As 7BitArcade flies past the 300+ subscriber mark I decided to guest on the Newb Review podcast. I joined Alan (braindead_hero) and Chell (Chellemo) from the Pink and Deadly podcast for a bit of a natter of what tickled our taste buds in the gaming world this year. Give it a listen on the Newb Review site right here.
Podcast Description: This week we bring you a special treat, a completely unplanned and unscripted episode. Braindead_hero sits down and talks to two of the greatest, funniest and most beautiful women to be found on the internet. These are of course Chellemo from www.pinkanddeadly.com and Spanjj from www.7bitarcade.com as we talk about the year 2009 in general.
Episode 2 of the 7Bit saga has hit the podcasting world! I am noticeably absent from this one but I think the boys did a sterling job without me.
‘In this weeks episode expect Rap Offs, Forza 3, Terrorism, Red Rings, Modern Warfare 2 mixed with Animal Hospital and features on the newest games including Stevie getting his teeth into Dragon Age and further anarchic banter.’
Listen to it straight off the site.
Yesterday the 7BitArcade podcast tumbled over the 200 subscribers mark. Its completely surpassed my expectations and anticipate greatly the response to the second podcast soon to be released. The site is also getting good traffic with 200+ unique visitors thus far.
Thats enough karate chopping for my arm, I’m bloomin’ knackered!
So, Karate Monkey. Plot = Monkey learns Karate. Why not. 59p for a nice simple game. You either chop up, down, left or right. Now to be honest I actually thought there was a bit more to this game but that was human error on my part. I enter the main menu and I see two options: ‘Training’ or ‘Black Belt Challenge’. Well I don’t know about you but I’ve never been one for the training mode, I prefer to jump right in.
“Patience is a virtue young Sensei…”
Quiet you! To my dismay I was not allowed to jump straight in and did indeed have to surpass the training first. Thus it begins and I begin to chop, flicking at the touch screen left right and centre to keep up with Sensei. Inevitably by impatience kicks in and I end up making a few mistakes and assassinating Sensei. Game Over. Restart the training. A fair few attempts later I find myself getting a little frustrated, I can’t tell how many rounds I have to go with Sensei and I really want to skip all this and get to the main game.
“Patience is a…”
Shhhhhhh! A few more goes later and my arm is bloody tired and it finally clicks how many rounds I have to do. The monkey’s belt is changing colour! When it hits black then the Black Belt Challenge shall be unlocked! Finally realising my target, a renewed sense of determination pushes me past the training stage. Yeah take that Sensei I didn’t hit you once! Here it comes… the Black Belt Challenge… which is…….. an infinite version of the training level.
Damn.
Well in all fairness if I’d bothered to look at the screenshots and description I would of realised that the initial bout with Sensei was essentially the game. Looking at it from that point of view its a nice little game to pass the time, though too much time will leave you with a rather sore arm. The graphics are most notable, with a nice mix of the 3D background and hand drawn characters. I think the progression of belts in the training stage perhaps needs to be clearer, it didn’t twig straight anyway exactly what I was working towards.
Overall its an aesthetically pleasing, addictive but very small game. I think you’ll find 59p games that give you a bit more for your money but the game is decent. So its a respectable 3 Susan Boyles out of 5 from me.
Oh my Susan Boyle.
“Hark!” cried the Angel(a) that appeared to me in a dream last night. “You must travel to the great Apple in the sky to the mystical city of App Store and search for the games of lowly developer stature! Unworthy of the front page but worth of a review by you!”
Wow Angela.. err I mean Angel! Thats a top notch idea you got there, might just have to use that! So here’s a festive one to start us o
Christmas Capture
With the arrival of the fat man comes the arrival of a tonne of Christmas related iPhone games. So I boycotted the front page and searched for… Santa! Eeny meeny miny mo! Christmas Capture is a puzzle game by ‘PlayScreen’. You place presents on the screen to try and surround Santa, capture him. Why not eh, that old man has broken into more houses than you can shake a candy cane at. All to feed that filthy cookie and milk addiction. The shame of it all.
As you put presents down, Santa legs it towards the edge of the screen. If he makes it off the edge its game over and this is where I find flaw with the game. I’ve had a fair few stabs at this game but can’t seem to make it past level 3 and as soon as Santa escapes once you’re a goner. Back to the start. This wouldn’t be a problem if I understood the progression in difficulty from one level to the next. I fail just as often on level 3 as I do on level 1.
Its a shame because first impressions of the game were it could be quite an addictive little puzzler. The graphics are nice and can’t fault the audio either. The scoring system makes sense, more presents used the less the score with a high scores table and a save game option too. If the good people at ‘PlayScreen’ feel like doing a quick update on this one I’d recommend a three life system and then we’d have a nice little Christmas puzzler on our hands with a reasonable price tag of 59p.
Rating on this one on the Boyle-ometer… 2.5!
I like drawing snails! Yoseph happens to be a very unfortunate one as you’ll find out from this little cartoon. Started to explore the interactive side of flash with this one which led onto the development of Christopher Crunch. A nice, clean contrasting style compared to the previous cartoons.
Watch it
A short animation concerning three snails and a friendly, friendly bee. This ones from 2006 but the quality of the drawings has once again shot up and all the tweening is a lot smoother. Some early experimentation with Actionscript 2 as well with a much more creative preloader.
Watch it
A big step up from Nightmare Floor on Floor 53 but also released in 2005. Better animation techniques and drawings, most notable is the lip synching. Audio of dialogue isn’t quite up to scratch but the whole thing shows a definite learning curve being experienced. Watch as the jellyfish causes havoc for poor Bert, disrupting his afternoon watching TV but cringe at the hideous voice acting (my apologies – this is early work!).
Watch it
First flash animation accepted through the Newgrounds portal in 2005. Shows my ability to use the drawing tools in flash more than anything. Take a trip up to Floor 53.
Watch it
Under the alias SuperDuck-Spanjj I’ve been putting new animations onto the site Newgrounds from a young age. This is something I plan to continue doing but I’ll post a few of my early works up here too. Flash was the catalyst that sent me towards a career in creating online media and now thanks to my recent iPhone development – media on multiple platforms. Watch this space for further work.
