Wondering if Cow Defender has potential to be accepted to the site
5 years ago
Texas, USA

Hi all. I recently became fascinated with this flash game called Cow Defender (https://www.crazygames.com/game/cow-defender) and think it has great potential to be a speed game. However I would like to request for it to be added to the site, and don't know exactly what counts as a "Short/Trivial Flash Game."

To give you an idea about how long the game takes, to complete each level to it's fullest (100%) you would need to rescue all surviving cows and kill all UFOs, which takes a lot of intuitive routing and strategy (levels are randomly generated). For ILs it can take probably about 5-30 minutes but for all levels I'm estimating can take at least a couple hours (given you have the skill to do this consistently, this becomes increasingly more difficult to do). There's also potential for an Unlock% category, which would involve unlocking every level and completing it. Would take even longer.

For the "trivial" aspect, according to the game's site it has over 350,000 plays since its release one year ago.

Just wanted to check and see if this is likely to get accepted to the site since I don't know the very exact standards of flash games. I've already started running it and writing up on strategies haha. Thanks!

Canada

The "Short/Trivial" rule is mostly there to stop very low-quality and simplistic games that can be completed in their entirety in less than 5 minutes (of which there are many). At a cursory glance of this game and based on your description of it, it's definitely not too short, and the gameplay seems at least somewhat involved, so I don't think it would get caught as trivial either.

It could still get rejected but as far as flash games go it looks pretty decent, so I think it's worth submitting it.

[quote]For the "trivial" aspect, according to the game's site it has over 350,000 plays since its release one year ago[/quote]

This isn't what's meant by trivial. Trivial in this context means there's very little (if any) gameplay, and the gameplay that's there is incredibly simplistic (the best example of this I'm aware of is "Super Press Space To Win Action RPG", which is pretty descriptive of the gameplay). From what I understand popularity doesn't really get factored into the decision beyond "have more than 5 people played the game ever".

Texas, USA

This isn't what's meant by trivial. Trivial in this context means there's very little (if any) gameplay, and the gameplay that's there is incredibly simplistic

Okay, this is what I was looking to understand. Beyond the simple driving / shooting mechanics there's a lot of technique involved when it comes to moving around and rescuing cows efficiently, so that makes me feel a lot more confident

Imaproshaman likes this
United Kingdom

"Trivial" in general is pretty broad, but being too specific would likely just lead to a ton of people trying to loophole the process with semantics.

As long as the game isn't like very short / very simplistic, generally the guideline I like to use myself is it being less complex mechanically and as short as the first few levels of SMB1/3, then it should be fine. It's just to avoid a utter barrage of low quality garbage getting through, mainly.

I'd like to say the process has some definitive guidelines, but there really is nothing set in stone. A 20 minute flash game where you just hold right with a large portion of the run being cutscenes/moments not in control in which the game essentially autocompletes itself is less likely to get in than say... a 7-8 minute game that's well designed with complexity in the grounds of NES platformers, for example.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Imaproshaman likes this