In the popular “Late Night” segment, Conan would make humorous predictions of what was going to happen in the years to come, even though 2000 had come and gone. In contrast, these are going to be very serious predictions on where Flash/browser-based gaming can/will go in the future – from the coming months to years down the line. Sure, you may end up laughing, but these are my predictions on where Flash can go and where it can falter…

• Flash games will not only be used as advertising, but will have direct effects on the stories of the games they’re linked to - This is an easy one because the trend has already started. While it’s a couple steps away, Dragon Age: Journeys is a fun flash game that can be tied to an EA account. Depending on how much of the game you complete, EA will reward you with in-game items for the full Dragon Age: Origins. If they can share enough information to make it so that your progress in a Flash game can equate to rewards in the retail release, it seems more than possible to have the same factors affect the development of the story. Perhaps not main plot elements, but wouldn’t it be cool if the actions of your Flash character prevented a city from being raided in the main game?

• Flash and browser-based games will become major releases - With the current internet infrastructure in the U.S., this is impossible. Still, the signs are there and waiting for everything to catch up. Flash gaming has already become where one can find some of the best indie releases out there. In fact, Flash portals provide monetary compensation to Flash developers by “sponsoring” their games. Games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars that are run through Facebook are monetized via micro-transactions. With EA’s acquiring of Playfish, it’s clear that I’m not the only one who feels that there is a lot of money to be made in this market. If your argument is that these are all super-casual games, then might I direct you to Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes, which are starting to find their place on the net. This is also dependent on the success of the OnLive service, which promises that you will be able to stream full games through your PC. If OnLive proves successful, it could become a proof-of-concept for developers to start hosting games off their own servers to which you pay for access.

• Flash may die, but it will die at the hands of the “App” - To say that a software is untouchable is just downright ignorant. I’m sure people thought assembly would be the only language you ever needed, but certainly grander things have come and gone. That grander thing might just be the app(lication). While the number of inputs are limited on current touchscreen phones, the app has done an amazing job at being that “thing that takes up those extra 15 minutes you have to kill.” Of course, if Adobe were a smart company, they would start right away at making versions of Flash compatible with mobile browsers. As mobile phones keep advancing, we may just see that happen. But don’t underestimate the power of the app. Hell I think they even have an app for that.

The next 10 years will see a lot of changes to the gaming scene as we know it. There’s a part of me that feels we are on a path to comic book-dom. This means developers will still pander to our niche of “core gamers,” but it will be a different sort of game that takes advantage of the mass market. These will be social networks, similar to MMOs, but based on whatever you are looking to do at the time. I think they will advance from the rudimentary Farm Towns that exist on Facebook, but don’t be surprised when a Wizard101-like world is the anticipated release for the holiday season.

There will be exceptions where the experience is actually enhanced by being able to enter the game’s world through other portals. Madden is the easy example of this. It seems like a simple logical step to be able to manage your team and check your stats on the go, and then play the game in your private league with friends when you get home. Or perhaps there’s a bonus dungeon that is inaccessible to your character in Dragon Sword: Future Eternity Cycle (or whatever they might call RPGs down the line). This means that on the bus ride home from work or during your lunch, you fire up your DS:FEC app, and perform a sidequest that unlocks the dungeon by the time you get home. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

Newgrounds

Founded by Tom Fulp, the programmer behind the dynamic developer duo that is Behemoth (creators of Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers), Newgrounds is likely the largest site of user-submitted and peer-reviewed content on the web. The site primarily relies on amateur or very small independent developers to submit their Flash game/video to the community. Then it is up to the community to either protect it and push it to the top, or to “blam” it and keep it from ever seeing the light of day.

But the selection here isn’t limited to only Flash games. You can also find a huge supply of music, art assets and many flash videos – some excellent, some not so. In fact there is so much to explore and discover that it seems like a lot of the great stuff could easily get lost in the muck. Fortunately, the site does a great job of featuring some of the best submissions on their front page, saving you a lot of hassle. However, if you are brave, there are many deep, dark horrible holes you can crawl into to see what is likely the best representative of the darker side of humanity – at least the more “dick-joke” centric side of humanity. A site both for consumers and producers, Newgrounds is great if you want to create, critique or just see what’s new.

Kongregate

Kongregate may be my favorite Flash portal if only because I’m a dirty achievement whore. That’s right. They took your achievements, and they got Flash in them. Or did they take your Flash, and get Achievements on it? Either way, the badge system set up in Kongregate provides incentive to really dig deep into certain games. It helps that they typically only give badges to games worth spending a large amount of time on. And why would you want badges? To get more points! What do the points do? Increase your level, duh. And the level does…well, nothing really. But you can still vote on your favorite flash games!

Kongregate even includes a pay-out for the most popular new release of the week and of the month. All in all, the average quality seems to be a little higher than what you might find at Newgrounds, but there is much less content and games here tend to be on a “second run” of sorts.

Now these two portals are far from the only ways to find new Flash games. Armor Games is similar to both Kongregate and Newgrounds, but usually games sponsored on Armor Games will find their way to either of the two featured portals. Jay is Games is a really good site for uncovering some really neat gems, but so much of their selection skews to the very casual that there is a lot of sifting required to get to the good stuff. I am also partial to the Indie Games Blog, but again the focus of the site is on indie game development, regardless of whether it is or is Flash.

So there you have it. There are many doors to chose from – many more pages added to your choose-your-own adventure novel called “Life.” No worries, I’ll still be here. I just want to spend some time not only showing where to find great Flash games, but really celebrating where Flash is heading and what it could become. Don’t get me wrong, if I stumble upon greatness, I will absolutely let you know. But Flash is in a place to really change the future of gaming. Will it start a revolution? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s a debate for later. For now, waste some time enjoying and discovering some great Flash games.

Coign of Vantage

Well, it takes a while to put a million pieces back together!

Made by two guys named Markus and Philipp based out of Vienna, Coign of Vantage has the player adjusting his or her mouse to line up pixels in such a way that a 2D image is formed. The twist is that the pixels are scattered in 3D space, and the only thing you can control is the camera. Did I mention the time limit? Time begins to count down from thirty seconds as soon as the first pixels appear. However, with each image you complete, you gain more time to complete further images. Still, as the clock winds down, your mouse starts flailing more and more as you try to find just where the hell you need to put the camera. What’s the goal? Points, baby, points! Finish as many as you can to earn the high score and gloat to your friends about your more worldly perspective. Or don’t and just enjoy the game and the soothing piano accompaniment.

Starlight

Seriously, those squiggles mean something…

As you may have concluded from the name, Starlight has you manipulating the heavens themselves — bending them to your god-like powers, all in the name of pretty 2D pictures. Imagine looking up in the sky, connecting the dots to make a pretty picture, and then your jerk brother comes up and spins the stars around in 3D so that you can’t tell what you are looking at anymore. It’s now your job to spin those stars back into place so that the world may marvel at your celestial vandalism. The game has three difficulty settings, meaning you can choose just how casual you want your casual gaming experience to be. Take all day with the easy difficulty and tie thousands of others for the high score. The middle difficulty provides a higher score for faster completion, but you can still take all day to finish them should you choose. Pro mode, on the other hand, comes in with a fistful of whoop-ass and gives you 30 seconds to finish as many of the 64 puzzles as possible. Even with the two second extension per completed picture, it is still quite a task. Also, I’m not sure what it is with these perspective gaming guys and their fetish for piano music, but the music does provide a nice calming background for whichever mode you feel like playing.

So that’s it for this week. I told you, very niche, but I feel as though there is a lot to be had here. Now I’m not going to make any promises about what you will get from me next week. Do you remember paragraph one when I told you I was switching up the game plan? You got so mad, I thought you were gonna throw something at me. You know, you should probably see someone about those rage issues. Or go play some Starlight. Seriously, that piano is MAXIMUM relaxation music. Check you next week, dear readers.

After a long silence, here I am. Once again back is the incredible, not-so-rhyme animal, Incredible T. Or perhaps the incredible, inedible Tony. ‘Lo what could stir the Tony so strongly that he found it necessary to write again? The answer, my esteemed friends and colleagues, is Flash games.

I’d like to begin with a discussion of the qualification of a Flash game. A Flash game can be made using Adobe flash, but I really use this as a general term for browser based gaming. There are slight variations between engines used, but the point is that the code is compact enough to be downloaded and then run within the confines of your browser window. A Flash game is typically an independent production from a single person or a small team. However, there are known contradictions to this, in particular the Dragon Age Journeys game put out by EA2D. So as you can see, there has been a large amount of evolution to the Flash game genre. Now take my hand and join me on a trip to visit a couple of the latest and greatest residents of the magical world of Flash.

Canabalt

CHEESE IT!

Ah, here is a game marvelous in its simplicity. Known as an iPhone app from a group called Semi Secret Software, Canabalt really has its roots in the hands of two prolific indie designers; Adam Atomic in charge of the game and its visuals and Dan Baranowsky in charge of the music. As some sort of perfect storm of simplicity, the game is highly addictive. In fact, these guys keep it so simple that your only means of control is a jump key! Originally mapped to the x and c keys, as an iPhone app you find yourself frantically trying to tap the screen (or click for the browser version) to jump over all the obstacles dumped in your path. And what, pray tell, are you running from? Who the hell knows! I just know it must be scary as hell because the more obstacles you miss, the faster your little man books it from the left side of the screen to the right. The game also derives a lot of its atmosphere from the fast retro-esque music and sound design, as well as the carnage ensuing in the background. If you enjoy this fantastic work that was first constructed on the flixel engine, be sure to check out another fav of mine called Gravity Hook.

The Company of Myself

“I’m Sparticus!” “No I’m Sparticus!”

This game, created by Eli Piilonen (known as 2Darray), features the “these are my clones” style of gameplay that has recently been showcased in major titles like Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time. While you navigate with the arrow keys like you would in any other platformer, the main mechanic of the game is restricted to a reset button which starts the level over with a shadowy clone enacting what you just did. On certain levels, you need many “yous” in order to complete your objectives. But on other levels, this mechanic is abandoned. You are given an assistant that you swap between using the same key as the reset button. Otherwise, you’re trying to jump over chasms and off of your clones in an attempt to reach a door that you would not be able to get to yourself. Not only are the mechanics of the game sound, but the art style (provided by Luka Marcetic) and the music (from David Carney) provide a melancholy atmosphere that fits perfectly with the game’s story displayed through on screen text.

Continuity

Not for the weak of mind

A current entrant for the 2010 Independent Games Festival for the student competition, Continuity is definitely one of the best twists on the traditional platformer I have seen in a long time. Created by a group of students that live in Gothenburg, Sweden who call themselves Ragtime Games, Continuity gets a little bit of your sliding puzzle in its platformer. Or is it a little bit of its platformer in your sliding puzzle? Either way, players have to navigate their little stick dude through 32 levels that become both increasingly complex as a platforming maze and as a puzzle. The aesthetic is kept to simple shapes with solid color backgrounds which allows you to more easily see which pieces line up correctly and in what fashion. The sounds design takes an interesting twist with a very calm, quiet and melodic tune while zoomed out, which stands in contrast with a fast-paced steady electronica rhythm to accompany the zoomed in platforming. Your goal? Simply to scarf up all the red keys in a level and then make it to the door. There is no time limit, so the game lets you take it at your pace. Just don’t be surprised when you find yourself checking the time and a couple hours have passed.

So there you have it, a quick introduction to some of the most recent cool cats to enter the Flash Gaming scene. But this is definitely only the tip of the iceberg that is the Flash games community. In fact, there are now several communities that make their living as portals for thousands upon thousands of browser based games. I hope you enjoyed this first foray into the World of Flash and look out for the next installment where I’ll talk about where many of these games make berth. (Yes, I used a nautical term.)