Category Archives: News

“The Majesty of Colors” Remastered

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Majesty Greenlight PromoBig news! As part of Future Proof Games, I’m remastering my classic Flash art game “The Majesty of Colors” for modern technologies. Instead of Flash, the game will be available natively for Windows, OSX, Linux, iOS, and Android. We’re polishing some rough edges but otherwise staying true to the original.

This feels very odd! “(I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors” is one of the first games I made that got any attention and remains one of my most-recognized games. It can be a bit frustrating sometimes that a game I made almost eight years ago is more familiar to folks than my recent work, but the truth is that “Majesty” is one of my favorite projects I’ve worked on, along with Looming, Ossuary, and Exploit: Zero Day. Out of all my games that are becoming inaccessible due to the fading of Adobe Flash, “Majesty” is the one I most want to preserve.

I’m hoping that there’s an audience for weird little art games in the modern gaming world, especially on Steam. If you think there is, please vote for us on Steam Greenlight.

Otherwise, you can see the trailer and get more information on the official website of “The Majesty of Colors”.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Ossuary in Steam Summer Sale 2016

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Our 2013 game Ossuary is currently on sale for $7.49 on Steam!

Blog Summer Sale 2016 Offer

I wrote all of Ossuary and released it with my partner as the first project of Future Proof Games. It’s a little game that’s pixelly and funny and strange. You’re a newcomer to a macabre philosophical underworld, and to escape you have to solve conversation-based puzzles and use sins as inventory items. I used it to explore a lot of Discordian concepts and perspectives, so in a sense it’s a religious work for me.

It’s weird looking back on Ossuary. I’m really proud of how it turned out, although it’s never had real financial success. We’ve sold maybe a couple thousand copies. For now it’s paying Future Proof’s monthly expenses for servers and such, but it’s certainly not making enough to provide us with paychecks. Each sale on Steam helps a bit, though, so if you haven’t picked up the game, check it out! It’s cheap! (And hey, if you know someone you think will like Ossuary, you can always get it for them as a gift!)

And a final request: if you have played Ossuary, please do leave a Steam review. Our 17 reviews are 94% positive, but Steam won’t list them as “Very Positive” or “Overwhelmingly Positive” until we have enough of them. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that these categories make folks more likely to check out an otherwise-unknown game.

Thank you for reading!

Ossuary Now on Steam

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Ossuary is on Steam! It’s been a long road getting there, but a game I wrote and designed is finally on the largest online game store.

So far the game’s been selling well compared to its previous performance, but it’s not been anything lifechanging. I’m very thankful to all the fans and journalists who have helped us get to this point.

If you haven’t played the game, pick it up on Steam! If you have played the game, you should have a Steam key waiting wherever you bought it. Please leave a review on the Steam store page saying what you thought!

Ossuary occupies a complicated head space for me. It was developed during a very difficult couple of years in my personal life, and it’s releasing right when I’m struggling the most to support myself. I hope that in the years to come I can look back on this release fondly, but right now I’m not quite sure how I feel.

Discordianism is a major influence on Ossuary, and I’m reminded of its Parable of the Bitter Tea. The Parable of the Bitter Tea teaches us to accept the nature of things. You can work to improve the world and you can see the flaws in it, but it’s harmful to struggle to change that which is already set in stone. I’ll work to be mindful of how I am right now and move toward the future.

One Year In Steam Greenlight

Over at Future Proof Games I blogged about how it feels to have our funny, unsettling satire Ossuary languishing in Steam Greenlight for a year.

It feels like a slow struggle. New games are being added to Greenlight daily. Because the primary measure of progress is “percent of the way to the top 100,” this means that your rank can actually slowly drop as some popular games surpass your vote count. Then, on an unclear schedule, a batch of games is greenlit, chopping the top off of the sample set and raising your rank again. It’s two steps forward, one step back.

You can read the rest at the Future Proof Games devblog and you can always vote “Yes” on Steam Greenlight.

What is Ludus Novus For?

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Over the past year, I’ve put up a single post on this site that’s not directly related to our company Future Proof Games. Everything else has been FPG related, mostly promotional stuff for Ossuary.

I’ve been asking myself what I want Ludus Novus to be for. In the past it’s been rather focused on game design, but I think it’s time to expand that a bit. Games are my life, but I’ll be writing a lot about them for the FPG blog as well. So I hope to use this space for a bit more eclectic set of stuff, including:

  • Personal news
  • Posts about other things important to me like polyamory, feminism/queer issues, and nonviolent communication
  • Feelings about games I’ve been playing
  • Podcast episodes (hopefully!)
  • Brief FPG updates and crossposts

In general, I want to take some of the pressure off of myself, to encourage me to put up stuff that’s less polished and more frequent. I may still post more theoretical game design stuff, but a lot of that will show up on the FPG blog instead.

Is there something you’d like to see in this space that’s a better fit for Ludus Novus than Future Proof Games?

Ossuary Demo: The Hodge-Podge Transformer

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OssuaryDemo200x200We’ve released a new game in the Ossuary universe: “The Hodge-Podge Transformer.” It’s a demo, a prologue to Ossuary, and a standalone game featuring all-new characters, setting, and puzzles. It will give you a good idea of what Ossuary is like (and let you test it on your computer!) while still not showing everything about the full game.

“The Hodge-Podge Transformer” was an odd project. For a while, I had no idea how to make a demo for Ossuary, and then inspiration struck rather fast and it planned itself out in my head. I’ve been downplaying the spiritual aspects of Ossuary, probably to avoid it being known as “that Discordian game,” but it’s a little bit tempting to claim divine inspiration for this one.

The demo should go up on major Flash portals tomorrow, but for now you can play it at Future Proof Games.