Just a quick update: my game for July, which I previewed a few weeks ago, is done. It’s called Silent Conversation, and it’s just waiting for final sponsor review. Expect it to be released soon; if I know the sponsor as well as I think I do, it should be out by Monday night.
Here’s another preview:
Jonas Kyratzes, creator of The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge, has picked up a strange transmission from an extradimensional source:
Have I mentioned how much I like exploration platformers? The new game, Phenomenon 32, will be out sometime soon, it seems.
In January I resolved to release a game every month during 2009. There have been six months, and six games so far. I’m halfway done, and now is a good time to look back on those six games and how they turned out.
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Italian-language indie games site IndieVault.it just posted an interview with me! They asked a bunch of interesting questions, including one about my next game.
In case you (like me) don’t read Italian, I’ve included the original English questions and answers below. A warning, though: this is just copied from our correspondence, and hasn’t been edited by them, so any mistakes are mine and it may not match the Italian version perfectly.
It’s been a little over a week since “How to Raise a Dragon” was released, and it’s been played almost 650,000 times, linked by Jay is Games, IndieGames.com, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Play This Thing, Auntie Pixelante, Kotaku (Australia), Bytejacker, and sundry others. I’m pleased by the responses, although I’d probably be more well-received if I cut down on the lo-fi pixel art, as folks often seem to find it ugly or overplayed.
As I was going back to get the game ready to post on other portals, I put in a few updates. I made it possible to create a Fiery Watcher in-game, added Y as an alternative jump key for my QWERTZ friends, and added a new behavior that really should have been in there all along. These updates are present in the ArmorGames version. I’ve put up a copy here on Ludus Novus and one on Kongregate. Other portals will follow once I work out some difficulties with a new ad provider.
My latest column has gone up at GameSetWatch. It’s about a rare and intriguing animal: the Video Game Album. Occasionally, several games will be released as one package. In the article, I discuss Odin Sphere, Kirby Super Star, and The Orange Box.
One work I didn’t discuss in the column, because it seemed a bit incestuous, is my recent IF piece, The Bryant Collection. (more…)
My June game is finished. It’s called How to Raise a Dragon, and it’s a game about dragons, humans, and eating things.
The dragon: a majestic and complex beast. How is it born? How does it live and die? Magus X. R. Quilliam’s definitive work, How to Raise a Dragon, describes all that is known about these great creatures.
Play How to Raise a Dragon on Armor Games.
GameSetWatch just posted my latest article. It’s called “Interplay in Left 4 Dead,” and it’s about how the various kinds of enemies in that game interact to become stronger than the sum of their individual strengths.
L4D is such an astonishingly complex game. So much more can be said about it, and I expect to get at least one more post out about how the weapons all work together. This is a game that, like Portal, has clearly been fine-tuned and adjusted to a glossy finish. But while Portal was cut down and simplified to make it a smooth, well-crafted ride, L4D was cut down to a tangled knot of gameplay interactions, making it this chaotic, complicated, minute-to-learn-and-lifetime-to-master enigma of a game.
This world is not as it should be. There is no truth. Reality is what we believe it to be. If you think you can fly, then that flight is real to you. Others may see you plummet and die, but you might live on, soaring above the clouds. Anyone can dream, but it takes someone special to make those dreams real.
Here is the release of my May game: LORE, the Lightweight Omnipotent Roleplaying Engine, and its first sourcebook, Belief. Together, they form my first tabletop roleplaying game system.
LORE is an attempt to address some of the common problems with tabletop RPGs. It has an interesting dice system; a quick, easy, and original character creation system; and a system that’s lightweight, because roleplaying happens beyond the rules.
Belief is a game about changing reality, about subjective viewpoints, and about the search for a better world. It owes heavy debts to other sources, but it is its own being.
Both of these books are beta releases. They have been playtested, but not enough for me to say they’re finished. Please, read them, play them, and comment with anything you think I did especially right or that I could change for the better. I’ve provided them in bookmarked PDFs slavishly laid out for optimal printing at your local print shop, and they’re released under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 License.
These are just the initial releases; I wanted to get them out and in people’s minds so that I could start getting feedback. Expect extras like quick reference sheets and maybe an adventure or three in the coming weeks and months.
