Ludus Novus 019: False Narrativism: Awesome Zone

Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 019: False Narrativism: Awesome Zone
Loading
/

This podcast episode is about an unreleased game from 1990 that a guy showed me at GDC. It’s called Awesome Zone, and it was created by developer Theodore Alby for a company called KnowSoft over the course of a six-week nervous breakdown.

The music for this episode is from “Three Goes On Forever” by Time Slips By, and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike License as part of the compilation Ctrl-N.

7 thoughts on “Ludus Novus 019: False Narrativism: Awesome Zone

  1. I’m glad you’re back! I’ve always found your podcast extremely thought-provoking and this one’s no exception. I can’t find much at all online about Awesome Zone (due, no doubt, to the rather generic name), so if you can track down any screenshots, that would be very, very cool.

    Thanks for the great show!

  2. Gregory Weir you magnificent bastard! That was the most fanfuckingmarvelous story I’ve ever heard.

    I’m just listening through for the second time and trying to track some of this stuff down.

    Is it possible that ‘Ted’ was actually Theodore Alby himself? It sounds kind of nuts, but then this whole story is nuts and that would at least explain why he didn’t give you his card and why he had a copy of the game.

    Still haven’t found anything about the game, but I’m looking. Are you sure that the guy’s name and the game are spelled that way, or is it worth searching for alternate versions?

  3. ^ Every time there’s a new false narrativism! :D

    Very interesting ideas.

  4. It doesn’t have the same developer’s fall into insanity deal that Awesome Zone has, however a game that is pretty similar in some ways is eversion. If you’ve never played/heard of it the main mechanic is that you have the capacity to “evert” causing the world to change and different areas of levels to open up. As the game goes on it becomes clear that everting doesn’t just make obstacles appear and dissapear, it is actually making the world darker. By the end what was once an overtly cheerful game has blood and gore flying everywhere.

Comments are closed.