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.

The Narrative Constraints of a Violent Medium

     And now, ladies and gents, here's an article I wrote for Beta Fish about the narrative limitations of game violence, mostly in response to Bioshock: Infinite. Thoughts?

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!

"Empty Chambers" now on Game Jolt!

You can now download "Empty Chambers" from Game Jolt and apparently give me ad revenue or something/whatever. There's also more screenshots and shit. It's nice.
Check it out here.

7DFPS Challenge: Day 7

     "Empty Chambers" was completed at 3:00 AM this morning. You can read the pitch about it and download it on the games page. It's entry on the 7DFPS site is here.

     Before I talk about the game itself, I want to mention that the 7 Day FPS Challenge was a wonderful experience. I really enjoyed reading up on everybody's progress at the end of each day. Even though each team used a different development tools, were of varying sizes, and had wildly different end goals, I felt a lot of solidarity with the whole community. To each of you who completed a game this week, congratulations! Also thanks to those of you who helped organize it.

     Also, this is the first damn videogame that I finished making in three years. This is a really big milestone for me. Most of the time, I don't even get far enough to begin implementing sound. It was a good experience to have gone through the entire development cycle for once. Not only is it good practice, but it's a good reminder to myself that I am actually capable of making and releasing a full game.

     Now, I'm still damn tired from working lasting night and won't write too much else. I have a lot of things I want to say about game violence, shooters and storytelling, and this game in particular, but that discussion will be much more fruitful as I receive feedback on the game. This is in a few ways an experimental game - I made some creative decisions without knowing what the effect would be, and from the little feedback I have received I don't think that the effect was at all what I had intended. So give me feedback. Pretty please? Thanks!

EDIT: Oh, and as far as the last 36 hours of development went, it was pretty hellish. I spent 4-5 hours working out the gunfight at the end, another hour adding the zeppelins and bombs, another hour making and figuring out sound effects for the first time in forever, and still another hour doing boring mundane shit. Totally worth it, though.

     There was a lot I had hoped to get done that I didn't get to: there was supposed to be a section with turrets, and the last level was supposed to be a war zone with civilians under attack from the zeppelins and stuff, and I wanted to add more banter between the player and the fugitive, but it was all low-priority stuff. Perhaps I'll add it later.