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By Flipline_Tony, April 6, 2016 9:17 am

Introduction

At the inception of Papa’s Burgeria, we came to the realization that we could go well beyond pizza with our hands-on style of gameplay.

On that very day, we quickly scrawled down on our whiteboard the basic core structure of what makes a Papa’s game work. While doing that we quickly discussed, “Whoa, wouldn’t it be cool if you made weapons instead of food”. Not knowing where to go with the idea, we wrote “sword crafting” on the whiteboard and left it at that.

Several years and 5 Gamerias later, we wanted to try something brand-new. Although our Papa’s games were immensely popular within the casual games arena, they never quite caught on with the “core” gaming crowd. We would always see our Gamerias getting low ratings on sites geared towards fighting and RPG games, and understandably so. When you’re all about shooting hordes of zombies, a game simulating food preparation was probably not your immediate idea of a good time.

So we decided to challenge ourselves: We would make a game using the main concepts of a Gameria which would somehow appeal to both the “core” and the “casual” gamer. We immediately looked up on our whiteboard, and in that little unerased corner we noticed our years-old note mentioning “sword crafting”.

From there, ideas started pouring out…

What Went Right

1: A World of Warriors and Weapons

We started with a rough idea about the game taking place in Medieval times, where you would be playing as a blacksmith. To bridge the gap between core and casual players, we decided to leave ordinary humans out of the picture and use animals for our entire cast of characters, focusing on the animals that would be found in Europe during the Middle Ages. At one point we even had an idea that you were a field mouse riding on top of a turtle, but we decided to go with larger animals instead.

At first, we thought the whole game would be structured around building swords. However, as we started fleshing things out, we quickly realized we would need a variety of weapons to craft. Soon we “hammered” out our final list of weapon types: Swords, Bows and Arrows, Maces, Pikes, Axes, and Shields.

2. Battles and Bombs

Throughout the course of the brainstorming session, we realized how anticlimactic it would be to make all these weapons for warriors, then call it a day and close up shop. That worked for the Papa’s games, because nobody wants to sit and watch Wally eat an entire anchovy pizza. But in this game, players would know that all the real action was taking place beyond your blacksmith shop, so we decided that the player would need to come along for the ride and see how the weapons held up.

This is when things really started to diverge from the Papa’s formula. Story ideas started flowing, where the Blacksmith was rallying the troops, and he was slowly moving down the road to the final battle. The stationary blacksmith shop soon became a traveling wagon in the distance as the troops battled in the foreground. Seeing your weapons in action would be exciting, but we decided that the player would need something to do during this time so it didn’t just seem like an extended cinematic interlude. Initially, we thought simply picking up loot that the baddies dropped would suffice. After a few tests, we realized that there needed to be something to tie the player in with the action. That’s when we came up with adding a cannon to the wagon, which could use a variety of cannonballs, each with distinct properties that could either help fight baddies or power up your party.

After we planned how the battles would work, we started to flesh out what the player’s progression would be like in the game. We started with the core concept of how progression works in Papa’s games, where you always make forward progress based on how well you perform your tasks, and you never move backwards or get overly penalized for how poorly you play. We learned in Steak and Jake that it was very frustrating to have your progress reset after making one mistake, so we try to keep this lesson in mind for all of our extended-length games. But in Jacksmith, how would a player know if they did exceptionally well crafting weapons? That’s when we decided to add a treasure chest at the farthest point of the battle trail for each day. If you crafted great weapons and used the cannon just right, you could reach these goals, but if you didn’t you would still be that much closer to your next level-up and unlockable item.

So the next problem was what to put in those treasure chests besides just a bunch of loot and gems. As we worked on how weapons would be designed, we soon figured out what would work as a great reward for these chests.

3. Open-Ended Orders

While planning how players would design each weapon order, a problem soon arose when we realized that a player’s inventory of parts and ores would always be changing. Warriors wouldn’t be able to have specific weapons to order, since you might be all out of silver ore or that cool diamond arrowhead. That’s when we came up with the idea of open-ended orders for each weapon. Each animal would have a weapon of choice, and when they came to your shop, they would simply ask for that type of weapon. It would be up to the player to craft the best one for the situation.

We were then faced with another question: Why would you decide to use one part over another when crafting a sword? We decided to give elemental properties to each part and style of weapon, and in turn, elemental properties to different enemies so that strategy became priority in crafting the weapons. Of course, for players to develop a strategy on how to defeat that day’s enemies, they would need to actually know what kind of baddies would be along their path that day. We decided to add a blacksmith apprentice who could scout out the trail before the start and report back to Jacksmith, and that’s where Scout was created. He’d still need to tag along with you and the warriors so he’d be available to help the next day, so we decided he could man the cannon as well.

Now that we had elemental parts and open-ended orders, we had a perfect idea for what could be in the treasure chests: Epic Weapon designs! Since orders were open, we thought it would be cool that if you made a very specific type of sword, using all of the right parts, it would give your warriors extra stat boosts in the next battle. This would also lead to another layer of strategy, where the player might save up certain parts or ores for later instead of using them right away, in hopes of unleashing an Epic Weapon when it would really help in an upcoming battle.

What Went Wrong

1. Elemental Enemy Overload

Enemies were initially just monstrous versions of all the warriors, but when we needed elemental baddies, we decided that each enemy would have a unique visual style for each of the 8 elements. We started on the shield-wielding Woolcrest, with each variation redesigned to match each element. For the wind element it became a Woolwind with feathers and a beak, while for the water element it became a Riverhoof with fins and gills. This proved to be far too labor intensive, and with 72 more elementals to create, we had to resort to simply changing their colors, and even that took a while.

2. Too Much Time Outside

Early on, when the battle sequence was more of a leisurely hands-off experience, we thought we needed to avoid a landscape constantly looping as the battle moved down the road. A great deal of time was spent making randomly-generated backdrops that were different throughout the entire trail. However, once we incorporated the cannon into the mix, we realized that the player was more concerned about the state of their troops, the cannon refills, and picking up loot to notice if they saw that rock in the same location two screens back.

3. Overbooked

One last thing that went wrong was simply the fact that we were not prepared to handle a second highly popular game franchise. Because of this, we were unable to make a timely sequel which would have kept the franchise’s momentum moving at full speed.

Conclusion

Jacksmith was born out of a self-imposed challenge that we could make a game that both “core” and “casual” gamers would enjoy, one that would be highly-rated among fans of the Papa’s games as well as with those who love strategic, battle-fueled games across other sites.

In the end, Jacksmith was a success! The majority of our fanbase fell in love with the game, and it was highly rated across all gaming portals both core and casual. To that degree, we underestimated the success that Jacksmith would have, and we were unable to put our entire focus into a timely sequel that would have surely kept the Jacksmith franchise moving forward. But fortunately, almost 4 years later, Jacksmith is still a relevant Flash game that is being played by hundreds of thousands of people each week!

Play Jacksmith!

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By Flipline_Tony, January 26, 2016 9:41 am

Introduction

The date was August 5, 2011 when Papa’s Freezeria launched on Flipline.com. It had been over a year since our huge MMO game Remnants of Skystone had launched and quickly failed. We were frantically working on games during this period, doing everything we could to keep Flipline afloat. During this small window of time, we managed to launch seven Flash games including Papa’s Freezeria.

Work on Papa’s Freezeria started immediately after the successful launch of Papa’s Taco Mia! Once it was completed, we started looking for someone to sponsor the game before it was released. Around this time, large gaming portals would sponsor your game by giving you upfront money in exchange for their links and branding to appear in the game. This also usually included some period of exclusivity, where the game would only appear on the sponsor’s website before being available anywhere else.

We were lucky enough to have Armor Games sponsor Papa’s Freezeria, who had also sponsored our platformer “Steak and Jake” the previous year.

What Went Right

1: Sundaes + Concretes

The idea for an ice cream based Gameria actually arose while brainstorming Papa’s Burgeria, though we made Papa’s Taco Mia next instead because we were still uncertain how ice cream would work. But with fresh eyes, we came up with the idea of combining two tasty ice cream treats: the sundae and the concrete. For those not familiar, a concrete is a treat in the US that is like a milk-less milkshake, blended with larger toppings, and eaten with a spoon.

Concretes are great, but when put into the context of a game, it’s just mixing a few ingredients and blending. We decided to add an additional step where you are placing toppings on top of the concrete like a traditional ice cream sundae. From that idea, we created a perfect “blend” of sundaes and concretes that made the gameplay more entertaining, and the orders even more tasty and unique.

2. Customizable Lobby

Papa’s Freezeria’s big addition was the customizable lobby. Our previous Gamerias did have furniture, but the lobbies were pre-designed, and you were simply unlocking the hidden furniture.
The problem with that system was the limited amount of furniture that could be brought. Once again, people found themselves late in the game, with tons of tips and nothing to spend them on.

Now that the lobby was customizable, we could design a huge catalogue of decorations to put in the shop. Players could then pick and choose what furniture and posters they wanted to display. This ended up being a hit, and people were posting pictures, showing off their own unique lobbies in their games.

What Went Wrong

1. Working on the Build Station

This was by far the trickiest station to figure out. We spent a lot of time, testing different mechanics to get the blendable ingredients in the cup. At first, all the mixables and syrups were laid out on the screen, and you had to manually pick them up and squirt them into the cup. Initially we had a very complicated portioning system, where the larger the cup size was, the more scoops you had to put in. It was tedious, confusing, and was too similar to the Topping Station.

We decided to scrap everything and speed up the process with the use of push-button machines. We added moving meters so that you had to time the button press in order to get the perfect portion of ingredients. And as a bonus, if you timed it just right, you would get extra tips from the machine.

This added a unique and fun gameplay experience for the Build Station while speeding up the overall build time.

Early Prototype of the Build Station with Taco Mia place-holders. At one point we thought it would be fun to draw on the cups.

2. Hackers + Exclusivity

When Papa’s Freezeria successfully found a sponsor, we created a special version of the game that would be featured on their site. As was common at the time, the sponsor would have the game exclusively on their site for a while before other websites could show it. After this exclusivity period was over, we would release a second version of the game (called the “viral version”) that could be spread across the other major gaming sites and could be played anywhere. This viral version would also feature MochiAds in the game, which was an ad system we used at the time and was our primary source of income.

Of course we didn’t want the sponsor’s version of the game spreading across the internet early, so we programmed the game to only work on the sponsor’s website. If someone tried to copy this game onto another website it just wouldn’t work, and they would have to wait until we released the “viral version” if they wanted a copy for their website.

Unfortunately, as soon as the game launched on our sponsor’s site, a Chinese gaming site stole the game and hacked into it. They removed our site-locking code, so that the game would now work on any website (including their own) instead of being exclusive. This version immediately went viral, and spread across the internet. Even worse, we realized that while the hackers were removing our site-locking code, they also removed all of the MochiAds that would normally be shown in the game. We made Papa’s Freezeria with the intent that the ads in the viral version of the game would help pay for the time spent making it, and help pay towards us making other games.

We were devastated. Within a day, the game was on thousands of sites illegally, and we were losing out on all the ad revenue we desperately needed to make. During this time we worked like crazy to contact each and every site owner, and inform them that they had an illegal version of the game and they needed to wait until August 5th to get a copy of the viral version. Some sites were really cooperative and removed it, but a good majority simply ignored us.

Conclusion

Papa’s Freezeria turned out to be a fan-favorite Gameria. It was our first foray into sweet foods, and proved to be immensely popular. However, the launch of Papa’s Freezeria was disastrous thanks to the hackers, with tons of lost revenue and tons of stress. The launching of a game is the most critical part of game development, and Papa’s Freezeria’s taught us a lot.

Papa’s Freezeria was the last time we looked for a sponsor (Cactus McCoy 2 sponsorship was already set up, even though the game launched later). After our experience with Papa’s Freezeria, we decided the whole process was far too risky for us. We wanted our future games to be released virally from the start, so the official game with ads could be spread immediately instead of giving hackers an opportunity to exploit a site-locked version, and cut us out of the equation.

For the next Gameria release of Papa’s Pancakeria, we decided to go it alone and self-sponsor the game. At the time, this idea seemed crazy to other developers (and sponsors), but it ended up being the single best move we have ever made. When we started self-sponsoring, our website traffic grew exponentially, and the ads on our website were finally able to cover our development costs. This was huge because we were able to be truly independent. We didn’t have to worry about finding interested sponsors, or make adver-games for other companies. Now we could focus on creating the games we love to make and our fans love to play!

Play Papa’s Freezeria!

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By Flipline Matt, December 18, 2014 3:11 pm

Introduction

Since the release of our casual game Rock Garden, we had been interested in ways to combine casual gameplay with more traditional video game genres, especially with the platforming gameplay seen in our earlier Papa Louie game. We went through a lot of different ways to make that happen, and eventually focused on the color-based gameplay we see in Steak and Jake, where the matches you make in the puzzle affect what you can do in the platforming world. There were a lot of challenges we overcame in making a game of this style, and some unforeseen stumbles were made along the way as we developed the game and saw it release to the public.

 

What Went Right

Balance Between Puzzle and Platforming

When we started designing the game, we knew we wanted the gameplay split into two sections: A platforming section where you’re guiding a character through the level, and a puzzle area where your actions would help the character in the platforming level. It took a while for us to figure out exactly how to combine these two elements, and what form the puzzle portion of the game would take. Some early versions of the game had a match-3 style of puzzle where you would slide rows and columns to make matches, and an alternate version where you would slide blocks around the screen like in our game Rock Garden.

We quickly realized that if you had to spend too long interacting with the puzzle, it was hard to keep up with the action in the platforming level, and the puzzle aspect of the game was just getting in the way. Rather than simplify the platforming part of the game, we decided to reduce the puzzle down to a simple matching-bubble style of puzzle. This way you could quickly glance down and see if there were any matches, and with a single click would be ready to interact with the main platforming game again. Having this simple mechanic for matching colors let players focus on the platforming experience and deciding how best to use their color matches.

 


 

Packed with Tons of Variety

We wanted to keep presenting the player with new things in each level, so we created many different challenges and special levels that would appear as you continue to play. Some levels have you defending Steak from multicolored Milk Bandits that require multiple hits to stop, and other levels have bosses attacking in helicopters which throw dangerous mines in your path. Players will occasionally race against the rival Cocoa Cow to the finish, and other times will be collecting balloons along the path or guiding a troop of Cookie Scouts to the barn. Along with these races and challenges, we also created dozens of areas and enemies that would automatically appear the further you get into the game. Within the levels themselves we also created a tons of objects that Steak and Jake can interact with, including stretchy worm bridges, moving platforms, springboards, and the ever-present blocks and ramps.

Platformer with Endless Play

Rather than having a set amount of levels or puzzles, we set out to create a platformer that could continue indefinitely by generating new levels on its own. The game combines a number of pre-made trail sections to build each level, and keeps things fresh by including boss battles, races, and other challenges in these generated trails. New content is revealed over the course of over 170 trails, so there’s always something new around the corner. The game will continue to generate new levels after this point as well, so players can continue playing as long as they like.

Created a System of Reusable Trails

To allow for the endless levels in the game, we first had to create a large number of individual “chunks” of levels that could be connected and remixed to create the trails. We developed a level editor to design these sections, which would automatically be reskinned with new tiles and new enemies based on whichever area it was used in. Every section was designed a certain way so that its endpoints would match up with the next room, and so Steak wouldn’t get stuck when a trail was generated. Some sections would also allow for branching paths at different heights which would connect to other similar sections — so even if you’re seen that same level chunk before, you may be on the top half instead of the bottom half. Though some levels (like Cookie Scout and Milk Race levels) were laid out by hand, most of the rest of the game is generated from all of the reusable parts.

 

What Went Wrong

Harsh Difficulty Level

As we were developing the game and playing levels over and over, we eventually reached a point where we had gotten so good at keeping up with the color-matching and platforming that it didn’t feel challenging anymore. Feeling that the game had gotten too easy, we kept adding more and more enemies and obstacles to the game, so you had to really pay attention and move quickly to keep Steak out of harm’s way. At the time we didn’t realize that we had tailored the difficulty for ourselves as now-expert players, but after it was released we quickly found out the game was very difficult for beginning players. If we had done further playtesting with other new players we may have caught this issue earlier, but after the game was released and spread virally it was unfortunately too late to do much about this harsh difficulty.

Restarting Trail is a Heavy Penalty

Another issue with the game’s difficulty is when Steak fails in a level and has to restart the entire trail from the beginning. Since the game is structured with roughly 6-minute trails, if you miss an enemy or bump into a wall right at the very end of the trail, you’re forced to repeat the entire 6-minute trail all over again, which became very frustrating for players. This could have been improved with some sort of checkpoint system, or multiple “lives” where it could restart Steak back on a safe section of the path, though unfortunately the game wasn’t designed with this in mind. In our newer platformers such as Cactus McCoy 2 and Papa Louie 2 we’ve added checkpoints to help with this issue.

 

Lulls in the Action

Despite filling the trails with enemies and obstacles to increase the difficulty, there were still times where there was nothing for Steak or Jake to do at the moment, aside from just watching Steak plod along at his constant pace until the screen reveals something new to do. Originally, we only had the speed-boosting speedometer available during the Milk Race levels in the game, and during the rest of the game you were stuck at the same slow pace. Thankfully before the game was released we decided to keep the speedometer in the game full-time to help with these lulls in the action, which did improve the pacing quite a bit.

 

Disconnect between Visuals and Gameplay

After working on Remnants of Skystone with its dark and gritty art direction, we wanted to create something at the opposite end of the spectrum which was bright and playful. We did achieve this look in the game, with its cartoonish characters and saturated colors, but with the difficulty level spiking in the game we ended up in a situation where the visuals no longer matched the gameplay. At first glance, one may expect this colorful game to be easy to casually play (especially for a younger crowd), only to be caught off-guard by the harsh difficulty.

 

Time Spent on Unseen Content

Unfortunately with the difficulty level of the game, many players may not stick around to keep playing and seeing everything included in the game. As the game continues we introduce a ton of new areas and enemy designs, though frustrated players may miss out on seeing all of this content unless they stick with the game. All 60 of the Challenges and Milk Races were also carefully crafted, and players will need to keep playing for quite a while to experience all of these levels. When we later decided to create a Halloween-themed spin-off of the game, we were able to adapt some of the Cookie Scout levels into “Midnight March” so players could get another way to experience them.

Conclusion

In the end, Steak and Jake turned out to be a bright and colorful platformer which incorporates puzzle gameplay in a way we hadn’t seen before. Though there were missteps along the way, we were able to create a new type of hybrid game with a great amount of gameplay and challenges, as long as you can survive the difficulty!

Play Steak and Jake!