So you may be wondering why a guy that has a Flash blog is talking about an HTML5 game. Well, its important for people in the Flash community to know what is happening with all the latest gizmos. This game by Grant Skinner is amazingly playable and fun. It is the first HTML5 game I’ve seen that can attempt to rival some of the stuff we have depended on Flash for the past decade.
Watch me explain how to play and rule
This is the first time I’ve described how to play a game while playing it. It was a bit harder than I thought it would be. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind:
- Try to end the game with as much gold as possible.
- Try to finish levels as quickly as possible. Have a strong front-line of defense and don’t worry too much about the daisy patch.
- A few juiced-up characters are better than a ton of weaklings.
- Press the “w” key as soon as you killed the last enemy to advance to the next wave. The quicker you end a level, the more gold you get.
- Keep your eye on the birds, always have enough gold to buy a few scarlets to get you out of a jam
Basic Troop Formations
Wave 6
In the first few waves you just want to have a few key characters to make quick work of the enemies. A few Indigos and a Lenny can do some heavy damage while a few scarlets get ready to pick-off a few birds.
Wave 12
Getting towards the middle of Rum Alley the birds are going to be a force to be reckoned with. Get a few Billy/Scarlett clusters going at key bird-concentration points.
Wave 21
In levels 12 onward my focus is on upgrading my existing troops. You need to have a few jacked Indigos and Lennys around the first bend. A fully upgraded Billy can do wonders with his far-flung giant sponges while a few Scarletts go to town.
Play Pirates Love Daisies NOW!!!
I really think this is a phenomenal game. That game was built in partnership with Microsoft to show how IE9 can handle intense graphically complex HTML5 interactive experiences. You can read more about it here:
http://gskinner.com/blog/archives/2010/12/pirates-love-daisies-html5-game-launches.html
Grant Skinner is an icon in the Flash community and it is really neat to see how he is using his AS3 skills to not only create HTML5/JavaScript games but to see how he is creating js libraries to make javascript more like actionscript with easel.js.
Don’t worry folks, I’m not jumping ship to javascript, I’m going to let the heavy-weights work out the kinks first. As great as this game is, it doesn’t yet prove that HTML5 is any more suited for mobile devices than Flash. I have to say that its performance on slower computers was pretty poor. I doubt an iPad could handle it, anyone try it? This is not a criticism of the work, it was intended as a “best of breed” experience and not something suited for every device or browser.
Simply put, I’ve had a lot of fun playing it. I think my audience can have a lot of fun with it, and that’s that.
ps. — Before you jump all over me, I know its kind of lame that my high score appears right after the others got nuked for the week. It wasn’t planned. Scores in the 350,000 range are considered quite high though. I’m quite sure they will last a few days up there. I urge you to get to work and try to knock me down.
