Tag Archives: game releases

Babies Dream of Dead Worlds Released

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And it’s out! My December 2009 game is up at Newgrounds. Babies Dream of Dead Worlds is a game about family.

Before we have memory, before we know what this world is, we dream. Babies dream of what came before, of universes that are no longer there. Babies dream of dead worlds.

Play Babies Dream of Dead Worlds on Newgrounds.

This game is a sort of surreal platformer, I suppose? It’s a bit hard to describe. It’s developed using Flixel, and tells the story of three siblings at the end of a world very unlike this one.

Procrastination Released

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My final game of the year is done, and boy did I delay it to the last minute. “Procrastination” is an abstract experimental game, my attempt to communicate purely through game mechanics. It’s my tribute to Rod Humble, if you must.

Play “Procrastination” at Ludus Novus.

Astute fans will notice that I have only released eleven games this year, despite my resolution to do a game a month. Fear not; the twelfth game is done, but “Babies Dream of Dead Worlds” will wait until it is sponsored before it gets released. Does it still count? Sure it does. I set the rules for this thing.

My other work-in-progress, the procedurally generated metroidvania with the working title of “Millions of Space Stations,” will be released in early 2010.

Backup Released

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I’ve put together a game! I guess this is my November game, as the space station game would be October’s, and it’s still under construction. “Backup” is an Interactive System Failure about killing.

The Prosperity Commission transportation facilities are designed for the utmost safety and reliability. They are equipped with weapon dampening fields, highly-trained security forces, and four redundant computer cores. You are the third backup computer core for a facility under construction. You should never have to wake up. Something is wrong.

Download “Backup” from Ludus Novus.

To play the .zblorb file, you will need a Z-machine interpreter, which is like a media player for interactive fiction. If you use Windows, I recommend Gargoyle. If you use Mac OS X, I recommend Zoom. If you use Linux, I recommend the Linux version of Zoom.

This game is heavily inspired by Gun Mute. It is a (potentially) violent piece of interactive fiction with multiple endings set in a science fiction world of robots, plasma swords, and intergalactic finance. I’ve attempted to create something that rarely occurs in interactive fiction: a game that requires tactical thought as a challenge rather than puzzle-solving. In-game instructions and hints are available by typing HELP in-game. “Backup” is written in Inform 7. Let me know what you think in the comments!

The Mold Fairy Released

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Well, that didn’t take long. My August game, The Mold Fairy, is released. It’s a game about mold, magic, and death.

Once upon a time, there was a fairy for everything. One for frost, one for cobwebs, one for dew… and one for mold. When the fairy queen Titania decided that humans had lost their respect for mold, the mold fairy was sent down to teach them the power of the fuzzy fungi. Did the fairy brighten the humans’ lives, or curse them with poisons and spoiled food? Only you can decide.

Play The Mold Fairy on Armor Games.

This is a game in the vein of “Majesty of Colors” and How to Raise a Dragon; there are choices, and they affect outcomes. In this case, the choices are what to mold, and the outcomes run the gambit. This is my most explicit use of the “achievement” concept so far; I think it works for this sort of game.

Let me know what you think of The Mold Fairy!

Paladin 0 Released

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My September game, “Paladin 0,” is released. It is a three-day prototype about virtue.

VIRTUE IS INSUFFICIENT. DESTROY EVIL. AVOID CORRUPTION.

Play “Paladin 0” on Ludus Novus.

Astute readers will notice that there appears to be a monthly game missing. My August game, The Mold Fairy, is finally complete and should come out very soon. Hey, I’m willing to bend the rules of my New Year’s resolution if you are.

“Paladin 0” is, in part, an experiment using the Flixel framework, which is a library designed to help with making pixelly games in Flash. It is very slick, as you can see from the amount I was able to achieve in just three days of work. If all goes according to plan, my October game will be a procedurally-generated Metroidvania done with Flixel.

If you like the music in the game, it’s available through Creative Commons and is part of Ozzed‘s album Lesser Than Three.

Silent Conversation Released

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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.

How to Raise a Dragon Released!

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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.

LORE and Belief Released

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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.

Download LORE and Belief.

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.

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