Browser games

An advertisement of browser games seen in Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage and 8bit Doves

Browser games are the main type of games created by Nitrome. After failing to enter the mobile phone market, Nitrome's first flash game was created to see if income could be brought in from them, and fortunately this worked. Browser games serve as Nitrome's main source of revenue, and have been since the release of Hot Air the main type of games Nitrome creates, these games working with advertisements to generate revenue for Nitrome.

Browser games encompass a large variety of genres, ranging from action to puzzle games, though the main type of genre Nitrome focuses on is puzzle. Though the development time varies, they currently range from one to three months. Mat Annal oversees the development of all Nitrome games.

History

Nitrome started making browser games after the abandonment of the mobile version of Chick Flick . Nitrome's first flash game was Hot Air, and despite it not making as much money as commissioned work, it still allowed for the production of further browser Nitrome games. Nitrome has continued to make browser games to the present day.

Markup language

All of Nitrome's browser games are in Flash, though Nitrome will eventually be making games in Unity. This interest in Unity was previously not shared by Nitrome, as Unity was previously seen as having no advantages over Flash.

Nitrome is currently not interested in HTML5 due to unfamiliarity with it.

For the Nitrome Jam because there was more freedom in terms of what markup language/game engine could be used, some Nitrome games were made in different software: some were in Flash, one was in HTML5, and the rest were in Unity. The Nitrome Jam served as the first time a Nitrome game was made that was browser based but not in Flash, and also the first time Nitrome made a Unity game.

Game development

Development time

The current development time of Nitrome's flash games varies greatly, usually taking two to three months to make, although Nitrome sometimes manages to create a game in a single month, such as (but not limited to) icon games. Nitrome's development time has varied throughout their years of being active. Early on, from from the release of Hot Air (late 2005) to 2007 it took around a month (four weeks) to create a game, which later shifted to six weeks, eight weeks if the game had to be developed longer. Game development soon became longer, ranging from one to three months to make a game and on average a game being completed in ten weeks.

While Nitrome often sticks to a regular development time for games, some games have taken much longer to develop than most games, Steamlands for instance taking six months to make and Nitrome Must Die taking a similar amount of time. Originally, it was thought that longer development of a game would result in more income from ad revenue, however, this proved to not be the case, though Nitrome will sometimes still spend more time making some games if the game is enjoyable to work on.

The length of game development, and also the length of a game are determined by ad revenue, specifically, the amount of time that can be spent on the game and what the game can be expected to make back in ad revenue. The budget for individual games are smaller than what Mat Annal was paid when hired by companies to make games.

-Although the ideas for most Nitrome games come from Mat Annal , he allows all staff members to submit ideas for games as well. To keep track of ideas, all staff members have books where they can write down their ideas, and every month a meeting is held where these game ideas are discussed. Before game ideas can be worked on, they first have to be approved by Mat Annal and upon being approved they can be worked on once that team has finished their current project. Once development on the idea starts, further ideas for the game are brainstormed with others in the office. Ideas may sometimes change dramatically throughout development based on how the game may work when the game's basic controls are programmed into the game and can be used.

Nitrome avoids using mature content in their games, as they do not want to lose their already large audience, as it was their family friendly attitude at the start which allowed them to gain such a diverse audience. Still, Nitrome does sometimes create games with dark themes in them, such as Final Ninja or Nitrome Must Die, though even in these games mature content is avoided. Despite the absence of dark games in recent years, Nitrome still is open to creating games of this type.

Many of Nitrome's earlier flash games used to be coded in ActionScript 2, but since then Nitrome has moved to coding games in ActionScript 3 through Flash Develop. Game art is created with Photoshop and depending on the preference of the artist sprites can either be animated in Photoshop or with Promotion. Music is created with Logic Pro. In recent years most tools for Nitrome games are created directly at Nitrome, such as level editors for different games and game engines, though for some of their earlier games Nitrome has used Box 2D to handle physics more complicated than other games.