Minotaur China Shop (Out Now!)

More games should make failing this fun.

Hmph.

Why don’t they put a DOWNLOAD button in there? There is nothing that makes this game “web-only” and requires some arcane custom plugin which only a couple of sites use.

So, how about adding an option to download the game for those who don’t want to download and install extra plugins?

@BadSector: It’s actually a rather _new_ plugin for the Unity engine, which is on the rise.

But how is downloading the entire game better than downloading a much smaller plugin? Also, the Blurst site is going to keep track of your account, with leaderboards and achievements and all that.

Wants to play: Can you drop us an email? We’d love to help you track down your issue: [email protected]

There are various reasons we don’t offer download versions of the games (and we can produce them by changing a radio button on build options, too). If you’re interested I can get into it…

Matthew, I’d love to hear your reasons for staying browser-only. I’ve enjoyed your games, but I dislike having to install a plugin that isn’t used for anything else.

I know from one standpoint, once you assume the plugin is installed then playing a game is a nice one-step process. Visit site and bam, you’re good to go. Unfortunately, since this plugin is rare, playing your game becomes a two-step process with a cumbersome first step.

Another issue is control. When you download an archive, extract it, and run the game inside, you have control over what is happening to your computer. A simple delete of the folder and you’re back to where you started. We really have no idea what that browser plugin is doing and have to trust that it (and our browser) will behave.

@Nemo07 You still need to get good enough at selling in the early game so that you can reach more profitable insurance fraud early. And with how slow patrons come in compared to your ability to break things, it’s usually profitable to enter rage mode late in the day and smash stuff in overtime.

I’ve had Unity installed in Firefox for several months, and I haven’t had any problems.

Eww, Skofo. lol

Ben Ruiz is a master of sexual bondage tricks.

Ben Ruiz is a bear of a man.

Ben Ruiz is a man of a bear.

Ben Ruiz can destroy china shops using only his massive, titanium-hard fists.

Ben Ruiz is the best. Or possibly the Ben Ruiz-iest.

(Sorry, I had to. Love the game! Wrote a Freeware Friday on it a’cause I just love this game and Flashbang so much.)

@Blake: What browswer and OS?

Unity plugin current doesn’t play nice with Google Chrome – specifically, the input doesn’t work – but that’s going to be fixed with the 2.5 update :).

im guessing that they do not put the game up for downloads because they need hits to generate income from the advertisements since the game is completely free.

Well, that’s the problem- I’m using Chrome!

Looks awesome from what I’ve seen of it from the trailer but can’t seem to play it for some reason. Game runs fine until just after the upgrades screen and then I don’t see the shop but I can hear everything working in the background (stuff breaks, messages come up, etc.) but no view of the shop itself. Used Firefox then tried on IE for that matter. =/

OK, on why we don’t do download versions:

There are a bunch of reasons. The simple version is that we think it’s easier to accomplish what we want to accomplish with Blurst by using the web player instead of standalone. These goals include:

– Community. It makes more sense to wrap a browser around our games rather than give people downloads and hope they come back to the site. There’s quite a bit of placeholder widgets on Blurst in its current form, but they’ll slowly be replaced with leaderboards, achievements, friend functionality, and so on. This kind of stuff just works better with games in the web; people are already in the midset of jumping around (from game to game, or game to leaderboard, or forums, or our blog, etc).

– Control. It’s ironic sinoth brought up control from the point of the user–which I totally understand–but we’re actually trying to increase control as a developer. With Raptor Safari we did something like 20 pushes inside of two days after launch, fixing all kinds of bugs and performance problems. Releasing to web means we can release sooner and trust that if we do hit problems we can fix them transparently, without new builds/patches/autopatches/whatever. Yes, there are complicated solutions that could act like Steam for updates, but we’re only six people and can’t afford the time to build that infrastructure.

– On Trust. I do get people may have trust issues with a newer plugin. We have to work through that, but Unity is a savvy company who realizes what they’re up against (their product evangelist was on Director for years). Flash is a plugin, and people have to trust that Flash content will be sandboxed and won’t fuck with your system. Unity will eventually have that trust.

– Feedback. We’re moving into an 8-week dev cycle in 2009. Part of this will be interacting very heavily with our users: posting prototypes, early betas, and so on. This also makes more sense in a web context, because it’s easy to push messages on people when they visit the site (“oh hey–you’re on our beta list and we just posted a new version! go check it out…”). Yes, you can do this in standalone games, but it feels surprisingly intrusive. People are quite used to websites telling them these kinds of things.

– Expectation. People expect a certain kind of experience with web games, and we’re leaning into that with short dev cycles and propensity for experimentation. We can get away with a little less production and a little less play time on a web game. We’re basically reserving standalone builds for future use (maybe as a feature when we roll out subscriptions, or maybe for longer and better games).

A lot of the above boils down to keeping people on Blurst.com, where we can better talk to them (both as human developers and more abstractly as a system designed to build community). And, yeah, one potential goal might be keeping them on our site for advertising purposes, although we actually have zero plans to do that. The banner space up there now is populated with cross-game links to our own stuff, and we plan to open it up to promotion of fellow indie titles (at the low, low price of absolutely free).

Totally open to discussion on this! Curious what people think of our reasoning…

If it is browser based, can it then be played in OS X? Safari?

I feel so bad for this poor minotaur. He obviously loves fine china and it’s not his fault he’s so clumsy. To top it off he can’t control his anger and has to resort to insurance fraud to keep his business afloat.

A very sad game indeed.

Matthew, I like what Unity is doing and plan to do some development with their nifty framework in the near future. BUT I’m not about to install their plugin.

I realize you’re trying to bootstrap a community by limiting access to your games, but sorry I’ll just go elsewhere. Love the idea of the game though, and I’m sure it’s fun.

Best of luck.

@Uesugi: So, you don’t play Flash games? You’ve never played a game on Kongregate, miniclip, or Newgrounds because you resent installing a plugin and, thusly, their attempts to “limit access” to their games?

I guess I just don’t get where you’re coming from.

Awesome game!…but the sound isn’t working for me…

Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to want to make games with Unity in the near future, but at the same time refuse to install the required plug-ins yourself, for basically free-to-play games.

If you want FlashBang to continue making games, you’ll have to support them, but they are definitely not forcing anyone.

Yeah, I already knew I was weird. I’ll make downloadable games with Unity. Forcing someone to install a Unity or Yoyo or X plugin to play a game just isn’t my thing. Same goes with Flash, but somehow everyone (me included) already has Flash.