IT’S aLIVE!

That’s right folks… It was 145 days ago we wrote our fist ever line of code and over 2,500 man hours of blood, sweat and temper tantrums later… The Collective is LIVE! The site is now free for all to use and register! So head on over to The Casual Collective and get your game on! (after you have read the rest of this blog post of course)

Casual gaming meats social networking, and gets jiggy with it!
We are not just another flash game portal that just lists games that it finds on the web. We have groups which all members can create and join. Leader boards to compare your scores with other group members as well as the Collective as a whole. Awards for all our single player games which are unlocked by both results from single games and accumulative measures. A Buddy list which contains all of your friends and shows you who is on line and who is playing. Activity lists to keep you up-to-date on what people have been doing since you last logged on. Global maps, a threaded forum as well as private messaging, group shout boxes, group news and live chat to allow you to communicate with other members. We also have multi player games and single player games all of which are FREE to play and require no download or subscription!

Multi Player Desktop Tower Defense (MPDTD for short)
This multi player version of the massively popular “Desktop Tower Defense” was the first game we made for the collective. In this game you compete with up to 9 other members in real-time to be the first to complete the levels and trigger the next ‘wave’ of creeps. With 5 game modes and 4 options there are 80 possible game variations! There is also a single player version we call “MPDTD Training” which lets you learn the game or refine your tower building skills so you can do better when playing with other members.

Desktop Armada (DA for the lazy)
Go head-to-head with one other member in this desktop naval warfare game. The aim of the game is simple, build ships to destroy the enemy HQ before they do the same to you. The game is also very simple to pick up as you only have to manage what ships to build, from which location and what path they should take, once built they carry out your orders firing on anything in range. With the ability to upgrade ships and use paths to either do a direct assault or flank your enemy the game is great fun for both the new player and seasoned veteran. There is also a single player version called Desktop Armada Missions (DA:M) which has both training levels for the new players and much harder missions where you fight against the CPU to win various missions.

Buggle (well, just Buggle)
In this 2 to 4 player game you compete with other members to control the greatest number of “Buggles” by strategicly placing markers. Any buggle that passes in range of your marker gets converted into your colour and then goes on to spread your colour by passing it on to other Buggles in range. Sounds simple and may seem random to new players, but by learning what your apponant tends to do you can 2nd guess their next move to prevent them from taking your Buggles, or even better, take more of theirs.

Flash Element Tower Defense (FETD of course)
The single player game that kicked off the whole “Flash TD” craze almost 1 year ago has been moved over to the Collective. The game remains the same with only tweaks to graphics and sound but it now has all the benefits of been hosted on the Collective; global and group leader boards and awards based on everything from gold earned to creeps killed.

We have only just begun!
Just because we are live with 6 bad-ass games we are not taking a break! Right now we are working hard on a sequel to Flash Element TD, and we are always developing the site to improve existing features as well as adding new ones. We also have plans for some very cool multi player games which we will tell you about in future posts.