Cool flash game for Arcade Trap

Hi everyone, today I will share with you the fascinating world of flash game programming, and the creation of an involved flash game that goes as a companion product with the studio’s recent short film “Arcade Trap”.

After initial brainstorming; it was decided to have a go at an old puzzle favorite, memory, the game where the main objective is to reveal all the matching pairs before the time runs out. However simply basing the game on memory alone would not make a very interesting experience; face it, everyone’s played lots of memory games already, so the design phase included ways of improving this classic game and re-inventing its game play mechanics.

“Memory Bytes” was chosen as the name for our game for obvious reasons, which I wont go into at the moment, but its obviously very cool and is themed on the short film “Arcade Trap”. Now back to the better stuff.

When talking about the various key game play mechanics we could add, we come up with a skill system, which allows players to use while playing the game, giving them a fun advantage against the clock.

Some of the skills we created included a stop time skill, which is not very interesting at first glance, but when placed in a hectic time restricted scenario, it could quickly become one of a players most important assets for winning the game.

Another skill, perhaps more interesting for players, was the x-Ray skill. This beauty could be called upon to have an x-ray lens, something similar to a magnifying glass, follow the player’s cursor, and reveal the symbols underneath the stones the lens passes over. Of course, this skill has the potential to be quite powerful and in some ways is essentially a cheat, so like all skills, an active time cap was placed upon it, and once used, it would take a very long time to recharge before the player could use it again.

Once we had decided upon the skills that would best articulate our take on memory, we needed a way for players to score and collect skills. Actual player score was quite simple; you get score for matching pairs. Some variation was added to score gain through the game difficulty setting as well score compounding with consecutive pairs.

The more fascinating game variable was player’s points, OK, it’s probably not that fascinating, but what you could use them for was the fascinating part.
Because the main driving force for the success of this game was its skills, an adequate system for acquiring them was needed. Simply put, the player needed some way of collecting skills that was not complicated and was easily incorporated into the score. This gave birth to the point value, which was increased each time a player matched a pair. Hang on, you’re probably thinking, what’s so sophisticated about this? Well you’re right, nothing, but it’s a simple use of a number value which we can use as a kind of currency for purchasing skills, which I’ll get to later.

After the design brief was established, the general game flow was drawn up, from game intro to end game and everything in between.

One great thing that sets our game apart from a generic flash game is that all the artwork is sourced from the short film and rendered out in 3D, giving the game a cool graphical boost in quality.

To sum up the game, players collect points with which to purchase skills to aid them in essentially betting the clock and coming out on top after ten levels.

To read more interesting information about the crazy design of “Arcade Trap - Memory Bytes” and to get an insight into some of the technical flash gobbledygook, be sure to check back in a few days.

cheers
Adam Reed

Just to whet your appetite, I’ve provided a nice screen shot for all to ponder.