Go Fishy - What I Learned From A Simple Flash Game

Played Online came out with its list of the best flash games of the past decade.As someone who wasted a great deal of time playing these games I was happy to see some of my favourites make the list. I spent countless hours learning how to best play Miniputt, Age of War and Defend Your Castle - remember when there was only one tower defence game?

The one game on this list that I spent the most time on was XGenStudio's Fishy. It was a simple, but difficult game that I would initially play to decompress. Before long, I would find myself obsessed. Seven years later, I can look back and determine that Fishy either taught me or reinforced various principles about game design, attention to detail and even life. Kinda intense.

More musings - and the game itself- after the jump...

Even More Playfully Awesome

Playfully Playing at Playful

We've finally pieced our brains back together after they exploded from the brilliance of Playful 09. This who's who of UK gaming professionals overloaded us with networking opportunities and ideas - so many that we're just now getting back around to posting about the day.

The one day conference was organised by Pixel-Lab with the broad goal of 'highlighting the importance of play.' Well, Mission: Accomplished. There were nearly 20 presentations dealing with all manner of playful things. My notes are copious and full of pen-heavy drawings and musings that were incredibly profound at the moment but are now incomprehensible. For beautiful (and coherent) notes check out Nick Marsh's brilliant graphics (via ThisIsPlayful.com):

Busy Weeks, Boiler Suits, and Big Hands

It's a busy week here at the Go Game UK office! We're running a promotional game tomorrow that will have teams sneaking and snooping through the narrow streets of London's Chinatown. We're excited to break out the orange jumpsuits and show off some Go Game magic!

Hooray For Game Makers!

A gaming friend passed on this video of a super cool (and remarkably well-spoken and poised) 16 year old from Australia, one of the winners of an online tech expo for teens around the world called Digital Open. He created a game called Sneaky Card which 'uses social interaction as a platform.' More specifically, he made cards with instructions for fun or silly tasks or games which he would he would 'put-pocket' (the opposite of pick-pocketing) into the pockets and belongings of his classmates, teachers, and other people. Here's a fantastic video on his project:

PICNIC - Best. Conference. Ever.

The Go Game has done quite a few conferences in our time. There was the 3200 person extravaganza in Dallas and the crazy 72-hour free for all at SXSWi this past March. But no conference we've been a part of compares to PICNIC, held just a few weeks ago in Amsterdam.

The Go Game Does igfest

We were in Bristol last weekend for the amazing igfest 09 games festival. Before the recap, we'd like to take a minute to acknowledge the wonderful people from Simon Games and Pervasive Media Studio. Special thanks should also go to The Simons, Richard and the amazing Helen.

Now let's talk about us! We created a modified Go Game that was shortened to 90 minutes and included almost no location-based missions. The modified format didn't do anything to hamper the creativity or the hilarity of teams like The Pretty Committee:


It's all about perspective. The Pretty Committee imagines a monster attacking Bristol