30 seconds of your time please.

Just over a week ago we launched our first Casual Collective Mini Game, Attack of the Buggles! A simple single-player game where your only goal is to move around the screen avoiding the red Buggles and collecting blue boxes. There are plenty of games that have similar mechanics (like this one, and this one, and this one, to name a few) so when making a game based on a popular mechanic it is always good to bring something new to the table and innovate as much as you imitate.

AotB’s average game time (that’s only counting the time you are in control of the Buggle, not the loading screen, countdown or game over screen) is 30.6 seconds, which is very short, even by casual game standards! However the average number of game plays per person is just over 66 which makes a more impressive average play time of 33.7 minutes, so it must be doing something right.

A few examples of how we made AotB stand out from the crowd can be found after the jump…

Still here!

You will be forgiven for thinking Paul and myself had dropped off the face of the earth, given the lack of posts on the blog and the shortage of major upgrades to the site, but we have been working, honest!

After returning from San Fransisco we have been very busy planning out what we intend to do this year on the Casual Collective. We have also just moved into a nice new office, hired ourselves a full time PHP programmer, almost completed 2 Facebook applications and are currently producing an advergame for an upcoming film, so it has been quite a busy couple of months.

10 days in the wild

Howdy all! It has been just over 10 days since we unleashed Flash Element TD 2 (FETD2) on the world and as promised I have some stats for you figure loving people out there. Also in this post I will talk about some of the mistakes we made with the launch, what we did to fix them and some of the things I think we got right.

FETD2 is live, Info on upcoming games & San Fransisco here we come!

Flash Element TD 2 was launched on the 14th (a week ago) and has significantly increased the activity on the Collective, it is already coming up on its first million plays! It was well received in a Jay is Games review and has gone down a storm in Norway! All those long nights I guess. Hats off to Dave for creating another quality TD. Click here to play FETD2

Now that FETD2 is live we have been planning out our game output for the next few months and we have some exciting games lined up. Well we would say that wouldn’t we :o)

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.

Ooooh look! A Flash Element TD 2 update!

Howdy all.
Work on Flash Element TD 2 (FETD2) has been going at a pace on the run-up to the Collectives “go-live” date at the end of this month *bites nails* and I have taken some time out to do a quick update and post some screen-shots.

The BETA is dead… Long live the BETA!

After much tinkering we have removed the “BETA” from buggle and passed it on to our newset game “Desktop Armada” (DA) which we launched on the Collective today.

Avast there me hardys!

<start silly pirate voice>
Aarrrrrrrrrrrrrgh, I be showing ye land lubbers a peep of me new time sink… Desktop Armada!
</end silly pirate voice>

OK  Desktop Armada doesn’t have pirates in it, but it is a game involving ships and I don’t need much of an excuse to talk like a pirate :o)

What the buggle?!

The collective is progressing well (if we do say so ourselves) this week has seen almost daily updates to the site and in the background both Paul and I have been working on 2 new games. The first one we hope to release is called “Buggle” and should be live this month, quickly followed by the 2nd game named “Desktop Armada”.

A 2 to 4 player game called Buggle.
You win rounds by controlling the most number of “buggles” (bug like blobs) on the screen.