Introducing GambrinousGames.com

Er, not that game Portal

We've been busy beavers over here on Planet Gambrinous the past couple of months, and we're finally ready to announce the fruit of our labour! Our very own brand spanking new flash game portal, imaginatively titled: Gambrinous Games. Well, as some of our more attentive readers might attest, it's not that brand spanking new. It has been hanging around for a little while now, and has already gone through one iteration already, and we're working on a new design as we speak — but it's our little experiment and we finally feel ready to formally announce it.

So, what exactly is this Gambrinous Games of which you speak?

I'm very glad you asked. Gambrinous Games is our take on the traditional Game Portal. There are many like it, but this one is ours. We're actually hoping that this is a little different to many of the portals you see out there these days, and here's why we think ours is worth a little more of your time.

Quality over quantity

There are many game portals out there that simply grab the RSS feed off the larger portals and publish every single item on the list with no regard for contents or quality. You have to ask yourself the question, why would anyone visit your game portal over Kongregate or Armor Games if you are simply republishing the exact same content? On Gambrinous Games, we're hand picking games that we really enjoy and sharing them with (hopefully, eventually) many like minded individuals. You won't see any mindless republishing over here.

I want that one

Once we've picked our favourite games, we don't jush throw the game up on the site and leave you guessing why we put it up there. We take the time to write a mini-review of the site and tell you what's actually good about the game that you're about to play. I think it's a nice personal touch to show that we've actually played the game, thought about it and enjoyed it enough to tell you about it. We also rate the game out of five stars, y'know, just to really really prove that we like it!

Get that link juice flowin'

Every game we publish comes with a developer link free inside! You won't have to dig right down to the bottom of the box for this one either, because it's right there beside the game. It's always nice to send a little bit of love back to the developers who have toiled hard to make each game, and hey, if you click on the in game ads, we might even get to send some cold hard cash lovin' too.

But why bother? Kongregate is just fine and dandy!

Sure, it's a competitive world out there. There are many excellent portals such as Kongregate, NewGrounds and Armor Games, and we're not expecting some kind of over-night meteoric success. We're mainly doing this, quite simply, because we frickin' love games. And like the desperate and needy nerds we are, we want you to revel in what we think are the best games out there and love them too.

A grand don't come for free

We do hope that eventually, one day, our little game portal will be able to pay for itself. We have two main revenue streams: the publisher's share from in-game ads and also the various ad banners and text that you see around the site. Sure, we're never going to be billionaires from it, but if we can generate any kind of income from this, we can re-invest it into making even better games. And hey, better games is good news for us all!

Home, sweet home

Gambrinous Games will also eventually become the platform for us to launch our own games. It's nice to have a place to call home, and home it will be for our games when we publish them.

So, head on over and check out Gambrinous Games in the flesh. There aren't a whole lot of games over there at the moment, but we will be adding at least one game a week over the coming months. Follow our Gambrinous Games account on Twitter to be notified whenever we add a new game!

Keep an eye out for Part II in the series which will take a technical look at just how exactly we built our game portal and what tools we used in the process. If you're even thinking about launching your own portal, you'd be a schmuck to miss it!

Thanks for reading! Now check out Guild of Dungeoneering, a game I'm making where you build the dungeon instead of controlling the hero! \o/