Merlin’s Dev Blog A Wizard’s Flash Blog

Hotel Escape 2 – The full overview

It's been a few days that HE2 has been out now, so i figure i should talk about what's in this episode and what I've changed. 

Fun Value

Those of you who played Hotel Escape 1 may have been faced with a few situations where it took you bloody ages to find anything. I had very small hit boxes for all items, and no visual response to your mouse being in the right position to click. This was originally supposed to make the game harder,and to the hardcore escape game players, it wasn't that bad, but for the casual gamers out there, it just frustrated them. In Hotel Escape 2, I made things much more obvious. First of all i moved away from having to find too many items, combining them, etc, and moved closer to puzzles you had to solve. As for navigation, and finding items, I changed the mouse icon to arrows. It makes it less frustrating for causal gamers, but moves towards being too easy for fans to this genre.

Navigational Arrow

Cut scenes

One thing that is a big change from my last game is something I've already talked about, cut scenes. Though it increases the size of the file, it involves you a lot more, and adds something i think was missing in my first game. I found that HE1 was extremely static, with hardly any movement. You opened a door and you'd get the next picture of an open door. In HE2, you get to see most doors opening!  When you go into the room that you have to get by with a code, you get trapped in, and there's a nice little animation.

Music & Sound Effects

Usually I'm not a fan of sound in my games. As a flash game player myself, i usually like playing my own music while playing a game, and usually reach for the mute button straight away. In HE1 however, the reviews all pointed to putting some sound, so i added a menu tune. I went a little further in HE2. I added a track for the whole duration of the game, (Moonight Sonata by Beethoven), and had some sound effects too. The response i got from the first impressions though was that i didn't have enough sound effects. Seems that once you add some, you need one for everything! So next time, it'll be all or nothing. 

Coding Technique

When i made HE2, i started pretty much from scratch and took a whole new approach, by learning AS3. HE1 was coded in AS2, and was the first time i coded in ActionScript. I do Computer Science in University however, and am very familiar with Java, so when I heard that AS3 conformed to the ECMAScript Language Specification, which is very similar to the structure that Java conforms to, I decided to make a framework for my Escape Games. I made two main classes, NavButton, and GameObject. Whenever I had a navigational item in a frame, I would make it a NavButton object, which handles events, where to go, what to display, etc. GameObject did the same thing but for items. It made things much easier to code, and as a result my game was much more organised. It also means that I can apply the same framework to HE3, so it'll take me half the effort HE2 did.

In-Game Tutorial

So my first game, HE1, when i look back, was horrific, i have to be honest. That Tutorial annoys me so much how slow and messy it is. As Kyle Gabler said in his “How to Make a Game in 48 Hours”, "All the cool kids are doing it now!". He was referring to the way tutorials have now moved from static pictures to being embedded directly into the game as you're playing along. So thats exactly what I did. It could have been better, but not bad for a first attempt i believe.

Embedded Tutorial

Conclusion

I think that it's a huge step from HE1, and I believe i have widened the audience who will enjoy this game. The success however, is yet to be seen. There has been a few sponsor viewings, we'll see if it sells! 

Where can I find this game?

As the game isn't sponsored yet, I'm going to wait a few days before publishing it here, but if you're a member on FlashGameLicense with a community level of 2, and a market level of 1, you can find the game here. I will have a page here with the game, a walkthrough and some information on it eventually, so check back!