Perfect Score in Entanglement!

Update 2/9/11: This post is from prior to our update on how scores are calculated. At the time that this post was written, the number of line segments was the score. You can still only get a maximum of 169 line segments (the number in the center), but your score gets a bonus determined by how many line segments you can complete in a single move (the upper left number). Sorry for the confusion!

One of the limits of the solitaire game board is that the highest theoretical score possible is 169. That high score is no longer just theory: 'atomic' commented on the Jay is Games review with a screenshot of the perfect score! Truly impressive.

Entanglement Reviewed

A big thanks to all the sites that reviewed and/or linked to our latest game!

• Chrome Experiments
• Jay is Games
• Indie Games
• Gamershood
• Free Games News
• pocitace.sme.sk
• Indie Gameru
• woot!

I've been updating parts of Entanglement over the past month, some due to usability feedback (added white borders to the lines to make them clearer) and some as extra features (Two Tile Tangle). I have a few ideas for additional play modes, so check back occasionally or follow us on Facebook or Twitter to be notified when something new is added.

Entanglement

The more tangled you get, the better you'll do in Entanglement.

I neglected to stay on topic with this particular submission. The original topic two weeks ago was "trap" which produced my initial idea to do this. Our last topic was "bait", but I continued working on this and couldn't find a good way to get it to work with the new topic, so I didn't. I suppose Todd will beat me on this round.

Polar Bear Hop

The original topic for this one was "flip", but I didn't quite make it that far. The very first topic we implemented was "polar", for which I made a neat little board game I called "Polar Bear Hop". I made a few homemade Polar Bear Hop game boards and handed them out for Christmas a few years ago and posted instructions here.



One part of the game is "flipping" an iceberg over to your color when your polar bear lands on one of your opponent's icebergs. So, I thought I could make an online version with some graphical "flipping" when this happened. I didn't get to the graphical part, but I did get most of the rules implemented and a very simple AI computer opponent. Play Polar Bear Hop.

Village Simulation

Our latest topic was "village". I had pretty big aspirations for this one, but the deadline came a bit too quickly. All I was able to get functioning was this weird simulation of a village being created. You can click and shuffle huts and gardens around, but unfortunately at this point it's not much of a game.

Reverse Pacman

For the 'chase' topic, I made an odd map game where you were given 4 red guys who ran around the map until they captured all the blue guys. Our next topic was 'lost', so I took this same peculiar game and added dots - if the blue guys ate all of the dots before you capture them, you lose! After a bit of change to the graphics and color scheme, it remotely resembles Pacman. Remotely. Only, you don't play Pacman. You're a multiplicity of Blinky look-alikes.

Pixel Invasion

It's less "game" and more "game of life", but it was fun to make. This is my first try using the javascript canvas element. Play Pixel Invasion. I win.

Tower of Something

Okay, this was my entry for "strength" and then I developed it further for "airborne". The towers are strong, but the airborne cannon balls are stronger. And airborne. Play Tower of Something - your tower's name will be unique. Probably something better than 'something'. Oh, and you may want to find a friend to visit the game and play as well; otherwise the battlefield will be rather quiet.

Windy Leaves

Todd and I are competing once again - this time the topic was "wind". I haven't seen Todd's entry yet, but I'm fairly certain mine is much windier than his. If not, hopefully at least my blog post will be.

For "wind", I had trouble coming up with an idea, but finally settled on an online app that showed leaves blowing in the wind. Leaves are a really easy way to show "wind". I played with a few mathematical formulas using cosine and varying constant values until it started looking correct. Once I had the leaves floating convincingly across the screen, I added a barren tree and some background noise to lend a windier atmosphere. The end result seems a bit like a frame from a comic strip.

So, try catching some leaves:


I will also note that, unlike all my other JavaScript apps, I tried adding a little sound to this one and, thanks to Scott Schiller's Sound Manager, implementing sound was rather straightforward.

Seasonal Colors

For "Seasonal", I decided to try a bit of ASP generated CSS. I created a script that, when fed a specially designed CSS file, spits out that same file modified with "seasonal" colors. Depending on the month, it generates certain color sets. I tried using PSP's colors, but my wife said January shouldn't be orange, so between her and I we created this:

Now the Image Game, sociate.us, and this blog all use the new seasonal color set.

Trading in Umbrare

So I didn't quite accomplish what I set out to do on "hidden". I started trying to copy some NetHack code to Javascript to implement my idea, but that didn't get very far. So I started another idea. I completed part of it, involving allowing folks in Umbrare to trade, but I didn't get to implementing the "hidden" part of it, so this is the result.



If you walk up to someone in Umbrare and run into them, it opens a private conversation dialog (they must also run into you, or you will be ignored). Once you start a conversation with them, you can click the "<-- -->" button to start trading items in your bag. It should be straight-forward, but if you run into any bugs, let me know.

Universal Gravitation

For the gravity theme, my ideas kept waxing grandiose, until I only had two days to work on it. So I drew a comic strip. Click to see it larger.

Image Game

Todd and I have been in a creative competition. We pick a topic and than create something with the topic as our... ...topic. Our most recent topic is "star". As I was brainstorming an idea, I thought about how searching on Google Image Search for "star" brings up a lot of pictures of stars. That gave me an idea for a game that had nothing to do with stars and everything to do with Google Image Search. I produced this Image Game. Let me know if it's fun, whether it could use some improvement, or anything else that occurs to you as you play it.

Umbrare - the land of light-hearted living

Umbrare.com is my latest project - It's an interactive game/chatroom/toy that places you on a world with other folks. Once on Umbrare, you can edit your surroundings to your heart's content, go exploring, or discuss the wonder of life with everyone you meet. If you use the link provided above, try going Northwest - that's my brother's realm - he's probably the world's biggest land developer up to this point.

Umbrare is still very much a work in progress - "beta" if you will - so you will probably see a few glitches here and there. Also, comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

(FYI: it works best on FireFox and Internet Explorer 7... ...no news from Mac users, and Internet Explorer 6 is currently treating Umbrare pretty rough.)