UPDATE: The issues I describe below clearly were specific to my laptop, as I was able to install the game on my desktop machine with no problems. Check the game out, it has great just one more time addictiveness!

I’m writing this post from IE because Bang!Howdy has locked up Firefox.

I decided to try Bang!Howdy today. So far it is not going well. As GDC Daniel from Three Rings mentioned that 90% of the people who visit Puzzle Pirates end up not even trying the game. If Puzzle Pirates is anything like Bang!Howdy, I can understand.

A few problems:

1. When downloading, Bang!Howdy had the dreaded resetting-progress-bar which tricks you into thinking the download is done, only to discover the progress bar has hopped back to 0% to for another step in the process. Multiple times. This wouldn’t be so bad except the each progress bar took several minutes to get to 100%.

2. During the download, I could not access any tab or window. Firefox had not crashed, but it wasn’t letting me have any access to the tabs. So I was stuck waiting.

3. Once the game was downloaded and running, it asked me to log in or create a new account. When I clicked “create”, it told me to check my web browser to create a new account. Except my web browser was still not accepting new windows. At this point I had the option of closing the game and hoping Firefox recovered, then create an account, then reload Bang!Howdy again (another 3 or 5 minute wait). Or to use IE to create an account.

I fired up IE and created an account. Once I was logged in I got Another progress bar. I think.

When the game started running I noticed it was too big for my screen. the bottommost part of the game UI was covered by my windows task bar. I couldn’t see the score or the “cards” you’re awarded in the tutorial.

Once getting through all that I really enjoyed playing the game. I just played the tutorial’s “Claim Jumping” scenarios for several hours, ignoring the bottom portion where I couldn’t see. But I can see how attracting new players may be a bit difficult with such a daunting start up process.

I am not sure if Daniel was trying to hint at something during his GDC speeches; I do remember him saying that their next game will be in Flash and not Java. It seems like there’s a big barrier to just getting Bang!Howdy to run. It may just be that it’s not optimized for Firefox, I’m not sure.

Anyway, to Three Rings, if you’re reading this … very clever game! I really enjoyed it, despite the troubles I had getting it to run. I really would have given up (as I have with Puzzle Pirates) but I really wanted to try it out. I’m glad I did. To everyone else: go check it out!

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