Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg

Auditorium, clever design and beautiful presentation

Today I found a neat little game in one of the office-chats.

Auditorium is a great example for games on the Flash-platform. It has an extremely focused scope and is in no way handicapped by Flash's restriction in ways many games unfortunately are. It's very accessible for most people but is not because of that an easy game. I got to the third Act's sixth level, after that I couldn't figure out how to solve the puzzle. But I'll be back, trying again for sure.

Auditorium... I'm stuck...

The game is played by using tools on the screen to redirect the flow of a steady stream of particles. You have to get the particles flowing through certain "Audio Containers", fill them up and then progress to the next level. The gameplay could easily be ported to any system able to calculate and render it; like the Apple iPhone, the 360's XBLA or PS3's PSN.

Now the question is, how small did this idea start? Surprisingly, Auditorium was meant to only be a mere widget at the top of Cipher Prime [available 5/12-08] to engage visitors for a few minutes as they visited our site. In fact, the game was not even supposed to be a puzzle game. The first ideas that were thrown around were ideas of shooters and reaction games. We weren’t sure what sort of direction to take or where to start. So, Dain set off on a small personal journey of recreating an explosion effect he had made in 3D early this year. Meanwhile, I starting working on the game design and ideas.

- http://blog.cipherprime.com/ (5/12-08)

A common problem with flash-games if you ask me is that even though the idea and concept might be pretty good, the game just isn't suited for the plattform. Flash is actually quite demanding on your computer, it doesn't let you use the right mouse-button (there might be a work-around for this, I don't know) and one of the most important thing; I don't think people want to dedicate the time and effort worthy of a "real game" (as many would call it) into a flash-game on a website. This game however works very well and this among many other, is the kind of game I want to play when I'm looking for something very minimal and accessible to play during a break at work.

Try it out.

http://playauditorium.com/ (available 5/12-08)