About The Code Zone
The philosophy of The Code Zone is simple. Games are becoming too durn big and complicated for their own good. Nowadays it seems that a game is considered "compact" if it fits on a single CD-ROM and has a manual less than 50 pages long. The problem is that, despite the giant sales of large-format adventure and wargames, the most popular game in the universe is still Minesweeper! Granted, Minesweeper is a freebie, but it wasn't included with Windows because MS figured that their CD wasn't full enough. The fact that clones of Minesweeper exist on every platform from mainframes to HP calculators is testimony to the soundness of what I like to call "The Minesweeper Model".
The Minesweeper Model is simple. It contains the following attributes:
- Simple to understand. There should be only three minutes of help-file-reading if you can't figure it out from simple play-testing.
- Quick to play. Most games are less than 3 minutes long. You can play an entire game while on the phone or waiting for the printer to complete.
- Easy on system resources. There's not much point in having a quick-playing game if it takes forever to load and it forces you to shut down half of your apps.
- Abnormally low bug-level. Again, you won't be buying more games if they crash your machine. I've never heard anyone complain that Minesweeper killed their machine.
- Cheap. I can't get as cheap as minesweeper, but I try to get close.
That's it. Simple, quick, small, bug-free, and cheap.
Postal Address
3333 Southlake Park Road
Southlake, TX 76092
Phone
(817) DUCK-ZIP
(817) 382-5947
John Hattan
john@thecodezone.com
Affiliations
