The Bryant Collection Released

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Right on the heels of my last release, here’s my April game, The Bryant Collection. This one is a bit of a cop-out; it’s not actually my game. Instead, it’s a translation of someone else’s work into interactive fiction.

An excerpt from my release post on RGIF:

A few months ago, I found an old strongbox at a garage sale. The box was full of papers written by a woman named Laura Bryant. The majority of the stuff in the box was a collection of what she called “story worlds.”

These story worlds are akin to interactive fiction or roleplaying games; they’re designed for one player and one mediator who serves as the parser or the game master. The earliest date on a story world in the box is 1964, which means these works predate Crowther and Woods’s Adventure, Dungeons & Dragons, or Wesely’s Braunstein. The Bryant Collection contains the five stories that I found the most interesting and feasible to convert to IF:

  • “The End of the World” is a story about lunch.
  • “Morning in the Garden” is a story about dealing with annoying people.
  • “Tower of Hanoi” is a rather interesting little puzzle, but not what you think. It came with a sort of feelie in the strongbox, which is included as an IF object.
  • “Going Home Again” is a story about growing up.
  • “Undelivered Love Letter” is a story about airports.

Download The Bryant Collection.

For more information, including links to interpreters that will run the game, see the game page.

Sugarcore Released

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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

Two Interviews

News

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.

News Update

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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.

Personality in TF2

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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.

Exploit Released

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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.

The Video Game Lies Database

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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.