I think I agree, but I also think that it is partly because of the limited range of view you get in the top down games. You have no idea what lies just off the screen, whereas in the fps style ones you can get the lay of the land in a matter of seconds. There is no incentive to actually scour every inch.

Ok. That looks fantastic! (having gotten over the annoying interviewer. apologies if it's actually someone here  )

It does look like a year is a reasonable amount of time as that was basically a tech demo. Good luck with development man. What are you building it in by the way?

I love the look of this. I just can't imagine it not being a frustrating experience being a multiplayer game. That said, i'm not a big multiplayer game player, so maybe i've yet to experience the kind of harmonious multiplayer existence that would be required to actually achieve something great in this game.

The tools do look amazing. This can't seriously be the efforts of one man surely?

I really enjoyed Phantom hourglass, until i got stuck because no amount of variations seemed to register that damn "trace this shape" puzzle mid boss later on.

It would be nice if they had actually done something new though, that looks more like an expansion. And that train system looked annoying just from the video, i can't imagine how annoying it will get doing that for hours on end.

I'll play it though, and no doubt enjoy it.

I have found that some keyboards restrict you holding two arrow keys and the spacebar down at the same time. Now I think most game engines can avoid this by firing events for keydown/keyup instead of polling directly for the state of a key on the keyboard, which is what the old version of actionscript, and the version still most used by new developers, did (even though it did have key listeners, nobody though to use them when Key.isDown was more convenient).

The new version of actionscript removed Key.isDown completely, forcing you to listen for keydown/keyup events instead, alleviating this problem I think. I still avoid trying to use arrows/space combination and instead opt for arrows/asd

Nah, the problem is still there using keyDown event. If you have up and space down for example, pressing i think left, doesn't fire a keydown event. And yeah it is a keyboard limitation, not flash, as far as I am aware.

[Parasol]

Parasol

"parere" + "sol" essentially means to parry the sun.

Ha. That's a fantastic one.

The only ones i can think of off the top of my head are 'blimey' which is short for cor blimey, originally 'god blind me'. Similarly crikey is 'cripple me'.

And yeah who on earth thinks peruse means to read thoroughly?

What, in all flash games? Because that sounds pretty bizarre. Or is this on a specific game or site?

If you click out of the flash it will lose focus and key events will stop registering. Similarly if you right click in the flash. Other than that i've never heard of that issue. Not really sure what could be causing it, but it's not an issue with flash. Sounds like it's an issue with the OS/browser passing keyboard events badly. That key-jamming issue is bloody annoying though. It's why flash games rarely use the spacebar + arrow keys.

It's also very unhealthy. The name of the site isn't "disgusting food", it's "this is why you're fat". I'd say the toad is a good enough reason.

I think you're mistaking toad in the hole for something else. It's not health food, sure. But it's essentially sausages, an egg or two, and a lot of flour. Not much fat, not much grease. Have it with some roasted veggies and it is healthier than a lot of other foodstuffs out there.

(should probably go to bed now. Defending the rights of battered sausages at 4am is a bad thing)

Also I looked on the front page of that site, what's wrong with toad in the hole?

Haha, yeah I thought that too. Toad in the hole is fantastic.

A chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, all wrapped in bacon.

That's actually a fairly traditional meal. It's not for one person, it serves many. And it is delicious. A lot of the ones on that site are obviously jokes ... but boy, do they make me hungry!

I liked Mardek RPG. It's witty, it matches my own aesthetic preferences (excluding some fairly awful flash art), and it was fun to play.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/382579 Chapter 1

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/408513 Chapter 2

Much more fun than Sonny, in my opinion.

That is pretty great. Only managed to play the first though. The second keeps bugging out on me.

Sonny is awful. I don't get why it's so highly rated. I mean, sure it's extremely well polished, but the actual gameplay is a snorefest.

As this is a browser honouring thread though, my favourite is this. (along with all their others really.)
http://www.nitrome.com/games/dirkvalentine/

One of my most favorite browser-based indie flash games is Click Drag Type 3. It's a puzzle game including 15 entirely different puzzles. There are absolutely no instructions, you have to figure out each puzzle on your own. I liked playing it a great lot.
Don't go looking for the other 2 games, though. 10 of the 15 puzzles of CTD3 are from the predecessors, so it is the complete version

Argh it's so hard! Darn it, now i'm stuck doing this all night ...

Another great example of a community is that Fantastic Contraption game. It is also a shining example of a different business model for a flash game. The key in that case though is pretty much limited to that kind of game, i.e. player created content which you need to pay to create/use. I imagine he has made a killing from that game. Far more than he would have done getting sponsorship and putting it up on game portals.

Another example of this, not the community, but the percieved quality, is all of Nitrome's games. It's hard to believe you are playing flash games and i definitely feel more fulfilled playing them in a non generic portal website.

It is a fascinating subject though, and i'm probably coming at this from a hopeful angle as i am currently working on my first game (yes, in flash).

Looks good man. The title made me burst out laughing. :D

Looking forward to watching the progress.

The only part where i got confused was when you died and instantly reappeared on the left. It looks like a really cool mechanic though.

Ok I just stumbled across this one (a bit late I know).

http://aviary.com/blog/posts/aviary-launches-crane-paper-editor

It's actually really well done, and pretty funny. I particularly like the demonstration of working with layers.  :D

I thought it would be a new kfc mega meal. Derek, that is exactly how i'd expect it to turn out. I'm gonna be all over this!

I used to love the pirate sets. I had a pirate fort, and a big ship with cannons you could fire! I also had a playmobil pirate ship, which whilst obviously not the same in terms of construction, was awesome for making up stories and adventures. Mainly because the thing floated, so i'd play with it in the bath.



The space lego sets were also pretty awesome.

re: Lego/legos. I always said lego or lego bricks, but it's officially either or according to the makers. Lego is the name of the bricks, so the plural of that can be lego bricks or legos. It does sound stupid though.