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. Continue reading The Video Game Album
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.
A fan of Exploit has put together a site that compiles maps for the game. If you go there, you can see a whole bunch of user-created puzzles, complete with titles and screenshots. You can even submit your own levels!
Check it out if you have been looking for more Exploit action.
I’ve gotten some requests for a way to download the Exploit soundtrack, so I got Evan Merz, the composer, to give me some new, high-quality mp3s of all the music. You can download the soundtrack in a zip file. You can also visit Merz’s site, where he discusses computer music and has some of his other compositions available for download.
My game for March is out! It’s called “Sugarcore,” and it’s a game about bullets, naturally-occurring candy formations, and the hazards of gardening.
Find out where sweets really come from as you mine licorice, demolish candy orbs, and defend confections from attack! Three quirky characters guide you through 18 levels of sugary goodness.
Play “Sugarcore” on Ludus Novus
I’ve returned from the Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco. I’ll be blogging about it sometime in the next few days, but right now I want to highlight two sites that were cool enough to ask to interview me.
Whose Fault is That bills itself as having “interviews with wonderful people,” and they really do. Joe Bernardi and David Cole have interviewed interesting people, from cartoonists to photographers to musicians. They seem to think I’m wonderful, too, and put up an interview where I talk about Knytt and learn that my too-seldom-updated podcast has a stream-of-consciousness feel.
Good Game Get! is a blog that talks about video games in a pleasantly NGJ way. In this interview, I discuss upcoming games and my unhealthy month-long obsession with the Stargate franchise.
This is just a quick update post, with a few bits of news. First, Exploit is doing well. It’s getting generally favorable reviews and comments, and it got Daily 3rd Place on Newgrounds, as well as winning Mochi Media’s weekly Flash Game Friday contest and getting a third place in Kongregate’s weekly contest. It’s gotten linked by Jay is Games, Play This Thing!, and (niftily) Bytejacker. It’s cool seeing your game in someone else’s show!
In other news, I’m going to be attending the Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco. “The Majesty of Colors” is up for an award there, and there should be some interesting panels. The topics are all business-focused, which is a little disappointing to my game-designer-and-analyst heart. But hey, I also like eating, so I think the panels will be useful.
My latest article is up over at GameSetWatch. It’s called “Personality in Team Fortress 2,” and it’s about how the memorable characters in TF2 enhance the gameplay experience by reinforcing character roles.
The Orange Box wins in my book for best characters in a 2007 video game package. Alyx and Eli Vance, GlaDOS, and the TF2 cast together are an amazing accomplishment, especially when you realize the games were released on the same day by the same company.