I had an idea for a game about a month ago. Normally I just prototype this things, file them away, and move on to the next one (there’s always a next one). I was taking part in the MochiAds beta at the time, though, so I figured I’d put a little more work into it and release it on a few sites. To cut a not-too-long-story short, making games sucks. I’ll qualify that. I love prototyping, but I’ve spent the last month (on and off in my after-work non-girlfriend free-time) essentially adding instruction screens, level selection screens, and high score integration. The actual gameplay (and all 10 levels) haven’t changed at all since my first prototype (which took about 2 hours) over a month ago.

This isn’t to say that I’m going to ever stop making games… because it’s too much fun. I’m not going to hold my breath on the financial rewards coming in from the MochiAds, but it’s pretty cool that I can track how many people are playing across a bunch of different sites (sadly, MochiBot doesn’t work with Flash 9 yet). And once it’s been out there awhile, I can flip a switch and turn all the low-CPM ads into links back to my own site.

Why does doing interface stuff take so long? Well, for one thing, it’s boring as hell. This is the main reason MXML exists… but unfortunately, neither of the two “services” I’m targeting allow it: Whirled (still in super-secret Alpha) and MochiAds. The other that I wouldn’t mind supporting is Kongregate, but they’re not Flash 9-enabled, yet. Perhaps Flex isn’t quite mainstream enough (and by that I mean stupid-simple). Or maybe rather than building more games I should devote some time to developing an AS3-only interface library.
On to the game! I whipped up an ad-crazy embedded version just to test out a couple of other ad mechanics. Or you could go directly to the SWF. The thing runs at 900×400, so I’m not sure how well it’s going to embed below: