Category Archives: Sky Madness

Sky Madness Update Now Available

144Four years ago, in an attempt to offer something really simple and straightforward for all audiences, we developed Sky Madness.  It was sort of an “Airport Madness takes to the skies” concept.  The game is extremely simple to grasp, just drag the airplanes to their correct color-coded flight levels, while avoiding other objects.  The first few levels are pretty easy, but the game gets challenging once you get into the double digit levels.

The first version’s graphics were pretty bad, I’ll admit.  Four years ago, I was still a one-man band.  It’s hard to be a one-man band.  You have to play a steady drum beat, while holding a trumpet in your right hand and a tamborine in your left.  Or in my case, you have to know how to write game code, create art, manage a website, and be 24/7 customer support.  I now have lots of help.  The new Sky Madness art was not done by me, but somebody far more qualified.

The game play has also changed dramatically.  I basically modeled it after Angry Birds.  I figure the folks at Rovio have this game dev thing all figured out, so I borrowed a page from their book and set up a structure of unlockable levels.  I think it’s a good fit, and I plan to add this design to future versions of Airport Madness.

Oh, and I also added some cool game logic that detects how good of a player you are.  If you are failing miserably it gets easier.  If you are a rock star, the difficulty increases.  I also plan to add this to Airport Madness 5, due this spring.

Sky Madness can be played on PC and Mac computers, or if you have an iPhone or iPad, get the app!  Enjoy!

Upcoming Sky Madness Update

We are pleased to announce an update in the works for Sky Madness.  You may be wondering, “Why Sky Madness?  Aren’t you supposed to be making Airport Madness 5?”. The truth is, Sky Madness has always been special to me.  I like the game.  It’s fun.  Plus, our artist created beautiful new artwork for it a year ago, and I’ve been sitting on it ever since.

Background

Sky Madness has always been one of our “bargain bin” games, with a price tag of $4.99.  When we recently decided to port the game to iOS, it occurred to us that it needed a larger resolution and more polish.  We now offer a huge 1000×750 resolution, improved graphics, better game structure and more levels.  If you own Sky Madness already, contact us after the release and we will give you a free link for the update.

When BFS got started five years ago, our first game was insanely complex.  To an almost unplayable degree.  So we dumbed it down and made an easier radar game.  Then came our hugely successful Airport Madness.  We thought we were on the right track with keeping our games simple, and Sky Madness came next.  It was the ultimate ‘easy’ ATC game.  It never did that well, however.  The original graphics were horrible (made by me) and the game play was poorly designed.

The Sky Madness update will bring a new look and feel.  It will be available on PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone and iPad.  We hope you will support us and help keep our little pirate ship afloat by purchasing Sky Madness after it’s upcoming update.

Sky Madness Released

Sky Madness is now available, with both free and full versions to suit everyone’s budget. I believe Airport Madness fans will really enjoy this. The screenshot is from the full version. Yes, the full version has tornadoes.

The full version also has bad weather, numerous objects that need to be avoided, plus a continuous-play feature, similar to that seen in Airport Madness 2. For just $6.99 it’s a bargain.

I sincerely hope you enjoy my latest creation, Sky Madness. As always, I appreciate feedback, so don’t hesitate to shoot me an email.

Sky Madness Update


Delays, delays. I had been secretly aiming for an early release of Sky Madness, but unfortunately I’ve eaten through my time cushion. My expected release date is now August 1.

I am currently working with a small beta testing team to iron out the bugs, in an effort to avoid posting a whole bunch of follow-up builds. I have found a great musician for the soundtrack, and am in the process of inserting the music, making sure to add a mute button this time.

This is going to be a terrific game. I hope that you will love it and decide to support my efforts by purchasing the full version.

Upcoming Game: Sky Madness

Airport Madness takes to the skies in my upcoming new game, Sky Madness. I know that I promised a screenshot over a week ago, but what can I say? There is always so much to do. The release date for this game is July 25, 2009. Have a look:

This game obeys my new law, “less realism, more fun”. To be a successful game, the fun factor definitely has to be there. Aside from a small die-hard group of ATC simmers out there, the masses just aren’t looking for uber-realistic ATC games, so I am trying to come up with ways to simplify and intensify the game experience here.

The idea is to climb or descend all aircraft to their correct flight level without hitting any mountains, blimps, birds, restricted airspace or other aircraft. From my initial beta testing, I can tell you that it is definitely not as easy as it looks. I had intended to have this game ready by now, but had to abandon an original control interface concept that involved UP and DOWN buttons. All that mouse-clicking really sucked away the fun, so I’ve gone with a click-and-drag concept to reassign flight levels to aircraft.

There will be a free version and a full one. The full version will offer more levels, a continuous-play option, no ads, and will sell for just $4.95. The code is still wet (so to speak) so if you have any suggestions, please email me. I really hope to make another successful game from this 2D sky concept.