Hello, we have released a new flash game named Masakrator. Since we were mostly adventure/puzzle games creators, we decided that it would be a good idea to practice developing some actual game mechanics. The game is a top-down shooter, where you shoot aliens and upgrade your weapons. We worked hard and learned a lot during the development of this game. Hope you like it!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/631915

Newgrounds Tagging system

There is a newgrounds update coming at some point, in which authors will get more use of their chosen tags (the tag choice was implemented already, but they don't do much yet). As I've heard you will be able to get a full list of flash submissions with the same tag (a. k. a. Shooters, Puzzles, Drama, Parody, Comedy and etc.). That is why today I'd like to <pasvarstyti/pamastyti> about how else could the surfing through tags be more satisfactory and what more features could they have.

One of them is choosing multiple tags at once, for example puzzle platformer or action platformer. Those are quite different and would require some pointless game loading before you see that it's not what you wanted if you could only check platformer thus at least two tags at once would be nice. Now this addition could be useful at some points, but the negative points would be that, some good games that have a weird tag combination would be often overlooked and also this depends on the design, but more often than not such search system would look bad within a site. In the end I really can't decide whether this would be useful or not.

Another one is sorting games by score (that I think will be made without me mentioning it). But I thought of some score sorting which does not include the from the highest to the lowest system. One of those would be based on review score. That would be the most controversial product. That is the one where review scores are furthest away from the average review score (ex. A flashes average review score is 5, but the reviews are only 0 and 10, this would be the most controversial game on the other hand if a review average is 8 and all the reviews vote 8, the flash isn't controversial at all). There is a mathematical formula to count that, but right now I can't remember what it is.

Well that's all I could think of because I'm on vacation right now and its heck hot in here in Montenegro. And that makes it hard for me to think. So what are your thoughts on this topic? Do you have any brilliant suggestions?

Art games

Good day newgrounders. Today I would like to speak about art games and other collections... blah blah blah. Imagine some more introduction sentences. We all know that you hate to read, so I will just get to the point.

Recently I saw a new and rising game collection "Art games". If you would be kind, I would like to suggest some works to be included there, as the collection is currently rather small. So here are those works:

Menulis - Why? Relaxed atmosphere, not very challenging. Satisfaction coming not from achieving or overcoming, but rather from the actual process of playing. Some freely interpretable symbolism. Interesting execution (animations were hand drawn on scraps of paper, then scanned and put into flash).

Miestas - Why? Similar to above as it is sequel of the above game.

Pragaras - Why? Lots of symbols, thoughts on society. Intended emotion is not fun or happiness, but concern and meditation. Gives some analysis on modern values and virtues.

Those three were the works of our 3j team and I do not want to be some self-centerd advertiser. Here are some works by other people:

Every day the same dream - Why? Again satisfaction not in the overcoming of obstacles, but in the calm and slow process itself. The game has a point of view, expresses the universal values and virtues, which tend to be forgotten (not only these days, it was always so, just in different ways).

The Scale of the Universe - Why? Well this one may be highly debatable, but the main reason I guess is that everything is based on the experience, on the fact of how facanated you feel despite the fact that you can only zoom in or out.

William and Sly - Why? My personal favorite. Beautiful art, laid back atmosphere. The whole fairy tale mood... And so on.

Ok, that is all. If you find that some games lack something to be regarded as "Art games" please express your opinion. After all, art is something that is highly based on personal opinion and lacks a strict definition.

Collections in general

Another thing I was interested in speaking about was collections. It has come to my attention that a lot of games which could be sorted into collections aren't in any. That is why I would like to discuss some of methods newgrounds could use to submit work to collections.

One of them would be author suggested collection. When author submits a work, he could choose a collection which he thinks would fit the game. And then when user clicks "Recommend for a collection" button he would first get the authors suggestion. The user then could choose whether he agrees with the author or not. If he does, his vote goes for the authors sugesstion, if he does not he gets to choose from that outrageous and huge list.

Another would be introducing another set of points for collection submitters, similar to blam and protection points. They would increase voting power or collection voting power or something like that. Or maybe have some diffirent secrets tree which would unlock with proper collection votes. Like blam and save points the user would get points only if the work is submitted to the collection he suggested.

And lastly if collections would be revived, there would be a need to browse them easily and find what you are looking for with as little digging as possible. Now I will not get into this, so wait for two weeks until I am allowed to post on front page again. I'll give a thought about how to sort work within a collection.

Please share your thoughts about things that I wrote, whether it is about art games or about collections in general.

Please check todays daily fifth submission. I found that submission very interesting. Something of uncommon style for newgrounds.com. I'm happy to see something this unusual (unusual for newgrounds) and it sadened me a little that this persons works are a bit underrated. So if you have the time go scout the art of this person and watch a few more submissions by him/her.

That is all, and here is the best picture ever. (I probably failed at joke, but that's not the point of this post, so don't flame me too much).

Hello.

On thursday I am having a Lithuanian speaking exam for school. We get a list of topics to choose from and we must get ready to speak about the topic for ~7 minutes. My topic is: "There are Lithuanians, whose woks are important for worlds culture history. Present three authors from diffirent fields of culture and reveal the importance of their works". My choices were M. K. Ciurlionis, B. Sruoga, J. Mekas.

M. K. Ciurlionis is an important artist and a musician with a very unique art style. His works were shown worldwide long after his death. And they traveled around the world even to Japan, Tokyo (based on geographic location of Lithuania, the closest way to get to Japan would be to dig down, so it is completely other side of the globe). Also his works were showcased in France, Germany, Italy.

The second one would be B. Sruoga, whose book "The Forest of The Gods" was translated into: Russian, Polish, French, Latvian, Estonian and English. A very satyric collection of memoirs from the time when he was imprisioned in a Concentration Camp by SS (Nazis). It is a very unique way of writing about such a terrible experience, because he, in his memoirs is always laughing at humanity and life, being a prisoner bitter jokes and satyric point of view could have been the only thing that kept him from getting mad or inhumane.

The third one would be J. Mekas. He is called the godfather of Cinema Avant-garde in America. As you might have guessd he's a director. He together with some other people established Anthology Film Archives in New York, one of the world's largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films. Thus a lot of underground movies were saved because of this. Because at that time youtube did not exist and without such archive the cinema underground art tapes would be simply lost.

I am Interested whether you know about these people (mostly I believe J. Mekas will be known) and what have you heard of them. Also what authors would you choose if it would be about your countrys artistic world influence? This goes mostly for the people who live in smaller less noticable countrys. And also do you believe that my choices were right and these people are influentual. Could you sort them from most influentual to the least influentual (there are wikipedian links at the introduction part)?

Thank you for your time do not forget to leave a review and here is a picture of Jonas Mekas:

Hello there.

I just wanted to talk a bit about things.

1) I would like to remind that we exist, and you could visit our website to check on news from time to time.

2) I am really interesetd about your opinion on Power Of Three event. In your opinion was the project a success, did you even notice that it's even happening? We're still in progress doing a game for it... And what features do you expect of future events like this one? I personally as a developer would simply enjoy progress bars, demos and screenshots page, which was promised for this one, but died soon after it started. Guess we as developers are to blame too, because of our apathy and slow work times.

3) I noticed that a topic of "Ask me stuff" is pretty popular, so if you would be interested in anything about me (or our 3j team), ask away. I am aware that we are not really heavily noticed on the Newgrounds, so this is just one of few things I want to do and I do not have large expectations of someone being actually interested in something about us.

4) Statement: most of our games which include other language (Pragaras mostly) are in Lithuanian, NOT in Russian (Many of reviewers for some reason believe it's Russian).

5) How was your winter, has the nature began to restore already, or is it still snow and coldness? Do you have something like seasonal depressions (I personally do and I feel unproductive, sad and lost during the winter season, even though my birthday is during winter and there are loads of holidays like christmas and new year during winter).

Well thats all folks! I guess I just wanted to make a post without knowing what to write about.

Hello there guys

I just wanted to say that my friend released his first flash game, so check it out and review it!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
504028

Have a nice day.

Alien Shooter - Moon

This game took about two years to make (or was it two days, I can't seem to remember).

We present you the Alien Shooter. Destroy alien scum that has landed on the moon!
Arrow Keys to move and mouse to shoot.

NOTE: BEST PLAYING EXPERIENCE WHEN LISTENING TO FAST TECHNO MUSIC

Now the serious stuff: Maybe someday we will make a second game with all the cool stuff like multiple guns, multiple enemies, multiple stages, high score system and so on, but now we already have too much on our hands, that is why we decided to release this one as it is.

Hi there newgrounds.com users!

We have just released a new game "Pragaras" This game is a creepy and surreal adventure through a world which reflects our current Social and Global problems. Your task may not neccesarly be to solve those problems, sometimes you will simply pass by.

This was our first project as a "3j" team. The beginig was slow, because we were really unorganized. But eventualy we managed to get a hold of ourselves and so the game "Pragaras" was born.

So, less talking and more playing! Check it, write a review, vote and visit our website!

"Pragaras"

Hello there everyone!

I think nobody is going to see this, and I just want to test this feature. If accidently someone stumbles across this page, please leave a comment of how did you get to my account page (was it a flash you liked, was it random, was it a flash you hated, maybe you are from the same country?).