The Courtship Play Through

Here is the entirety of The Courtship being played out!

The Courtship: Looking Back Part 1

This is the first of a series of posts looking back on my Flash platformer with a ton of levels called The Courtship. This post is about graphics, the comics, music, feedback, and everything else that isn't gameplay.

Flowers. Flowers. Flowers.

It's not that I actually like flowers in real life. It's not that the flowers in the game are actually based on actual flowers. But they represent flowers.

The name of the game is "The Courtship". It's supposed to be somehow related to love (although it's stupid and basically a joke.) So the flowers kind of fit in to that theme.

At the same time, I like putting the flowers in levels. I like playing around with the different color combinations, working with the background and ground tile, and creating a great feel and using all of the graphics I have to make a great looking scene.

Ooh, purty colors.

In terms of the main character, I'm going to be honest. I completely half-assed it. You might notice that this is a common factor in my games, having a main character that is sub-par. In Ruined, I was afraid of the project not working out (and we decided to keep it.) With this, I just was afraid of not being able to make a good walking animation.

So I made a robot on wheels. Well, on one wheel. So then there was no animation walking needed. I apologize for the cop-out. I'm pretty sure some people have said that he looks good- he doesn't, it's just an oval with wheels and a gun. And no animation! Personally I dislike when games don't have a walking animation. I broke one of my own rules- that's a bad thing.

See what I mean? It's such a stupid design for a main character.

Anyway, the story of the game is just something I thought would be silly. I like silly. It's almost as if I'm not taking myself seriously for one second in my life (like that would ever happen.) Anyway, it's not supposed to be a game built for Valentine's Day (although it peaked in popularity at that time) and it most definitely is not supposed to be based off of real life experience (duh). It just is.

The music was something I cooked up a long time ago and recycled for this game. I kind of like it, but I hear that it's annoying after a while. That's understandable. I always feel like when I make the music for a game, people shouldn't like it, because I have no experience with music. I just make what I think sounds good for the game, but in reality, you shouldn't think my music is good, because it isn't. Hopefully someday music that I make will be good.

Well, feedback for the game was okay. I remember on Newgrounds I got one "5/10" and also one "10/10. I guess it's just that kind of game. The feedback on Newgrounds was really good. In the end I think the graphics looked pretty good and I'm happy with them. I wonder how much better it would be with an awesome player character...

Thanks for reading! To be continued in a few weeks.

Crappy Stories and the Popcorn Incident

(Before I start this post, I have to get something off of my chest. I was eating popcorn, and when I was done with the fully-popped pieces, I went on to the half-popped pieces. Usually I can cleanly bite right through the entire kernel, but today part of the kernel got stuck on my teeth. So right now I'm totally freaking out, because there's part of a half-popped kernel on one of my teeth.)

On to the game-related stuff. So my last few projects have been Flash games that have a lot of levels and are highly gameplay based. A couple of the comments that I've received on some of the games that don't have a story at all is that they should have a storyline.

But here's my question. Why do they need a story?

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand the importance of stories in media. In fact, that's exactly why I didn't want to put stories in the games in the first place. The stories would be half-assed, stupid, and a waste of people's time.

This is garbage. This isn't art.

In The Courtship, I have a few comics that tell a story that doesn't take itself seriously at all. If I were to make a story for games like GAMMACART or Leap of Faith, they would have to also be silly, otherwise they would seem out of place.

(While I was typing this last paragraph, I got the half-popped kernel off of my teeth. Crisis averted. Lesson learned.)

My ultimate goal as a game developer is to be proud of stories I put in games. I feel that a lot of mainstream games are heavily plot-based and have flat, lifeless, cookie-cutter characters. It's entirely possible for videogames to have great stories.

But that doesn't mean every game has to have one. In fact, I think some games are better off without one.

Thanks for reading.

New Flash Platformer

Recently Abscure started working with Stencyl, a Flash library. We have just finished up our second Flash project, an 80 level platformer designed by me, Ethan, with tons of help from the Stencyl community (thanks guys).



The Courtship is a game where you use guns to get rid of obstacles, as opposed to enemies. It might start off simple, but eventually you will need great timing to complete the challenges in the game.




Expect more to come from the Flash world soon (and the Game Maker world, of course).

Play The Courtship