Silent Conversation Released

August 12, 2009Digital Games, Games Releases, Newsgame releases, my games, silentGregory Avery-Weir

My July game, Silent Conversation, is released. It is a game about reading.

Read carefully. Run and jump through the text of stories and poems, from the horror of Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City” to the simple beauty of Bashou’s frog haiku. Go for completion or race through the pieces you’ve mastered!

Play Silent Conversation on Armor Games.

This game grew out of an idea that I had in childhood. I was a voracious reader, and occasionally, late at night, I would see the structure of the words on the page as something physical: the end of a paragraph was a fissure in a cliff edge, and each indentation was a handhold. I could visualize a little person running along the lines, exploring every crevice of the story. This is an attempt to realize that concept.

Torn Paper GIMP Filter

August 9, 2009UncategorizedGregory Avery-Weir

In the process of working on my next game, I found myself in need of a particular photo editing effect: torn paper, as if an image has been ripped out of a magazine and glued in place. I found an excellent method for the image editor I use, the GIMP, but it requires several steps. The solution? Script-fu! I haven’t coded in Scheme in forever, but it was relatively straightforward to put together a new filter.

Download the filter here.

Save it to your GIMP scripts directory, which will be ~/.gimp-2.6/scripts/ (or something like C:\Users\Gregory\.gimp-2.6\scripts for Windows users). The filter will be added to the end of your Filters menu. To use, just make a selection of any shape, make sure the layer you want to tear out is active, and go to Filters->Torn Paper. The filter will make a new layer with the torn out piece on it.

This filter allows you to make images like the one above. Cool, huh?

Silent Conversation Release Date

August 5, 2009UncategorizedGregory Avery-Weir

Looks like Silent Conversation, my latest game, will be out next week. I’ll post when it’s released!

July Game Almost Ready

August 1, 2009Digital Games, NewsGregory Avery-Weir

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:

Phenomenon 32

July 20, 2009Digital Games, NewsGregory Avery-Weir

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.

On Pixel Art and Design Decisions

July 12, 2009Blogs, Digital Gamesart, dragon, graphics, my games, neo-retro, pixel artGregory Avery-Weir

I got a comment from David that I’d like to highlight and address, because I believe it highlights a misconception folks have about pixel art and the style of my games. I’ll cut the comment for length, but try to retain the intent.

Iâ€™m a visual artist, so critiquing your visuals is all I feel arrogant enough to do. They were well executed and suited their purpose in “Bars of Black and White” and in Exploit (and in the “Majesty of Colors” they were exquisite), but in “Sugarcore” and “How to Raise a Dragon” they cause the games to suffer. In “How to Raise a Dragon”, the pixels are not a bad idea, but they are also sort of sloppy looking. They are used in lieu of more detailed graphics to avoid having to draw, right? They are probably better than the alternative, but the use of pixels should not become your crutch. Instead it should be used to artistic effect.

The art style in “Dragon” was definitely chosen for artistic effect, not to avoid making art. Continue reading On Pixel Art and Design Decisions →

Untitled Work In Progress

July 10, 2009NewssilentGregory Avery-Weir

Six Months of Games

July 8, 2009Digital Games, Interactive Fiction, News, Roleplayingbars, belief, bryant, dragon, exploit, game a month, LORE, my games, sugarcoreGregory Avery-Weir

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.
Continue reading Six Months of Games →

Interview with IndieVault.it

July 6, 2009Newsdragon, interviews, majesty, mcmillen, wipGregory Avery-Weir

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.

Continue reading Interview with IndieVault.it →

“How to Raise a Dragon” News and Updates

July 3, 2009Digital Games, NewsGregory Avery-Weir

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.