Good lord, y'all are crotchety. This just seems like a fun little time waster that was probably developed internally by a very small group of people. I don't see it as a large marketing push or some kind of fancy technical demo. Just something... fun.
Some people are so strange with things like this[1]. It's as if anything that a major company would dare put their name near must be super polished and very serious. It's fun to ship. I clicked the same link as you. I saw the same domain name as you. I walked in assuming it'd be something pretty neat. I saw faux-8-bit and said, "golly I bet someone had fun for a day or so". I got over it and played the game a half dozen times noting the annoying GC pauses and slightly-off collision detection. Had fun, moved on.
Sometimes companies are chill about non-core stuff having their name on it and will let an individual who created a cute game during a hackathon show it off. "Is this video streaming related? No? Okay, just make sure it's not offensive and there's no way anyone could take it too seriously."
It has that fun Hackathon / side-project feel, that someone probably noticed and said "Hey, if you polish it up, we can host it for public use, because why not?".
Dong Nguyen, the creater of Flappy Bird thinks different about this topic - this is also the reason why he took the game down for the app stores:
'"Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed," the developer said "But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever."'
it is also not on Apple's app store anymore. What happened is "As Nguyen had promised, August 2014 saw a revised version of Flappy Bird, called Flappy Birds Family, released exclusively through the Amazon Appstore for the Amazon Fire TV platform."
You are right, it was not put back up by the original developer. I guess I just conflated it with the subsequent clones because by the time I heard of the game it had already been removed but then later I was able to play "the game" still.
I gotta say though, Flappy Bird is a higher quality game than this. Even though it was graphics copied from Nintendo and an even simpler mechanic, the physics and hit detection make a huge difference.
What about this game possibly leads you to think that they're launching a gameflix? It's all know characters from known netflix properties. After you die it links you to the show. I think you're seeing something that isn't there.
I mentioned "could be" and agreed it might not exist. But keeping the viewer engaged during the lull of what to view next , games seem to be an obvious choice. This is something which Netflix should and can do .
Okay, perhaps I'm out of the loop. Is this created for marketing purposes, technical purposes, or something else? What makes this different from a random Ludum Dare-style submission, other than the Netflix logo?
As others have said. Pablo & Marco Polo. Piper Chapman from Orange is the New Black and Mike Wheeler from Stranger Things. (Won't make sense if you haven't seen the shows)
I can only confirm the first two, but they're the stars of their respective Netflix Original Series. The background and enemies are thematic to their shows.
pablo escobar is from their original Narcos. Music is adapted from show's theme. he is delivering cocaine and running from cops. Same with rest of them .
I think besides the logo the characters that run are related to Netflix show. It struck me only after I read your comment.
Marco Polo - from Marco Polo series
The female - from Organge is new Apple
Pablo - from some drug related tv series. (is he the math teacher who makes crack ?)
Netflix IPs would make some great worlds for larger games, actually. I can imagine a Telltale-style narrative adventure set in the Womens Prison of 'Orange is the New Black' or an action horror game where you play as Eleven, trapped in the Upside Down. Even their animated properties - Knights of Sidonia, Ajin, and Voltron - would be awesome worlds for players to experience. Netflix, if you're reading, hit up the game studio I design for -- contact@phosphorgames.com
Seriously? wtf? I thought, this is going to be something cool as it's from them, like an experimental UI or something. Am I missing something or is this just a bit lame and pointless? Maybe I'm dead inside.
Probably not, but Netflix has so many shows now that it's kind of nice to get reminders about certain content. I had totally forgotten about Macro Polo.
Fun. I wonder why they went with a modern-day chinatown backdrop for Marco Polo. I haven't seen season 2 yet; did this somehow become a time travel show? :P
This is a fun idea, but feels weirdly amateur. Like, the way the sprites disappear the moment they touch the side of the screen, or the way the powerups keep scrolling past even when you're dead.
It's like someone at Netflix did an "intro to games programming" tutorial and decided to put the result live.
Yeah, I was on phone so I did not explain. The characters are made to be leaning forward, so the hitboxes are very wide. When they jump, they remain as is. Hence, when you can clearly make the jump, you still "hit".
This apparently doesn't use delta time. Is it frame-timed? When the FPS lowers, the game slows down. That's rather sloppy, and it doesn't help the game's playability.
^ This, not to mention there are several good proxies to get US Netflix working in other countries, but getting Canadian Netflix in the US is a much more arduous process.
What's super weird about this to me is how unlike the actual shows these are; OITNB doesn't take place in a cell block prison, and Matthew Modine isn't bald in Stranger Things.
It would be kind of funny if it turned out my ISP is slowing down Netflix. Thought it's Orthodox Christmas and people are all home and watching OTT or IPTV so probably Internet congestion...
I really hate games that try for an "8-bit" aesthetic but can't be bothered to even approximate a consistent pixel density for their art. It's not that hard.
