damn it.. why are so many people making browser games?! it's just so wrong!

Just played it for a while. Initially it is pretty cool, especially that you're only defending and trying to keep up a cycle of resources, so that your base is ideally self-preserving. At some point, though, I found that the game's flaws stand out more and more. I mostly disliked that it takes energy to even build the structures, instead of only taking energy to maintain them. This way it can easily happen that you build them in the wrong "order", so that you don't have a sufficied energy supply, but in order to produce more, you need plants - but it takes energy to build them, which you don't have. In the same way it can happen that you build too many plants or trucks, which then produce much smog, but you only notice it when it's too late to do anything against it, leaving you with a horde of huge mutant zombies powered by smog.
Another thing I found to be rather awkward was that defensive structures like floodlights and tesla coils consume energy even when they are not in use, which also doesn't seem to make any sense. But then again you can't simply disable them, as it just takes too long to click on each of them and then disable them, only to enable them again few seconds later when the zombies attack.

But I don't want to make it sound like the game is just bad, it's not. I especially liked the nice pace, as at first all the aspects you eventually have to take into account (energy, food, garbage, fuel, metal, etc.) seem totally overwhelming, but by slowly being introduced to each of them you really "get" it and later on are able to maintain a complete base on your own :) That was just also the point at which I lost interest in the game, for all of what I mentioned above.

Interesting. At first look i thought it was like an old c-64 game i can 't remeber the name, then after i played i find out it's like a tower defense with a deep managment system.

What's wrong with browser games, Raigan? I thought you were on the flasher's side.
And if your making it in flash - why not make it browser based.

Flash is great! but i really dislike in-browser gaming. i'd rather have a .swf in a folder that i can organize -- and that will be there regardless of whether the author's site is down.

then there's the fact that .swfs run more slowly, and MUCH more jerkily/inconsistantly, in a broswer.

i guess i just don't see the point -- what is the benefit?! aside from if you're playing at school/work.

maybe i'm old-fashioned.. i just really prefer small, self-contained games on my HD. if there's some reason for it to be in-browser -- like Urban Dead, which is great -- then that's one thing, but making a game that's in-browser just for the sake of in-browserness, i don't get.

If you want, raigan, I'll put up a standalone version on my website, just for you :)

I put up the browser version per competition requirements, but I agree, the standalone experience is better for the user, though it's harder to get people to download your game and some prefer the browser option, even though it's got the issues you mentioned. I'm working on retooling it and fixing some bugs, so hopefully we'll have a 1.1 release that adds a save ability and fixes the lag issues among other things, and of course we'll have a standalone exe / swf. You can download the swf right now from the competition page and also from my website (though you'd have to poke through my page source at the moment to find it) :
www.fadupinator.com/energyapocalypse.htm

thanks!

I say have both the option of downloading and of playing in a browser. There, everybody happy! :D

Done and Done!

You can download an exe at:
www.fadupinator.com/energyapocalypse.htm

Also I updated the game to version 1.1 with the following fixes:

1) RESET level
2) SAVE your progress (continue from any level you've gotten to)
3) Optimized it to have less lag
4) Rebalanced some numbers that were wrong
5) fixed minor bugs