Tumbledrop Iphone

I know I said I wasn't on board with iphone games, but here comes another to prove me wrong. Tumbledrop is the work of Hayden Scott-Baron, and is a port of an earlier game of the same name for the web. It was made in Unity and it is slick slick slick! Bright colors, cute sounds and art, and best of all a simple touch control scheme that doesn't feel forced on the iphone at all.

The game is simple: touch shapes, they disappear. Try to get the star to land on the ground and not in the water. You can play the web version for free, but I highly recommend the iphone version. There are three times as many levels (60 up from 20), with more promised in a free update. Best of all it can be had for 99 cents, down temporarilly from it's usual (and still well worth it) price of $1.99.

OW/G Project

This was mentioned briefly in the recent Rock, Paper, Shotgun post about how to afford that pricey $15 dollar indie game, an amusing instructional series of graphics put together Michael Lee. Michael's goal for 2010 is to put together a game every week for a year. He's not the first to push toward rapid prototyping and experimentation. He mentions the Experimental Gameplay Project, and Kloonigames comes to mind as well. But Michael's plan to keep this up for a full year is certainly the most ambitious goal I've ever heard from a rapid prototyper.

Fortunately Mr. Lee knows how to make games fast, as evidenced by his entry for one of the recent Ludum Dare competitions. That image above is from his entry, Into the Pit. I was lucky enough to meet Michael unexpectedly at GDC Austin this past year after I mentioned I would be at the Cartoon Network booth on the TIGsource boards. While I didn't expect anyone to show, Michael did, and I made just about my first indie gamer contact. I've bookmarked his OW/G blog and I'm looking forward to the games that come out of this effort.

When Good Guys Do Bad

 
My folks got me Assassin's Creed II for Christmas. In addition to being the best game of the year to squeeze the word "ass" into its name twice, it's also pretty fun to play. What really separates it from the original, however, is the story. In the first game the "story" was more like an interruption that took place in the present time between the action sequences in the past. It felt disconnected and not very immediate to the action at hand, and as a result, the gameplay got boring after a while and I gave up. But Assassin's Creed II has a rich story that takes place within the Animus, based around the character the player actually plays for most of the game. It's fun, involved, and has just enough historical connection (though plenty of bastardization) to feel important.

For those who haven't played or even seen the game, it's a basic revenge tale. The player takes on the role of Ezio, whose father and brothers are betrayed and hung for crimes they did not commit. Ezio is a pro free-runner and renaissance building climber, but the death of his family transforms him into a super bad-ass assassin who carves his way through Florence and Venice in a quest for revenge. It's a compelling, very movie-like tale, and Ezio is your basic revenge movie hero. He's likable (since the audience has to feel bad for him), clearly in the right (murder is bad, the hero murders very bad people, so it's cool), a super bad-ass (well, obviously), and a ladies man (again, obviously). But this is where the problem starts. Assassin's Creed II is not a movie.

In the imaginary Assassin's Creed movie, a typical action scene would work something like this: The hero knows Evil Man is inside the castle. He quietly climbs a building, surveying the rooftops between him and the castle walls, shining in the moonlight. He nimbly jumps across roofs, slips unnoticed past guards, almost gets spotted, almost falls, etc. Once he's at the castle he climbs the walls and locates Evil Man, who is conveniently talking about his Evil Plan, instead of reading or eating or something. Evil Plan made clear, the hero delivers a well-deserved quip about justice and slays him.

Here's how a typical play session of the game works: I climb up to the roof to survey the path to the castle. A stupid guard shouts at me, so I stab him in the throat with my hidden blade. Then I loot the money from his body because its fun, even though he only gives me 4 florins and I have 9000 florins coming in every 20 minutes from my huge estate in the country. Then I pickup his body and fling it from the roof down to the street, where I watch the pedestrians freak out a little bit. I do some running and jumping. I miss, fall to the street but don't die, where I disturb a guard. He pushes me, so when he turns around I kidney shot him with my hidden blade. His friends get pissed, so I pull out my sword and eventually kill eight guards by running them through, slicing their throats, or stabbing my dagger down into their heads. Then I poison a civilian for fun. Finally I make it to the castle, where I kill Evil Man. I say what I have to stay and put him to rest. Then I get a cut scene about how great I'm doing and what to do next to revenge my poor father and brothers.

I'm sure you can see there are a few discrepancies between version one and two. Describing the game's story makes me sound like a hero, describing the actual gameplay makes me sound like a villain. This discrepancy between the story the game's authors wish to tell and the story told by the gameplay (what I have called the narrative of play) is present everywhere now, and maybe it's a problem. One of the ways games are interesting as a medium is in the way they push controlled, authored narrative up against the uncontrollable actions of the player. This juxtaposition could one day be for games what the theory of montage was for movies. But to be more than their separate pieces, the authored narrative and the player narrative have to work for or against each other in a way that means something.

In the case of Assassin's Creed II, the gap between the necessary violence of the player and the more "noble" image of the hero in the cut scenes is a problem. It breaks a wall and it makes the story feel inauthentic. I had the same problem with Grand Theft Auto 4, and it hurt the experience. All the reviews for GTA4 expounded on how gritty the story was, how it was a tale of redemption and a quest for a better life, an opportunity for the Niko, the hero, to leave behind the violence of his past. In a grand sense that was the goal of the story perhaps, but it was hard to believe when the meat and potatoes of the game was stealing cars and shooting police.

This story problem seems to be, in large part, an issue with sandbox games. The more freedom you give the player the more careful you have to be if you have a narrative goal as a creator. Some games take the unpredictability of player action in stride, however. Fable and Fable II allow players to be either evil or good, going so far as to change the appearance of the character based on his behavior. Role-playing games like Fallout III allow players similar good vs. evil choices, and in the downloadable content, even a few ambiguous ones. Unfortunately the attempts these games make to account for varying player choice ultimately limit the options, rather than open them up. It means that players who take the "wrong" path know they are still essentially on-rails narratively. This becomes a narrative weakness too.

So what are designers and writers to do? Too much control and the player resents it, but not enough control creates this gap where player's actions don't match narrative. But I only said that that disconnect might be a problem. While it certainly weakens some current games, within that space (or maybe it's a lack of space) between player narrative and author narrative is where games really have their chance to be different. How does it change the meaning if the actions of the player are intentionally contrast against the story told by the game? Ezio's tale of just revenge turns into a man's decent into murderous insanity, seen as noble only by him. And how can designers and game writers weave author narrative and player narrative into a single experience that allows freedom and allows defiance of expectations and yet still works narratively? The short answer is I don't know. When someone figures it out, the games-as-art debate just might tip in our favor.

Back To Work!

The title says it all. Today is the first day of my new job at Adultswim.com. I haven't worked since mid december, so this is both exciting and a little sad I guess. But as much as I loved not working, I think I love working more. I'm the kind of person who needs to have a job. Anyway I want to make sure it's ok for me to post pictures of the new office. If it is I'll have some up ASAP.

I've been neglecting posting because I was in Augusta all weekend with the Lady, but I've also been working on two actual article posts that I haven't finished. I'll try to get one of them up in the next couple days. Since most of today is going to be spend getting settled, I'll at least try to get some cool links up this afternoon.

100 Rogues

 
I am unimpressed with iphone games. There are a few exceptions, like canabalt, but you can play it for free on your computer at that link instead of buying it. Plus I spend a great deal more time in front of a computer then I do in front of my phone.

But the upcoming 100 Rogues has got me excited. It's a roguelike, developed exclusively for the iphone. If you don't know what a roguelike is, know that they are randomized dungeon crawlers and they are very difficult. You should read about them here or here. But as I said, 100 Rogues will be coming out soon, and it looks great. It has colorful hand-drawn sprites and a cute-ish art style that I think works for an iphone game. The game was designed to be short form compared to most roguelikes, which is suitable for the platform. But of course beating the game is going to be rare indeed.

I've read through the designer's blog a time or two, and he is certainly an opinionated guy when it comes to games. Hopefully his game will bring something new to the genre, and to the iphone. Still, from what little is available about the game, it seems a pretty standard roguelike. There are four classes, a goal item, and many many bad guys. Permadeath of course. There will be boss fights, which certainly has potential, and the designer has written about plans to move the inventory system away from the typical RPG system where most loot you find is useless. You can read about it in an article on his blog from the early days of development.

What's most exciting about this project is that 100 Rogues is being made for the iphone. Neither the interface nor graphics will be a bad port of the PC classics (as much as I love nethack, I can't play it on the iphone). The game is due next month, and it's the first iphone game I'm happy to pay for. Though the game doesn't have a website, there is facebook group you can find here.

Pictures of My Boat

I thought I'd post a couple pics of what the finished product of the boat project will be. The first picture is a tricked out version of the Teal, the boat I'm going to try first. Mine wont have the boom out front or the fancy woodwork on top, but aint she pretty? The second picture is the Gypsy, which I might try next, depending on how the first build goes. Last but not least is the Goat Island Skiff, an absolutely beautiful (and simple) plywood boat.

 

Note that I shamefully stole these pictures from the web, they aren't mine.

Boat Plans

So I'm building a boat. The idea started almost a year ago when I was bored at work and started researching boat kits. I learned a lot of interesting stuff about the boat building community, and discovered a great group of boats called "Instant Boats," designed for those with limited time and previous experience.

Real life caught up shortly, however, and wooden boats went from invading my every thought to more like an occasional daydream. Then I got laid off. After I found my new job I realized I was going to have a gap in employment of at least a few weeks, and what better way to spend it? Of course wanting to build a boat and building a boat are two very different things, and the process went more slowly then I imagined.

But now I've got the plans. They arrived last night in a big envelope and they are beautiful. If I manage to complete this thing I'm getting them framed. Included with them are several other sheets that explain how to adhere boards together end to end with epoxy and fiberglass, how to rig sails, etc. Best of all the instructions on how to actually build the thing are photocopies of typewritten pages! The antiquity of the whole process, ordering the plans by mail, the typewritten pages, and hand drawn plans just really completes the fantasy of wooden boats: stepping on to one is stepping into the past.

I've long since realized this project isn't happening while I'm still unemployed and have so much time to do it. I could be back at work in a few days potentially, and I'm still waiting for a jigsaw to arrive from Amazon. I'm not even close to ready to start. But having the plans is an important step. It feels like I've begun.