Skip to main content

Popfly: DIY Casual, MS-style

The race to establish the Youtube of gaming continues. Kongregate - which we really should visit more often - is by far the most likely bet at the moment, with its 4000+ free games, but predictably Bigger Boys are trying to snatch a piece of pie. Enter Microsoft with its Popfly project, which combines a gallery of user-made games with simple tools to create and share your own.

It's mainly show-offery for Silverlight, Microsoft's proprietary Flash rival, and doesn't seem yet capable of going much beyond basic casual games and retro remakes. Its main requirement, though, is simple patience, allegedly not any sort of coding experience, so a suitably inventive mind could churn out some gems. I've not had time to try devising my own game yet, but it took me mere minutes to modify a pre-generated Missile Command clone into spawning such a bewildering deluge of giant-size rocket 'splodes that my quad-core processor wept (not a good sign of Popfly's worth , quite frankly). I am so creative.

It's all very interesting, though yet to demonstrate greatness - if, however, anyone here fancies delving deeper and establishing what this thing's actually capable of, please do link to your creations below. We won't laugh, promise.

Read this next