Game-a-Day Journal Archive

Contain the Roots

It looks like this:

But I have another KamikazeRush style metaphor analysis if you’d like to read more… (more…)

Try KamikazeRush

The game looks like it’s about this:

Rest assured, it isn’t. Play it for a bit, then read on… (more…)

Put Yourself Through GoodNotGood (Consider it a cultural experience.)

I’m a firm believer that videogame developers, along with all other media creators, have a social obligation to at least occasionally exhibit deeply-considered meaning and purpose. This is me doing that. (more…)

Try DarkPlace

It’s everything that I care about from zombie videogames, minus the stuff that takes a long time to generate.

Top 10 Successful Zombie Videogame Mechanics (all used in DarkPlace!):

1. Constrained vision. Why does First Person perspective lend itself to so many zombie games? For the same reason that Resident Evil 1 worked will using fixed cameras, and Resident Evil 4 worked well with an over-the-shoulder camera - the zombies that you can’t see are substantially creepier than the ones that you can. No sense in writing a 3-D renderer to constrain vision, though - a couple of dot products did just fine.
2. Unpredictable zombie movements. Conker’s Bad Fur Day (the zombie segment late in the game) and Resident Evil 4 both use zombies that periodically stumble forward into a brief sprint, followed by an unpredictable return to staggering slowly forward, rinse and repeat. This makes it so that when the player is surrounded by a ton of zombies, there’s no way to know how to pick them off in the systematically best way, and when there are zombies at all angles in the distance, there’s no way to know how quickly they’re approaching besides turning to check, and at that point it may be too late. (more…)

Proselytizer is my first direct attempt at making a game to convey an aspect of how I see the world. Namely:

1. Spreading ones beliefs is an identity survival mechanism. “We” each exist within a bubble of our own worldviews, and no matter what its composed of sustaining that bubble is perceived by the identity as critical to sustaining our sanity, motivation, behavior, careers, and relationships. If the belief ends, so too do we, since within that bubble there’s a concept of identity separate from the body - and it’s strictly the transient identity that is seeking self-preservation via spreading belief. We want to protect that identity, like we want to protect our avatar dot onscreen, even though neither one is really “us”. (more…)