Castle Smash

John Warner

It's me! That's right peeps, I still exist. I'm not quite entirely dead yet.

quite the opposite in fact. Myself and a few friends recently finished work on a new facebook game called Castle Smash. I wanted to post it here and get some eyes on it. Hope everyone likes it.. but of course all comments are welcome and wanted

First, a trailer we did:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck8UythCQsU[/ame]

and the game!

http://apps.facebook.com/castlesmash

Some art from the game, since we're on an art forum..




Cheers!

PatrickL

Awesome trailer.

Slum

Neat! I love that background painting.

That princess looks almost identical to princess peach. It's kind of distracting actually.

Vailias

wow. trailer was superb.

Jeff Parrott

Awesome man. Love the style.

bloodmoon

Your link is broken and should start with apps not apss ^_^ Great style gonna try it out.

John Warner

ack! fixed. thanks man!!

Thanks a lot for the nice comments guys. Yeah, the trailer is great. I had very little to do with it, I'm afraid

bloodmoon

I liked playing the game and invited 26 friends and lets see if they like it too. ^_^

John Warner

dude, if i get rich..

you're getting like sixty trillion dollars.

like maybe even 70.

bloodmoon

I'll invite some more but 26 was maximum for one run ^_^ So more to come.

Edit: 25 more invited ^_^

bloodmoon

Got a question when playing in Single player why do I "use up" 7 hearts in a fight even if I kill em all with one stone. And can retry with just 2 hearts when I fail. But need 7 hearts to start a new fight. I guess you need 7 to buy in to a fight and 2 to retry right?

Some times when a "level" loads, enemies die (turn red) before I even shoot so I have less enemies to kill I don't mind but just letting you know. Some times even the whole structure has fallen before shooting.

ae.

looks cool will play when i get home

achillesian

great trailer, but, is this just an angrybirds clone?

Peter H

very similar to angrybirds, but i did totaly enjoy it!

Invited 25 friends and also just as i was realy getting into it i ran out of energy and needed potions

Sean VanGorder

Awesome trailer. Many lolz were had.

aesir

Very cool! Mind if I ask what the dev time on this has been?

Edit: as a critique I'd like to see people die in amusing ways rather than just turn red when you kill them

John Warner

bloodmoon - yeah, there are one or two physics bugs.. but sometimes, I left situations where enimies fall over on spawn because I kinda thought it was hilarious. either way, thanks for telling me.. that's good to know. as far the energy thing, ya, you got it right on the head. I didn't want to charge people 7 ep to re-try. that'd just be cruel.

ae - cheers man. hope you dig it.

achillesian -- actually, it started out as a crush the castle clone... but yes, basically. we're not pretending that we're breaking perfectly new ground.. but it is what it is. multiplayer is a ton of fun, we think, and that's something new. meh. you get the idea. we just did what we wanted.

Peter H -- man, thanks so much. We really appreciate that. as a matter of fact, we're getting a lot of folks frustrated by running out of energy too soon. we uploaded a new build where you can buy an energy potion for 300 gold. you can now basically play as long as you'd like.... hopefully that helps get the game off the ground..

Sean -- thansk a lot dude. Yeah, they did a great job. really proud of that over here.

Aesir -- 8 months, if you can believe that. we went through several re-designs. Rebuilt the front end like 3 times. completely re-contextualized the game at least twice. hmmm thanks for the input on the death thing. we're thinking about that but we're afraid of putting some people off as a result of the gore... I'd personally love it if some of them exploded in a red mist.. (the characters, not the people who'd be put off)

bloodmoon

I got the game to stall.. hehe In the last level in the first world I used two runes. First the rune that makes your enemys castle lighter and then the one that breaks the "stone" into few small stones. When I shoot the stone and the small pieces hit the castle. Everything was ok BUT the game didn't reset to the sling shoot again I tried pressing buttons and menus and stuff but it did not wanna run. So I was stuck watching the enemy castle and had to reload facebook
Do you have a timer ingame that after a shoot is made so if I shoot then wait a 30sec or so then it resets to the sling shoot again.
Only happened once and I've completed the first campain 5 times I think.
Just a thought.

John Warner

hmm wow interesting, thanks a lot for the bug report man. uuummm lets see

we are getting this huge, horrendous bug where sometimes in multiplayer one side doesn't get any enemies in his castle, and one guy gets a double castle (two castles on top of each other).. and in those instances, that player can't go back to his weapon either. maybe those things are related...

Man, we're getting bugs coming in.. I've never been so anxious in my life. I programed this thing, so I'm just eating my gut over here.

edit: hilarious or not, everyone is thinking that the guys who die without you touching them is a problem.. sooo yeah obviously i guess it looks broken. I'll fix it. thanks for telling me.

JasonLavoie

aweeesommme trailer!

shinobix

Awesome Job John!
You, Stephen, and Michael deserve a pat on the back and a beer!!

Looks fantastic!

John Warner

hahah thanks Andy . actually speaking of beer... hows this weekend? needless to say i'm rape-busy.. but if you're free..

Jason -- haha thanks man! actually, the guy who basically owned that thing is the same guy who did Dungeon Force....

Pseudo

Very cool, congrats on the launch!

I will be very interested to watch your growth to see if the Unity plugin holds you back. We briefly toyed with the notion of using Unity, but the Flash install base was too inviting.

A small gameplay suggestion - it would be helpful to show the angle/arc of the last shot to help with adjustments.

John Warner

Thanks Pseudo. yes, we're anxious about the install base as well.. we'll see how it goes...

thanks for the suggestion.. we've gotten that input. we'll probably implement a dotted line for the last shot, like angry birds...

Nate Broach

So its not very often, but every once in a while, I regret getting rid of my facebook. This looks like a lot of fun. Really fun trailer.

shinobix

Yeah John, lets do beer! I'll facebook you my cell number!

bloodmoon

Ok, sounds like bugs are pileing up hehe. I have another bug. Sometimes when I start a new singleplayer map/castle I get a empty game field no castles, no characters, no slingshot so it's only a background. And I can't do anything so have to reload facebook.

Let me know if you are looking for more 3D artist for projects in the future ^_^

vofff

I cant play the game in fb, helllooooo?

d-pan

Warner, dame here,
wow!!!!! congrats to you and the team for an impressive accomplishment. Like i said before one can truly admire others strong ambitions and drive. Keep up the great work I'm sure this will do well for you all.

PS/ props to the trailer, quality is nothing but the standard in my opinion


cheers!

JeremyRM

I just played through the first part, pretty cool. I think multi-player would be really the only reason I would come back. That's not a slam on your single-player I just never get into anything I have to play alone. So I clicked on multi-player and waited for a game, not a big deal nothing came up because I'd rather play with friends and will give that a try later. What I did notice was you have preset castles to choose from correct? I think it would be so much more interesting if you could win pieces and build your own castle at the beginning of each round. As you play earn more men to fill it and different parts. Seems like it would add a nice strategy element and cater to my love of construction and destruction haha.

JeremyRM

yeah a build option would be fun and a replay button so i don't have to create a new game each time. Also seems to be a bug that wont allow a new game until you refresh the page. I can create it but when my buddy connects the countdown hits zero and nothing happens.

bloodmoon

I guess this is a plan of yours to not be able to buy anything you want with gold hehe. Or at least sell gold to get Money. Btw I'm at the top of the FB highscore list at the moment. Woho ^_^

So my most wanted list contains... Turing Gold into money or an option to buy weapons like the golden slingshot for gold ^_^

Cheers!