Launchball - an awesome Flash game

I’m very impressed with Launchball, a Flash game from the Science Museum.

I love the design, I love the interface - its unique, simple and very swish. Once I started playing the game I was staggered by how fully realised it is - no skimping on the programming here, we’re talking realistic physics and complete freedom, thanks to the Flade Actionscript dynamics / physics engine. (Launchball is AS2 - but incidently Flade is now called the APE and is available in AS3 format).

And when everything just works, you start to get far more creative. Most Flash games are tasks, challenges, but Launchball seems so much more like an environment (with a goal, of course). It’s beyond your average Flash game and into the realms of something I’d expect from a proper games console.  No wonder it picked up a few awards!

There’s an awful lot of fun to be had with Launchball, and if you’ve got friends, there’s also more to the game than the standard few levels - there’s a whole host of features for creating and sharing your own levels. I was also interested to see that, although the game doesn’t have any real integration with sites like Facebook (all the game sharing is done via the good old e-mail & account method) there is a group devoted to the game. (Become a fan of Launchball on Facebook)

Read more;

Mike ellis of electronic museum was involved in the creation of Launchball. See what he had to say about it on his blog. [link]

Henry of prehensile.co.uk gives an interesting overview of many of the elements that went into the development Launchball.  A long read, but interesting… [link]

Preloaded is the agency that brought Launchball to life. [link]