Review: Undertale

Sometimes, I think video games are really goddamn stupid.

My feelings about most video games are similar to my feelings about bacon cheeseburgers. Yeah, I like them a ton, but I don't feel virtuous about eating them, and unless a person's expressed a similar passion for them, I'm not going to recommend burgers to them. Sure, I had a ton of fun with the Star Wars: Battlefront beta the past weekend, but if someone who doesn't play games asks me why I care so much about the medium, Battlefront is not the game I would point them to. Honestly, I am a little embarrassed that games like Battlefront, Call of Duty, Pac Man, and Mario are the public face of our medium. But my general angst about games can be saved for a separate essay.

The point is, because of the piles of adolescent masculine power fantasies I'm expected to pre-order for sixty bucks every damn year, I sometimes forget why I give a shit about video games. But, once every year or so, I play something that reminds me that games, occasionally, can be truly worthwhile.

This year, that worthwhile game was Undertale.

source: undertale.com

Undertale is a role-playing game for PC and Mac that was almost entirely made by one person, Toby Fox. You play as a human child who's fallen down a hole into the underground world of monsters. What begins as a simple journey to return home, predictably, evolves into something more dire.  

Don't let the game's crude graphics fool you: the game's electronic soundtrack is amazing, the writing is superb, the humor is on-point, and the design is smart as hell. Player behavior shapes the story in a natural, immediate, and significant manner.

source: undertale.com

There are two things about Undertale, on a general level, that clearly differentiate it from other games of the genre. The first is that the game doesn't forget past decisions you've made when you  reload your save file after death or quitting,  nor  does it forget when you clear your data and start a new game. Many characters are aware of the protagonist's ability to save their progress, and one in particular retains his memory when a saved game is loaded. I can't say more without spoiling the game's endings, but what happens outside of, and between, playthroughs of Undertale is nearly as interesting as what happens within it. At the end, Undertale's metagame is used to great dramatic effect, creating one of the most memorable boss encounters I've ever experienced.

The second obvious differentiating feature of Undertale is its "combat" system, if it can be properly referred to as such. As in most RPGs, you will find yourself in violent turn-based encounters with monsters and the occasional boss. However, instead of fighting them, you are capable of interacting with them in various nonviolent ways, with the end result of reaching a mutual agreement to spare each other. For example, one volcanic monster in the game will spew magma at you, mistakenly thinking that it has healing powers. Instead of killing the monster, you can instead take a turn to criticize the monster, informing it that it isn't being helpful. The monster will then feel dejected and sulk in the corner, ceasing to attack you. The player can then hug or encourage the monster, ending the battle.

source: undertale.com. I didn't know that the website had an official screenshot of this encounter until after I wrote that paragraph. Very convenient!

Undertale markets itself as a game "where nobody has to die," and while a pacifistic run of the game is not an easy feat, it is highly encouraged by the game itself, which is refreshing. Undertale, at its core, is a game about compassion, which is so damn rare for our medium. Not only does it encourage compassionate interactions and emotions through its mechanics, but also through its story. There are, arguably, only two "evil" characters in Undertale - even your main adversaries are incredibly likable and decent characters, making violent confrontations with them especially heartbreaking. Violence in Undertale is tragic, rather than recreational.

Of course, your choice to spare the lives of your adversaries is meaningless without the choice to kill them. The game has an entire alternative narrative for the bloodthirsty player, but it is a tragic story, and the player pays dearly for pursuing it. Again, I can't say much, but a genocidal player will permanently suffer for their actions, even if they restart the game. This serves not only as interesting commentary on violence in games, but on the completionist impulses of players. Undertale may be a game packed with secrets, choices, and alternate endings, but unlike other games which boast these features, it is not a game that is meant to be experienced in its entirety - in fact, it punishes you for it.

Ultimately, what truly makes Undertale so special is its emotional breadth. Most games, focused primarily on conflict, make you feel frustration, fear, tension, and the respective releases from those three emotions. Undertale, because it is as much focused upon compassion as it is conflict, comedy as much as tragedy, is a game that makes you feel the usual video game emotions, but also more. For me, those emotions included affection, gratitude, sorrow, remorse, and defiance. More impressively, the game was able to evoke these emotions in a non-exploitative way. Rather than, for example, force you to watch a predetermined, scripted cutscene in which the villain kills your favorite character, most of the game's most emotional moments are largely the result of player choice.

source: undertale.com

Of course, Undertale is by no means a perfect game. You know how most stories have one climax, and how that generally works really well? Depending on your choices, you may find yourself experiencing two climaxes for the game, one right after the other. Not only does the game's second climax lose some impact just for existing, but it especially pales in comparison to the excellent climax preceding it. Furthermore, as is the case in many fantasy stories, most of the game's endings heavily depend on some fairly nonsensical deus ex machina, diminishing their impact. Thankfully, the game's writing leading up to its conclusion more than makes up for its flawed ending.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to discuss the game in more concrete terms without wandering too far into spoiler territory. Half of what makes Undertale so great is its overall structure and premises, but the other half consist entirely of the game's specific moments. I would happily deconstruct the mechanical and narrative brilliance of the game's first hour, but even describing the game's beginning would spoil too much. Even though the game uses many common tropes and storytelling conventions, it subverts expectations from the beginning, and it often moves in directions which are genuinely surprising. More so than usual, Undertale is a game you want to play blindly.

Undertale is a significant work for many reasons, the least of which are its quality of storytelling, its subversion of genre tropes, and its sheer roller coaster of emotions. But it also, in many ways, represents the result of a decade of experimentation in the indie scene. Whether or not game creator Toby Fox was directly influenced by the mechanics of Iji and imscared, the aesthetic and narrative style of OFF, or the crudeness, humor, and charm of Space Funeral and Armada, many game design trends unique to the indie scene, especially the freeware scene, have seemingly converged into this single point, and have resulted in something wonderful.

Undertale is the sort of game that can only be created by an individual. In a subculture that places disproportionate value on the production power of large studios, examples of individually created works with strong personality are vital. Part of my angst about games in general stems from the lack of personality in the majority of celebrated games - an inevitable byproduct of massive collaborations between hundreds of professionals. I have long insisted that individuals or small collaborations are much more capable of creating impressionable, personal, and soulful art. Undertale is a strong example of the potential for individual expression through games.

You can download Undertale for Windows and Mac. It only costs ten bucks. There's a free demo, but... the game only costs ten bucks. That's a little bit cheaper than a ticket to that disappointing blockbuster film that person you don't like wants you to see, and a hell of a lot cheaper than the DLC for Overproduced Military Shooter Game 4: The Good, the Bad, and the Mediocre.  Buy the damn thing.

Radical Plaything 2: Claw Champion Earth, Alien-Stalker from Pluto, and more!

I really do intend to write Radical Plaything posts at least on a bi-monthly basis - my apologies for their absence over the past nine months. Let's get to this month's recommendations.

All of my freeware game picks for this month are from the Indies Vs Gamers jam at Gamejolt (a jam in which I entered Bloodjak, which placed in the top 10% of entries and got a little mention in Fireside, by the way)! I'll be focusing on games that didn't win the jam but still have a ton of character.

For me, game jams are often an excuse to create experimental, personally expressive, and/or ugly games and get away with it. So, this isn't a list of what necessarily I think are the best games of the jam. Instead, this is a list of games from the jam that, in some way or another, deviated from my usual experience of what a video game is, either mechanically, thematically, or aesthetically. Here we go:

Alien-Stalker from Pluto by Jord Farrell

Heres the finished game. Finished with 5 min left so there might be bugs 
Controls: X to Capture, C to Kill, Arrow keys to move around

I've heard people who've played video games before the 1990's describe retro and arcade games with a certain nostalgia and reverence that, as a young twenty-something, I've never been able to relate to. There's a level of abstraction in archaic games that leaves a lot of potential for your mind to fill in the missing spaces and go wild with your imagination in a way that you can with reading a novel - for whatever reason, most old games fail to realize that potential for me. 

I don't know what it is about Alien-Stalker, but its crude pixel labyrinth and the monsters that inhabit it somehow seem more real than the labyrinths from similar games made in the early 80's. 

Play Alien-Stalker From Pluto in your browser!

Mr. Pigcat by IsmoLaitela

Move Mr. Pigcat by using 'ARROW KEYS'.
Shoot/Puke using 'Z'
Press 'X' to use special when available. Increase your score during the special attack by smashing the keyboard!

Be aware of burdocs, hoovers, waterballoons and red lasers!

You're a fucking Mr. Pigcat who vomits on things. The game has screen shake in it. It also requires that you smash your keyboard. Any question?

(Also, I'm currently the highest scoring Mr. Pigcat player in the world!)

 Download Mr. Pigcat for Windows!

The Secret World of Arcade Game Repair by the Wzzard

TSWOAGR is a 2D infinite procedural wave shooter bullet hell nightmare game! Play with a gamepad or keyboard! Get the High Score by destroying glitches. Grab powerups to help with your repairs. Try again when you can't dodge any more!

At its core, TSWOAGR is a standard, but well done, side-scrolling shmup game. Aesthetically, it's a real treat. Stuff's flashing and shaking and blowing up all of the time. Many of the songs from the soundtrack kick ass.

Download TSWOAGR for Windows!

Claw Champion Earth by Taylor Bai-Woo (FromSmiling)   

Do you want to become a champion?

Maybe even a claw champion?

Please, search no more for your ride to becoming the champion of claws. A fierce claw-battling campaign. Climb your way up to becoming a champion and beat as many other claw-playing-opponents as you possibly can. The champion's throne awaits you.

You know those bullshit claw game machines they have in restaurants and amusement parks? Imagine a world in which there are competitive, multiplayer claw machines. Now imagine a world in which you can be a champion of the competitive claw machines. This is a pretty seductive world we're talking about, right?

Claw Champion Earth is charming, humorous, and well written. I wish most video games had just half the heart that it does. I'll take genuine, goofy stuff like this over Gears of War any day.

Download Claw Champion Earth for Windows, Mac, and Linux!

Radical Playthings: Bottle Rockets, Frail Shells, I'm Scared of Girls, and More

I've kept a list of neat-o freeware games over the past eight months that I've been meaning to share with everybody, but between game development, thesis writing, and reflecting upon current events in game community*, I haven't had too much time to write about any of them. Now that the year's winding down and everybody's writing their game-of-the-year lists, I'm feeling a little pressure to write about all of the cool stuff I played this year before I get to the GOTY material.

I do intend to dedicate more of this blog to freeware indie game curation in the future. The hole left by freeindiegam.es still hasn't quite been filled (although Warp Door comes pretty close), and I'd like to do my part to help share the small, otherwise unheard-of games that are well worth your time. So, I am pleased to announce that I am formally rebooting the (bi-?)monthly Radical Plaything(s) Blog Post Series!

I intend to focus on freeware, indie, alternative, punk, political, and experimental games in the new Radical Playthings posts. I might write about the occasional twitch shooter or small commercial release, but such recommendations will be made sparingly.

Because I have so many games I want to cover this month, my commentary will be fairly sparse this time around. Without further ado, here are this month's radical playthings!

Bottle Rockets by James Earl Cox III

"Bot­tle Rock­ets is a music videogame about a mother and her daugh­ter...

It is a game to play when you feel sad."

Do you know the terror of attempting to escape a burning space station as it plummets into the earth, knowing that your effort is in vain and you will never see your family again?

Bottle Rockets give you some idea of what that feels like. For such a small game, it's heavy.

Download Bottle Rockets for Windows (free).

Froggy by Tetrageddon Games

"FROGGY is the legendary froggame that forever changed frogtelling in the frogindustry with its groundbreaking narrative. Many critics have heralded it as the Citizen Kane of frogs. FROGGY’s most notable achievement was the accurate representation of frogs, for which it won many frogminations in froggytainment, and PC Frogger’s Frog of the Year award. In this no holes barred froggame you frog as FROGGY, a seasoned frog veteran with a strong inner-voice but no moral conviction, surviving one day at a time on Armageddon Highway. For the first time ever play the remastered version in full 2D froggraphics!"

 I haven't enjoyed a game purely for its tone in so long. Froggy's gameplay is fairly unremarkable (eat bugs, don't get hit by cars), but the bizarre setting, stylized, quality animation, and funny writing make for one hell of an experience.

Witness death and carnage on Armageddon Highway as Froggy. Do it. 

Download Froggy for Mac and Windows (free).

Mouse Corp by thecatamites

"Explore a field of caves and ruins under the benign aspect of the Mouse Corp. A mysterious 3d adventure awaits your survey. It's Mouse Corp. - what are friends for?"

SPOILERS FOLLOW, but it's a short game, so whogivesafuck.
Mouse Corp is cute and sad. You lead a group of mice on an expedition, fighting monsters and collecting berries, but over time, your comrades defect. By the game's end, you are all alone, with nothing to do**. There's no game over screen. Instead, you're simply left to experience an empty world. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about it.

Download Mouse Corp for Windows, Mac, and Linux (pay what you want).

I'm Scared of Girls by Moga

"Explore the depths of death, gender, and unhappy places in this surreal action game!" 

An adventure RPG in which you play as a gender nonconforming boy in the afterlife, who must cut all ties with his past life before being reborn . Solid little story, haunting music, great aesthetics and atmosphere. The game is quite compelling.

Download I'm Scared of Girls for Windows (free).

Average Maria Individual by Alice Maz

"You are MARIA. Why are you here. What's going on. Wait is this Super Mario Bros 1-1.

Find yr girlfriend! Defeat yr enemies! Jump no higher than half a tile!

The only mechanics are walking and light conversation and the only puzzle is don't act like a gamer. (There are some cool gameovers if you do tho)

Will you complete yr quest?? Yea prolly"

Nice little subversive parody of Super Mario Bros with themes of nonviolence and queerness. It pissed off some Gamergater-y types who made some awful response games (I played one of them and needless to say it was not cut out for this list). It's pretty weird that a harmless walking simulator with a gay protagonist that got such a strong counter-response***. Crazy times we live in.

Anyway, the game itself is an interesting little thing.

Download Average Maria Individual for Windows (free).

VA-11 HALL-A by Sukeban Games

"In this world, corporations reign supreme, all human life is infected with nanomachines designed to oppress them, and terrifying White Knights ensure that everyone obeys the laws.

But, this is not about those people.

You are a bartender at VA-11 HALL-A, affectionately nicknamed 'Valhalla.' Although it is just a small bar downtown, it attracts the most fascinating people this side of dystopia. Keep your clients lubricated and you will be made privy to the most interesting stories."

VA-11 HALL-A is a visual novel in which you, a cyberpunk bartender, influence the story based on how you mix your client's drinks. Currently, only the prologue is complete, but the setting is intriguing, and the game's story and mechanics show much promise. 

Download for Windows, Mac, or Linux ($5 or more).

Frail Shells by Taylor Bai-Woo

"Shells fall from the sky

Like rain on a day that's just a little too cold

Shells shatter like ice

Against a pan that's just a little hard to hold"

Frail Shells is a first-person shooter game that's more concerned with what happens after war than with war itself. It has a wonderful visual style and uses interactive mechanics to tell a story in a really clever way. It's damn near heartbreaking.

Download Frail Shells for Windows, Mac, or Linux (pay what you want).

And that's it for this month's Radical Plaything(s). A bunch of stuff for you to play that will make you feel sad or awful. Cheers.

*yes, that thing
**Unless I suck at Mouse Corp and am totally missing something.
***Hell, I even got a slight reaction for my latest game having a female protagonist, which surprised me. More about that soon.

Wrist recovering, many games recommended!

Hey, so it looks like my wrist may be recovered as soon as a month from now. What's more, I was just changed from a full-arm cast to a short-form cast, allowing for elbow usage, and I was given permission to use my right hand for computer operation.

I still don't have amazing dexterity with my right hand, and using it is fairly exhausting, but I am now better able to type and use a mouse. So, I'm pleased to say that I'm starting to slowly hack away at Waker again.

I won't be able to run at full speed for another month, but hey, I'm running. 

In other news, here's some free games I've played in the last month or so that are worth checking out. Fun fact: you can play all of them with one hand:

I Move the People by C. Hughes

An interactive fiction game about life as a human, and life as an elevator. Kind of beautiful.

Death of the Augnob by Jake Clover

Short punk adventure about the death of the Augnob. Clover always does good sound design. Ugly and engrossing as hell. 

Exit Fate by SCF

An oldie, but a goodie that I've rediscovered. I've gotten pretty tired of high fantasy JRPGs, and high fantasy most-things, but Exit Fate is just too damn good. Intrigue? Epic scale? Unique, simple, elegant battle system that evolves and stays fresh from beginning to end? Exit Fate's got it all.

Mogeko Castle by Mogeko

A self-described "prosciutto adventure game" by Mogeko, who also made The Gray Garden and Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea, translated by vgperson. You play as Yonaka, a high school girl trapped in a castle filled with cute but perverted creatures called Mogekos. You will laugh, you will cry, but you will mostly be uncomfortable. 

Recommendation: The Gray Garden, Waker Update, New Project:Void Hero Blues

Item Number 1:
Recommendation: The Gray Garden

The Gray Garden is an RPG by Mogeko, translated by vgperson, who also translated Standstill Girl and Mad Father . It takes place in a world in which, in the aftermath of a great war, angels and demons learned to coexist peacefully. Hell, they get along so well that God and the Devil flirt with each other - it's pretty great. You spend most of the game playing as a demon schoolgirl who lives an innocent life, up until her town comes under attack by flaming bats sent by the devil of another dimension.

The combat's stupidly easy, and it's a bit cheesy, but this doesn't detract from a surprisingly engaging story - it's one of those visual-novel-in-an-RPGs-clothes sort of deals. Combine that with dark humor, quirky loot, and a unique take on Christian mythology, and you have a damn worthy narrative experience.

You can download it for free. It's an RPG maker 2003 game, so it'll require downloading the RPG maker 2000 runtime for it to work. Of course, if you're the sort of person who likes these sorts of games, you've already got it installed, now, don't you?

Item Number 2: 
Waker Update

Sound production on Waker has begun - my audio guy (Ashton Morris, check out his tunes!) is sending me some sick music and sound effects. On top of that, I'm done revising the pre-existing section, finally moving onto actually progressing the story. To be totally honest though, I have to admit that Waker will probably remain in developer hell for longer than I've last estimated (November 2014) because of...

Item Number 3:
The Void Hero Blues Announced

So, I was having trouble this semester motivating myself to work on a year-long student game project. It was essentially just a multiplayer arena game, which I found dreadfully boring to even think about working on. While technically more impressive than anything I had worked on before, creatively, it felt like a step backward for me. I'm ready to move on and make games that are more experimental, political, and self-aware. It was also a problem that, on the seven person team, I was the only one willing to program. It was a depressing situation, but my professor rather kindly allowed me to work on a solo project. That project is The Void Hero Blues.

The Void Hero Blues is a first person shooter game about the objectification of strangers. Every time you kill an enemy in the game, you will be alerted to a bit of personal information about them. One enemy is an avid stamp collector, another is a loving parent, and this information will be made known to their killer - you. Maybe it'll be funny, maybe it'll be sobering, hopefully it'll provoke thought about objectification and violence.

I should have some levels made in three weeks or so, will show 'em off then. It'll be my first project made in Unity, and my first (truly) 3D project since I was a teenager (sadly, all of the first person shooters I made as a kid are forever lost) (and Empty Chambers doesn't really count). It'll be done by December.

Recommendation: Standstill Girl

Okay, so I'm a little late to the party, but vgperson (the person who translated the very excellent Mad Father which I talked about here) translated this fantastic short JRPG called Standstill Girl. I'm having trouble describing the game without sounding ridiculous, so I'll let it explain itself:

Alice is a girl who lives in the Land of Time, in the care of a boy named Tiska.
One day, when the hands of the Great Clock are mysteriously scattered, the Land of Life comes to a standstill.
Though it's Tiska's job as a warden of time to recover the hands, Alice can't help but be curious...

It's short, but tells a unique story very well, and has a fantastic, streamlined turn based battle system that elegantly fixes all of the usual flaws with JRPG combat. I haven't enjoyed a JRPG this much in a while. Give it a play!

Digital Toilet World and LD28 Updates

Hey all,

So, out of 1284 entries, "Digital Toilet World," placed #111 for humor and #282 overall in Ludum Dare 28! Originally, I was a little bummed that I didn't make the top 100 for any category, but considering how rough the game is, I'm still happy that I ranked so high regardless. It deserved the placement it got.

Next time around, I definitely need to hold myself to higher standards, and appropriate myself more time to work. Most of the highest ranking entries had quality graphics, sound, and UI - I purposefully skimped on these attributes in DTW, thinking that it would be forgivable for a jam game. I also didn't have Friday evening/Saturday morning to work on the game like many developers did - that was a lot of valuable time I could've spent fixing bugs and improving the presentation!

That being said, I still managed to cram a lot of content into the game with the time I had, and managed to tell a decent little story to boot. Oh, and having completed a game, period, is still a great achievement. At the beginning of 2013, I hadn't finished making a game in years. By the end of it, I had made two. It's a great feeling.

Someone asked me to port this to Mac, and I started just to fix some bugs and a typo for it, but I'm now also implementing difficulty levels and plan to add music - the most prominent criticisms about the game were its lack of difficulty and music. So, "Digital Toilet World Plus" will be coming to you soon! I don't plan on replacing the craptastic graphics and audio, or an expanding the game in any other way - I really don't want to dedicate too much more time to this project - but I do want to fully realize the original vision I had for the game.

Thanks for playing, and for the meaningful criticism!

Oh, and I had said earlier that I was going to list a bunch of my favorite picks from the competition. Sadly, the record of games I rated during the competition has been lost - but here's a bunch that I remember:

From the 48-hour compo:

The Day the Laughter Stopped - Interactive fiction game about sexual violence. Trigger warning. Really powerful - and it couldn't be any more powerful if told through any other medium. If you play one game from Ludum Dare, play this one.

You Only Get 1! - In which you are in a Japanese gameshow and must accomplish three tasks with one object. Very amusing!

The Foodcourt - I won't spoil it. Apparently it's funnier to Swedish people - there's supposedly a pun that I can't detect. Still, really funny.

From the 72-hour jam (with teams)

Titan Souls - Is fucking unreal. It's Dark Souls meets Shadow of the Colossus. It plays great, feels great, looks great, and sounds great. You wouldn't be able to guess that this was made in 72 hours otherwise.

Mama is Sick - Simulation game in which you are a schoolgirl in a third world country, struggling to care for her family with only one dollar a day.

Impressive Dog - Is cute as hell.

Wilhelm's Escape - Brilliant, short, and good-looking point-and-click adventure in which you die in amusing ways.

You Only Get One Pig - Great series of pig-related minigames.

Going Down - Your plane's going down, and there's only one parachute. Have you ever wanted to play a game in which you beat people up with a suitcase? Now you can.

Recommendation: Attack on Titan Tribute Game

You see the text in the corner that says "Frumper just killed a titan with 520 damage?" That was me. I did that. Boom.

Hey, so you know that hit anime/manga Attack on Titan that all the kids are raving about these days? Have you ever though to yourself that a co-op multiplayer game based on the franchise, in which a small team of terrified soldiers armed with jetpacks, grappling hooks, and swords has to fight through an arena of giant, naked, nearly-invincible giants, would be balls-to-the-wall awesome?

There is such a game. It is free. It's called Attack on Titan Tribute Game, and it's balls-to-the-wall awesome.

And it's also really freakin' hard. The only way to kill the giants is to close in using your 3D Maneuvering Device (meaning that you have to traverse levels Spiderman style), get behind them, and land a well-placed blow to the back of their neck. The game's mechanics are super bare-bones - you have to manually aim the grappling hooks yourself - making the game really, really hard, but also allowing for a number of incredibly complicated and impressive maneuvers.

As rough as the game is, it's one of the most fantastic multiplayer experiences I've had in a while. Check it out.

Frumped.

The Echidna Awards! (GOTYs 2013)

After much careless deliberation with myself, I have chosen the top 8 games of 2013. These are clearly indisputable. Check out my list at Beta Fish mag and be enlightened.

Recommendation: Super Hot

I don't know how I missed this from 7DFPS, but Super Hot is amazing. It's a shooter game in which time only moves when the player moves. It's really an amazing mechanic. Play it here.

Recommendation: Save the Date

Play this.

It's called Save the Date. It initially appears to be a visual novel dating sim, but it isn't. At all. It's really best to go into it blindly, so I'll try not to spoil it, but it's really, really funny, fantastically written, and provides really great commentary on storytelling (esp interactive storytelling). (Tip: keep playing after each bad ending. Try to avert them. You will progress.)

It's short, it's free, and it's quality. So much quality.

Recommendation: Hate Plus

Oh, *Hyun-ae. I really shouldn't be romancing you in-game because you're an underage genocidal computer program and it all kind of makes me uncomfortable, but I'll still drop everything and make you a cake when you ask me to ~! In a mug. In the microwave.

<3?

Look, a computer game made me do this. If you've learned anything from my blog, learn this: computer games are evil. Ugh.

Recommendation: Ultra Business Tycoon III

     Porpentine's has recently become one of my game dev heroes - she's more aware of everything that's fucked up about the medium more than any other public figure that I know - but this had only been because of her incredibly insightful writing about games. Ironically, I had actually never played one of her interactive fiction games until this evening: Ultra Business Tycoon III, a (semi-autobiographical, I assume) text adventure in which you're in the role of a young girl in a dysfunctional household playing a game. I really don't want to spoil any more of it, but it really struck an emotional chord with me, and you should really do yourself a favor and play it.

Recommendations: Various 7DFPS games by other people.

     I've spent a few days now playing through as many of the hundreds of 7DFPS entries released last weekend as I could stand before growing sick of the FPS genre altogether. Here's some pretty cool games from the jam.

Turret Crisis

There's a bunch of planets with turrets on them and you jump from planet to planet and there's PLASMA FREAKING EVERYWHERE and it's kind of epic.








Tunnel Revision
Not much of an FPS, but you race through a tunnel in first person view. Kind of like those helicopter flash games everybody played as a kid except it doesn't suck.


Terror From Another Dimension

Roguelike-ish shooter where you blast cute aliens, but after a certain amount of time the level's ceiling flies away and aliens come down from space and it's really awesome.









Boarding Party

Procedurally generated shooter in which you blast through hordes of aliens with what precious ammunition you can scavenge. One of the most polished entries by far, and a load of fun. Borrows some of the best elements from Doom, and then adds some of its own flair.






Shambles

Notch, the guy who made Minecraft (dur), made a game, and it's kind of been hogging up all of the 7DFPS press from those of us who don't have name recognition, which kind of pisses me off, but the game's really, really good. It's the zombie apocalypse, and life is hard.












Ned Kelly's Last Stand

In which you play as Australian folk hero Ned Kelly during his final moments. There's a couple of really great moments in this game, but I don't want to spoil them. Pretty neat.











Microdoctor

A game by Vlambeer, those guys who made Super Crate Box, in which you blast bacteria with guns using guns. Very solid gameplay.









Anything you've played from the game jam you've enjoyed? Please lemme know!

Recommendations: Tower of the Blood Lord and Leigh Alexander's Critique of Bioshock Infinite

Here's an interactive fiction game made in Twine called Tower of the Blood Lord, which starts out as an amusing parody of the first 20 minutes of Modern Warfare 2, but then takes a surreal twist, and eventually ascends into a really well written essay about games and culture and violence and prejudice and interacting with culture instead of just consuming it. The game gave me a much needed reminder to consider the relationship between narrative and gameplay, especially violent gameplay, and to consider my own role as a game developer in proliferating (or not) certain cultural attitudes about violence, gender, and race in games. Definitely worth a play/read.

Especially relevant to the themes of Tower of the Blood Lord is this brilliant critique of Bioshock: Infinite by Leigh Alexander. While I enjoyed Infinite very much, I was a little off-put by the narrative context of the game's violence, as well as how the game addressed race. I might write more about race in Infinite some other time (I need to go to bed), but Alexander does a fantastic job in critiquing violence in the game. Well worth reading.

Recommendation - A Thing About Nothingness

     The list of free indie games  in my bookmarks menu that I've been meaning to play has been overflowing, and I've finally started hacking away at it. Today's recommendation from that list is a Ludum Dare entry called A Thing About Nothingness in which you are a man in a barrel who tries to adhere to the philosophy of cynicism. It's short, free, and remarkably well written - download this little gem here. You will be amused.

Review of Fez

I just reviewed the delightful Fez for Beta Fish magazine, and you can read my thoughts on the game and on exploration in games in general here.

Also, Jurassic Heart

Also! There's a short dating sim parody in which you play as a young woman who is friends with a ukulele-playing Tyrannosaur. The Tyrannosaur has the hots for you.

It's called Jurassic Heart. It's freakin' odd, in case your afternoon doesn't have enough weird. Yer welcome, kid.

Miscellaneous Short Essays I Had to Write for School

     So, I recently applied (and got in, of course) to Ohio University's Games and Animation program, while keeping my good ol' Political Science major. To do this, I had to write six short essays for an online blog - I don't know why it was necessary to post these essays publicly on the internet, since they're just going to be a general waste of server space - but a couple of them might be of interest to you.

     For the first of these, I had to explain why I applied to program. I ended up explaining why I want to make games, why I want to make them independently, and how I want the medium to evolve. If you want to know why I do what I do, give it a read here.

     The second is a review of The Binding of Isaac, a wonderfully twisted zeldalike roguelike. Those of you who are Indie Devs are probably quite familiar with it, but for the rest of you, it's cheap and good - and I give a good synopsis and short analysis of it here. Not my most in-depth review, but it'll do.

Please, for the love of God, no not read the rest of the entries.

Recommendation - Get Punched! (also swearing)

     Okay, so if you've read any of my writing, you know that the reason I make games is to attempt to tell emotionally engaging and meaningful stories and be part of a movement to help mature the medium and press its limits and blah blah blah yeah yeah whatever.

     I lied - that's only half the reason I make games. The other half is this:

     This is a short punk game in which you punch people called Get Punched, and it the most fucking fun you will have all week. The game's feel is amazing. It's crude as hell, but I love it. The download link is further down the thread here.