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Ask HN: I'm building one HTML5 game per week, need feedback
Hello,
As a developer and a gamer I always wanted to make games, but I never actually did it. To change that I threw myself a public challenge: build a new game every week in html5 using Phaser (a javascript framework).
The games are quite simple for now, but that's because I'm still learning. Let me know if you have any feedback on the games or the website.
Link: www.lessmilk.com
Thanks!
- phaus 13y agoSo far the one thing that all of your games have in common is that they are very responsive. Don't ever change that for any reason. Without responsive controls, you game will be terrible no matter much polished the rest of it is. As your games become more complex, it will be easier to offer some constructive criticism. Right now, however, you seem to be doing fine. Keep up the good work.
- phaus 13y ago>So far the one thing* I meant that it's one of the things they have in common. Basically, the responsiveness they share stands out in a positive way.
- lessmilk 13y agoClickable: http://www.lessmilk.com http://www.lessmilk.com
- iterationx 13y agoGame 1 might be fun as multiplayer
- paugay 13y agoExactly, Game 1 with multplayer, real time, start together, and the one who stays the last gets a point, the first who get 10 points wins :)
- mrfusion 13y agoHow did you decide on Phaser? Would you recommend it? How hard would you say it is to get started for someone with some JS experience and some pyGame experience?
- lessmilk 13y agoI spent a lot of time trying multiple javascript 2D framework, and Phaser [0] was the best for my needs: it works well on all modern browser, it's simple, and powerful. I never tried pyGame, so I don't know. [0] - http://www.phaser.io/ http://www.phaser.io/
- didsomeonesay 13y agoBased on pixi.js, should have good rendering performance. Great, just the thing i was looking for!
- jrs99 13y agowhich frameworks did you try for JS? and what were your needs?
- joebo 13y agoIt would be neat for someone to take one of the games and show how to build it without any frameworks.
- lessmilk 13y agoI plan to write tutorials on how I build some of my games with Phaser. But without any framework, I don't know how to do it.
- Taurenking 13y agomake sure to make a post about it...I'm interested! Keep up the good work!
- lessmilk 13y agoThanks! To be notified when it's out, you should register to my newsletter http://www.lessmilk.com http://www.lessmilk.com
- drd 13y agoHere is a simple game I did. You can see the software life cycle data on the blog. Check the source code of the game. It is pretty straight forward. http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=a-simple-html5-game-the-design-decisions http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=a-simple-html5-game-the-design...
- sideproject 13y agoVery awesome. Played each one of them for like... 5 minutes!
- naeemnur 13y agothese are awesome!
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoI'd recommend you go for quality over quantity. Make a decent game every month or some longer period of time, rather than a generic arcade game every week. But, whatever keeps you motivated. Keep going.
- aymeric 13y agoSeconding that, but it really depends on your objective with this.
- blainesch 13y ago"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay." Art and Fear
- sauravt 13y agoAwesome, keep at it. :D
- nashashmi 13y agoYou must be a terrific game artist to combine tech and games like that.
- mrkipling 13y agoI enjoyed them! I've been thinking about getting into HTML5 game development recently but couldn't think of a good place to start. Creating lots of little games like this (simple arcade games) seems like as good a place as any - perhaps I'll attempt something similar. Thanks for the idea!
- pawelkomarnicki 13y agoVery nice games :) Keep going! :)
- gargarplex 13y agoi enjoyed the square jump game. it could benefit from a leaderboard.
- maxbrown 13y agoGreat project and fun games! How many are you planning to do? Do you have an end-goal in mind?
- lessmilk 13y agoThanks! I don't have any specific goal in mind, I'll try to do it for as long as I can.
- blackdogie 13y agoreally liked game number #3 , not so much a fan of the background music, but definitely it was a cool game to pass away 4 or 5 minutes. Thanks.
- aaronetz 13y agoNice games. I like the simple visuals. Played game #2 for a bit. One specific comment: Holding "up" fires at the maximum rate (pressing up repeatedly doesn't fire any faster). Also, there is no downside to constantly holding up. So you probably should either (1) eliminate the up button and just auto-fire all the time, (2) have a fuel mechanic that will force the player to conserve shots, or (3) make it worthwhile to press up faster. And if doing so, move the fire button to space or something similar, because it is hard to repeatedly press up while moving with the side arrows.
- lessmilk 13y agoThat's some great feedback, thanks! I don't want to edit my previous game to be true to the challenge, but I'll definitely keep this in mind for my next games.
- aaronetz 13y agoJust finished game #3, died 83 times (wasn't too hard after playing Super Meat Boy :)). Some ideas: add two more controls for increasing vertical and horizontal velocity (i.e. holding "shift" will make to box go faster and jump farther, and holding jump longer will make it jump higher. And then add more levels that exploit those controls!
- bonobo 13y agoOh boy, these are awesome! :D I'm especially fond of game #1. It reminded me of an old html game I played in which I had to use the mouse to drag a rectagle around, avoiding collisions with other rectangles that bounced around. I remember receiving this in an email that said if I were able to stand for X seconds (I can't remember how many) then it meant that my reflexes were above the threshold required for jet pilots — and obviously, as every boy, I wanted to fly a jet. The only critique I have for you is to have posted it during my work hours.
- nahlyee 13y agoCould you perhaps show some of your code or screencast so others can learn along with?
- japhyr 13y agoThese are great! I love simple games like this. They are fun, but it feels like they'd be a lot more fun with a bigger playing field. Have you considered making a larger playing area?
- japhyr 13y agoInspired by your sharing of simple games, I'll share the one html5 game I made a couple years ago for fun: http://tapawaygame.com http://tapawaygame.com It's meant for mobile devices, and it's unpolished, but it was fun and satisfying to make. I was inspired to make it after I had an eye exam. I'm always scared of "failing" that test where you have to tell the optometrist every time you see a flash on a screen.
- notlisted 13y agoGame 3 is my fave... Awesome... brings back memories of my Commodore 64 days where my favorite game was Galaga, crude pixels, smooth movement, great action. One small refinement suggestion: perhaps a few "tick marks" on the horizontal axis so people can time it right (if not for all, at least for initial levels, would lure players in a little more), eg see http://imgur.com/kDEgbTo http://imgur.com/kDEgbTo Edit: here's a longplay video of that Galaga game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSqk8t0Pxww http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSqk8t0Pxww
- potomak 13y agoMine too! I scored 44.
- Jeremy1026 13y agoYou'd probably enjoy the crap out of City Jumper (flash game) from way back when. http://www.addictinggames.com/action-games/cityjumper.jsp http://www.addictinggames.com/action-games/cityjumper.jsp
- Nevermark 13y agoWow! Love your games. I got started programming by writing games like this on a TRS-80 Model 3 in the early 80's, but we only had one "beep" sound then. I went on to write parsers for text adventures, which got me into parsers for programming languages, compilers and then machine learning. Your games are fun, especially Jump Squares. I noticed that keeping the game going without pause has an addicting effect. (In comparison to the "push up button to restart" on games 1 and 2.) I had no intention of playing it all the way through, but I couldn't stop until I did. Nice clean design for such simple games. Fun sounds.
- pacofvf 13y agowho much time did you spend doing these games? I actually worked doing some physics stuff in C for a game, never got to see the finished product but I've always wanted to do a whole game.
- d0m 13y agoOnly played game #3. Really like it. Two suggestions: - I'd put a small countdown (2-1 go) or something when we die because otherwise you die and already miss the right timing to do this level. So sometimes I had to voluntary let it die 2-3 times to have a good start. - Would be way cooler to be able to jump on top of the boxes.. but you have to land perfectly on it.
- drhayes9 13y agoGreat games! Great start! Here's a talk you might be interested in from one of the guys who made "Ridiculous Fishing" on the Art of Screenshake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U Basically, it's a bunch of interesting points on how to make action games feel more responsive and fun.
- lessmilk 13y agoThanks for the video, it looks super interesting!
- d0m 13y agoI like how you created real games instead of just demos. The third one is really addictive, I've played one very similar on the iphone. (I think it was called Impossible game or something similar). Maybe as a next game it could be similar to the #3 but with this gameplay "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPgotLzzb-Q" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPgotLzzb-Q", i.e. one key to move higher but gravity then brings you down. You rock keep it up.
- tedajax 13y agoI'm doing a similar, but slightly less aggressive thing and trying to do a game a month. Here's what I currently have, it's ok I guess. http://tedajax.net/Game/ http://tedajax.net/Game/ I really like your third game, very simple but it works and is engaging.
- Zisko 13y agoI played it for a little while. Love the Feel! EDIT: green particles are meant to collide with the player, Sorry!
- jerle76 13y agoI would suggest building analytics in your games, to see how people are playing them vs how you thought they would be played, and identify levels that are too easy or difficult. e.g. on Game 3, track an event on each level up along with the number of death for that level. Game 3 is really addictive. Good job
- Keyframe 13y agoExcellent! I hope you progress well from this. One thing that bothers me here is input lag. Is this inherent to phaser?
- wtetzner 13y agoI'm not experiencing any input lag in Firefox. What browser are you using?
- tenpoundhammer 13y agoLove game 3, 1 and 2 seem like they a need a bigger playing area to be fun.
- stellar678 13y agoNumber 3 is so simple but a really novel game mechanic. (For me at least.) Nice job!
- stuaxo 13y agoNice! Difficult, playable and addictive :)
- marigoldpicker 13y agoHow about open sourcing the code so others can learn with you
- wtetzner 13y agoThe code's not obfuscated or anything. Just view source.
- eliot_sykes 13y agoThanks, enjoyed game #3. Enhancement request: Fullscreen mode
- eguneys 13y agoWould you like to work together, i am building a turn based board game, and need some help on client side. http://www.reddit.com/r/devblogs/comments/1v6ivc/turn_based_board_game_developer_partner_needed/ http://www.reddit.com/r/devblogs/comments/1v6ivc/turn_based_...
- davidslv 13y agoVery cool, i like this one http://www.lessmilk.com/3/ http://www.lessmilk.com/3/