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Snap-together games

May 2nd, 2008

This is certainly turning into a booming segment. The latest is Microsoft’s Popfly for Silverlight, which has been out for a while but didn’t have any game stuff. But now there’s Popfly Game Creator.

Today we’re adding something special to Popfly: an early version of our Popfly Game Creator. That’s right: Popfly is about more than mashups and web pages. It’s about making it fun to build things and share them with your friends. And one of the things we’ve heard loud and clear is that games are the kinds of things that people would like to try to build.

What kinds of games can you create? Just about any kind of two-dimensional game, a category that includes things like the original Super Mario™, Frogger™, Asteroids™, and a host of other old arcade games. To make it easy, Popfly is still focused on getting as much done as possible without having to write any code. The game creator has over 15 pre-built game templates for you to try, hundreds of images, animations, backgrounds, and sounds for you to use in the games you create, and, of course, a way for you to write code if you reach the limits of what the user interface can do for you. Since this is Popfly, you can still save, share, and embed your creations everywhere from your blog to your Facebook page to your Windows Vista Sidebar.

Just in the last few months we’ve seen this, and Gamebrix, and Sims Carnival

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7 Responses to “Snap-together games”

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  1. Raph's Website » PlayCrafter: another snap-together game maker wrote on

    [...] is launching open alpha, joining all the others: Sims Carnival, Gamebrix, Popfly… Looks to me like they lean heavily on [...]

Reader Comments
  1. Christopher J. Rock said on

    This game development software is really phoning it in.

  2. Patrick said on

    Last but not least .

  3. Raph said on

    Doh, forgot about Mockingbird!

  4. Andrew Wooldridge said on

    I think the “winner” will be the one with the most accessible tools connected with a vibrant community of co-bootstrappers…

  5. Don said on

    I don’t think redesigning frogger or asteroids makes you a gamemaker. I suggest the dutch gamestudio from hetklokhuis.nl soon to be released in the us for a major themepark . It’s all about gameplay and yes, sharing your ideas.

  6. Greg said on

    To Andrew’s (#4) point, the winner is the platform that lets users connect, extend and re-use work. I’d be remiss not to mention my company… Sharendipity provides the best chance at scaling these communities because every sub-component in a game can be re-used in any other creation.

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