There is something about flash games that catches my eye.  Maybe it’s the ease of which it can produce a silly or entertaining game, or sometimes it’s the quality and effort put forth by what often is a single man project, with maybe a few free music resources here and there.  Either way, I’ve found that as the quality of Flash has improved over the years, so has the amount of endless entertainment for me at Newgrounds.

What I want to talk about are the diverse subjects attempted in Flash.  If there has been a type of game, someone has attempted it in Flash, all the way from the basic point and click games from the early flash days (Pico’s School, anyone?  Maybe StickDeath.com’s SWAT games?) to even a true raycaster!  Of these, it seems puzzle games, tower defense games, and freeroaming side/top shooters dominate the types of games I see, though the occasional RTS creeps in.

Of all these games to play, one would wonder why they exist since there are plenty of games available that are of higher quality.  For some of us, the ease of being able to play a game right there on the PC without having to worry about anything else is always a good thing.  In this way, Flash almost brings the simplicity of unified hardware (and the advantage of consoles) to developers, with a small difference- a slower computer will not be able to play flash games as optimally as a fast computer.  But this is 2008- few people still have Pentium 3’s as a main computer, and those that do will be forced to upgrade soon.

Another thing to note about Flash is the large community it already has.  Places like Newgrounds and ArmorGames are already dedicated to Flash content in general, plus with the maintainer of Newgrounds (Tom Fulp) ALSO having written Flash content for the site, it’s surprisingly easy to find someone willing to make this type of game or that.  To contrast with other systems, there is a large base of freeware games available for PC, but it is not as centralized.  It also requires some installation, which may not be what a person intends to do right off the bat.  Console developers take quite a bit of cash, or modified game systems, in order to begin programming for.  The modding is often a TOS violation and keeps the homebrew software underground!

It seems to me that because of these advantages over other freeware alternatives and its free source also being a positive when considering professional games, Flash will continue to enjoy an audience of viewers and players.  Because of this, I will continue to watch those who develop games on this platform for trends, ideas, and possibly even content!

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