I have been working on a couple of Flash games recently for my new arcade site zapgamez.com. The first of these games is Zombie Killer Gorefest 3, which is now previewing on Zap Gamez. You can play the game here:
http://www.zapgamez.com/games/action/zombie-killer-gorefest-3

The official release text for the game is as follows:

Currently exclusive to ZapGamez.com, Zombie Killer Gorefest 3 is a point and click shoot 'em up where you have to defeat the zombie hordes in 3 chilling action-packed levels. Inspired by 70's and 80's Horror and B-Movie genres, this game includes it's fair share of blood and gore, so is therefore not appropriate for younger players.

I created the game in actionscript 2, possibly one of my last as2 projects before I move over to as3 fully. The graphics and animation are a more prominent part of the game than the scripted aspects which are fairly basic hitTest functions.

The game will probably stay exclusive to Zap for the next couple of weeks before I release it through MochiAds distribution. If you are interested in getting the game for your site when it is released please subscribe to my RSS feed and I will announce the release here on my blog in the near future.

I have recently been working on a highly versatile premium theme for WordPress which is due for release soon. As part of the project I wanted to test how the theme (and WordPress itself) could work with sites of various different genres. My intention was that the theme would be configurable enough via it's Options Menu that it could easily be styled to suit corporate sites such as recruitment, blue chip company, technology site  & product portfolio, media sites such as magazine, news, image & video gallery and also youth oriented sites such as music / band website,  games website.

The theme also features simple integration for banners and advertising,  so creating a couple of  'working example' sites was not only a good way of testing the theme's versatility but also a potential source of a few extra quid!

I had been wanting to do a games & videos website for a while, and I had built the theme's default settings around a 'corporate magazine' look & feel, so I decided the games site would be a great way to test the theme. Here is my wordpress games arcade site so far:  Zap Gamez

I decided to look around and see what articles I could find about creating a games arcade website with wordpress, or if there was a plugin that allowed you to easily insert games into your WordPress blog. I found this article by Emanuele Feronato:

• Creation of a Flash arcade site using WordPress

It describes a method of populating your WordPress blog with games via a feed from MochiAds (A source of free games for websites) using custom fields. However, for my site I wanted to be able to integrate games from various free content suppliers and host games on my own server as well as embedding games hosted by content suppliers. What I really wanted was a plugin that could embed games into posts or pages using shortcodes.

THE PLUGIN

The prototype plugin I have built includes the following features:

4 Different views:

1. Grid view - a grid of thumbnail images linking to each game (can be restricted to a single category or parent category)
2. Category view - this view includes a medium sized image and a written description of the game
3. Single page view - the page where you play the game itself
4. Featured Game view - a page with a list of featured games

Different embedding modes:

1. iFrame embedding - embed iFrame content using code provided by free games sites, or use this method to display games from your own server where an html file has been provided with the free game download.
2. Flash embedding - embed Flash content using embed codes provided by other sites, or embed flash games directly from your own site. You can even upload them easily using the wordpress 'Add Media' tool.

The beta version of the WP Game Embed plugin can be found here.

With the recent creation of my first games website www.artanoid.com (hopefully the first of many as I have two other games currently in development), I have been looking into various advertising strategies and in particular at the various link and banner exchange programs being offered specifically for games websites.

I have signed up for a few of the different banner exchanges out there and have found that although they are mostly based on similar technologies and business models, they actually vary quite a lot in terms of the quality of service they provide. In this article I intend to compare and review three of the best known games banner exchanges on the net.

Read on…

Artanoid is a Flash remake of the original classic arcade game Arkanoid. It was created by 76 Creative web design studio. Complete each level to reveal a different fine art masterpiece, while enjoying a library music soundtrack and old-school arcade sound effects.

Check out the new Artanoid Game webpage. www.artanoid.com