when pigs fly is a game about becoming trapped in a place you don’t want to be in, then teaching yourself to fly so you can go someplace beautiful: the money this game earned me will let me to finally move to the bay area.
click here to play when pigs fly on newgrounds
as the first game i ever made with the intention of selling to a sponsor, it’s pretty conservative. it’s hard. there are achievements, or “medals,” for finishing the game quickly or without accidents. (you’ll have to sign up for newgrounds if you want to hold on to them.) it’s a game about managing momentum, and balancing the desire to go fast with the need to avoid collisions. (big, feathery wings let you fly, but they’re also very delicate.) i think, but i’m not totally sure, that if you click on the ad at the beginning i’ll make a tiny bit of money.
the music in the game is by the delicious amon26. and the pig’s squeals were provided by my own little piglet. (you can turn those off with the S key, by the way.) and the birds that chirp at the beginning are from my father’s garden.
a lot of people helped this game take flight. qrleon’s sensitive elbows sparked the idea of maneuvering a character who had both vulnerable and invulnerable bits (balloon kid was also an inspiration). edmund mcmillen stood behind me while i flapped my newfound wings, blowing. tom fulp was amazing enough to buy the game and keep me aloft. my slut, in addition to squealing a lot, was there to help me work out my constant frustrations with flash (she’s a good punching bag) and to keep me reminded of my goal. and there’s all my playtesters, whose names are forever engraved on a stone monolith within the game.
and remember that a blue sky is a true sky.
78 comments
How does Newgrounds pricing work? I’ve noticed more and more well-known developers like Edmund Mcmillen, and others, are putting stuff up on there.
tom paid me a flat fee to post the game on newgrounds with medals (to encourage repeat play) and an ad at the beginning. this wasn’t the just-upload-your-game model; tom and i negotiated this via email. i think the ads earn me some money over time, but it hasn’t been much time yet so i’m not exactly sure how much.
Late Tuesday, but Tuesday nonetheless.
I love the graphics :)
1st try = 45′16” 471 accidents ….lol
Great job and congratulations! The best reason to hate you for being sadistic since Mighty Jill Off.
Found this posted over at the Independent Gaming Source-awright!
The spikes made me angry, but I feel better now.
congrats on the newgrounds deal, the released game, and all!
the game is really fun/challenging, but this particular screen was torture! http://www.grabup.com/uploads/fe8bb13f4e62b21fe273f02797ea5769.png
i must have died 200+ times there!
slut suggested i keep track of which screen the player died most on. it would have been a bunch of extra work, but also i’m pretty sure it would be one of those last three screens every time.
54.10 with 686 accidents!
man that was tough, and my hardest screen was the same as eric_c’s hardest screen, but once i figured it out i could’ve kicked myself, it was so simple.
congratulations on another fine game and the deal that came from it!
my next game will be more experimental and fartsy i promise
That’s my most death screen too- wait… there’s a way to figure it out?
count. i didn’t end up implementing anything that keeps track.
that screen probably went through the most iterations of any screen in the game, though.
My most death screen was somewhere in the middle, which I think was indicative of one of the major problems the game had. The difficulty was very flat. The rooms didn’t seem to get progressively harder in any way, there was never anything new* to see as the player continued on. The most challenging thing was figuring out how collision was calculated. It didn’t seem to be pixel-based, and the wings seemed to have a larger bounding box when flapping than when not. The pig herself seemed to hit her head above even her ears, and similarly, seemed to extend past her feet while moving.
All in all, Mighty Jill Off was a much better game, there was a definite feel of progression, things being introduced later on like the spiders, and then even the torture room (which was a nice callback to MBJ) gave something different later on. Meanwhile, When Pigs Fly just left me feeling wanting more out of the game. Something more even than the alternate modes unlocked at the end, which seemed pretty bland and really offered nothing new to do.
I do have to say, though, the opening was very strong. The first room did a great job at teaching you the very basics, and only when the grass first appeared in the cave did I wonder if I was being given a new challenge. It wasn’t immediately apparent if it was grass or some sort of toxic slime that would kill me. So, in the end it was a fun fifteen-minute diversion, but it really left me with no reason to go back and play again.
*Except the submarine room. Which I sat and watched as it passed.
conflict between my desire not to stretch the game beyond the natural implications of the protagonist’s verb set and my desire to create enough content for the game to be saleable. i’m new to this for money thing and hopefully i’ll get better at it.
I’m amused at the agreement on Eric’s choice of the hardest screen. To me, that particular screen is the relaxing reward for completing the screen before it, which was my hardest one. (The one with the reverse-S fulla spikes.)
this is great! congratulations! but it was so hard.
the screen eric_c posted wasn’t that hard, but the previous one was a bitch.
first try: 29.26 with 364 accidents.
I knew exactly which screen Eric was talking about before I opened the image: the OMEGA SCREEN. I died so many times there.
My “score,” since that’s what we’re doing, is 26.05 with 355 accidents. PAINFUL ACCIDENTS.
I also died a ridiculous amount on that one level, it made me really angry. The fact that it was shaped like Omega and wasn’t the final challenge also got to me…
I laughed when I saw that the “hardest screen” Eirc_C posted was the one I had the most trouble on, as well. I lost count of how many times I died there on the first go.
How the grass is introduced is perfect. I really wanted to step on it and this was encouraged by how you made it progressively more accesible.
Also, because the game is so challenging, when I finally got to the unobstructed last few screens that lead to flying out in the open sky it really felt rewarding and very liberating. You are indeed flying out of hell and onwards to paradise. It conveyed the idea of getting out of a claustrophobic confinement very well, I thought.
Another thing I found interesting is how the way the character worked (having the two modules on its sides being its weakness) allowed you (forced you?) to play with the shapes of the terrain and ceiling. What I mean is that, for example, the irregularity of the floor made it impossible for it to be a place of rest (other than the desired spawn points or specific spots, obviously); the player learns to calculate the size of its avatar and because of that the 1 or 2 tiles wide “U” shapes in the ground become a clear sign of danger.
Those are things that kind of stuck with me after playing the game twice.
I think it’s a well-constructed game and I really, really liked the graphic style.
I didn’t feel much inconsistency with the wings’ bounding box, but I did notice something odd with that of the pig itself.
My first play-through was 19 something minutes long with 205 accidents. On the second attempt that improved to somewhere around 8 minutes with 50 something deaths.
PS: I find no reason to ever turn off the squealing.
Wow, what a great reason to make a game. I’m pretty impressed, actually.
I agree that the last few screens near the end were very rewarding. I felt like the game was short enough that the scenery and the challenges presented were enough to keep me going. I had a really good time with this.
oh my god that was incredibly aggravating, i’m so glad i’m done.
also, bay area? CA bay area?
san francisco bay, yup.
So when’s the DLC coming out?
That was great! It took me 10 minutes, I can see how you’d get frustrated if it was taking you 45 or 50 like the people above.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know you could mute the SFX. Suddenly I could understand why Daphny needs to be punished….
emaG sdrawkcaB is faster than Forwards Game, pass it on.
Also thanks for not making any references/terrible puns of foodstuffs made from pig flesh, in the vein of “Porky Pig, our favourite ham!” etc.
hey its pretty good its fun
I prefer for games to be downloadable, though I still went ahead and played/finished the game. It was fun but did get incredibly frustrating quite a bit.
oh hey auntie gotta put a restart button, im on a time attack and im doing badly i dont wanna have to play through it the whole way dogg
Not really as good as Mighty Jill Off. As you said, it’s not a particularly deep concept but if it’s putting food on the table then good for you.
i don’t think i have done particulary well but i managed to finish the game with 46 accidents at 7.08
so it really makes me wonder how some of you guys achieved so many deaths ^_^’
I just played through this and had a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed the submarine room, and I wish the game had more things like this. Congratulations on making your first flash game!
Did you enjoy working in flash sufficiently to want to employ it as your primary production method from here onwards?
Well gee Teasel I was kind of proud of my 17min/~170 deaths but OK.
This game was pretty incredible! The aesthetics (including music and sound!) are the finest distillation of blue skies I can think of right now, and between those and the new background elements introduced giving me hope I was near the end, I didn’t even notice getting frustrated until the omega room.
Having a go at one try mode and getting ten rooms in was nice, too. And I totally didn’t suspect that everything would work so well backwards!
I really appreciated the instant restart after death in contrast to Mighty Jill Off’s falling sequence. Also, gaining momentum was pretty exhilarating!
I can’t think of anything negative right now, except the way there’s a frame of dead pig after you restart.
This reminded me of the last part of Psychosomnium, except adorable. Kind of funny that these aesthetics are affixed to your most hateful game yet! I never really found Jill Off to be all that rough anyway. But yeah really nice to look at/listen to. I like how consistently life and attention went into areas of the screen you couldn’t even reach.
I’m still not sure what to think of the difficulty. I usually consider a game to be about as hard as how far failure sets you back. This game has really generous checkpoints! More frequent than Jill Off’s, and yet the game’s still quite a bit more difficult.
The thing that got me the first time through is that I really never felt like I was learning the game as it went along. It was more like I was eventually managing to vaguely satisfy the button-pressing requirements of three second bursts of gameplay because eventually you pretty much just have to pull it off if you try enough times. But it never felt like it was because my mastery over the flight controls were gaining some sort of momentum. It doesn’t seem like there’s ever enough room for that. Plus, because the controls are fairly acceleration-based, you operate more on feel than anything, and you can’t really correct something quickly on-sight just by reacting to what you see.
But now I guess I feel like I proved myself wrong because I immediately went for a one-try run and got like 11 or more in a row. Probably the only two I got in a row my first time through were the very last two screens. Then I did a backwards run and doubled my time/more than halved my deaths. Obviously something happened! I guess it’s just more subtle than I might’ve liked. Plus the aforementioned flat-ish difficulty curve.
I’m sure I’m going to play this game more later. Thanks Dess.
Oh and I’m pretty surprised I was never particularly compelled to turn the squealing off.
I should probably see what this feels like with a pad.
AHAHAHAHAHAH 14 DEATHS 3:56 SUCK MY COCK
I just typed at another site, “The S and M keys are your friend.” Hm.
Congratulations on the new game, and hooray for online play! Also, AAARGH! Though by the time I finish, I’m pretty sure I will beat everyone — larger numbers are better, right?
this is a really great game. i loved it so.
it’s really neat playing a game like this after reading your level design lessons- i kept seeing points where i thought “oh yeah! that’s where she did so and so!” and yeah.
but yeah, really great game and stuff and yay.
24 mintues, 300 accidents. i hate derek’s score. same room as jason stuck me. i really love what you did with the grass, and the spikes look great now. =)
from your previews i was hoping you’d squeeze deeper strategy into each screen, but with the big three-tile character i guess it would’ve been too tight. each screen was engaging both visually and in terms of challenge. it’s a nice progression from jill off. awesome!
like adam mentioned i think you would’ve benefited from adding more scripted stuff like the submarine, as encouraging observation might help players enjoy the game more since careful flapping works better than dive-bombing through every screen. but when you see people posting times it’s kind of tempting.
amon26 really did well by you. the atmospheric synths are great as expected, but he really outdid himself with the melody. this guy knows game music! any chance of sharing a less-compressed version of the song?
I had a moment in the middle of this game where I was getting past some of those spike/lava combinations (which were the hardest parts of the game for me, because I never figured out how to balance loft and gravity properly) and finally, after much effort, made it through the screen and threw myself at the rightmost wall and of course died.
It took me a second to realize why I had done such a silly thing — in Mario, and many other platformers, there’s a “mile-wide landing pad” effect when you’re landing on a platform with a wall on the edge, so I’ve developed the instinct to intentionally overjump into the wall because it ensures I won’t fall into the pit.
This game forced me to challenge my assumptions!
(Also, the secret to the omega screen is to land after you get past the spikes.)
oh dear oh dear…
:)
Adorable pig noises!
I cried for the hurt piggy.
But I finished the game.
Congrats!
amon does wonderful music, yes.
the game has two tracks because when i played the first one through gmail it sounded all grainy and glitchy. this is not a game for grindcore techno, amon, i said. so he sent me a second version. when i downloaded them they were both beautiful melodies.
to this day gmail does not agree with amon’s mp3s. i don’t know why.
oh, yeah, flash. i hate working in flash. flash is incredibly frustrating to build games in.
game maker was written as a response to the question “what would be the most convenient way to organize and build a game?” flash was created as a means of playing movies in web browsers. game developers were interested in making games that run in web browsers, so features were hacked into flash that would let them.
but that’s really not what it was intended for, and coding a game in actionscript is super frustrating. but it does put food on the table, so i’m probably going to keep at it.
My hand may never be the same…but I finished it!
Hee hee, if you fall back to earth, the music fades back in.
yesterday: ~12:00, ~60 accidents
today: 5:02, 37 acc
I thought the Omega screen was really easy. It was the screen before that got me.
Cool game!
I left a massive review on NG, but as it’s easy for it to be lost among the hundreds of reviews that are left there, I’m re-posting it here. Hope you don’t mind:
…. a typical game from you, auntie pixelante, but not as good as some of your previous efforts, as it suffers from a sever case of repetition and lacks a reward effort. Good, yes, but lacking. Allow me to detail my review:
- Graphics are simple but very well done. You have quite some skill when it comes to making pixel art and this game showcases this quite well. The diversity of the backgrounds was also pretty good, as was the sparse animation. Overall, this might be the game’s strongest point (ironically, given your focus of gameplay).
- Sound, well, ouch. I managed to get used to it and it wasn’t too bad, but the pig’s squeals were very, very annoying. You surely must have known the effect it would have had on the player, so this was a personal choice of yours, one that I can’t really fathom. Were you attempting to add an ‘extra level’ of challenge by forcing the player to hear it? Reward them by playing perfectly and not having to hear it?
In any case, I assume that this was intentional and, in that case, you succeed in making the game significantly more annoying/frustrating thanks to it. If not, then please, please consider using other sound effects and/or just music next time.
- Gameplay, well, it’s complicated. The game’s responsiveness is adequate, as is the acceleration that the pig undergoes when moving (in any direction), as you wanted to make the game challenging, but not ‘impossibly’ so. So the controls are quite reasonable.
The game’s difficulty level, although quite high, was tolerable and you deserve praise for it. It’s quite hard to make a game difficult without making it ‘fake difficult’ (which can be fun in itself, if it’s done ala I Wanna Be The Guy) and I feel that this game doesn’t make that mistake. It’s difficult because it requires high level of precision from the player, as well as patience, but not unfairly so.
However, there is a problem when it comes to the level design. Now, I know that given the sort of gameplay this game has, there is a limit on how creative you can be when designing challenges for each level, but it got far too repetitive far too quickly.
I mean, about half-way through, already the game was presenting screens that were very similar to a previous one, just significantly more difficult. To be frank, facing a challenge you’ve already overcome, if not presented in a drastically new manner (stuff like new graphics, new abilities for the game character), gets a bit dull and becomes more of a chore than fun.
This is, I feel, the game’s greatest flaw and it could have been corrected only in a few ways: by having more diverse level design (ideal, but difficult to achieve), new game mechanics (which would have been against the spirit of the game) and/or more diverse presentation (not a very reasonable request, given that the game already has a diverse presentation); or by making the game shorter. I know, I know, it’s short as it is, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s too much of a one trick pony…
- Finally, the ending provided no satisfaction for the player. Given that in previous game’s of yours you’ve provided at least some tentative rewards, I feel that you should have made the effort here and added a little something. But, so as to not end in a sour note, let me say that the overall presentation of the game is quite good and that the premise, as silly as it is, was stretched out and well developed.
So, overall, a good game, with good overall presentation and a difficult but fair level of challenge, but lacking when compared to previous game’s of yours (although, now that I’m thinking, this may be due to your unfamiliarity to Flash), by being too repetitive and unrewarding.
Still, cheers! Hope to see more games from you on Newgrounds in the future! I that you’re a talented game maker and that you can make really good-but-hard games.
Thought this was great. First time through I found it slightly too long, second time it was perfect–any shorter and it wouldn’t have felt like a worthwhile challenge.
I’m curious whether the submarine represents anything in particular.
a lot of my design decisions were based on what i thought i would be capable of getting to work in flash, which i was still learning. having all collisions with walls result in starting the screen over was an easier prospect than the kind of collision resolution i’d have to implement in a more conventional platform game, for example. there’s no scrolling, either, except on two distinct screens in very controlled circumstances.
i think that this project has given me the experience i need to better plan a platform game in flash, though. with when pigs fly, i was figuring things out as i went.
the submarine room is halfway point between the beginning and end of the game. it’s the deepest point in the game (first you go down and in, then you go up and out), and i wanted to mark it with a visual reward. i also wanted it to be distinct because of its position at the game’s pivot point.
i put the room together as a horizontal tunnel with a big window in the middle. i couldn’t decide what to put in that window. it was slut who ended up suggesting the submarine, and i thought that was a good idea, because it could be something for the player not just to look at but to watch. a little show.
25:52, 316 goofs, significant relief
really need to stay away from these masocore jobs, even when they have such well executed intros
Damn, that was a lot of fun. You have a hell of a sense of style, and it’s good to see that doing something for commercial reasons hasn’t blunted your ability one bit. I’m already eager to see what you make next.
(First try: 17.23 / 120 accidents. That room mentioned by others accounted for a lot of those.)
Like your other games, this is awesome. And you are awesome.
It only made me swear once. Well, out loud anyway.
Great aesthetic and props to your music person, too. Also, I could really see your brilliant level design principles at work.
Congrats on getting a paying gig!
First try I finished in 16.42 - 165 accidents.
I was among the ones that found the screen Eric_C posted to be a nice break after the screen before that. Though the worst part for me was that first long narrow passage with spikes both above and below you.
Second try 10.10 - 78 accidents
By the way, the most sadistic part about the game has to be the noises when the pig gets hurt. It really gets on your nerves after a while.
Congrats on a fun release!
No matter how I phrase things, always ends up sounding dirty.
I have been a fan of your games since a while back, I remember fondly Invader and Mighty Jill Off.
When pigs fly has that great quality of grabbing the player’s interest through really simple and natural (for me, at least) mechanics. I rarely play flash games for more than 5 minutes, but this is one I plan on coming back to.
Keep it up!
by the way, santiago, it was really heartening to me that you picked up on what i was doing with the grass.
cute, fun game. at the beginning I got screwed up a bit because I was trying to fly like in Joust, tap to hover, but gravity is much stronger here, I can’t tap fast enough to hover.
the omega-shape screen did give me some trouble, but not as much as one of the s-shaped screens nearby.
my only gripe is that the middle of the game doesn’t quite convey a sense of progress. somewhere between 50% and 80% of the way, I kept feeling like quitting, because I didn’t have any idea whether I was close to the end or not, for all I knew there could have been another hundred screens to fly through, and it didn’t feel like there was enough reason to find out. could probably fix this with something simple like dim the lights until the halfway point then start brightening again.
the SMB 1-2 screens were a nice touch.
9 minutes, 75 deaths first try. Most of my deaths were getting annoyed with the reverse S room and just kind of hammering it for 30 rapid fire deaths. DAMN IT.
My favorite room was probably the room right after it. The omega shaped one. Died several times as runoff frustration from the previous room, paused, figured out the mechanic, felt clever. It was pretty refreshing.
I thought the grass was toxic slime or something when I first saw it again. It looked like you made it inaccessible, so I figured you were showing it off as a danger. A couple screens later I plopped down on it anyway, for the same reason I divebombed straight into the lava when I first saw it: I wanted to see if there was a unique death animation. There wasn’t. For a moment I was disappointed that the harmless grass did not kill me.
Graphics SO CHERRY. Especially the intro. Haven’t liked the art in one of your games this much since Calamity.
so cherry
Woo! First time through with the Better-Than-Jill medal!
Eleven minutes and fourty three seconds, with one hundred and nineteen accidents.
Took me abit to warm up to this game, get into it’s groove, but once I did it was extremely enjoyable, nothing beats the gratification of flying through one of the tougher areas the first time unscathed. Fun stuff.
How are you handling your collision detection, with basic hitTest or with a pixel-level model? I seemed to die a lot when I was off a distance from a wall, which is the bad kind of frustrating.
How much easier was the newgrounds version than the first playtest? Felt like a lot. Or was I getting that much better?
Also, I’m just going to say that the squealing wasn’t really that annoying, and people should probably calm down a bit. It basically walked the line between cute and annoying, but in the end I think I liked the game all the more for it.
I wasn’t sure about posting a comment, but I’m glad it had that effect.
Keep on rocking.
I never said the annoying sound didn’t add to the games appeal. :)
Gamasutra picked When Pigs Fly as a pick for its “Best of Indie Games” weekly feature. Congratulations.
Check it out here: http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24651
Just completed the game for the first time; 14.50 seconds, 196 deaths. Woo! Going back straightaway to play through the different modes and get the ‘true’ ending.
This is the only game I’ve played with 3-by-1 square protagonist, even if you say the game is conservative, it offered something different, and the way you built the challenges around the piggy’s squat dimensions was really awesome. I like how you’re given the guidance background squares to help you out at the start, that they’re taken away in the lava caves, and that you have to rely on more than just the guidelines in the last area.
For the final screens, especially the reverse S, the placement of the windows really helped (I followed the windows with my piggy’s body and got through the S just fine).
Some of my fave bits:
The first time I flew back to the start of the level and realised I could go back to a previous screen
Bouncing piggy’s head against a nice flat wall
Watching the submarine
Landing on grass for the first time
Getting through the goram omega
The ending!
1st try 47 minutes 600 deaths
2nd try 7 minutes 50 deaths
the difference being for some reason the first time the game would freeze randomly for a couple frames, just enough to kill you. no idea what caused it. On that run through the hardest room was the one that was like
———–
|..GGGGGGGG
|..|..v
|..v…
|…..^
|..^..|^^
|..|..|GGGG
and the 2 shaped room before omega
the second time through nothing really jumped out as the source of death.
Actually, the submarie room reminded me of the glass Maridia tunnel in Super Metroid.
ONE TRY MODE WAS MY IDEA
57.18 with 648 accidents.
That goddamn omega room! And that fucking 2 room after it!
I kept getting frunstrated and leaving the game alone, leaving me with a 47 hour play time. I also got exactly 200 accidents.
The last screen made it all worth it.
First try: 1.31.07 with 912 accidents
2nd Try: 20.41 with 205 accidents
I haven’t sworn so much in ages.
2:07.39, 1507 accidents. KC had a good try but I got a bigger number than him/her! Oof.
At first i thought about a lovely knytt level you designed (the same idea of falling in a cave). Then i felt the same restraint (physically) than in the game with an archeologist in tiny cave attacked by flashy creatures. Yes, i like it.
+ love the kind of “oh oui” the pig made when falling fast enough. That kind of unexpected and lively sound of the character enjoying itself (or feeling anything by doing anything) brings a lot of realness to it, by the illusion of autonomy of the character(or something like that).
+ great opening credit,especially the title, coming in just fine.
Now the negative points,to me:the only thing which is too sadistic is the music,actually (as in mighty jill off, i had to mute it). After a while, i just can’t stand it (too repetitive). Maybe i’m an idiosyncratic musiclover, and Kurtag wouldn’t fit,but …that was a bit too much maybe.
Another thing: i was really hoping for the open space reward at the end; so i guess it would have been quite powerful to twist or spice it somehow.
Sorry about my broken english. Please do others games. I enjoy your work.
I am a fan of the ‘easy controls, difficult challenges’ school of game design, so I am chiming in to say that this was a very frustrating experience for me. I can understand why you decided to make the game claustrophobic, but the flat difficulty curve noted by others leads to the game being very difficult to navigate after a few short screens.
The pig’s awkward shape (compared with the more squared or roundish shape of conventional game protagonists) makes it much more difficult to navigate the challenges, as the player must account for two dimensions instead of one. While I certainly applaud this little innovation, I found that the game’s environments were not actually designed with the pig in mind. They were far too narrow, leaving very, very little room for error. The worst deaths came when I bounced the pig’s head off the ceiling, and into the spikes (why am I even allowed to touch the ceiling then? That makes me less cautious about avoiding walls). The level designs left me struggling with the controls because the game immediately demanded mastery of them. It reminds me of Gutsman’s level in Megaman; at the very beginning, it expects you to be able to leap across moving platforms that collapse beneath you, involving a mastery of timing that a newbie will almost certainly lack. When Pigs Fly dumps the player in a very difficult arena that is not designed for the protagonist to inhabit. They reminded me of Mario levels, stages which are meant for a much more precisely-controlled, boxy character to pass through. Perhaps this game should have been presented with a ‘widescreen’ format, to accommodate the pig’s horizontal dimensions?
I found the game to have a terrible lack of momentum. When I did complete the screen, I did sometimes pass through with elegance and grace, but other times I persevered through the use of fluttering (a la Joust as mentioned above). This is mostly the result of the faults mentioned above; the level design is hostile to the player character, the game demands rapid mastery of its mechanics, and the intuitive, simplistic control scheme is too fluttery, too loose and free; it is completely out of place in the claustrophobic setting of the game. I had 269 accidents in my playthrough. Some masocore, trial-and-error games offer some reward even for dying (like the flash and flair of I Wanna Be The Guy and Karoshi). Even Super Mario features a silly death song and animation. This game punishes players for failing, with annoying and repetitive sound effects. When the player character is so out of place, they are sure to die over and over, killing the momentum of the total playthrough, and being punished for their constant failure; this is a game that made me want to stop many times, because I felt no reward from it, not even upon completion. I had no desire to replay it, which, based on other people’s comments here, is necessary to play with any momentum or professionalism.
I can understand the thematic reasons for these flaws; yes, it is claustrophobic being stuck in a cave, and wings are delicate and all of that. It is important to understand that a computer game is still a game; its purpose is fun. Everything superficial about the game (themes, difficulty, music, graphics, SFX, level design etc.) should be slaved to the central gameplay conceit (in this case, flying piggies) and should serve Fun. The more accessible and user-friendly the game is, the more fun it will produce; it should be easy to play the game and more difficult by degrees to master. That’s the point of discrete levels in video games!
Especially if you want to make money off of games, every artist needs to realize that craftsmanship and profitability are not mutually exclusive. I doubt that most indie games, even the easy-to-play ones, could be widely popular. Most indie game developers and other indie artists make games that appeal to them; ‘we must make the games we wish to see.’ But indie gamers are a niche, they’re highly specialized in their tastes and skills. A more successful work ethic for the indie artist would be ‘we must make the games we wish to share.’ You don’t need to compromise your artistic integrity or personality to become successful in the mainstream.
Basically my criticism is that you next game should imitate the principles of Nintendo’s school of game development. Hope this helps with money-making game!
Yes, and then you should imitate World of Warcraft’s success.
WE MUST MAKE THE MONEY WE WISH TO SPEND IN THIS WORLD.
i don’t actually care about any of this stuff. when pigs fly is a boring game that i made because i needed money. i will probably do it again in the future, because i will probably need money in the future. i don’t particularly care about getting good at it, or about expanding my “userbase,” becoming profitable, or anything like that. i’ve been mostly ignoring press about the game, and i have an inbox on newgrounds full of unread messages (most of which have subjects like “YOUR GAME IS TOO HARD YOU CUNT”).
i just want to be able to be able to eat while i work on the games that actually are interesting. i made “adventured servants” in two hours, it was only played by the maybe twenty people who showed up to klik of the month, and i take more pride in it than i do in when pigs fly.
though i understand that distancing onself from the product of one’s labor is the sort of dangerous idea that leads to the de-skilling of work and to shit like an asteroids clone with the WING COMMANDER “ip” stamped on it, when pigs fly is, to me, the check that’s paying for my move to california. when pigs fly is a compromise i make for the sake of being with the woman i love.
i don’t mean to act dismissive of criticism or advice - and in fact most of the criticism i’ve received has been accurate and even insightful. but this isn’t something i’m very concerned with my ability to get good at. my next flash game will be easier and will hopefully earn me enough money to keep a roof over my head. if it does that, i’ll consider it a success.
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