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The main purpose of this website is to support Android indie game developers with tutorials, reviews and promotion of their games. The main difficulty for the developers is not to make the game, but to get exposure. To get it out there. If you find anything useful here, please spread the word. Like my page on Facebook, follow me on Google+ or Twitter. Thank you!

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Saturday 30 November 2013

Dirt Rider Mayhem review - A fresh Dirt Bike game

A new addition to the family of dirt bike games was just released by nazgee. And it's awesome.

If you've thought that this genre has nothing more to offer, let this game prove you wrong. The simulation is not just very realistic but a lot of innovations were added to this game.

The game consists of 30 levels and some of them feel more like a puzzle game than just a riding one. The obstacles are well placed and sometimes you will have a difficulty getting over them. Read carefully the hints on screen!

Controls are standard, two pedals working as gas and break depending on the direction you are moving. The graphics are quite nice and the motorbike models look good too. But the strongest side of this game is definitely the gameplay.



The levels alternate between day and night. As you progress through them, more tricks are required to advance. And more and more special features are added. The physics simulation in this game is really used to a maximum. For example there are levels, where you have to ride a cart or a loose log! Reminds me of Yo Dawg meme...



Some levels also require to upgrade the bike. Dirt Rided Mayhem offers several types of bikes and plenty of upgrades including engines and tires.

And when you finish the level, either successfuly or with a crash the game takes a nice picture of you, that you can share with your friends. Here's me after a very bad crash! :)




The game is completely free, but if you'll feel like you want to advance faster or buy another bike right away, it offers you an in-app purchase of the game currency.

Conclusion

Dirt Rider Mayhem is the best dirt bike game I've played. It might not have the best visuals, but the gameplay will captivate you. There's plenty of levels offering hours of fun and another batch is coming soon. It's definitely a good choice for the fans of the genre and anyone else who wants a good game.

Get it on Google Play!
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Friday 29 November 2013

How to become a game developer

I was asked this question before. The obvious answer is "Go and make a game". But maybe it's not so obvious when people still have to ask...

Motivation

First,start with your motivation. Why do you want to make a game? If you want to make money, here's bad news: Majority of indie game developers won't make much. And those who work for big companies will tell you that their job is not much different from any other software developer or designer job and far from the fun they expected (there are exceptions...).

However if you simply want to make a game and you don't expect to make a lot of money, at least not from the beginning, then you are on the right track. Of course, you can still make money, just don't expect it to happen over night.

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Tuesday 26 November 2013

Kana Karate Review - Fun way to learn languages

Kana Karate from Aztecbyte is an educational game for people who want to learn English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, Italian vocabulary and especially the Japanese writing system. The system itself is complicated - there is Hiragana and Katakana (together called Kana) and Kanji. Learning it is all about drill. There's plenty of apps that can help you learn it, but I can say that this one is definitely the most fun!

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Sunday 10 November 2013

Fight Fight Zombanite review - Zombies vs. Survivors, new tactical action game!

FFZ is a new game by MojoBox Games that combines action and real-time strategy genres spiced with a little bit of RPG. It's about survival after a zombie apocalypse which sounds like yet-another-zombie game. But FFZ is different and worth playing.

In this game, you start with one survivor. More people will join your group after completing missions. There are many characters in the game and every one of them has a unique ability that can benefit the team in the current mission, or it can prove quite useless. Mixing the right team for the job is one of the things that make this game interesting.

And it's not just the team. Each individual has a basic set of skills and two special upgradeable abilities. Usually both of them are useful and you just have to choose based on your style.




There are resource missions where you gather supplies and there you need less firepower and more speed, defense missions where you need both firepower and mobility and hard-core survival missons where firepower is everything.




As you can see on the left, I wasn't doing very well in the survival. Not even with my awesome rockets... FFZ also offers car driving missions. I find them quite calming after the action in the field!

The gameplay is really good and engaging, the graphics are polished too and overall the game feels like a solid piece of work. Music perfectly adds to the atmosphere of a zombie apocalypse. The only thing I found a bit funny are the sound effects especially in the car driving mission.

I got a chance to play this game before the official release and I haven't finished playing it yet. But I can already say it's definitely worth playing and one of my favourite games I had reviewed. I will post the link to the store as soon as it is released.

Conclusion

MojoBox games are two students of game design who picked game making as their future profession. I think they started very well. Their zombie game is fresh, original and fun to play. Stay tuned for the release!

Update

The game is out now! Get it from Google Play store...


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Tuesday 5 November 2013

Android Game Development Tutorial in AndEngine - Part 5 - Resource Loading and Splash Screen


This part will show you how to load assets to memory and how to use them in a scene.

It's important to preload some resources, especially those that will be used all the time, but you can't load too many resources at once simply because you might run out of memory and the gamers could run out of patience waiting for everything to load. It is equally important to unload those resources that are no longer needed.

For the purpose of preloading resources a splash screen is usually displayed first. It is not necessary, but first you can show your brand or name and second it will give users something to look at while you are loading the resources in the background. You can also show some kind of progress bar, but splash works just fine.
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Sunday 3 November 2013

GDSE Game Jam - My First Game in HTML5 + Javascript

I've participated in Game Jam organized by Game Developement at Stack Exchange.

A game jam is a gathering of game developers for the purpose of planning, designing, and creating one or more games within a short span of time, usually ranging between 24 to 48 hours. Game developers are generally made up of programmers, game designers, artists, and others in game development-related fields. (Wikipedia)

The great thing about Game Jam is that it forces you to think and code quickly. The requirement was to make a game playable in browser. I was thinking of using libgdx, but ended up using Phaser, a Javascript/Typescript framework. It was a great learning experience.

I call the game TCOB1. Theme was "There can only be one" (sic) and the genre of my game ended up being "endless" space racing where players are eliminated by asteroids. The last player in the game wins.

It took me about 8 hours to finish the first prototype and another 8 hours to complete the game. Phaser development is really fast. My next step will be to get better in Javascript and make the game more portable - I want it to be playable in Android stock browser and mobile Chrome.

You can play the game in your browser. Instructions are on the page itself. Source code is available if you want to take a look. The Javascript code is not so nice - but not that bad considering I started learning Javascript on Friday night and submitted the game on Sunday night!

Simple screenshot from the game

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