Plastic Balls was a Plastic Martians exclusive game written in 2003. It's an entirely original take on the whole arkanoid/breakout genre of games, and takes the concept to a new level!
Plastic Balls was written partially as an exercise in Flash gaming (proving physics based mathematically intensive games in Flash were possible... they were) and partially as a test of the power of games to spread word of mouth. Both proved astonishingly successful! When the game was released it was deliberately not promoted hard to judge market reaction to a new style of game. Within a week of the games launch the Plastic Martians web site was getting 1 million hits a day and the Plastic Balls game has had more than 6 million unique game sessions to date!
We believe the game was such a runaway success due to the fact it was a) free and b) totally original. A very attractive prospect for the average casual gamer!
Written in flash the game threw up some interesting technical problems. Primarily there was the major issue of performance. A great deal of computation goes into working out if a curved surface hits another curved surface and this proved to be the major hit on the responsiveness of the game. However, we worked through various solutions and came up with effectively a "fake" physics solution - something that worked well without to much of a hit.
The game is still played today, although not as much as the first 6 months! A sequel, which addresses some of the not-so-good points of the original, has been in pre-production for some time now, and we hope to release it sometime soon. So watch this space for Plastic Balls 2!
The game was also linked to a high score database which has been recording the high scores since launch. So far the highest score is stupidly high set by some mad bloke - which just goes to show doesn't it? Some people. Too much time.
Plastic Balls was written partially as an exercise in Flash gaming (proving physics based mathematically intensive games in Flash were possible... they were) and partially as a test of the power of games to spread word of mouth. Both proved astonishingly successful! When the game was released it was deliberately not promoted hard to judge market reaction to a new style of game. Within a week of the games launch the Plastic Martians web site was getting 1 million hits a day and the Plastic Balls game has had more than 6 million unique game sessions to date!
We believe the game was such a runaway success due to the fact it was a) free and b) totally original. A very attractive prospect for the average casual gamer!
Written in flash the game threw up some interesting technical problems. Primarily there was the major issue of performance. A great deal of computation goes into working out if a curved surface hits another curved surface and this proved to be the major hit on the responsiveness of the game. However, we worked through various solutions and came up with effectively a "fake" physics solution - something that worked well without to much of a hit.
The game is still played today, although not as much as the first 6 months! A sequel, which addresses some of the not-so-good points of the original, has been in pre-production for some time now, and we hope to release it sometime soon. So watch this space for Plastic Balls 2!
The game was also linked to a high score database which has been recording the high scores since launch. So far the highest score is stupidly high set by some mad bloke - which just goes to show doesn't it? Some people. Too much time.
