The game features all the usual Christmas favourites – snow, presents, elves, flying reindeer, and of course Father Christmas – along with some more unusual elements – body odours, death and cannibalism. Have fun, and do comment on the game below.

And every fortnight one lucky player wins a remote-controlled micro helicopter.

But I spent most of yesterday afternoon playing Zwok, a multiplayer game that is so simple, and so much fun, I figure there may be something to learn from it. (And if I do learn from it I won’t have to write off yesterday afternoon as wasted time). So here’s a brief summary of my thoughts so far.

• Joining the game is very simple – just click the guest button (here called “quick play”) and you’re in.
• There is no lobby, no decisions to be made, no worrying what others think and if they’ll play with you – having clicked the guest button you are dropped straight into a game. It couldn’t be any simpler – click one button and start playing.
• The game is played in two teams of three. As a player you’re not totally reliant on your team-mates (as I got better I won some games with little or no help from my team-mates) so it really doesn’t matter how bad you are when you start out.
• The game play is very simple – throw stuff at the other team. We all understand that and have enough experience with gravity in the real world to figure out roughly where our chosen missile will land.
• Games last between two and five minutes, so it’s perfect to slot a few games in at lunchtime.
• Registered users get to design their own character, build a reputation and gain access to some additional styles of missiles, but the game-play and fun are not limited for unregistered users.

So, in a nutshell, make it as simple as possible to start playing. I know we apply that to single player casual games too but I’ve not seen it applied so effectively to a multiplayer game before. Add to that the standard “make it fun” and “make it short” and it sounds like a recipe for a successful casual multiplayer game.

Finally, one sour note in the game – who thought it would be a good idea to show the message “You have been kicked out of the game for poor performance” when your network connection is too slow or unreliable? I can’t be the only one to have thought the other players had decided I wasn’t good enough to play with them.

It’s the most complex flash game I’ve created and was both difficult and fun to do. Before this project I wasn’t particlarly in to Soccer games. On the web, all the socer games seem simple and dull (another keepy-uppy game anyone?). Console games like Pro Evolution & Fifa Soccer, on the other hand, seem very complex and consequently dull for beginners as one struggles to learn the necessary skills to enjoy the game. I know a lot of people love them but I don’t have the time to devote to learning the skills needed to play these games well. I hope, with Stick Sports Soccer, we’ve created a good in between game where it’s easy to pick up and hard to master – simple and challenging in equal measure. Give it a go and let us know what you think – here or at the Stick Sports forums.

As the programmer, the most interesting bit was getting the AI right. I started with various code for manage complex state machines, then built the code for the different states and finally played with the parameters to get the feel just right. All the while remembering that I’ve played it so much during development that my opinion on difficulty level is not a representative one. So thank you to the beta testers for their feedback. I’ll write a little about the AI code another time. Meanwhile, go play the game.