Games which evolved from public prototypes

rooster

Hi all, I'm trying to compile a list of games which were released as small test prototypes and then turned into full products..
Could you guys put your heads together and see if I missed any? cheers

I have so far:

- zen bondage (zen bound)
- stair dismount (and various dismount games)
- sumotori
- crayon physics
- de blob
- cloud (I think they're doing this one next? that game company)
- tower of goo
- narbacular drop (portal)

I also would be interested in thoughts about how you would analyse the success or failure of said prototype. You can count the number of downloads from your server and use that as a 'word of mouth' gauge, but once its on the net it would be hard to keep track of figures

ta!

Muzzoid

Does portal count, considering it evolved from a student game called narbacular drop?

crazyfingers

Not sure if they count, but Plants vs. Zombies evolved from the tower defense prototypes first started in the starcraft community and polished in the warcraft III editor. By the same token, Heroes of Newerth, Savage's surefire hit is based entirely on the hero arena's and more specifically Defense of the Ancients mods from Warcraft III as well. Though these might differ from what you're looking for since these "test cases" weren't released by the developers of the actual profitable game.

rooster

ah, narbacular- good call!
crazyfingers: yeah i'm mainly looking for someone releasing a test then following up with full product- but thanks for the info, its all useful

Muzzoid

Well i think that it depends on the prototype and the games audience. A lot of the time this sort of thing happens in indie games where the original is only popular within small circles, but when the full version is made it is suddenly alot more successful.

But i think the best benefit of the first prototype isnt so much seeing how exposure the sequel gets because of the original, its more testing how the concept is accepted by a small core audience before trying to make it mass appealing.

I mean in the flash community and indie community as well we have.

Alien homonid- was a very popular flash game, which they then formed a company called the behemoth and went on to use a similar forumula to make castle crashers.

Canabalt- an insanely successful flash game that when ported to the iphone made the guy a fair amount of money.

n+- again another popular flash game ported to a console.

Cavestory- just about to get a wii ware port with higher res graphics and more features.

super meat boy- Was a flash game made by edmund mcmiller who is now bringing it to xbla.

Xoliul

When was sumotori re-released? And as what? I wanna play that.

JacqueChoi

If Portal counts.

Wouldn't Counterstrike and Team Fortress count as well? They were Half Life mods.

Ghostscape

Alien Hominid. Behemoth started off as a collaboration between Dan Paladin (awesome artist) and the guy who runs Newgrounds.com (Tom Fulp?).

DarthNater

Cellzenith! It was released to the public before we bought it from the kid and 'finished' it.

If any of you had the unpleasuring time of wasting your money and time on that game, you have my fullest apology and if I ever see a dime from that game, I would refund your money personally!

skankerzero

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai - Was an XNA game for a while before getting funded into a full xbla game. They have a sequel on the way now.

eld

Defence of the ancients, from being a simple map in warcraft3 at start to spawning at least three seperate full products.

(edit: as someone already cleverly said up there)

aesir

roboblitz