February 2010
1 post
4 tags
Postmortem: On My Mind: An Awareness Meditation...
On My Mind is a game that I made for January’s Experimental Game Project theme, “100 Things.” I had been wanting to make a meditation-based game for a while, and felt that I could combine three goals in one: participating in the EGP, making a meditation game, and learning the game engine LÖVE.
I fit the game into the “100 Things” theme by having 100 thoughts going...
January 2010
7 posts
Lessons learned from Might & Magic: Clash of...
Is a “clash” of heroes like a “murder” of crows? Having finished playing M&M:CoH, I now present the following Do’s and Don’ts, which I have compiled in order to apply them to my own game designs; if the reader also benefits from my efforts, so much the better. (note: I have only played the single-player campaign.) DO apply a simple gameplay mechanic in...
3 tags
Lessons to be learned from Portal
Considered to be one of the best games of 2007, Portal has received good review after good review for its originality and excellence in level design. And now that I’ve finally gotten around to playing it, I can see why — it’s a great game. Obviously I haven’t been playing a lot of games in the last two years, and this may put me in a somewhat unique position to point out...
“People with day jobs don’t have eyes like that.”
– pixelvixen707, describing Jason Rohrer’s “passionate eyes.”
Game comments: Ico
I finally got around to playing Ico. It is a beautiful, beautiful game. Yes, it has pretty graphics, the controls are about as tight as 3D platformers get, etc etc…. what really strikes me about this game is a rare quality — so rare I can only think of one other game that does it off the top of my head — where the game as a whole has one single consistent emotional thesis.
I...
3 tags
Learning Scratch: Day 3
The last few hours that I worked on this project were juggled around family time, holiday cooking, and chasing around (and being chased by) my two-year-old niece. I was able to download the Scratch software on a borrowed computer as well as an image editor with which I changed the colors of the “enemy” snowsuits.
In trying to simplify the user interface as much as possible, I removed...
5 tags
Learning Scratch: Day Two
After Day One I was busy for two days. When I started back up I didn’t track my progress as well.
My first priority was creating enough art and sound assets, temporary or otherwise, to be able to finish the coding. I wanted to finish this game before I lost enthusiasm for the project, and the next day I was going to be driving to my sister’s house for a few days, so any work I did on...
December 2009
1 post
Learning Scratch: Day One
8:00AM — A phone call and my alarm wake me up simultaneously, unaware or uncaring of the fact that I had stopped watching classic science fiction television only a few hours before. Abruptly, a game design springs fully formed into my head. Not a world-changing, deeply philosophical game; rather, a game simple enough to finish quickly and complex enough to get me back into practice. As I go...