Best of Online Games.com

Future warfare in Echoes

David — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:04:41 +0000

The developer of Portal: The Flash Version is busy with a brand new project. Echoes is an action-strategy game, which set in an extensive universe on a torn Earth almost three-hundred years in the future. It joins the famous Real Time Strategy genre with many elements from the Third Person Shooter genre, in a side-scrolling environment.

It is explored in three Acts, released as three games. Every Act is built from 5 stages and an unlockable challenge game-mode. Every stage has its own learning curve and objectives, and is loaded with dialogues carrying on the storyline of the series.

The gameplay in Echoes is combined and it joins RTS and Shooter gameplay elements. Ingame, this means you can switch live between Strategy-mode and Combat-mode. In Strategy-mode, you’re able to construct a base, recruit an army and control them around. To encourage that, some of the resources in the game are collected throughout the map by capturing Control Points. In Combat-mode, you’re able to join your army in the mission to repel the enemies. The cursor turns into a crosshair and the camera focuses on the hero named D.e.m. (name is storyline-related). Controls in Combat mode turn into action game controls. D.e.m. is packed with abilities and weapons which he can carry out during the battle, to support allies and resist enemies. So basically you join your own army, and fight with them side by side in Echoes.

Every stage is filled with dialogues and cutscenes, each time revealing more about the universe of Echoes. All dialogues in the game are voiced, not a single line out! Developer Ido has been developing Act 1 and Echoes in general for some time now – the original design is over two years old! Echoes is a massive project and is scheduled to be released within a few weeks. We can’t wait!

The Last Stand: Union City Alpha 0.7

David — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:06:54 +0000

Another quick update on developer Con Artist’s upcoming game. More features have been added to the alpha and the new version can now be played right now and you can find the link at the bottom of this article.

It’s good to see the game evolve slowly but there’s obviously still plenty to do until the game is finished. It remains unknown when we can expect the next update as developer Con Artist has been attending the Flash Gaming Summit over the last couple of days.

Bad news first, it looks like the game will be delayed and a late April release is the best we can hope for at the moment. Furthermore, here’s the complete list of things to know about Alpha v0.7:

- Equip weapons from your inventory, click the slot to select it, then click the weapon in the inventory.
- Melee animation re-done. It’s tricky because the torso is controlled via code.
- Hold crouch now works, toggle crouch will be an option.
- Shove has been added, use the spacebar to activate it.
- There’s no sound, all weapons in this alpha need their sounds added.
- Search proximity added, you need to be close to open a container.
- Half decorated rooms.
- Containers that actually look like places to search.
- Searches are now saving and your Luck and Search skill is very low.
- New zombie attacks.
- Zombies learned how to climb stuff.
- There’s a lot of janky animations and oddities, which the developer is aware of.

And as a final note, the beginnings of the zombie director have been added. At the moment it’s just dealing with the spawning of enemies in new rooms. It takes into account your health, level and will eventually look at things like time between fights and ammunition stores.

Click here to play The Last Stand: Union City Alpha 0.7

Monsters’ Den: Godfall

David — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:55:24 +0000

After many months of waiting and doubt, the time has finally come to reveal developer Biclops Games’s latest project. Your prayers have been heard it seems and it will indeed be a new installment of the beloved and praised Monsters’ Den series.

Behold, the first teaser of Monsters’ Den: Godfall has been released and the speculation can begin. The image shows what looks to be a warrior, one of the playable classes of the game. Unfortunately, this is in fact the only information that has been made public, together with an introduction of the game’s new storyline which you can read below!

“In the beginning, there were many gods. Until war came to heaven.

One by one, over several centuries, the gods fell. Each Godfall brought a fierce meteor shower, as well as the sudden death of their every worshipper. As the gods continued to fall and entire kingdoms were brought to ruin by the sympathetic deaths of the devout, many renounced their faith in the hope of being spared. Without divine protection, large numbers succumbed to possession and corruption as the demonic powers forced their entry into the world.

Now, there is but one God. To even speak her true name is forbidden, and her clerics exert absolute power over the remaining human cities. Nomadic greenskin tribes pillage and burn their way across the land. Ambitious necromancers harvest the bones of fallen civilizations to amass undead armies of incredible size. The dwarves of the Earthern Nations burrow ever deeper, trying to escape the madness of the surface world. Horrors wait there in the depths, ready to boil out and claim the old places. The human heretics of the Cult of the Outward Path seek to break free from this world, risking it in the process. And all the while, sinister forces yet unseen lurk in the shadows and lay their plans.”

It surely does sound both mysterious and promising to the fans of the series. There is no word on a release date yet, but as soon as more details about Monsters’ Den: Godfall are released you’ll find it here! If you haven’t already, make sure to have played the previous game: Monsters’ Den: Book of Dread

First glimpse of Tethys

David — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:09:24 +0000

It has been some time since we last heard of Dark Realm Studios, known for their Pandemic series and more recently for the release of their defense game called The Farm. However, we’ve just received news on their latest developments and we must say it looks very promising and we can’t wait to play it!

Tethys is a scrolling shooter flash game inspired by arcade classics such as Raiden. The entire game is set deep in outer space filled with hostile alien spacecrafts. Instead of giving players the opportunity to memorize predefined enemy formations and spawning patterns, players will be forced to constantly adapt to new situations: enemy numbers and timings are based off of the player’s actions and movements.

Players will be constantly challenged due to the fact that the game is designed to exploit player weaknesses. Tethys features an AI Director that’s explicitly designed to monitor and react to the progress of every battle. If players are having difficulty with a specific enemy they can expect to encounter more of that enemy type. This doesn’t mean that players will be forced to fight nothing but the strongest ship however: the AI Director takes into account the strength of enemy ships.

Tethys features two different gameplay modes: standard and survival. Standard mode challenges players to fight through 5 different levels as players are exposed to more than 10 normal enemies as well as 5 unique and intense bosses. As players progress through standard mode they will be given the opportunity to purchase new weapons or upgrades for their ship through an in-game store menu. Survival mode simply challenges players to stay alive for as long as they can.

Developer Dark Realm Studios can’t wait for people to try out their new game which is slated to be released by early April 2010. We’ll keep you updated till then and make sure to check out the latest screenshots below!

Q&A #2 Last Stand: Union City

David — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:02:21 +0000

Time for another Q&A on The Last Stand: Union City. Developer Con Artist is releasing more and more information as the expected release date gets nearer.

The game should be out either this or next month, but there’s always the possibility of a delay as we’ve seen in the past with other games. We can say that with the currently available information, this title is destined to become the new standard in its genre and top the ranking and number of gameplays list. Read the Q&A below for answers on the most common questions!

Q: Multiplayer / Co-op?
A: No, no no, no. No. No?

Q: Is there a melee shove?
A: I’m working on that at the moment. Seems to be working well, just need to make it look good.

Q: Will zombies adjust to my level?
A: Certain areas will have certain zombie types that will be tougher/easier than others. In general though, zombie health and base zombie types will be spawned according to your character level.

Q: Achievements?
A: Yes. They may even tie to giving your character bonus weapons/equipment.

Q: Can my character and other survivors become infected?
A: We’ll have to see.

Q: Will there be barricade defence like the last two games?
A: Not in the same way, there’ll be barricades throughout the world that you may choose to hole up behind.

Q: Will the game be downloadable?
A: No. This comes down to me needing to make a living off this stuff. If it’s downloadable, I can’t run the dynamic ads I run now, no ads, no food.

Q: How many equipped weapons can I have?
A: You’ll be able to equip two at a time, but you’ll be able to hold as many as you can within your weight limit.

Q: Is running out of ammo going to be an issue?
A: The plan is for ammo depletion to be a problem at some times during the game, but not to the point where you’re constantly running out. I know where the fun lies in the game (shooting zombies) and don’t want the need to search for ammo to get in the way of that too often. It’ll likely come down to some weapons having ammunition more readily available and powerful/abstract weapons having rarer ammunition.

Q: How many in game days will there be?
A: I kind of answered this in the last Q&A, but it’s really up to how you play. There’ll be certain missions that trigger an end game which will have a very definite path towards ending the game, if you don’t follow that, you can run around as long as you like.

Q: How will I interact with survivors?
A: As I mentioned, you’ll be able to talk to them to get their stories. These stories might give you missions/quests that you need to carry out to gain their help. Others might just be after specific items in return for something useful of theirs.

Play Games!

David — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:46:13 +0000

From now on you can play all your favourite games right here at Best of Online Games.com! After many requests for this feature by visitors and long hesitation from our side, it is now live. Of course, it is still under construction and more functions will be implemented during the coming days.

Register and log in to rate all the games and make your vote count. Games will be listed accordingly to their ranking with the best games staying at the top of the list. Furthermore, the comments have been enabled as well so you can exchange thoughts, highscores and tips with your fellow players.

Click here to play games!

FGS: Speakers and Agenda

David — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:42:42 +0000

It looks like this year’s Flash Gaming Summit will top the previous edition in every aspect. The speakers for this year have been announced and the list consists of only important names in the flash gaming industry.

Read our earlier entry of the event for more details and visit the official Flash Gaming Summit 2010 website for the complete agenda. Furthermore, it will host the yearly Mochi Awards for the best flash games of the year, make sure to have voted on your favourite games!. Below you can read everything about the speakers and their background!

Ben Garney, PushButton Labs
Ben Garney is a second-generation programmer with experience in everything from bare-metal embedded code to million-line game engines to web development. Currently, he works on the PushButton Engine, an open-source Flash game framework, for PushButton Labs. Before that, he spent five years at GarageGames, where he mostly worked on C++ game technology (TGE, TGB, TGEA, TNL) and a few games (Zap, Marble Blast Ultra). His blog on Flash and games can be found at coderhump.com.

Danielle Deibler, Adobe
Danielle Deibler works for Adobe Systems, investigating early-stage technology and business opportunities. Her current focus is the casual gaming space as it pertains to the Flash Platform. Deibler has over 17 years in the Internet infrastructure, software development, and networking arenas. Her primary area of focus in the last 7 years has been on building scalable real time collaboration platforms and applications. Previously, sheís held senior leadership positions in software development, engineering, business development and product management for several early stage companies. She is also an avid gamer.

David Scott, Casual Collective
David Scott, the co-founder of Casual Collective, is an indie game phenomenon, known for his inventive and highly addictive Flash-based games. David has developed numerous hits like Flash Element, Circle, and Vector Tower Defense and more recently, ‘The Space Game: Missions’. In addition to creating games, David and his co-founder Paul Preece have launched The Casual Collective, a company to showcase their work to a growing community of users. The site has its own virtual currency which can be used to purchase gifts for other members and to upgrade and extend the features in the games. They are now focusing on bringing real game play mechanics to Facebook with the launch of their first Facebook game ‘Desktop Defender’.

Jim Greer, Kongregate
Jim Greer is the founder and CEO of Kongregate, a startup that combines over 20,000 user-submitted Flash games with achievements, high scores, chat, and other community features. Developers share in ad and microtransaction revenue, and retain the rights to their games. Before founding Kongregate in June 2006, Jim was Technical Director for Pogo at Electronic Arts. He has worked in the game industry since 1991 and hold a Computer Science degree from Princeton University.

Matthew Annal, Nitrome Ltd.
Mat Annal is the Managing Director and co-founder of Nitrome Ltd, an award winning games studio based in London, UK. Nitrome started in late 2005 with the aim of creating fresh, unique Flash games with production values above what would normally be associated with the format. To date Nitrome have now made over 60 games and counting including such hit titles as the Toxic, Icebreaker, Final Ninja and Skywire series. As well as being available on many of the most popular games sites Nitrome has built it’s own site (www.nitrome.com) where the games receive millions of plays each week. Nitrome now hopes to expand their games to other platforms as well as exploring other areas of online gaming.

Tom Fulp, Newgrounds
Tom Fulp is the founder of Newgrounds.com and co-founder of the Behemoth. Tom started making Flash games in 1998 and later made the first ever jump from Flash to consoles with Alien Hominid. Nowadays Tom juggles game development with serving the thriving community of artists, programmers, musicians, writers and voice actors at Newgrounds.

Eric Eldon, Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games
Eric Eldon is the Co-Editor of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games. Prior to Inside Network, Eric was the first employee at VentureBeat, a leading Silicon Valley technology publication, starting in 2007. There, he became an editor and the lead writer for social networking. Prior to VentureBeat, Eric co-founded WriteWith, a writing software startup. Eric graduated from Stanford University with a degree in International Relations in 2005, where he reported and edited news for The Stanford Daily, and ran its business for a year.

Dean Takahashi, Venturebeat
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat. Dean is organizing GamesBeat@GDC, a conference on the business of innovation in games taking place March 10 in San Francisco. http://www.gdconf.com/conference/gamesbeat.html

Jessica Tams, Casual Games Association
Jessica Tams the Managing Director of the Casual Games Association (www.casualgamesassociation.org), an international organization committed to serving the needs of the professional casual gaming industry. Before founding the Casual Games Association, Jessica held development, publishing and distribution positions inside the casual games industry. Most recently as VP Product Planning at FUN Technologies, a Liberty Media Company. Jessica was responsible for the product portfolio including game catalogue, website design and user experience of skill, community and casual download product offerings. Before working in casual games distribution, Jessica was responsible for internally developed PC download and Web Games and the externally published Launch Xbox Live Arcade Titles at Oberon Media’s Seattle Studio which included creation of the studio, hiring the team and managing the projects. Jessica spent five years working as a Software Engineer in Retail PC and Xbox console development on Dungeon Siege and Gabriel Knight III. Prior to joining the ranks of game development, she was in the UW Physics PhD program and spent several years in academia pursuing scientific research and teaching in Mathematical Biology and Physics.

Alexander Shen, Mochi Media
Alexander is the business development manager at Mochi Media. He spends much of his time contributing articles about the Flash space and fostering relations with a wide range of game developers. Prior to Mochi Media, Alexander has spent a number of years in the gaming industry with companies like SCEA, Leapfrog and Namco Networks of America. In his spare time, he`s often writing and illustrating comic strips and working on his own game creations.

The Last Stand: Union City Alpha 0.6

David — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:08:05 +0000

Developer Con Artist released a new alpha version of the long-awaited The Last Stand: Union City. Over the last few weeks we’ve been presented with various new features in every new alpha update and this time you can have a look at the search and inventory system.

It’s all very rough at the moment and you’ll see a bunch of small interface glitches as you play around with it. Also, there’s a bunch of icons and such missing and only short descriptions for items, but the developer hopes it gives you an idea of the scope he’s dealing with.

There are a few thing to keep in mind though. First of all, containers aren’t remembering their contents at the moment and will randomly populate every time you open them. In the final game they’ll populate with random items (depending on the type of room you’re in) the first time you open them and then be saved. Secondly, items in the search screen that are marked with a star are items that have been found as a result of either a luck or skill roll. This all happens behind the scenes but it’s an indicator for players who’ve put points into luck and the searching skill. Thirdly, you can open the backpack via the button on the bottom or by hitting tab. As a final note, zombies are turned off for the moment.

Click here to play Alpha 0.6 of The Last Stand: Union City

Cluster Lander

David — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:19:34 +0000

If you ever played the classic lunar lander and enjoyed it, there’s good news. Developer Diro Diro brings us the good old gameplay with new features and visuals. Players familiar with these type of games will have little trouble mastering the game as the physics haven’t changed.

You’ll have to take command of a Cluster Lander, a fast ship designed to maneuver between – take a guess – rock clusters. Players can explore big open styled levels with plenty of secret entrances, fight using bombs and ultimately find the coordinates to exit the cluster using their teleporter! There’s also a ghost replay system to watch your previous games and improve your skills to survive.

Cluster Lander is the first game by developer Diro Diro and if they can keep up delivering this quality, we’ll surely be keeping track of their future releases.

Click here to play Cluster Lander

Balloon in a Wasteland

David — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:18:07 +0000

In the past years there have been several releases by the studios of Armor Games which were completely new games with elements that we’ve all seen before. What set these games apart was their gameplay, artwork and the feeling that it was polished. That last point has proven to be very important in flashgames. If the player feels the game has been rushed to release and has rough edges, it lowers the entire esteem of the game.

Just like Hedgehog Launch did in the recent past, their new game Balloon in a Wasteland brings this formula to a new level and this is proven by almost half a million gameplays and a 9.2 player score on ArmorGames in its first week. Again, the principles of the game are simple and are a collection of elements we’ve seen in other games. When you balloon crash-lands in a wasteland of fowl creature, its time to survive. Upgrade your weapons, fort, and turrets while you try to fix your balloon. Balance your free time between battles so you are prepared for future waves with the ultimate goal of escaping in you repaired balloon.

The game is exactly what the description says and ArmorGames managed yet again to make it tremendously enjoyable to play. Just like Hedgehog Launch it isn’t overly difficult or a long game, but everthing is in proportion making it a well-balanced and fun game to spend some time on.

Click here to play Balloon in a Wasteland