When I was young, almost all the games I knew were made in Flash. The bigger, paid games were usually made with something else, but I didn’t know that then. Maybe that’s for the better. Regardless, that’s how I got interested in making games. I saw my brother playing fun Flash games and asked, “How do you make something like that?” and was told to “Download Adobe Flash.” From there on out, I was determined to learn how to make online games for a living.
Adobe Flash
What was the benefit of Adobe Flash? You could make a game… and then play it in your browser! People didn’t have to download, create accounts, or have a specific operating system! It was groundbreaking for its time. In no time, it became popular and took over the gaming world.
All my high school games were made in this. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to make much in that time and haven’t made backups of things yet, so I can’t find anything about this anymore.
For a while, I kept a “brain training website,” for which I made about 20 mini-games. Remember: a dot appears in a random spot for 3 seconds, then it disappears again, and then 5 seconds later, you have to click as precisely as possible where that dot was. Very simple “brain training” games. But yes, all lost.
HTML5 Games
When I went to university, the world had moved forward again. Flash was no longer necessary because websites had enough functionality to play games alone. And there were already sounds left and right that it was “dead” and “would disappear in a few years”, so I wanted something different.
So I started making so-called “HTML5 Games”. (HTML is the markup language for websites, and HTML5 was the new hip version that could do all these spellings. Now, they’ve stopped putting a number after it, and these languages are constantly being updated and revised. Many industries have been built based on this technology, and on top of them are non GamStop UK casinos). I threw it on a free website and named it “Bester Games.” What does that mean? Nothing at all.
Where is it from? I had a joke with a friend about the word “bester” a long time ago. If I tried to explain it here, you wouldn’t understand it after ten paragraphs, but at that time, I named all my projects after those kinds of jokes between me and my friends.
In any case, the result was that after a few months, I let all my fellow students know that I had made a funny game. I hadn’t yet learned the usefulness of simple and short URLs. And you’ll never guess: this game was a remake of a game of the same title I made in mid-high school… Flash. But you grow a lot in a few years, so let’s completely forget the original version and pretend the remake was the first attempt.
But funnily enough, most of them visited the game, and it was very hip for a few days to try and beat the — hold your seat — 5 levels. So hip that I quickly asked a friend to sketch a dragon so I could make a sixth level with a dragon.
With that success in my hands, I decided to expand the website. For example, I made all “HTML5 Games” for a few years and collected them on that website … only to stop again.
Lesson 1: Don’t Make Games in Website Language
Why am I telling you all this? First, if you’re going to make website games not on Gamstop, that’s fine, but don’t do it with pure website code. Still, use a game engine or a large, reputable framework to convert your game to an HTML5 version.
In the meantime, the internet has come a long way, and there are specific fast, better standards for games on websites. With such an engine, you can find errors much more quickly, do precisely what you want, and make different versions (one with or without ads, for example).
I still remember the days of painful programming for these games because everything was shaky, and I had to figure it out as I went along. That’s also why I don’t make the broken games “fixed” and playable anymore: it’s just terrible work that would only frustrate me.
Lesson 2: These Games Were Fun
Secondly, despite the very mediocre quality of these games, I may have tested/played them more often than many of my newer games. Why? Because they are incredibly accessible. One simple idea: you can easily play with 2-4 players behind the same keyboard, and it’s up and running in three seconds (visit the website, click on the game).
Take that “pizza game”: you are a puppet, you can walk, reverse your gravity (which was a better version of “jumping,” in my opinion), and throw pizzas. Throw a pizza on a piglet to beat it. Get to the finish of the level.
Conclusion
If you came to this article hoping to learn how to make those kinds of games, then I’m afraid the answer is no: don’t learn how to make website games. Learn to make games in a language/system that can convert (at the touch of a button) to all platforms, including HTML5.
It doesn’t matter which one you choose. Grab one you like the look of, which will make you happy when it starts. Choose one that starts up quickly. Unless you have a very unique, special, big game in mind, it doesn’t matter what you choose.
So for years, I’ve only programmed Flash and website language, afraid to switch, fearful that the rest would be too difficult or a waste of time.
That was a mistake. By now, I’ve tried just about every possible software and language, and after the first two, you see the patterns, it becomes super easy to pick up something else. And do that regularly, because technology is advancing fast, so you will never be able to move forward with the same piece of computer skill all your life.
I don’t remember what the point of this article was. Hopefully, it was interesting.
It tells my whole history of making games until a few years ago when I finally got serious and put in a lot of time. And now you have the link to the page with all those games because I don’t think it’s anywhere else. One might still work in your browser, and you can kill time with it, possibly with someone else.
