Ludus Novus

The 2009 XYZZY Awards are in their first round of voting, which is basically a nomination round. This is the major annual award show for works of interactive fiction (text adventures). If you liked The Bryant Collection or “Backup,” voting for them in this round might be something you want to do.

Of course, there have been several other awesome IF pieces released this year. I need to play more of them myself before I can make a proper decision.

And it’s out! My December 2009 game is up at Newgrounds. Babies Dream of Dead Worlds is a game about family.

Before we have memory, before we know what this world is, we dream. Babies dream of what came before, of universes that are no longer there. Babies dream of dead worlds.

Play Babies Dream of Dead Worlds on Newgrounds.

This game is a sort of surreal platformer, I suppose? It’s a bit hard to describe. It’s developed using Flixel, and tells the story of three siblings at the end of a world very unlike this one.

Last year, I resolved to create a game a month. That went quite well for me, but I think I want to be freer with my development goals this year. I still needed a new year’s resolution, though. Since I often neglected Ludus Novus in the wake of my game development, I chose a goal that should keep the content here flowing smoothly.

I resolve to post at least once each week on this blog. Posts could be game discussions, tabletop RPG summaries, podcast episodes (that’s right, I have a podcast!), or something else. If I’m especially busy, they could just be one or three preview screenshots of what I’m working on. Note that The Absolute Sum of All Evil comics do not count for this resolution. They’re weekly, but I drew the comics years ago, so that would be cheating.

If all goes according to plan, I should have over 100 new posts this year, including comics. Wish me luck!

My final game of the year is done, and boy did I delay it to the last minute. “Procrastination” is an abstract experimental game, my attempt to communicate purely through game mechanics. It’s my tribute to Rod Humble, if you must.

Play “Procrastination” at Ludus Novus.

Astute fans will notice that I have only released eleven games this year, despite my resolution to do a game a month. Fear not; the twelfth game is done, but “Babies Dream of Dead Worlds” will wait until it is sponsored before it gets released. Does it still count? Sure it does. I set the rules for this thing.

My other work-in-progress, the procedurally generated metroidvania with the working title of “Millions of Space Stations,” will be released in early 2010.

I’ve written a short story.

In the process of creating a fantasy setting for my roleplaying system LORE, I’ve been playing with a lot of world-building elements: cosmology, racial influences on culture, magic, spirits, and the like. A great way for me to get a feel for these elements and how they fit together is to write a story about them.

This story is called “Brea’s Crossing,” and it’s about the dangers of caravan travel, dueling, and leylines. Let me know what you think in the comments to this post. I’ll likely be releasing more stories in the future.

Read “Brea’s Crossing” here.

I’ve put together a game! I guess this is my November game, as the space station game would be October’s, and it’s still under construction. “Backup” is an Interactive System Failure about killing.

The Prosperity Commission transportation facilities are designed for the utmost safety and reliability. They are equipped with weapon dampening fields, highly-trained security forces, and four redundant computer cores. You are the third backup computer core for a facility under construction. You should never have to wake up. Something is wrong.

Download “Backup” from Ludus Novus.

To play the .zblorb file, you will need a Z-machine interpreter, which is like a media player for interactive fiction. If you use Windows, I recommend Gargoyle. If you use Mac OS X, I recommend Zoom. If you use Linux, I recommend the Linux version of Zoom.

This game is heavily inspired by Gun Mute. It is a (potentially) violent piece of interactive fiction with multiple endings set in a science fiction world of robots, plasma swords, and intergalactic finance. I’ve attempted to create something that rarely occurs in interactive fiction: a game that requires tactical thought as a challenge rather than puzzle-solving. In-game instructions and hints are available by typing HELP in-game. “Backup” is written in Inform 7. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Well, that didn’t take long. My August game, The Mold Fairy, is released. It’s a game about mold, magic, and death.

Once upon a time, there was a fairy for everything. One for frost, one for cobwebs, one for dew… and one for mold. When the fairy queen Titania decided that humans had lost their respect for mold, the mold fairy was sent down to teach them the power of the fuzzy fungi. Did the fairy brighten the humans’ lives, or curse them with poisons and spoiled food? Only you can decide.

Play The Mold Fairy on Armor Games.

This is a game in the vein of “Majesty of Colors” and How to Raise a Dragon; there are choices, and they affect outcomes. In this case, the choices are what to mold, and the outcomes run the gambit. This is my most explicit use of the “achievement” concept so far; I think it works for this sort of game.

Let me know what you think of The Mold Fairy!

My September game, “Paladin 0,” is released. It is a three-day prototype about virtue.

VIRTUE IS INSUFFICIENT. DESTROY EVIL. AVOID CORRUPTION.

Play “Paladin 0″ on Ludus Novus.

Astute readers will notice that there appears to be a monthly game missing. My August game, The Mold Fairy, is finally complete and should come out very soon. Hey, I’m willing to bend the rules of my New Year’s resolution if you are.

“Paladin 0″ is, in part, an experiment using the Flixel framework, which is a library designed to help with making pixelly games in Flash. It is very slick, as you can see from the amount I was able to achieve in just three days of work. If all goes according to plan, my October game will be a procedurally-generated Metroidvania done with Flixel.

If you like the music in the game, it’s available through Creative Commons and is part of Ozzed’s album Lesser Than Three.

My July game, Silent Conversation, is released. It is a game about reading.

Read carefully. Run and jump through the text of stories and poems, from the horror of Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City” to the simple beauty of Bashou’s frog haiku. Go for completion or race through the pieces you’ve mastered!

Play Silent Conversation on Armor Games.

This game grew out of an idea that I had in childhood. I was a voracious reader, and occasionally, late at night, I would see the structure of the words on the page as something physical: the end of a paragraph was a fissure in a cliff edge, and each indentation was a handhold. I could visualize a little person running along the lines, exploring every crevice of the story. This is an attempt to realize that concept.