The Sand Boxes

I guess I haven’t posted yet about The Sand Boxes, my Flash puzzle/adventure game.

I had so much fun writing Ka for the JayIsGames Casual Gameplay Design Competition #7 that when the CGDC#8 was announced, I decided to enter something again.

This time I wanted to try writing a Flash “escape” style adventure game. I had really enjoyed Mateusz Skutnik’s Submachine Zero. I wanted to make something like that.

Once the competition opened for voting, I found that my homage to an old archaeology-themed Submachine game was competing against…a new archaeology-themed Submachine game!

Submachine: 32 Chambers is a lot of fun, and handily dominated the competition. That’s okay, I hadn’t really expected my first Flash adventure game – written in about three weeks – to win.

In fact, it was an unexpected pleasure to have the privilege of losing to Mateusz Skutnik’s latest offering.

For one thing, I’d written The Sand Boxes because I wanted more games “like that” to exist. This way I got to play one I hadn’t written, too! (Did I mention his is great?) And since the winner had taken the same basic approach to game genre and the competition’s theme that I had, I felt like I was on the right track.

And of course, reaction to my game was generally positive. People played it and had fun, which is the real point.

The Sand Boxes was fun to create. It has some unique puzzles, and I think the photo-collage scenery turned out great.

You can play it for free right now.