jellybeans Blog

Play Zoom Plane Pilot

Play Zoom Plane Pilot today and leave some feedback, eh?

I’m currently looking for a sponsor for the new game.  You can check out a video here:

Get in touch with me if you’re a sponsor interested in this game!

My email – jrjellybean [AT] live [DOT] com

Check out the new game!

A quick screenie on what I’ve been up to.

It’s a Canonbolt type of game done in a goofy kind of style.  It’s fun – I can’t wait to show you guys!

It’ll probably be released sometime in August!

Stay tuned and join the Jr. Jellybean’s Twitter Account for more information!

So, Killer Killer Bang Bang is nearly done.  I’d actually say that it’s at about 95% or so…

More importantly, it’s been accepted as a nominee in the Beauty Of The Contest.  The Beauty Of The Web contest is a contest to find the best HTML5 games and music applications.

The award is based on a number of criteria and one of them is audience voting.  So, I’m asking everyone that visits this page to head over to the Contest Page and click the “Vote This Entry” button on the right hand side.  It’d help if you ‘Like’ the game as well…

I really think that Killer Killer Bang Bang is the finest Jr. Jellybeans game to date and that it has a great chance of winning.  I just need YOUR help!

The grand prize is $9,000 and a trip to Vegas.  I don’t actually care too much about the trip and I’m more interested in the money, heh.  The money would go towards paying bills I might end up doing a graphical update of Killer Killer Bang Bang.  More importantly, with the money I’ll probably just commission an artist to work on the next game, which would stop me from complaining about art so much…

There’s no registration needed to vote and it’s super easy.  Again, all I need you to do is:

• visit the contest page
• click the “Vote This Entry” button on the right hand side
• ‘Like’ the game

Again, it’d really help me out and I’d appreciate it if you showed your support!

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As for other news, Vexisolar is coming soon!  Basically, it’s a top down version of Killer Killer Bang Bang that will be playable on the IPhone and Android.  I’ll post pictures soon…

this baby just can't stop selling out

As I get ready to release another game (check out Killer Killer Bang Bang) I’ve found myself thinking more and more about the marketing side of game making.  Specifically, I wonder what I could be doing to increase the popularity of my games and grow a larger fan base.  It’s a popular subject and one that a lot of people have written about (sometimes without really knowing what they are talking about)  I’ve even shared by own thoughts about flash game marketing, despite how overwhelming the subject can be for me.  But, despite my efforts to grasp how to successfully build up and engage an audience, I still haven’t had much success.

Obviously, much of that has to do with the actual games that I’m making.  Admittedly, some quality aspects are missing from them, but, while I work hard on every game, there are just some problems that aren’t easily fixed.  More specifically, I don’t even realize what’s wrong with the game until AFTER it’s been released.  The situation would probably be helped by having more play testers, but I can never get more than a couple of people to play a particular game.  So, as far as play testing is considered, it’d be nice to have a fan base to rely on…

And, that’s the catch-22 of the entire situation – I can’t make changes to a game to make it better until I get some really good feedback on it, but I can’t get quality play testers without having made some great games first.

Frankly, it’s an uncomfortable position to be in.  More problamatic is the fact that I honestly haven’t come up with a solution to the problem.  The best solution I can come up with is to keep making games…

I know that a lot of other indie developers run into the same problem (ie finding a strong fan base).  And, I wouldn’t be surprised if they toss and turn over marketing as much as I do.  So, in that regard, I feel better…

But, it’d be nice to be able to work on something that had a buzz behind it.  I sometimes feel discouraged at the work I’m doing and not having a definitive plan probably worsens the situation.  I even suspect that if I were to ask other people “What could I be doing better?”, the answer would be “Make better games.”  With little cash to spend on assets (art / sound / programming help), I can only do what I can do.  And, apparently, what I do is not very popular

With my abilities what they are, building an audience is quite hard.  Even while the site gets more and more visitors daily, transforming them into an actual audience and fan base has been proving to be difficulty.

Actually, I imagine that a lot of major studios deal with the same problem.  Oddly enough, the internet has provided this great opportunity to reach people that you previously couldn’t but great products seem to get lost in the media.

I guess that it’s just more important than ever to be creative with your marketing in this digital age.  And, unfortunately, I don’t seem to be good at ANY kind of marketing.

It sure is a depressing way to think about work

With the release of The Great Typing Wars, I started working on a top down world building game.  I tried to flesh out an idea for the game for about a week or two before I realized that nothing that I was doing was working.  While I’m still working on the game, I decided that making a VERY small type of game might help my creative juices.  I decided that I didn’t really want to muck around with Flash (for no reason in particular), and, thus, began my HTML5 game development.

I’ve actually wanted to dabble in HTML5 for some time but couldn’t really figure out how to do anything with it.  At the time (which was a couple of months ago), there weren’t many game related tutorials so I didn’t really know how to proceed.  Thankfully, I finally found one in Atomic Robot’s Vertical Scrolling Shooter – it’s a great tutorial that really covers the basics of what you need to do in order to build an HTML5 game.

With the tutorial all set, I was ready to move into the exciting world of HTML5 game design.  What I found was that HTML5 is pretty similar to Flash Actionscript 3.0.  I used pretty much all of the same functions (Math.tan(), (Number).toString()) and, aside from using arrays for game objects (instead of building separate classes for each object), I pretty much designed the game very similar to how I normally make games.

The main differences that I’ve found between the two are:

• HTML5 uses a canvas element instead of the stage.  Not that big of an issue really…
• Creating an image is a bit different in HTML5.  I actually think that the way HTML5 creates images is a lot better than Flash’s
• HTML5 does not have the ability to add alpha to images.  In fact, it’s drawing capabilities are somewhat limited (but more than enough if you blit a game as I do)
• HTML5 automatically has anti alias enabled.  This is actually a big pain in the ass that is going to make the game look kind of crummy at parts.  Apparently, there isn’t much that I can do about this BESIDES make sure that every object is drawn at a whole number spot (which I can’t do for the game)
• HTML5′s sound capabilities are kind of pathetic.  Turns out, you CAN’T have a single instance of a sound playing more than once.  So, you need to make multiple copies of every sound that you need (which for a video games can be A LOT).  It’s just a pain in the ass really…
• HTML5 runs BETTER on Safari (version 5.0.3) than pretty much every Flash game I’ve ever designed.  In fact, this is one of the reasons why I bothered to try HTML5 in the first place – every Flash game I’ve made seems to have a choppy frame rate.  I’ve designed a test game with a single object moving to the right and it appears choppy in Flash.  HTML5 doesn’t have this problem.

Remarkably these are about the main differences that I’ve experienced ‘twixt the two.  It’s actually pretty incredible to me how similar and easy it is to make an HTML5 game after knowing Actionscript 3.0…

As far as what this means for the industry, when you consider the fact that Apple and Google have both shown their support for HTML5 and that HTML5 is, essentially, the FUTURE of the web, I can definately say that HTML5 is a Flash Killer.  Within just a couple of weeks after HTML5′s official release, I predict that Flash will be nothing but a faded memory in people’s mind

But, seriously, I don’t know what HTML5 is going to do for the internet.  I DO predict more HTML5 games coming out and that unique solutions will be found for those couple of ways that HTML5 is a bit wonky.  I would even go so far as to say that I expect that Flash / Unity and all of the other plug ins days are numbered.  It may not happen RIGHT after HTML5′s official release, but I imagine that it’ll happen EVENTUALLY.

I still think that Flash is a great platform to design on.  But, you’re going to be seeing more short HTML5 games from me in the future

You can play the game HERE.  The source code is entirely open.  You can take a look at any time by clicking “View -> View Source.”
It’s obviously a work in progress.  I’ll try to update it daily since right now it won’t make any sense to anyone.

Controls are:
Z – Start the game / Shoot
C – Jump

So, The Pixel Pirate is just about ready to get it’s official final version!  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a sponsor for the game…

If step one of game creation is actually FINISHING the game, the next step is the very fun task of MARKETING the game  Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of advice on how to market flash games on the net.  Apparently, people seem to think that flash games just get popular just by word of mouth which has some truth to it, I suppose.  Since my games tend to have a very narrow audience and I generally enjoy learning about the marketing process, I try to do more than just releasing my game into the world.  I don’t do THAT much more than most people, but every bit helps, eh?

The Pixel Pirate in action!

So, here’s my marketing strategy for The Pixel Pirate:

1.  Upload the game on Newgrounds and testing out the bugs.
For whatever reason, I don’t get a lot of play testers for my games so I have to rely on actual game players and respond to the feedback that they give me in order to test my game.  I’ve found Newgrounds to be a great flash site where smart players will give some pretty interesting feedback for games.  Obviously, I wish that I had more game testers prior to uploading the game on an actual site, but such is life.

2.  Make news announcement on Jr. Jellybeans accounts on Twitter and Facebook.
I don’t have many fans / followers, but letting the people who DO follow me know about the release is pretty important!

3.  After bugs have been worked out a little, submit the game for a news item on the indiegames weblog.
Mike Rose from  indiegames review Society (The Flash Game) and it’d be sweet if he would review The Pixel Pirate.  The number of plays on Society shot up a bunch just by getting a review from him.

4.  Submit the game for a news item on Play This Thing.
I got The Cherokee Indian reviewed on Play This Thing so I’m thinking about submitting TPP for a small review.  The only problem that I have with the site is their submission process actually shows who’s submitting a game for review.  I’m not really sure if they encourage game developers to submit their own games or now

5. Post a news item on the IndieDb.
I’ve never actually done this before so I don’t know the real value of it.  In fact, I didn’t even know that you could manually submit a news item…

6.  Send a news item to various independent news reporter.
I’ll probably send a quick e-mail to sites like Indie Pub, bytejacker, Indie Games Channel,  and DIYGamer.  I’m not sure if I’ll get a review on those games, but it’s worth a try…

(Edit: Some other places I submitted the game to are Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Reddit, and indiesuperstar.com.)

7.  Release a press release on Games Press.
Something else that I haven’t  tried yet with a Flash game; I didn’t know that they even accepted Flash games.

8.  Mention the game on tigsource, indiegamer, reloaded, and gamedev forums.
Usually, I don’t get too many eyes checking the game out by posting on a forum, but it’s still a nice thing to do.

9.   Submit the game for distribution on the Mochi network.
I’ve used Mochi for all of my games, so allowing distribution for my games is as simple as pressing a button.  The only bad part of the Mochi distribution is that you get a lot of Chinese people playing your game and, as such, the amount of ads that get clicked on is lower.

10.  Submit the game for distribution on Flash Games Distribution.
Simple enough, eh?

11.  Submit the game on the various other portals that allow games with ads.
I’ll upload the game on sites like gamejolt, indiegame.us, and a couple of others that I can’t really remember at the moment

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That’s pretty much the marketing / promotion plan for The Pixel Pirate.  Most of the stuff I’ve done for EVERY game that I’ve release, so I’m looking forward to seeing the results of the new ideas that I’ve read about (such as the IndieDB news release).

If you can think of any more, let me know and I’ll add them!

As you know, I’m constantly on the look out for sites to upload my flash games onto.  While I wouldn’t necessarily upload my games onto just any site, I don’t have very high standards in order to upload my game onto a particular site.  All I really ask for is that the site allows DOESN’T block outside ads and allows me to use the APIs that I choose to use.  I’m not entirely sure if Facebook allows all of that, but I kind of consider Facebook in a different category than a “flash game portal.”  I’d really like to upload my games onto Facebook, in fact… if only if I could figure out how.

Someone Hates Facebook

I’ve been looking for tutorials on the web as well as asking for help via places like tigsource, but, for the life of me, I cannot find a good tutorial on how to upload a flash game onto Facebook.  I was told that I needed to learn Javascript (which I ain’t gonna do) on the tigsource forums.  And, the best tutorial I could find on google was about using Flash Builder and Flex to make a Facebook app; for some reason, there doesn’t seem to be article on building an app with Adobe CS5.

I’m sure that it’s a simple thing to do, but I’m a simple man with a simple brain – a lot of these sort of technical things don’t come natively to me.  If I could just have some sort of guide that was up to date, it wouldn’t be a problem at all…

It’s frustrating because I’m, potentially, losing out on a HUGE market share.  I don’t expect my games to be smash hits or anything like that, but… I’m sure you can imagine the advantage of having your game on the #1 American web site on the net.

It’s frustrating and pretty odd that it’d be such a difficult thing to find – I’d imagine that lots of other people are in the same position.

But, such is life.  I’m just going to be doing what I do best and I imagine that someone will eventually write a quick and easy tutorial on adding your flash game to Facebook.  Since there’s nothing that I can really do about it (outside of learn Javascript), my games just ain’t gonna be on Facebook.

And, that sucks, eh?

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The Official Jr. Jellybeans Forums are now up!  Be sure to join today if you have any questions / comments about any of the current Jr. Jellybeans projects!

Get ready for the next Doom!

I’ve been trying to make things work as an indie for about 2 years or so.  During that time, I tried to release two games for profit and three flash games.  Overall,  I’ve only made a couple of hundred dollars.  Added to that, I’m finding that my motivation for working on games is a bit lower than it used to be…

That’s not to say that I’m giving up on making indie games, however.  I’ve learned A LOT about game designing and about myself during this time, and it’s been an amazing experience having people play the art that I’ve done.  But, I’m really anxious to finally  release that one game that’s going to be push me to the next level (next level being defined as being more well known and financially stable).

I was recently watching a youtube video by Brian Fargo (the founder of Interplay) and he mentioned how video game companies tend to become known for one game – Rockstar is known for GTA, Bungie is known for Halo, Id is known for Doom and Wolfenstein… basically, there’s a single game or product that eventually “pushes” the company into a different atmosphere.  Obviously, I’m not expecting to make something that sells to millions of people, but I’d imagine that this sort of thing happens quite a lot in a micro level.  The idea is that you work on a project or idea long enough, and, eventually, some sort of success is found.  That success fuels other success…

Basically, what I’m really looking for is to achieve some tiny bit of success that’s going to transform my thinking and the way I work.  After that transformation, I’ll be able to achieve even more success.

While it’s kind of a relief to know that a lot of other indie developer’s go through the same sort of setbacks, it’s still frustrating.  I’m sure that game designing would be a lot more fun if I was getting paid more than nothing

Unfortunately, I can’t quite identify what I’m doing wrong so I can’t fix it.  I’ve mentioned this before, but I can’t NOT make the games I’m making (if that makes any sense).  And, the most obvious problem that I keep running into (crummy art) has no real solution outside of throwing money at it.  Unfortunately, I don’t have much money and I don’t really want to borrow any.

It’s frustrating and a bit scary actually.  I hope I’m not spending my life doing something that won’t amount to anything…

But, I’m still pretty positive.  I’m sure that there are things that I could be doing better and, hopefully, I’ll learn them sooner rather than later.  Overall, indie game development is an exciting ride to be on and, while I do get nervous and worried about my own future sometimes, it’s something that I feel truly blessed to be a part of!

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By the way, the demo of The Pixel Pirate is up!  Be sure to play it and let me know what you think!