Posted March 27, 2018 by SPNKr
I spent a lot of time as a kid playing games. Sure there was a lot of Pokemon and N64 but I also fell in love with Flash games during my formative years. In many ways the Flash community of the mid-2000s laid the groundwork for the indie renaissance of the late-2000s and the indie community that we know and love today. Flash games allowed smaller developers to make games with low overhead and easy distribution which may seem familiar to anyone who regularly uses itch.io.
We owe a huge debt to the flash community but we’re facing a crisis: Flash has been depreciated and these games are facing extinction. There’s a short time left in these games’ lives and once the clock hits midnight these games will become literally unplayable. Unfortunately there isn’t an easy method for saving these games.
Earlier this month, (I Fell in Love With) The Majesty Of Colors was released in an updated and remastered form. The original Majesty of Colors was a beautiful look at love, humanity, and sea monsters but it was also one of the first games I remember tackling these concepts in a very un-game-y way. Let’s call it one of the earliest “art games.” The developers were able to save the game from the trash bin of history by investing time and money in recreating the game outside of the ticking time bomb that is Flash.
The Majesty of Colors is a game that is just as good today as it was a decade ago. The narrative of the sea monster holds up just as well as ever and it is similarly as moving. While the game has some of the limitations of its Flash roots intact --and has a little jank because of it-- the core gameplay loop engenders the same empathy as it always has. If you’ve never played The Majesty of Colors the remake is definitely worth exploring.
But porting a years-old game isn’t feasible for all developers. In addition to the time away from doing whatever it was that the developer was originally planning, there is also the financial cost. So what can you do to avoid this untimely fate? To be honest: there isn’t really a good answer. None of us can see the future but considering which tools you’re using is a good first step. Sadly this post is more of a PSA than a course of action. Maybe if we all think about this more often we won’t have to lose any more of our history than we already have.