HTML5 Games

[Kyttias]

Quickly replacing Flash, HTML5 canvas games are becoming popular and don't require any plugins to be downloaded or updated to jump right in. I've placed this thread in 'suggestions and feature requests' but I wanted to pose an open question to the community:

What sorts of minigames would be fun on YOUR site?

While some of us are dying for a battle system, the rest of us may be content with minigames, similar to the ones found on Neopets, etc. Usually these are puzzle or arcade games - clones of existing addictive games. Tetris, Snake, Asteroids - classics, but also more recent creations like Bejeweled.

I'm asking this because I'd really like to start working on a few simple games that are just clones of the sorts of games we already expect to idly play on our phones, etc. Once I've got a game prototype made, I'd like:

- The score to be integrated with Mysidia to deliver a payout in your site's currency.
- From there, optionally, a high score board for bragging rights.
- And in the final round of development, accomplishment badges that could be displayed on the user's profile.
- Other things could potentially be done - obtaining an item or pet (egg) directly without having to jot down a promo code as a reward for a particularly hard to achieve accomplishment.

There are so many types of commonly cloned games I can't begin to list them all - sliding puzzle, jigsaw puzzle, tower defense, higher or lower, space lander (thrust), brick break, tetris, asteroids, space invaders, memory matching (concentration), match 3 (candy crush, bejeweled), sokoban (chip's challenge), bubble shooter, mine sweeper, snake, jezzball, pipedream.

One thing I'd like to point out is that none of the above have a particularly difficult A.I. - these are not platformer jumping games, nor are they mazes. They also aren't complex creations, ala pinball or cards. Some will take more research than others. (And some can be made much more complex than they are at the base level. A basic sokoban game, as an example from above, is way less difficult than Chip's Challenge - which had a variety of tiles that burned you, warped you, slid you around, etc.)

What I'd like is a small discussion on games and one or two simple that would be perfect for your site (and what sort of art assets you'd imagine they'd have, theme-inspired, y'know?). I don't have the energy to devote all my time to helping everyone, but I'll gladly share my findings on whatever I do create.

From those more in the know on Mysidia, some advice for currency integration would be nice. (I don't want 'give users a promo code for an item they can sell' as an answer.) I know I can pass a number as a variable from Javascript to PHP, it's the PHP code required to add that to the current user's current currency balance that I'd like some help with. So once I already have an amount I want to add to a user's currency balance held in a variable, how would I go about doing that?

(And this thread can always be moved elsewhere, also. But games are a feature many of us would like to have - and though probably not something that can be directly added to the script - if documentation can be provided on how integration can be handled, that would be amazing!)