Retro Indie Game Development with HTML5 - The Series

Like many web developers I've become interesting in the recent developments in HTML5. Web browsers can now do things they've never been able to do and it's an exciting time. It's also an exciting time for games right now. Two phenomena in game development have arisen which make game development fun again: retro games and indie games, although they are often found in conjunction. Retro games use the old school 8-bit graphics and sound we loved when we were kids. Some of these retro titles are from studios such as the new Megaman games or Cave Story for the Wii. There has also been a rising tide of indie games such as Minecraft and the games of the Humble Indie Bundle such as Braid. Some of these have retro graphics and some like Machinarium have pretty nice art. Not to save that low resolution art isn't nice, "pixel art" has become its own genre with its own talented artists. Some of these indie games have actually been quite successful with both Minecraft and the Humble Indie Bundle raising millions of dollars in sales.

I think the simultaneous rise of HTML5, the retro style, and the commercial success of the indie development methodology have created a great opportunity for the hacker turned entrepreneur. Additionally, all of the open source code, DIY tools, and Creative Commons licensed artwork provide a relatively low barrier to entry. Take, for instance, Realm of the Mad God. This is a really fun retro indie MMO. It was actually developed as part of a contest where artists first made Creative Commons licensed art assets and programmers then used these to make a game. The map generation code is also open source. You could go out and write a game like this today and, even better, you don't have to do it in Flash like they did. A game like this could be written in pure HTML/CSS/Javascript, which is good news for web developers that have already been working in this medium for a while.

My plan is to write a series of posts about all of the great things I've discovered about developing retro indie HTML5 games as I've been working on my own game. While this may seem like a very specific topic, it opens up the doors to a variety of topics with nice concrete examples. For instance, I've often wondered, HTML5 sounds cool I guess but what is it good for, actually? In developing my game, it became quite apparent that it would be pretty much impossible without some very specific HTML5 features, not the obvious things like the Canvas and Audio APIs, but specifically Web Workers have been indispensable.

So watch the blog for future posts in this series. I'm going to start with Akihabara, the HTML5 game library specifically designed for retro games. Also let me know if there's anything specific you're interested in it and if I something to share on the subject then I'll try to make a post about it.