Game Idea: Abraham Slink-on

Or Abraham Slink-oln if you are picky about spellings. Abe Slink-on can wrestle, orate, and hunt vampires just as well as Abraham Lincoln, but he can also gracefully descend an entire staircase powered by momentum alone!

Games Are Games

Image by Jasper Byrne - Source

An article called 'Games aren't clocks' showed up on Brainy Gamer (as pointed out in RPS's Sunday Papers) a few weeks ago lamenting the way the press evaluates games by rating their parts. I've heard that argument made before, and I completely agree. There is no good formula to add up separate evaluations of gameplay, graphics, sound, and replay value, but the author goes on to say that part of the problem is the value we place on gameplay in the first place:

"I say it's time to let go of our preoccupation with gameplay as the primary criterion upon which to evaluate a game's merits. It's time to stop fetishizing mechanics as the defining aspect of game design. Designers must be free to arrange their priorities as they wish - and, increasingly, they are. Critics, too, must be nimble and open-minded enough to consider gameplay as one among many other useful criteria on which to judge a game's quality and aspirations."

I have to disagree. Games are games. They are intrinsically about mechanics, or they aren't games. I don't mean to say that an interactive not-game that is beautiful and aspirational and moving shouldn't be made or isn't valuable, but maybe we shouldn't be trying to call it a game and evaluate it next to other games. And I am not saying that games have to necessarily be fun. There are plenty of incredible films that aren't entertaining and many important books that aren't easy to read. Games don't have to be fun to be games, but they do have to have interacting parts governed by rules, and that aspect will be a big part of any evaluation.

The author says that we tend to focus on the mechanical properties of a new form of media, leading to terms like newspaper and moving pictures and talkies. Eventually we move on and use the media to do whatever it is it can do. While this may be true of the audience for movies or games, I don't think the same can be said of the makers. To make art, or simply entertainment, you have to be acutely aware of the mechanics of your medium. Games have a vocabulary, just like movies and literature, and the words aren't the same. Interactivity is one of the pillars of the medium. Without it you cease to be a player and become an audience. So if the interactive part of a game is broken, isn't the game broken?

Above all, I believe that the value of a game comes from the way all its pieces come together. As a creator, I know that design sometimes informs story, and sometimes story informs design. The same can be said for sound design, art, and even the different experiences and views of the creators. It's a powerful interplay that knits together different pieces to be more than they are by themselves. But it also means that when one element fails, it's clear. A great game can easily be reviewed holistically, but in a terrible game the mismatched elements scream for your attention.

As an example, a platformer is about navigating space. If you want to create a surreal platformer, you can't only create spaces that look surreal. You must also create spaces that feel surreal to move through. When reviewers say that the gameplay feels broken, oftentimes it is, in part, because the mechanics don't match the environment. It can be because your jumping feels too big or too small or too floaty for the size of the character, or it could be because the game has strange ethereal platforms with obviously rigid collision geometry underneath. These things matter.

Games are a fascinating medium for entertainment and for art. They plug straight into my heart and make me hold my breath and tilt my controller sideways as if it's going to help me steer. They occupy the body and mind. That is why they are powerful, and it's why they are damned hard to get right. The failure of otherwise impressive games to deliver gameplay that truly takes you somewhere should only be a sign that when it all comes together games really can be transcendent in new ways. That's not something to be afraid of.

Ascension - The Beginning

Alice the lawful human Valkyrie entered the Mazes of Menace a determined girl. Impressive, considering the hundreds and hundreds of men and women who went before her, never to be seen again. Did they die deep below the earth, somewhere in the twisting dungeon passages? Did any pass into Gehennom, the underworld? One thing she was sure of: even if any of the adventurers who went before her found Moloch's Sanctum and recovered the Amulet of Yendor, even if the bravest and luckiest had carried the amulet to the surface and up to the Elemental Planes, none had ever crossed the Astral Plane to place the amulet on the altar of her God. She was certain of this because Tyr had called for her to retrieve it, as Tyr had called so many before her. She was to do something no one had been able to do.

Surprising Design: The Walls Are Not Cheese

I love being surprised a by a game's design. Since I play a lot of games for work, many of which are based on traditional formats, it's becoming more and more rare for a game to have an element that feels totally new or just unexpected. But when it does happen, it's delightful.

At GDC a week ago I met Loren Schmidt, creator of the awesome Star Guard, an IGF finalist from 2010. While working through my stack of business cards I visited his site and discovered another game of Loren's I played quite awhile ago, and had forgotten all about: The Walls Are Not Cheese.

Learnings and Envy from Trainyard

Trainyard is a visually minimalist color-mixing puzzle game about trains. It's simple looking, wonderfully subtle in its challenges, and all around well designed. It's #2 in the US app store at the moment I'm writing this, and on sale for 99 little Lincolns.

So I was pleased to discover this long and informative blog post from the developer, Matt Rix, that talks about Trainyard's development from pen and paper idea all the way to megabucks. Anyone who is interested in iPhone development, or is in the middle of a project, can probably find a nugget or two to take away from this.

I found several nuggets. While I haven't talked about it on this blog at all, I am less than a month away from releasing my first game on the iPhone. I'm very excited, and I enjoy reading about other people who have gone through the same challenges that I have. That being said, I'd be interested to know if a dev blog written during development would read the same as his retrospective. His first app has been an runaway success, even though it took a while before it "popped," and I wonder if he glosses over some of the less inspirational moments.

In my experience, doing an iPhone game in my spare time has been a constant battle between life, from my day job to my girlfriend, and my moonlighting. I'm working on a team with three other full-time employed people, which makes it even harder. A lot of our biggest challenges have been simply moving forward when it seems impossible to coordinate our different schedules and other priorities. Day by day, I often find myself thinking about the game or future ideas when I'm at work, where I have to push them from my mind until later, only to come home tired and uninterested, uninspired. When I wake up fresh the next day it can be frustrating to know the feeling may be long gone by the time I get to work on my game again.

And then there are moments of total elation. Our work has progressed very slowly, so when a new build with significant changes rolls in it's like seeing the game for the first time. It reignites the fire that started this project in the first place. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing ideas come to life.

I suspect our app will not hit #2 in the US app store, but I am still really looking forward to launching it, both to say "look, I made that" and also because I've long been thinking about future games. When we're ready to "go legit" there will be a lot more info about the game available, and I'll be talking more about my experiences right here.

Review: Mirror's Edge (iPhone)

My new review is up at Finger Gaming, this time for Mirror's Edge. The short version is pretty graphics, bad level design, rough edges, disappointing. For the long version, check me out here!

L'Abbaye Des Morts (and Morts! and Morts!)

This one from Locomalito (developer of 8Bit Killer) has been written about all over the place, but I've just managed to give it more than a passing look. It's wonderful. In L'Abbaye des Morts you play Jean Raymond, a monk fleeing the Cathars into a strange abbey. The doors shut tight behind Jean and the game presents you with a maze of rooms spanning the bell tower down to the catacombs beneath the abbey.

The game is simple in it's construction and in its play. You can jump, walk, and crawl. There are crosses to collect and hearts to restore your nine lives, and levers to access new areas. The sprites are beautiful one-color creations, reminiscent of the Commodore 64 era (this from someone who was barely a pupae in those days of course), simply animated and wonderfully expressive.