Candy Hop
Candy Hop is my new game, published via Kongregate.
The theme is you are in a candy store, trying to fill your box of candy by bouncing each piece in, collecting chocolate hearts along the way. There are two modes: Action, which has a timed release of candy and encourages the player to react to the falling candy, similar to the classic Breakout; and Puzzle, which has no timer and is more similar to those games where you have to create a wacky device (eg. Color Infection). There is a high scores table on Kongregate. It's satisfying to see the high scores, since it means people are playing it all the way through, not giving up after a few levels.
The game idea is from Jig Easy, Sam, a contest entry for the JayIsGames 4th Casual Game Design Competition that I worked on with Joe Versoza, which itself was first inspired by a "toy" I submitted to Carnegie Mellon's Experimental Gameplay Project called Bagatelle.
The idea was to have a modifiable pinball machine, the key component being bumpers that accelerated the ball, as opposed to simple pegs as you would find in a pachinko game.
The Valentine's Day theme was a bit forced, but gave some guidance in terms of design choices. If this does well I may create sequels for other holidays (shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day, eggs for Easter, etc.), but the ultimate implementation of the idea will probably be a kind of virtual foosball I have envisioned.
The initial title of the game was "Be My Rubber Valentine", which I thought would catch people's attention - but it turned out to be an inappropriate choice, simply because it would be more likely to turn off the potential audience who would probably enjoy the game.