Chariton Arcade has added two free browser games, Starwarden and Macon Street Run, at arcade.charitonmedia.com, according to the site and its founder.
"These are simple, free, and fun games," said Patrick Nolan, founder of Chariton Media. "My firm paid for the development of them."
The arcade listing describes Starwarden as a game in which raiders carry colonists off a planet and players shoot the raiders down and catch colonists who fall. A play screen for the game shows a silver fighter over a violet planet surface with a "raiders inbound" counter along the top of the display.
Macon Street Run puts players on a dirt bike on Macon streets, racing checkpoints and collecting coins before the clock runs out. The game menu names three courses: Downtown Square (about 1.9 miles), School Hill (about 2.7 miles), and Highway 63 Strip (about 3.3 miles), each with seven checkpoints. The same screen credits Nolan Law Firm of Kirksville as the presenter.
Nolan said the goal was a fast, fun game that reminded him of titles from his youth, including the ColecoVision and Atari eras. The new games are not high-end productions, he said, but they are designed to be playable in a browser and even offline. Players can download and save the HTML games to a computer for offline play, though that step is not required, he said. Macon Street Run uses the Three.js library hosted on Chariton's server, he said.
The games are not designed for cellphones, Nolan said. Chariton plans a free game app for up to 20 beta testers by Thanksgiving, he said, with a nominal license fee of about $4 to $5 when the app is released on Google Play. Something people don’t realize is that Chariton Media publishes and sells custom software serving the legal industry, media, and publishing.
“I was complaining to my wife about all these stupid games advertised everywhere that were not what the game promised and none were just a quick 5 minute break like the games I spent hours on as a kid,” Nolan said. “She told me shut up and build it. So I put my guys on playing with game design when they are not writing code and training our legal AI. You should see what they have done with a Minecraft clone. I don’t understand it, but it is impressive.”
The arcade home page also lists Sub Hunt, Scrap Belt, and Alien Scrap: Survivor alongside Starwarden and Macon Street Run. All five titles show a Play link from the arcade landing page. To play click the Arcade link in the menu bar at the top of the page.
Patrick Nolan is founder of Chariton Media.