FEZ

(Polytron Corporation)

In many ways, FEZ closely resembles its creator Phil Fish: It’s eccentric and often darkly humorous, but chiefly, it isn’t pandering to anyone at all. FEZ doesn’t care if you don’t get its strange, sarcastic, post-ironic tone. Nor does it care if it confuses you, or bores you, and makes no effort to re-engage you should either occur. In this current period of gaming, when a ridiculous degree of hand-holding and tutorialization in games has been made normal, FEZ’s complete unwillingness to patronize the player is somehow simultaneously off-putting and refreshing in equal measure.

What’s strange about FEZ however, is that this laissez faire attitude to the player-game dialogue (or rather monologue) doesn’t feel punishing. Despite its fundamental complexity and constant elaboration, at no point does FEZ really feel like a tough game, challenging certainly, but not tough.

Painstakingly constructed, beautifully imagined, pragmatically delivered, and utterly, utterly brilliant.

Gazornonplat

FEZ (Polytron Corporation) If you’ve been living on the opposite side of a hexahedronal yet seemingly two-dimensional shape, you may not have heard that FEZ is now available for the personal computer from Steam, Good Old Games, and as a direct download from Polytron via the Humble Store. The peaceful, beautiful, challenging, nostalgic, multi-award-winning puzzle platformer from the minds of Phil Fish and Renaud Bedard is also due to hit OSX, Linux, and Playstation later this year. Gazornonplat
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FEZ

(Polytron Corporation)

If you’ve been living on the opposite side of a hexahedronal yet seemingly two-dimensional shape, you may not have heard that FEZ is now available for the personal computer from Steam, Good Old Games, and as a direct download from Polytron via the Humble Store.

The peaceful, beautiful, challenging, nostalgic, multi-award-winning puzzle platformer from the minds of Phil Fish and Renaud Bedard is also due to hit OSX, Linux, and Playstation later this year.

Gazornonplat

LIMITS AND DEMONSTRATIONS (Cardboard Computer) Strange and beautiful; Limits and Demonstrations is short introductory story for Cardboard Computer’s thrice IGF nominated “Kentucky Route Zero”. According to the official site, Limits and Demonstrations has no overlap with the story of the main game, but exemplifies the tone and style therein. I didn’t fully understand Limits and Demonstrations, nor do I think it is actually written to be fully understood, but what I briefly felt and strained unsuccessfully to grasp in its hissing blackness fascinated me, and I highly recommend the experience. Gazornonplat
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LIMITS AND DEMONSTRATIONS

(Cardboard Computer)

Strange and beautiful; Limits and Demonstrations is short introductory story for Cardboard Computer’s thrice IGF nominated “Kentucky Route Zero”. According to the official site, Limits and Demonstrations has no overlap with the story of the main game, but exemplifies the tone and style therein. I didn’t fully understand Limits and Demonstrations, nor do I think it is actually written to be fully understood, but what I briefly felt and strained unsuccessfully to grasp in its hissing blackness fascinated me, and I highly recommend the experience.

Gazornonplat

Extra Credits: “My Name Is Ozymandias…”

Extra Credits: “My Name Is Ozymandias…”

Video link

(Sorry about the link, they don’t support embedding it seems)

I really love Extra Credits, it’s one of the most interesting, educational “from the inside” shows about gaming and game development out there. They are also marked by an exceedingly positive view on almost everything they touch on, emphasizing what great good games can do, how diverse and interesting our medium is, and the ways in which technology can bring us new experiences. They occasionally go a little too far in this approach (I remember them doing an episode on Gamification, which in my opinion is a monster of an idea, which was largely quite positive). Incidentally, they also always include a song from either OCRemix or from an album or something similar, which I think is a wonderful gesture to promote this stuff.

Anyway, this week Extra Credits brings up a really interesting topic, which is that of preservation. It’s definitely something I often think about. While I won’t deny anything they’re saying here, (to summarize: old games are worth playing, and should be part of our common heritage, but technology often leaves these games in the dust) I find it a little uncharacteristic that they bring up a topic like this without saying anything positive.

First of all, they make reference to great works of Shakespeare and Van Gogh, and point out that our medium, with its incredible dependence on interactivity, has a much diminished ability to preserve gameplay experiences (after all, playing a game on iPhone is a radically different experience than playing the same game with a NES controller).

Now, they are to some extent right of course, but for the “classics”, there is one device that makes at least the console games of our past eminently playable—the Wii. It seems like gamers are eager to forget this stuff (most of us are after all capable of hooking up an emulator for ourselves), but this is an incredible boon, being able to load up any game like this with such simplicity. They talk about emulators and their difficulty (which I think they’re overselling a little, but that’s just me), but this is just as easy as starting any other game. There is no excuse at this point.

I think the real problems lies largely in the fact that there’s no real sense of studying games from a historical perspective. That’s fine, this is a young medium (many movies from the first 30 or so years of that medium’s lifespan are lost to time, or impossible to view), but it’s something to emphasize strongly to anyone interested in game design as a job or a hobby—you should know your history. But what are the classics? They off-handedly remark that X-Com and Grim Fandango should be mandatory knowledge, and I would certainly agree, but I could easily add another 100 games to The List.

At any rate, bottom line is that it’s an interesting thought and I encourage everyone interested in making games to study the old stuff as well as the new stuff.

Surasshu

HOTLINE MIAMI

(Dennaton Games)

Hotline Miami is something of an oddity. The quickest comparison would be to the original Grand Theft Auto titles, but it’s also one that does neither the brutality nor the cleverness of this game justice. In Hotline Miami you play an unnamed character, ordered by his phone to massacre the Russian mob, a pass-time in which he relishes. Encounters with the mob take place in various buildings across Miami, each of which is (quite literally) divided into two or three self-contained levels. Usually you arrive at these locations unarmed, although many weapons can be found thereafter, melee weapons in particular adding a certain spine-crunching, skull-smashing, limb-severing joy to proceedings.

Where Hotline Miami left me wanting however, was in how disappointingly lazy the enemy AI feels throughout most of the game. Standard enemies have five mostly-illogical patterns of behaviour: Stand in one spot, stand in one spot until a noise is heard, follow the walls, walk in a circle, and walk at random. Walk at random is by far the most frustrating of these, because any supposed “strategy” the game might contain is undermined by the sheer unpredictability of the encounters. Enemies are also hilariously stupid, something which the developers (must have thought they) corrected for by making them outlandishly, inhumanly quick to aim and shoot.

This, combined with the curious inclusion of boss battles (something the game neither trains you for, nor warns you about) makes the whole experience one of of rather frustrating trial and error, rather than strategy, as the developers claim, and unlike games such as Super Meat Boy, the inconsistency across multiple attempts means that death rarely feels deserved. More often than not, I found myself cursing the developers and the AI, rather than my own shortcomings, and most players would be perfectly right in doing so. Don’t even get me started on the hospital level.

The game’s most consistently impressive feat however, is in its narrative style. Emotion is expressed through environment and mechanics, and like many games that have the sense to remain subtle in their storytelling, the implicit narrative is always more engaging than the explicit one. Right down to the final resounding gunshot, the game tells beautifully through combat what words would make tedious.

A brilliant concept, clumsily executed. A consistent vision, inconsistently realised.

Gazornonplat

NiGHTS into DREAMS (Sonic Team) Been playing another old favourite that just had a HD release on Xbox Live Arcade. I’m always a little sceptical about HD releases but Nights (and Jet Set Radio) were done really well! As wonderful a game Nights is, I can’t even begin to talk about the music. One of the best soundtracks in gaming history imo. Strawberri
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NiGHTS into DREAMS

(Sonic Team)

Been playing another old favourite that just had a HD release on Xbox Live Arcade. I’m always a little sceptical about HD releases but Nights (and Jet Set Radio) were done really well!

As wonderful a game Nights is, I can’t even begin to talk about the music. One of the best soundtracks in gaming history imo.

Strawberri

INTERVIEW: SETS AND SETTINGS

(Folmer Kelly and Andrew Nissen)


Just a few days ago, I was lucky enough to chat with Andrew Nissen and Folmer Kelly, the dynamic duo behind “Sets and Settings”, an independent developer of quirky Flash and iOS games that is quickly gaining both fans and momentum. 

SO I GUESS WE SHOULD PROBABLY START WITH INTRODUCTIONS. WHY DON’T YOU TWO TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELVES, YOUR EXPERIENCE IN GAME DEVELOPMENT, UP TO FORMING “SETS AND SETTINGS”?

Folmer Kelly: Well, I come from a graphic design background, but I always had little interests on the side. Some days I wanted to make animations, some days I wanted to make music, and then indie games started becoming a bit more mainstream than before, and I got really interested in stuff like limbo, VVVVVV, and Super Meat Boy.

Andrew Nissen: I’ve been making games for about a year now. I don’t really have that much “experience” in game development; almost all of it is from Sets and Settings. I did a few things beforehand like Perception and some other tiny games, but it was never as serious as what we do now.

Folmer: On the Something Awful forums, there’s an annual game design contest, and I got involved with doing the artwork for Soul Jelly. After that, I started making flash games with Stencyl for a while.

Andrew: I’ve played games my whole life, and I’ve always wanted to make them. For a long time I tried and wasn’t able to do anything, but then I finally made Perception and some other stuff, but I was still pretty dry creatively and motivationally throughout all that, so that was really rough for me.

Folmer: (this is where our paths start to converge!) Andrew made a thread on the Something Awful forums, organizing weekly game jams. I participated a couple of times, and we got to talking through there.

AND SO “SETS AND SETTINGS” WAS BORN?

Andrew: Not right away. I made a prototype over a weekend, but I didn’t use art I could distribute (I actually used a new oryx pack at the time), so I checked the thread I had started for artists, Folmer and I had talked a bit before, so I asked him if he was interested in taking on the project. That was Cargo Breach, and we worked on that all summer. It wasn’t until after that until we knew it would be a lot of fun to keep working on stuff together.

Folmer: Yeah. We banged out another game called GRAVNAV in two days and I think that was the moment that we both realized we had something going on.

ALL OF YOUR GAMES TO DATE SEEM TO HAVE SOME SORT OF ZANY OR EXPERIMENTAL QUALITY TO THEM. TO TAKE “GRAVNAV” FOR EXAMPLE, THERE ARE SIMILARITIES TO A STANDARD RUNNER GAME, BUT YOU GUYS TOOK THE CONCEPT OUTSIDE THE BOX THROUGH THE FLOATY SPACE MOVEMENT, AND THE PERSPECTIVE CHANGES. IS THIS EXPERIMENTAL QUALITY SOMETHING THAT YOU STRIVE TOWARDS, OR JUST SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS NATURALLY WHEN YOU DESIGN A GAME?

Folmer: I think it just happens. Most of my game designs are born from the visuals; I never start with an actual game idea. I just start drawing stuff until what I’m looking at feels like a game to me. I’m really interested in limited design; taking one gameplay mechanic or game element and getting the most out of it. So once I have that picture, I start figuring out what kind of game it is, and once Andrew gets his hands on my stuff it starts coming alive.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s certainly not something we really plan. I don’t want to use the word gimmick because I don’t like that, but we strive to make them interesting. Nobody (especially us) wants to play another helicopter clone or whatever, so anything we can do to make it more challenging or interesting or fun is something we really look at.

YOU RELEASED YOUR FIRST COMMERCIAL GAME RECENTLY, IN THE FORM OF IRRUPT FOR IOS DEVICES. WHAT WAS IT LIKE MAKING THE MOVE INTO THAT SPACE, AND WHAT HAS THE RESPONSE BEEN?

Andrew: Well, making the move was really easy I think, at least for me. We didn’t change our creative process or anything just because it was a commercial game. We decided to trust ourselves and just make the same type of game we normally would. It was a little nerve-racking to stick to our gut so to speak, since we are asking people for money straight up. I think it certainly paid off in the response though, which has been great.

DO YOU SEE YOURSELVES MAKING MORE COMMERCIAL TITLES IN THE FUTURE? EITHER ON IOS OR ELSEWHERE?

Folmer: Absolutely. Our approach isn’t to consider a business strategy upfront or anything like that, but we do what feels right to us and if releasing a commercial game is what feels right then that’s what we’ll do.

Andrew: Yeah that’s really important to us. If we just wanted to make the most money, we could probably pump out flash games bi weekly and get them sponsored, but that wouldn’t be fun, and the games wouldn’t be fun, and we wouldn’t be happy with that.

Folmer: And that’s something that shows, I believe. People can tell if you’re making a game for profit or for the love of it.

THUS FAR YOUR GAMES HAVE BEEN NEAT, SELF-CONTAINED AFFAIRS, BOTH IN TERMS OF GAMEPLAY AND NARRATIVE (IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE). DO YOU SEE YOURSELVES EVER CREATING ANYTHING WITH MORE OF AN EMPHASIS ON STORY?

Andrew: It’s funny you should mention that. After Irrupt, we were talking about games that we wanted to make, and a story-driven game came up. We went through a few iterations of the idea, although nothing really stuck. But I could certainly see us doing one in the future, it’s just a matter of finding an idea that we can both get really excited about.

Folmer: I’m playing around with the idea of dynamic storytelling, taking the concept of telling a story and fusing it together with games that have arcade style gameplay, or randomly generated elements. So yeah, I think we will make games with a more pronounced focus on story.

Andrew: Maybe we should just throw out that sub idea we had, that’s a great example. I mean hey, if someone steals it I’d love to play it.

WHAT WAS THAT IDEA?

Folmer: Andrew had this idea to make a pixel art FPS, so we came up with an idea that we got really excited about. Only it turned out that we were literally describing Yeti Hunter. But the base concept seemed very powerful to me, so later we thought about making it about being in a submarine, and there’d be this monster of some kind stalking you, and it’d be all dark and claustrophobic, and if you shot the walls water would start pouring in.

THAT SOUNDS REALLY COOL, THE IDEA OF THE PLAYER ACCIDENTALLY FLOODING THE SUBMARINE ESPECIALLY. NOT MANY GAMES TRANSLATE A PLAYER’S FEAR BACK INTO THE GAMEPLAY LIKE THAT.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s a cool idea because it puts the player in an already stressfull situation, and over-reacting or making a mistake makes it that much worse.

Folmer: It would really feed off of fear yeah.

WHAT DO YOU GUYS PLAN TO WORK ON NOW THAT IRRUPT HAS BEEN RELEASED?

Andrew: Well it’s no secret that our next game is probably going to be the one Folmer’s been tweeting about. It is another iOS game!

Folmer: I like to think of it as the Sword & Sworcery of Doodle Jumps, which is weird because it doesn’t have anything to do with either of those games.

Andrew: yeah I mean I guess I can see the similarities to Doodle Jump, but only on a really abstract level.

SO IT’S A SORT OF VERTICAL PLATFORMER WITH AN ENGAGING STORY?

Andrew: Haha, would you like that? It can totally be that. I think that’s a cool idea.

Folmer: Andrew, “it can totally be that” is the best possible answer. Dynamic narrative. The storyline to tie it all together though I would describe as engaging though, yes.

Andrew: See this is funny because you know as much as I do at this point.

Folmer: Haha, yeah we didn’t have time to coordinate before this interview, and I have designed way more than Andrew knows about at this point.

IT SOUNDS AMAZING ANYHOW, AND IT KIND OF SUMS UP WHAT I THINK IS REALLY UNIQUE ABOUT “SETS AND SETTINGS”. MIXING THOSE TWO GAME STYLES TOGETHER ISN’T SOMETHING THAT WOULD OCCUR TO MOST PEOPLE, BUT IT SOUNDS FANTASTIC WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT.

Andrew: Well thank you! Having other people excited gets us excited about it and so on. It’s important to note that this wasn’t the first iteration of the idea though; I think we’ve been messing with this particular type of game and storytelling for like a week now or so.

Folmer: Something like that, yeah. At some point the mechanic started making sense, and just now the whole thing is starting to come together.

Andrew: Actually, now that I think about it, Irrupt might be the only game where the original idea ended up really close to the final product.

Folmer: NAV and NICE SHOOT too dude.

Andrew: Haha, that’s like all our games! I should stop making statements like that when I’m so tired.

I’M REALLY EXCITED TO PLAY IT, HOWEVER IT MATERIALISES.

Folmer: We appreciate it!

DO YOU GUYS HAVE ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO SAY BEFORE WE WRAP THIS UP?

Folmer: Since we have this soapbox right now, I want to say thanks to everyone’s who played Irrupt these past few days. we really appreciate that people support what we’re trying to do.

Andrew: Yeah it’s really awesome when people post their highscores on twitter, or tell us it’s their favorite iOS game.

Folmer: …Or when they get angry on twitter that more people aren’t playing it.

IT’S BEEN GREAT TALKING TO YOU GUYS!

Andrew: Yeah it was a lot of fun! Thanks for giving us the chance!

Folmer: And good luck turning it into something readable!

  • 39 Plays
  • MAGICAL AMBER [Arranged]Yousuke Yasui

still-the-best-1973:

MAGICAL AMBER [Arranged Ver.] [Yousuke Yasui]

I’m sorry, but I need to share this piece of musical genius with the world. Because it’s just so fucking catchy and upbeat it’s impossible not to like it.

It captures the charm of oldschool videogame music perfectly- right down to being composed using FM Synth (It’s one of the Yamaha chips, but I’m not sure which one).

Yousuke Yasui has been slowly creeping his way up my favorite musicians list, and after giving this a listen I wouldn’t be surprised if he become a household name for you guys as well. He’s an artist well worth looking into.

Fantastic stuff by the amazing Yousuke Yasui!

GUILD WARS 2 (Followup post)

(NCSoft) 

Just a quick followup to say I just received an email saying Guild Wars 2 is available again digitally! My complaints from before do stand, but I’m happy to see them come to their senses. And since I’m not one to hold a petty grudge, I’ll probably get the game soon (as predicted, my work has picked up so I can’t play it this week). Just to make this not a completely empty post, here’s the video that made me want to check the game out in the first place: Angry Joe’s 30+ minute exhaustive and super-positive review of the game (which includes some profanity).