Webby Character Artwork Redesign

Hey everyone, i'm in the process of redesigning/reworking some of the characters from the Webby series.

Don't worry i'm not touching Webby's classic cartoony look (atleast not yet...) but since the flies got a redesign for Webby 3 and the enemies haven't been touched since Webby 1 (or 2 in the case of Red Spiders) it's about time I took another look at them.

The original designs were very simple and cartoony which was partly down to the cartoony, unrealistic game style of webby (Bright blue Spiders, exploding red flies, you get the idea) but also partly down to my (then) inability do draw a realistic looking spider. Obviously now my art skills have improved so I can now draw a more realistic spider (whilst maintaining the "Webby Style")

I've started with the Black Spider and have 2 new designs, one is based very closely on the original Black Spider (with a more tarantula shaped body and few tweaks to it's eyes), whilst the other is closer to a Black Widow which was the original inspiration for the Black Spider. This is obviously quite a big change from how it used to look, and I can't decide which I like better.

Which is where you come in.

Check out the designs above and vote the in the poll (somehere on the right hand side) about which one you like better.

This is your chance to affect the future of the Webby characters and the series as a whole so make sure you vote.

- Nutter

Tower Defense

Hey everyone,

The blog has been a little quiet and empty lately. I haven't had much time to work on Flash Games but in the last few days i've started working on a Tower Defense engine, it's a genre i've wanted to break into for a while.

I'm planning to get the engine working, build a small(ish) game to test it then add features based on feedback from the game. Obviously there are many different varieties of Tower Defense whether it be grid based ones where the enemies find a path based on where you place your towers or the more classic ones where they follow a path.

So far my TD engine has the following features:

• Intuitive path creation system which allows level paths to be created easily without any extra code.
• Multiple Enemy types, including Ground, Flying and Boss units.
• Multiple Tower types with different buff abilities such as "Slow", "Stun" and "Poison".
• Towers which target Ground enemies only, Air enemies only or both types.
• The ability to select the target type for each tower - Closest Enemy, Fastest, Weakest or Strongest.
• The ability to upgrade towers to make them better/stronger.

Obviously these are all fairly common place features and don't do much to make my engine stand out. That's where my main big feature comes from.

When the player isn't building towers in "Build Mode", they can take control of a character (Webby in the case of my test game) and move around the play area collecting extra resources. This not only adds the extra element of resource gathering but also adds an extra risk that hitting any of the enemies moving along the path will cost a life in the same as if they reached the end.

The engine is still in a very early stage and there are a few bugs to work out but this could hopefully turn out to be a powerful (and hopefully easy and intuitive to use) engine which I might make available for other people to use when it's finished.

In the mean time, what features do you like to see in a TD? What else would you like to see in my TD engine?

Let me know in the comments.

- Nutter

60 Second Buffet

Hey everyone

As some of you may know, Mochimedia is a flash game company who offer ad services for developers who want to monetise their games with in-game ads. They also occasionally run contests for developers.

During June they ran a 60 Second Game contest which involved creating a game which lasts a maximum of 60 seconds.

The submission deadline has now passed and the entries are been judged so in the mean time, check out 60 Second Buffet. I took the classic fly collecting, spider avoiding gameplay of my Webby games and tweaked the game mechanics to better fit a 60 second game. The result is a fast paced little arcade action game.

You can play the game here on Newgrounds or Kongregate :)

- Nutter