Game development, like it or not, remains a territory largely off limits as it involves hard coding. And if this is the general rule, Microsoft offers the exception. The Redmond company has evolved its web and mashup tool in order to accommodate game creation. Now, the fact of the matter is that users won't be able to create their very own sequel to a preferred title, but Popfly will enable the creation of simple, casual games without writing a single line of code. This is now possible through the addition of the Popfly Game Creator.

"Popfly is about more than mashups and web pages. It's about making it fun to build things and share them with your friends. And one of the things we've heard loud and clear is that games are the kinds of things that people would like to try to build. What kinds of games can you create? Just about any kind of two-dimensional game, a category that includes things like the original Super Mario, Frogger, Asteroids, and a host of other old arcade games", revealed a member of the Popfly team.

The casual games built with the Popfly Game Creator can be run inside a web browser, as a Windows Vista Sidebar gadget, and can even be embedded in a blog. At this point in time, the Popfly Game Creator was released as an Alpha version, which means that users building their own casual games will have to make do with the inherent hiccups associated with such an early stage in development.

"If you're familiar with mash-ups and you're into gaming, then this is the rocking fun zone for you! As the name suggests, this release builds on Popfly's current set of mashup and Web page authoring tools to add support for easily creating and sharing casual games. There are 2 ways to get to the Game Creator. On the landing page, you have the "Create a Game (Alpha)" link, or if you select the "Create Stuff" dropdown, you will see "Game" there", revealed Miel Van Opstal, Enthusiast Evangelist Microsoft.



Popfly Game Creator