086: Seeing Red by ~Idene on deviantART
Thanks in part to a rush from Armor Games, “(I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors” has been played over 1,000,000 times. I can’t resist big, round milestones, and I remain overjoyed that so many people liked my little tentacle game.
As promised, my February game is finished. It’s called Exploit, and it’s a game about computer security, terrorism, and totalitarian governments.
Information is freedom. As a hotshot computer security cracker, you will solve over 50 puzzles and fight against totalitarianism, abuses of power, and terrorism. Story Mode offers a twist-filled story of international intrigue, and Challenge Mode offers 19 more puzzles to engage the mind. When it’s all done, use the built-in puzzle editor to make and share your own creations!
Play Exploit on Kongregate.
We all knew one. That kid who always told lies about video games. Maybe they knew a cheat code to make Lara Croft naked, or said that something special happened in Sonic if you collected 1000 rings, or that there really was a Carcer City in GTAIII that you had to be awesome to get to. Maybe you were that kid.
Do video game lies arise out of a desire to trick people, or because the liar wants to look cool? We may never know, but we can record all of these lies for posterity. Years from now, historians will be able to observe this unique bit of video game culture.
Because of positive response in a thread I started on the TIGSource forums, I’ve created a wiki at Wikia to record the odd phenomenon of video game lies. The history of video games is poorly-recorded, and this is especially true of the cultural history. The video game liar seems to be a universal experience of people who grew up around video games, and I’d like it if we could better document our experiences with it.
Visit the Video Game Lies database, and browse through the entries or add one of your own. The site’s a bit rough right now, but I’ll try and clean it up when I get the chance.
Just a collection of some news items about “The Majesty of Colors“:
I finished my February game a while ago, and I’ve finished the sponsorship process. The game’s called Exploit, but it doesn’t look like it’ll quite be released by the end of February. However, I’ve prepared a video that shows the finished version of the game:
Casual Gameplay/Jay Is Games has released their Best of Casual Gameplay 2008 awards, and my game “(I Fell In Love With) The Majesty of Colors” won the Audience Award for the Best Interactive Art or Webtoy (Browser) category! I got 15.9% of the popular vote, beating out such awesome games as “I Wish I Were the Moon” and Coil. Those two games shared the editors’ award for the same category, which was entirely deserved.
Other games in the awards that caught my eye:
Back at the beginning of the month, I resolved that I would release at least one game each month. January’s is “Bars of Black and White,” a game about barcodes and Orwellian experimentation.
You can’t remember the last time you left your room. When you receive a barcode reader in the mail, you discover that the world around you is not what it seems, and must escape the bars of black and white.
Play “Bars” on Kongregate
Play “Bars” on Ludus Novus
In place of my usual column at GameSetWatch, I was requested to do a general postmortem of “The Majesty of Colors” this time. I’ll point you that way if only for the inclusion of my initial design sketch for the game. It was an interesting experience writing the piece; usually, this sort of evaluation involves more than one person, so it’s easier to pick out successes and failures. When everything is your fault, it’s tricky to pick out specifics.
Because of the forum of GSW, I left out a few points that I was tempted to include. Here are a few of them.
Continue reading Postmortem: “(I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors”
I’ve been thinking about a goal to set for the new year, and I’ve come up with a good one. Here it is: release at least one new game each month for the year of 2009. I’m pretty sure I can achieve this; in the worst case scenario, the games for some of the months will be small in scale.
The satisfaction in releasing a game and knowing that people have played it and enjoyed it is incredible. At the moment, “Majesty of Colors” has been played over 700,000 times. I don’t know if I can duplicate that kind of success, but I know that I can put more of myself out there for people to enjoy if they want to.
So expect something by the end of January, and something each month after that, at least through December. Sometimes it may just be a little piece of IF, but I have bigger ideas in the works, too. Wish me luck!
If you’re seeing this post at ludusnovus.net, you may have noticed that I’ve changed the page’s theme. With the new year, I felt it was a time for a change. The theme I used before was Barthelme, by Scott Wallick. It served me well, but there were a few things that I wanted different; there was a bit too much white space, and it didn’t feel like it reflected me. Well, this is an entirely custom theme, unique for Ludus Novus, and lovingly hand-coded in PHP and CSS by yours truly. Here’s a list of the new features that you might care about.