In general, it's arguably more work to sell your game to sponsors than to make the game itself. Or at least it feels a lot more like work.

It totally does seem like a lot more work for me too.

I think maybe it's because when I finish a game I'm so pumped to see the reactions to it that I can't stand anything standing in my way (let alone 3 weeks of tedious back-and-forth emailing and waiting (I didn't use FGL)).

[@Salt:]

@Salt:

I've only sold one Flash game, but I'd say you're getting low-balled.  Maybe try contacting some sponsors personally? 

Your game seems to be of very high quality and well designed.  The only thing brining it down is that it's a concept that has been beaten to death in Flash.  In my (not at all expert) opinion, you should get somewhere around $2000.

Holy crap that was amazing.  Especially the fight scene in the dark.

Wooooooo good job guys, keep it coming.

Ogmo is lookin' good in that roster too!  I'm pumped to see how you use him.

I guess some general rules I tend to follow are:

• Catch the player early.  None of this 1 hour of text/tutorial BS.  EX: Zelda: Link to the Past had a great intro; Zelda: Twilight Princess had a terrible intro.
• Tutorials in general just bore players.  It's best to find a way to teach them the rules without them realizing they're being taught.
• Establish game rules and follow them.  Don't break the rules of the game unless you want the player to be confused/annoyed (which you could want but not usually).
• Flat linear difficulty increase can be boring.  Level 21 doesn't have to be harder than level 20.
• The story of your game is not the story that is delivered in the text/cutscenes/etc of the game, but the story of the player as he experiences these as well as the rest of the game (including menus, etc).

The bullet points above are just "rules of thumb" I try to adhere to, but I guess my actual "philosophy" is that I try to build a world governed by a set of simple rules, then use the way those rules interact to form interesting situations. 

I think Escape games are kind of different.

Hidden Object is like a visual puzzle of sorts ("find the needle in the haystack") whereas Escape games are usually logic puzzles ("here's a plunger, a match, a spoon and six tacks; escape from the dungeon").

I do pushups and this ab exercise where you lay on your back with your hands behind your head and your head off the ground, then you make a bicycle motion with your legs and touch your elbows to the opposite knee on each kick.

I usually do 12 pushups and 32 bicycle kicks per session, usually 5 or 6 times a day average (it only takes a minute when I'm thinking or between doing other things).  I'm sure this will slow down to 3/4 times a day when I get back into school.

Beyond that, I get out for a bike ride at least every other day.  I also have a general rule to choose stairs over escalators/elevators unless I'm pressed for time and going somewhere important and I will usually take the scenic route when I have time walking around campus.

Semi-Related: I have acid reflux, so I eat very little deep-fried or greasy food (blessing in disguise in that respect, though I could do without the morning nausea).

WIll the Inspiro Comet ever collide with Planet Art?

Brilliant

www.mattmakesgames.com has all my games and my blog, etc.

No, I've decided to go with my own engine this time (mostly to get the experience of putting together the engine), although I referenced the Grandma engine while making it, so it's one again been a great help.

Good to hear it still helped you in some way

I LOVE the central mechanic/hook but I agree that usually I just relied on luck and got to the end eventually.  Maybe I'm just a lazy player?

One mechanic I didn't like was how jumping at a vertex of the cube, so that you switch sides twice in mid-air, could send you flying a different direction.  It makes sense logically, but as a player it confused me and I never did master it so I could purposefully send myself flying where I wanted to go.  Levels which used this mechanic just had me randomly jumping at the corners until I got the desired result.  Not sure what you could do about this though.

But yeah, very polished and clever.  Was a fun distraction and has made me even more curious about Unity.

Still using the Grandma Engine?  If so, this could motivate me to finally get another new version out

Loved the first game, definitely looking forward to this.

I've released the soundtracks for four of my games (An Untitled Story, FLaiL, Jumper Three, MoneySeize).  The latter three include the PXTone source files as well, if you're into that kind of thing.

An Untitled Story: Download (MIDI)
FLaiL: Download (OGG, PTCOP)
Jumper Three: Download (MP3, PTCOP)
MoneySeize: Download (MP3, PTCOP)

I'm not aware of any real cons involved in upgrading - GM7 was really the equivalent of a GM6.2 so there isn't any major differences.  The pros are rather sparse as well, but you might as well take advantage. 

As far as transferring a work in progress, the only con is some renamed functions might give you 5 minutes of work before your game can run again.  Oh, and if I remember right (this could have been changed between 6 and 6.1) the particle system was redone too, so you'll have to rewrite some particle code if you have any (but the way it works now makes more sense).

MoneySeize was "hacked" within 3 days of release.  People just use memory editors to change their coin total, and the highscore board has people with 20,000,000+ coins (the most possible is 1010).  There's also at least one YouTube video explaining how to use a memory editor to cheat.

So it could end up being a problem, hard to tell.

I think a bigger security threat is memory editors.  Someone could just change the "continues" or "lives" variable to 99 when they start playing to avoid having to pay.  Unless Mochi has something in place to prevent this?  You could simply encrypt the SWF to prevent decompiling woes.

My next flash project was going to be arcade-style anyway, so I might have to hop on this bandwagon.

EDIT Actually... that arcade style thing might work great Glaiel. Why is that so bad?

I'm going to try this actually when the fall conventions and deadlines are over. The first credit is always free. So you can restart as much as you like and not pay anything but continues will cost a quarter just like an arcade.

I'll tag a disclaimer on it to say it's to help raise money for closure development so people don't start hating on me.

awesome, i think we might try it too.

what did you mean by "keeping it premium" or whatever?

I think he meant you have to apply for it, and Mochi chooses whether you are worthy enough to use it.

And that arcade idea is actually pretty good.

I like the idea of using MochiCoins to lock certain content.  Like, if you play without buying it's basically a demo of the full game, pay a couple bucks for the full game.  This business model would be similar to an iPhone game with the Lite version and the full version.

However, I'm not a huge fan of meaningless cosmetic upgrades (though I guess if it makes you a few bucks, why not - just kind of feels like ripping off the consumer) and I hate the idea of the player buying "upgrades" to make him better at the game like better towers in a TD game or similar.  Just sounds like it would completely ruin game balance.  Maybe let players buy cheats? (god mode, infinite ammo, etc)  At least then it's implied that the purchase will throw the balance out of whack.

I wrote this tutorial detailing how I did the XML stages for MoneySeize: http://mattmakesgames.com/blog/2009/06/embedding-xml-in-as3.html