BlackMoon Html5 Games

[blackmoondev]

Hi 

We make LOTS of games - so I figured out it's better to have a single post I could update every time we publish a new game rather than post info about the games in separate posts. 
Atm. the BlackMoon Design team (consist of 2 full-time developers, 2 part-time developers and 2 graphic designers) made roughly 80 games. You can check them all here - http://m.blackmoondev.com 

All feedback is welcome:)

 

[blackmoondev]

Here's a small quick, silly game I've made (together with my daughter) during the Global Game Jam last weekend. It's the first time I've used Construct2 and I have to say it works really nicely (good thing I had @elparole nearby though;) Anyway - check out the "Magical Kawaii Cyborg Girl" [PC only] - http://jamgames.blackmoondev.com/kawaiicyborggirl/

[end3r]

I just wanted to add that you can find games from me (Enclave Games) on the BlackMoon Design website too - both as a showcase of our work together and as a licensing offer through Robert.

Feel free to ping him for details if you're interested.

[Filipp_BSG]

Firefox 50.1.0, Win7 – links on your website are unclickable (however, can be opened via right-click menu). Nice productivity through.

[Goblet Ed]

Wow, never knew you guys made so many games! Nice work! 

[blackmoondev]

17 hours ago, Spyro23 said:

Firefox 50.1.0, Win7 – links on your website are unclickable (however, can be opened via right-click menu). Nice productivity through.

Hey Spyro - thanks for the feedback. I guess the scripts that register what is being clicked on the site cause that. Thankfully - Win7+Firefox combination is only 0.2% of all visits. 

[scheffgames]

Quite a nice library of games - will have to sample them all to learn a thing or two

. I quick played through a couple of them - I really like Trollboxing art style. Couple of questions:

1)What framework are you using?

2)What tools do your artists use? I only ask because I currently trying to work with an artist and he's reticent to create art using a vector drawing software (like Illustrator) - he comes from a Photoshop background. So is it possible to create clean looking (vector like) art in Photoshop?

Thanks!

[blackmoondev]

14 hours ago, scheffgames said:

1)What framework are you using?

2)What tools do your artists use? I only ask because I currently trying to work with an artist and he's reticent to create art using a vector drawing software (like Illustrator) - he comes from a Photoshop background. So is it possible to create clean looking (vector like) art in Photoshop?

Thanks:)
1. We use Construct2 in most cases (few games are made with Phaser)

2. We use Adobe Animate CC to create art and animate it in most cases. There's also some Spriter and Spine animation here and there. 

Is it possible to create clean looking-vector like art in Photoshop? Possibly. But Animate will do better I guess. 

[Str1ngS]

As someone who also maintains a large number of HTML5 games I'm also very interested on what goes on behind the games. I'm talking about hosting, updating games, managing different versions etc. (If you are willing to answer of course;)) We are really running into the limits of what we can do with our current setup and I'd love to hear about your endeavors regarding this.

[blackmoondev]

9 hours ago, Str1ngS said:

As someone who also maintains a large number of HTML5 games I'm also very interested on what goes on behind the games. I'm talking about hosting, updating games, managing different versions etc. (If you are willing to answer of course;)) We are really running into the limits of what we can do with our current setup and I'd love to hear about your endeavors regarding this.

Yeah - we just recently moved the whole inventory to MS Azure servers - we had a shared hosting (a pretty good one) but got a note from admins that requests for our games take up too much cpu time. Azure is pretty straight forward to setup (I've managed to that in two days - having none previous experience with cloud setups or server in general). So far so good - let's see how much resources the games are going to eat up (it's pay-as-you-go type of subscription). 

As for maintenance of all the games - that could be a pain. I presume 10-30% of the whole team time is spent on updating, fixing, changing, translating of 70 games. Looking at the tail in the revenue for those games though - supporting and updating older games is a great idea. 

[Str1ngS]

8 hours ago, blackmoondev said:

Yeah - we just recently moved the whole inventory to MS Azure servers - we had a shared hosting (a pretty good one) but got a note from admins that requests for our games take up too much cpu time. Azure is pretty straight forward to setup (I've managed to that in two days - having none previous experience with cloud setups or server in general). So far so good - let's see how much resources the games are going to eat up (it's pay-as-you-go type of subscription). 

As for maintenance of all the games - that could be a pain. I presume 10-30% of the whole team time is spent on updating, fixing, changing, translating of 70 games. Looking at the tail in the revenue for those games though - supporting and updating older games is a great idea. 

We have a slightly bigger team than your's but the amount of people fixing stuff is more or less equal in percentage. But it is as you said, depending on where your revenue is, it's definitely worth updating some of your games. As for the infra, we are on Amazon (bit of legacy, we already started working on amazon 5 years ago), is there any particular reason why you went for Azure?

[blackmoondev]

1 hour ago, Str1ngS said:

 is there any particular reason why you went for Azure?

Mainly because cool people work in polish MS branch and they do a lot for indie community (like events, meetups and helping with Xbo development). Figured out I'll know who to call in case there's an emergency. 

[blackmoondev]

So - we've made a new game:)

It's called "Wizard Quest" and it's a simple puzzle "click blobs" type of game with a fantasy setting. 

This game has been in the making FOR YEARS. We've finally managed to torn it out from the development limbo and finish:)  @end3r wrote about the history behind the game at Gamasutra - check this post if you would like to learn a bit more. 

Let's see how the game that was designed few years ago will do in the current Html5 world.  

You can play the game at http://wizardquest.blackmoondevgames.com/games/wizardquest/ - all the feedback is most welcome:)

[Goblet Ed]

21 hours ago, blackmoondev said:

So - we've made a new game:)

It's called "Wizard Quest" and it's a simple puzzle "click blobs" type of game with a fantasy setting. 

This game has been in the making FOR YEARS. We've finally managed to torn it out from the development limbo and finish:)  @end3r wrote about the history behind the game at Gamasutra - check this post if you would like to learn a bit more. 

Let's see how the game that was designed few years ago will do in the current Html5 world.  

You can play the game at http://wizardquest.blackmoondevgames.com/games/wizardquest/ - all the feedback is most welcome:)

Awesome. I remember trying this a while back when it was not completed yet. It much more challenging now and fun!

Only thing that is kind of an anti-climax is the victory end screen. Feel like it does not give enough of a victory feel once you beat a tough monster. I think most of it has to do with the unchanging music. Would be sweet if it had a victory tune.

[blackmoondev]

Here's our newest game - "Julia's Food Truck". 

It's a simple time management game, where you have to quickly create ordered burgers by tapping/clicking on ingredients. 

Play the game here: http://julia.blackmoondevgames.com/games/julia/

Or you can just watch a quick "trailerish" video : 

As usual - all the feedback is most welcome:)

[Goblet Ed]

@blackmoondev

Very polished game, I like it. All the characters are great. I especially like the reactions when you serve them their food!

Constructive criticism:

• I feel like there is a slight delay once you've completed a burger before the game registers it as complete. That critical moment before your time runs out I often felt like I finished a burger but instead I was game over.
• Why are there no upgrades or levels for progression? Having coins makes it feel like I can buy upgrades. Are you going to release a bigger version later on?
• Being 'game over' from missing 1 ingredient or being too slow for 1 customer feels pretty hardcore. Perhaps add a three strike system.
• Is the difficulty linear at the moment? Feels like I have a little less time for each next customer. Often making me earn just a single coin while the difficulty ramps up significantly. Coin rewards are based on how much time there was left on the customer right?

[blackmoondev]

On 4/4/2017 at 9:40 AM, Goblet Ed said:

@blackmoondev

Very polished game, I like it. All the characters are great. I especially like the reactions when you serve them their food!

Thanks:)

On 4/4/2017 at 9:40 AM, Goblet Ed said:

 

• I feel like there is a slight delay once you've completed a burger before the game registers it as complete. That critical moment before your time runs out I often felt like I finished a burger but instead I was game over.

Nice feedback. We would need to investigate that. 

On 4/4/2017 at 9:40 AM, Goblet Ed said:

• Why are there no upgrades or levels for progression? Having coins makes it feel like I can buy upgrades. Are you going to release a bigger version later on?

Well - we have quite strict time budget per game. Adding levels/upgrades/map/story would be cool - but it's not the way we would like to go with our Html5 games. 

On 4/4/2017 at 9:40 AM, Goblet Ed said:

• Being 'game over' from missing 1 ingredient or being too slow for 1 customer feels pretty hardcore. Perhaps add a three strike system.

Well - that's actually intentional. We aim for a very quick loops of gameplay. So the goal is that the player starts quickly, ends quickly and instantly restarts the game, cause the previous session wasn't long enough. Additionally - quick game loops give the best results with ads. 

On 4/4/2017 at 9:40 AM, Goblet Ed said:

• Is the difficulty linear at the moment? Feels like I have a little less time for each next customer. Often making me earn just a single coin while the difficulty ramps up significantly. Coin rewards are based on how much time there was left on the customer right?

Yeah, that element sucks a bit atm. and we should fix that soon. 

Thanks for the feedback:)

[oksana]

You have such a huge portfolio!

I played Wizard quest - pleasant game, good graphics and atmosphere. But i didn't understand the difference between different kinds of damage (earth, fire etc). I think you should explain it to the player.

[end3r]

5 minutes ago, oksana said:

I played Wizard quest - pleasant game, good graphics and atmosphere. But i didn't understand the difference between different kinds of damage (earth, fire etc). I think you should explain it to the player.

Thanks! There's no difference in terms of the damage itself - it's explained later on when monsters have resistance to some of the elements.

[blackmoondev]

So - we've made and released yet another Html5 game:)

This time it's a sequel to one of our previous games - Basketball Master 2 is a physics puzzle with a basketball theme. The player needs to throw the ball through the hoop. The game has 40 levels, featuring different kinds of obstacles (starting with simple blocks of removable and non-removable materials to space portals, special bouncers and wind blowers). 

You can play the game at http://basketballmaster2.blackmoondevgames.com/games/basketballmaster2/

or you can just watch a short trailer if you are in hurry:

 

 

As usual - all the feedback about the game is welcome:)

[bambo]

BASKETBALL MASTER 2

Cool animated menu  I really like how this streak behind ball works. Good work! Pink trampoline with nice jelly effect and well-matched SFX also makes pleasant impression.

Part of ball behind the circle showing actual level number is unnecessary I think. There's quite big diversity in levels design and it's great but some of them might be too hard and frustrating in result.

I see you got some inspiration for opponents from real people like Jordan, Gortat and... Mr. T! (this dark-skinned man's yellow T-shirt in 15^th level at the first glance for me looked like fomous Mr. T's golden chains  )

I give 4/5 stars (minus one star for letting me down with no cheerleaders dance or something like that at the end of 40^th level  )

I saw quite a lot of ads when playing on my desktop (next time I seek for a job I'll probably choose jobsquare.pl for job offers  ) On mobile after some initial troubles with displaying ads it started showing me 5 sec videos without any problems. Are you a lucky one who can use AdSense program for HTML5 games or you use some other ad network which also allows you to display Google ads?

Good luck with monetization!

[blackmoondev]

On 6/26/2017 at 5:23 PM, bambo said:

I give 4/5 stars (minus one star for letting me down with no cheerleaders dance or something like that at the end of 40^th level  )

Awesome, thanks:) I'm really happy you liked it:)

On 6/26/2017 at 5:23 PM, bambo said:

Are you a lucky one who can use AdSense program for HTML5 games

Yup, we're in the AdSense for Html5 Games beta program. 

[enriqueto]

how is it going with adsense? do you host the games yourself?

[blackmoondev]

On 7/1/2017 at 8:08 PM, enriqueto said:

how is it going with adsense? do you host the games yourself?

On general the CPM is around $3. And yes, we host the games ourselves (on Microsoft Azure).

[blackmoondev]

Winter is coming so we give you a fun, little game to remind of you happy times of Summer Vacation!
Find chains of vacation-themed objects and enjoy easy-going, cheerful gameplay - in other words, game as casual as possible;)

You can obviously play it in your browser at http://summervacation.blackmoondevgames.com/games/summervacation/

or you can watch a quick video with the gameplay:

 

The game has been made in Construct2.

All feedback is welcome:)