“Shootorials” Teach You How to Make Games

What’s better than playing cool indie browser games? Making your own.

Admit it – you’ve wasted plenty of work hours fiddling with web-based games, when you should have been doing something more productive – like making some of your own. With its new Kongregate Labs community site, freeware web browser gaming portal Kongregate is gunning to teach the average Joe the basics of flash game development.

Inspired by the in-house creation of a game simply called Shoot!, the site has launched the first batch in a series of detailed “shootorials” that walk you through the step-by-step process of developing a side-scrolling shooter. The project is sponsored by Scion and utilizes a free trial version of Adobe Flash CS3 to make the tutorial game. A dedicated Kongregage Labs forum provides an avenue for budding developers to bounce ideas off one another, troubleshoot issues that arise, and discuss the game creation process.

Kongregate is also running a “Driving Creativity Contest” with cash prizes to spur new game development. As the full set of “shootorials” are not yet available – new batches go live each week – entries for the month long contest will be accepted starting Oct. 28. That should give hopeful competitors some time to dive in and start concocting their diabolical flash game masterpieces. The final day to submit game entries into the contest is Nov. 28.

Behold: a simple way to learn how to develop flash games for free. What are you waiting for?