Anawiki Blog

This is really funny. Only a few months ago everyone was laughting at new Nintendo console name and now what? Everybody seems to love it. Though I don’t own Wii I read all those threads to find out what the buzz is about.

But what I read today shocked me. You can play minigolf, tennis or boxing on Wii. That’s nothing exceptional, though the way you play is exceptional. Wii controller lets you swing your arm in the air just like you would swing the ball or punch. And you know what? After playing like this for couple of minutes you find out yourself sweating. That’s right. It’s pretty good excercising. People love sports and they love to play computer games. Wii has it all

So have you seen Runes of Avalon trailer yet?

Online Games -Net-Games.Biz, the source of great free online games including arcade games, action games, sports games and flash game.

More and more christmas trees or decorations shows up in stores. It’s an obvious sign that Christmas is coming. Time to think about presents. While I am still not decided what I’ll get for my wife or kids I already have a list in my mind of things that I would like to get That’s quite surprising to me. Last year I realized that I don’t feel like I want or need to get any material thing for Christmas to feel happy (ain’t that odd).

But this year I become nostalgic about older games and would love to play them. Games like Curse of the Monkey Island or Prince of Persia. Or newer ones like Secret Files: Tunguska. Does Santa Claus read emails?

Do you love games? Do you want to play newest ANAWIKI GAMES releases before anyone else can even think about them? And you know how to use email, right? Then we might be looking for you!

We look for beta testers for our upcoming games (Runes of Avalon, the Ponys, etc.). If you want to become one, please do not hasitate to write to feedback@anawiki.com. Every time we do a beta test we will pick 10 people to win full version of tested game and another 10 people to win 50% discount coupon on any ANAWIKI game.

I’ve downloaded some new levels for Prof. Fizzwizzle game (did you know that there are more that 550 of them?). Some of them are really impressive. To be honest - some of them are designed by insane or genious people. Let’s take for example level called Feeling blue. It looks difficult just by looking at it. But guess what - this one is so hard that you’ll probably have to watch it hundred times to learn full solution. It’s not just puzzles - you need excelent timing also. I strongly recommend to download this one and turn on show solution feature. Very soon you’ll start asking yourself - you have to be either genious or insane to solve it on your own

But don’t be afraid - each custom level has rating that say whether it’s good or not, how difficult and so on. And in game levels are well designed with superb difficulty progress.

Do you remember professor Fizzwizzle? Now he’s back in FizzBall. What’s FizzBall? This is next great invention of cute professor. It bounces, it flyes and it catches everything on it’s path. And then it gets bigger (and bigger). FizzBall is an arkanoid kind of game. I am not a fan of that kind of games, but I really like what I have seen in FizzBall so far. The Twist is very oryginal, game physics reminds me BreakQuest a little. Unbreakable trees drop fruits or pinecones, hens hit by fizzball lay eggs. Lot’s of small details to enjoy. Bouncing fizzball reminds me pinball games. I like that very much.

Grubby Games new game keeps the same level of polish we could see in Prof. Fizzwizzle. It also is as playable as their first game. Here are few screens from FizzBall. I can’t wait to see full version release.

I’ve found 2 interesting game concepts today. Jochen De Schepper posted in his blog early screenshot for his new game project: Smiley Puzzle. Smileys are so popular on the internet that I am really surprised that it took so long to create a game around it.

soniCron?posted?gameplay?video?from his upcoming game - Jeweltopia. While i thought that this will be yet another match-3 clone this video looks really cool. Hopefully this game will play as good as it looks.

I’d been looking at many games lately. The odd thing that came to my mind was that my next game is not inspired by top notch games like Zuma, Bejeweled 2 Deluxed or Fairies, but… and that was a huge surprise to me, by a simple but fun game like Sweety Puzzle.

Of course those games are great, but rather than inspiration they bring motivation. Motivation to achieve same level of quality.

I need both.
Inspiration to start working on a fun and challenging game and motivation to finish it.

They say management is everything. It’s the key to success. But when it comes to art, managers are powerless. I asked Damian (our artist) to make one GUI element for our next game. 5 days ago. I still don’t have it. It’s not that Damian is lazy. He just want to make it perfect. I don’t blame him - we need high quality art. Still, I wish I could rush art.

We, game developers, like to think that we create innovative games. Some of us say, that the ability to have total creative control over the game is the main reason to go indie. That’s great.

But do you, the player, really care about innovation in games?

I care. As a player.

Innovation is important, but not for the sake of it. If someone creates a game just to make it innovative I could not care less. Create a game that is fun and innovative and you have my vote on it.

So will my next game be fun and innovative. I’m sure it will be more fun than innovative.

Few days ago my friend Kittanate send me interesting concept. He’s working on a game about Tuk Tuk. Tuk Tuk is a kind of taxi that is very popular in Thailand. The player task is to complete quest received from non-player characters. And one of those NPC’s will be Tom. Here’s the first sketch. Enjoy.