Mar 062010
I guess saying “Steambirds Sells” is a bit of a misnomer, but “has been licensed!” doesn’t sound as cool.
Last Wednesday SteamBirds went live on ArmorGames.com! Click here to play it.
I’ll make a retrospective post with sale details and game performance in a week or two, but right now the game is doing very well. 93% of players play for over 2 minutes, which is an incredibly low bounce rate. The average person reloads the game 6 times, 15% of people hit the mute button, and 1.5% of people check out the credits page. Game has been out for around 4 days and I’ve already hit 500k game loads, and close to 5 million level plays.
Whee, stats!
17 Responses to “SteamBirds Sells!”
Comments (17)
Steambirds is fun! And looks great too!
Hey Andy, Congrats on the great game.
Have you got any insight you can share on why you chose Armorgames over other flash sites like Kongregate ETC.. I am trying to do some research into the best home for my game and would be interested in anything you can Share.
Thanks.
I’m a huge fan of Dogfighting but never thought of it in a turn-based way. Steambirds is the first flash game I’ve actually liked in years.
You just got bumped by penny arcade. I hope their publicity helps. Steambirds is a pretty sweet game
congrats, you got on penny arcade! They really recomended SB. I’d really love to see elevation and other flightsim concepts and how you would implement it. Congrats again.
I followed a link from Penny Arcade to Steambirds late yesterday afternoon, and it kept me busy playing and replaying until deep in the evening. It will undoubtedly eat more hours of my life, too, while I figure out how to kill those damn zeppelins without taking any damage. (Okay, let’s be honest — I want to figure out how to kill those damn zeppelins without losing most of my planes.)
I’ve been a fan of turn-based strategy since the cardboard chit Avalon Hill days, and I’ve got to say that Steambirds is a very interesting and entertaining twist on the genre. I particularly liked the puzzle-like quality of the missions and definitely look forward to more. And yes, I’d pay for it.
From the programming side of things, I’d be very interested to hear something about the math involved in the trajectory control on the player’s planes. Very slick and intuitive.
I clicked because of the Penny Arcade link and was very pleased. I instantly thought multiplayer and all the madness that could bring in an environment such as XBL. Good fun, passed the link onward to a few friends. I wish you much success!
Really nice game! I hope to see it expand even more in the future. I see a lot of room for growth with this. It’s inspiring to see a simple concept like this can still be made and be so much fun. It’s one of those games that I wish I would have thought of. =)
Oh and Eric, the Zeppelins are easy, you just get up right behind them and slow down your planes so they have a lot of time to open fire over a few turns.
I managed to complete all of the levels that I could see, though I only got about 30 stars total… Are there more levels to unlock than just the first page, or is that it for now?
I’d really like to see more dynamic positions for the the enemies and such at the start…. Also being able to upgrade your units. I think having a lot of weak enemy planes could be challenging just due to having to destroy so many enemy targets while they try to chip away at your defense.
I could probably think up ideas for this game all day which is another reason why it is so inspiring! Good luck with your future endeavors! :)
p.s. I also found this through Penny Arcade
Congrats on an excellent game, may it bring you riches.
I really like the mechanics, and can’t help but think that they’re ideal for a multiplayer turn-based strategy game, with simultaneous planning phases cutting down on the wait that usually accompanies such games.
Perhaps sometime in the future.
SteamBirds is a fantastic game and very creative. Even though I have earned four stars on every level (which, nicely, wasn’t too easy) I keep going back to try some other methods of playing each level. The only thing missing from this game is more levels, of course! Thanks for the fun.
I’m in the 15% who mutes the game–hope I’m not missing too much, but I don’t want to disturb my girlfriend while I play and play and play. I’m done with it now, having figured out how to get 4 stars on the regular and bonus levels, so let me add both my congratulations on an excellent game and a wish for more levels (and maybe some customizability). Until then, I’m off to check out your other games.
Hi,
Two things:
* There are a little problem when the shield is used: The airplane become invisible.
* It would be cool if the statistics window show the location of weapons (and shooting range) and vulnerabilities.
I really enjoyed the game and I hope it will happen a second version in the future. ;)
Congratulations!
The best games are the ones that manage to present a simple interface but a lot of depth. Steambirds definitely fulfills that. A great concept applied to a perfect setting. Congrats on your success!
First of all, congratulations. I was excited when I saw this on the front page of Armor Games.
Second, if you aren’t already aware (unlikely) the open beta of FC2 has been released.
I’d like to talk to you and see what you think of it. If you can get ahold of Colin as well, that would be awesome. Drop by the chat room sometime! We miss you!
I was sad to see that the forum manager is NOT weasel/andy moore, but rather an ambiguous “Capt_sparkworkz.”
I’d like you to take a look at this video, and I hope my feelings come across.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UFri4kY1HY
If you have the time and inclination, a “replay” function would be fantastic – something that would play back, on command, our fights with the command phases skipped.
Am I making sense? Like, record the games and then play them back in realtime.
That sort of thing would make this game like solid platinum.
As it stands, it is gold.
Hi Andy,
I stumbled on SteamBirds yesterday on Kongregate.
I was a player of the table game Blue Max, years ago, and I am a fanatic of dogfight games. Well, what shall I say… SteamBirds is GREAT!
Although, IMHO, it can be improved in several parts:
1) [BUG] Firing animation: the algorithm should be refined, some times it happens to see a plane shooting in a direction opposite related to the target’s turn direction (i.e: if my target is turning left, and my plane too, I can see a wide spread of shots far behind the target’s tail). Hope this could be exhaustive as an explanation but I’m sure you can reproduce that personally….
In addition, some kind of animation should be provided when a plane suffers damage being shot at.
2) [improvement] How about supporting collisions between planes?
3) [improvement] 180/360° turns: animation should be improved. currently the planes always make CW turns even if they were turning CCW… How about adding some animation of loopings/tonneaux?
4) [for future versions] how about taking into account the plane’s flight altitude?
5) [for future versions] do you plan to use same engine in other games similar to SteamBirds but with an historical setting?
Hope you find my suggestions useful for improvement. Keep up the good work! :-)
MAx – Italy
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions guys! I’m hard at work on a new version. :)