Canabalt. Neo Scavenger. Defender's Quest. Dino Run. The Enchanted Cave.
What do all these games have in common?
They were all created with an open source game framework called "Flixel", originally written by Adam "Atomic" Saltsman. This was one of the most popular -- if not THE most popular -- game framework for flash games.
HaxeFlixel is a continuation of this mission. Where Flixel games can only target flash, HaxeFlixel games can go just about anywhere. Thanks to the magic of the Haxe programming language, HaxeFlixel games compile down to native C++ for Desktop and Mobile, and HTML5 or Flash for the web. And all from one codebase.
Best of all? HaxeFlixel is entirely free and open source, and it's compatible with popular IDES like FlashDevelop, HaxeDevelop, Visual Studio CODE and IntelliJ IDEA. It has a large and active community of friendly developers and a helpful website with lots of documentation. And the cherries on top are the no less than 75 freely available feature demos, with full source code included for each.
Every day, more developers are turning to HaxeFlixel for their cross-platform game development needs. Beloved by both professionals and beginners alike, HaxeFlixel is increasingly popular on Steam, Kongregate, and the world's most popular game jam, Ludum Dare. Furthermore, developers like Chimango Games and Ludoko Studios used HaxeFlixel to power their licensed games based on characters from popular animated TV shows.
But we need your help to make HaxeFlixel better.
New features, bugfixes, documentation, demos, maintenance, add-ons, community outreach -- all these things take time, and so far we've been run entirely by volunteers. With your help, we can hire a professional. And we can think of no one better than HaxeFlixel's own founder, Alexander Hohlov.
You see, Alex lives in Russia, and because purchasing power is different there, just $6,000 could fund him for an entire year. Not only would this let him quit his current job, it would actually be a step UP for him in income.
The core HaxeFlixel contributors have already pledged $3,000. So we just need $3,000 more. If we can collect this money, Alexander's job for the next year will simply be "make HaxeFlixel great."
That's where I come in.
I'm Lars Doucet, from Level Up Labs. Thanks to HaxeFlixel we were able to transform our game Defender's Quest, which depended on flash and Adobe AIR, into a fully native app with full HD capabilities, now known as Defender's Quest DX. It's had a really good run on Steam, and we owe its success to HaxeFlixel.
Right now, HaxeFlixel has no legal status, it is neither a corporation nor a non-profit foundation. But Level Up Labs is -- we're a United States Limited Liability Corporation -- and for years we've been operating as HaxeFlixel's small-time corporate sponsor.
So the plan is that Level Up Labs will hire Alex as an independent contractor, under a contract in which all work that he does on HaxeFlixel is immediately released publicly under the MIT license -- basically all the same stuff he's been doing so far, just more of it. Level Up Labs is uniquely suited to this because not only do we have experience with doing these sorts of "open source bounties", we also have a lot of experience specifically with hiring contractors from Russia, several of whom have worked on Defender's Quest DX and the upcoming Defender's Quest II.
We'll do our best to be responsible stewards of your money. The $3,000 we're asking for today, as well as the other $3,000 we've already raised, will be exclusively earmarked for Alex. We'll make publicly available copies of all relevant contracts, invoices, receipts, and other paperwork (with sensitive personal information redacted), and post them publicly. We'll also do our best to put out news updates on the HaxeFlixel website so you can know what we've been doing.
Thanks for your time. With your help, we can make HaxeFlixel an even better open source 2D cross-platform game framework.