The Essential Guide to Flash Games Review

I bought this book before its release. It took months for it to arrive which was a pain since my expectations were quite high. You see… I’m an 8bitrocket fanboy. I have devoured time and time again the ideas, thoughts, tests and code from Jeff and Steve Fulton and even being a fanboy I have a mind of my own and there are a lot of views that I don’t share. So I’m a fan I admit but I’m also an independent thinker.

And it is as a unbiased independent game developer that my advice is: BUY THE BOOK!

Why should I? – you ask. I’m not going to review it like you would probably expect a book review, a chapter by chapter analysis of it, acting like a dumb fan or a scholar on the subject. I’m not even going to rate it, I’m going to tell you why this book should be read by all game developers, especially aspiring ones: it has in it the lessons that seasoned game developers share with aspiring ones. It has that subtle juicy stuff that no programming book can give but it is written and thought like a coder would.

It is not a book for coders or a book for designers. It is a book for flash game developers. The best one I’ve read about the subject. I hope Jeff and Steve don’t mind this little quote:

Second game – what about the first game? Well, of course, you need to make your first game, but inevitably your first game will not be all that you hoped it to be. It just happens. Don’t blame yourself. You will cut features for time, get frustrated, and sometimes, not even finish. However, this is the most important thing we want you to do: finish your game, and move onto the next. It is the only way you will get better at making games. This is the second game theory.

This is the first paragraph of the book’s first chapter. This is what game developers that have a couple of games under their belts say to aspiring game developers: finish a game, as simple as it might be, finish it!

This book could be all about code (and it has a lot and very good code) it could be neverending lines of code of bad games, one after the other with no real connection, just trying to explain feature after feature of AS3. It is not, this book is about real game development, from mindset, to design, through code.

Enough independent thinking, time for the fanboy in me to write…

Go buy the book… Steve and Jeff gave the whole flash game development comunity a lot through 8bitrocket, they put a lot of effort in this masterpiece and from a game development perspective, there isn’t anything like it regarding flash or AS3. They deserve our support for all the support they gave us and it is not like you’ll be doing them a favor and buying a bad book, you will be buying the best book about flash game development.

Just noticed I really didn’t review it… but hey reviewing this is like reviewing Mona Lisa… it smiles in a misterious yet perfect way.

GO BUY THE BOOK!