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.

Extra Thoughts On Solipskier

I just wrote a review for Solipskier on the iPhone (link is to the flash version) for Finger Gaming. It's a great little game and I'd recommend it, but I had some extra thoughts that weren't relevant to the review, so I'm sharing them here. If you haven't played the game, give the flash version a try so you know what I'm talking about.

What "Inception" Says About Games

*I'm going to try not to spoil the plot of Inception here too much, but I will be talking about the ideas behind it, so if you haven't seen it, don't say you haven't been warned.*

So it wasn't too long after I walked out of the theater after seeing Inception that I started thinking about video games. If you aren't planning on watching it, the film centers on a team of freelance corporate spies who construct dreams designed to allow them access you a subjects secrets. They, and the subject, enter the dream and attempt to steal whatever he or she has locked away.

There are a lot of obvious parallels between Inception's team of spooks and a game production team. The dream starts with a goal (the design), and is constructed by an architect, then ultimately "played" by the team. Accessing the secrets of the mind works a lot like beating a level in a game, including shooting lots of folks and blowing a few things up.

Inception has a long list of it's own unique mind-benders, and that's the real meat of the movie, but watching it left me thinking a lot about the relationship between the player and the designer. In the film, the designer has to create a scenario which will elicit a particular response. They design vaults and safes in the dream world because once the subject enters the dream, that's where he will hide his secrets.

But once it's time to enter the dream, the architect has to give up control of her own creation. It becomes the subject's own space, filled with his thoughts and anxieties. When the 'hand' of the architect can be seen, it angers the subject so much that the projections inhabiting his world (you could call them "dream people") might kill her.

Being a game designer offers both the joys and frustrations of releasing your game. It is a certainty that players will do things you did not expect. Sometimes these can be wonderful examples of emergent play or clever solutions to problems, or not. As a friend from my previous job said: "Give them the tools, and they will make a penis." On the other hand, it doesn't really become a game until it's been put through these paces, trampled on by players, and tossed back to you for evaluation.

Tied up in this same relationship is the uncertainty of the player's interpretation. Game design really is a lot like Inception. We create a vault because we know the player knows a vault is a safe place. But what we never know is just what secrets they will choose to store there.

At the moment I'm out of time, but I'll update this soon with more on interpretation and representation.

Games Worth Talking About - Redder

Anna Anthropy's Redder grabbed me from the first screen more strongly than anything I've played since Knytt. To anyone who has played both that may not be surprising. The two games share many similarities: they both focus on exploring a strange, alien landscape and while both games have danger in the form of enemies, neither allows the player to fight, only to evade.

But Anna's game has a brilliant puzzle mechanic that really makes it stand out. It involves the simple activation of green or red switches, which swap green and red solids on and off. Only one color can be active at a time, but the solids can serve both as walls to impede progress, or as platforms to allow access to new areas. Even more impressive, the on/off status carries between screens, so switches can literally have far-reaching implications.

Boat Model

I finally got around to making a model of the Gypsy last weekend. I did it very simply and in an afternoon, not trying to be too exact. I wanted to see the thing come together more than I wanted something for the mantelpiece. It's just poster board, glue, and lots of tape, but I still got that "wow" moment when the hull took shape from those flat pieces of paper. I can only imagine how wonderful the same moment will be with the real thing.

As you can see from the picture I only bothered with the central frame mold, mostly because my girlfriend was bothering me to put it down and eat dinner, but I'm still very pleased with the results. I can't wait to get back to work this weekend. I'm trying to decide if I should go ahead and get the wood, or order full patterns for the pieces. Either way it's probably still several months before I have any chance of getting on the water, but for now I'm letting my imagination do the work. And shopping for a pirate hat.

Analog Temptations

I mostly post here about the digital side of my work and play, but recently I've been preoccupied with analog pastimes. I'm gearing up for the boat project as the weather slowly gets better and better, and to do that I've been trying to get some practice in with a few other projects. My attempt at shelves has stalled at one step past what you see below. Or one step past what you would see if my phone hadn't just died.

(photo update coming...swearsville)

The idea is to drill holes and run plumbing pipe through them to form a pretty interesting blend of industrial material and bare wood. You can see a successful example here. I got hung up because once I drilled the holes I found they were a hairsbreadth too narrow for my pipe. Also, since I'm not using a drill press, they seem to be slightly canted, and not necessarily in the same direction. You can see where this is going, and it's called failure. But my plan is to get a larger bit and drill over-sized holes. I don't think it will be too much of a problem.

The above gadget arrived in the mail today as well. Its a key chain sized bottle opener basically, but with the added benefit of having a two sided bit in it with a #4 phillips head and a flat head screwdriver. The website claims the hole where the bit goes in can also be used as a hex tool, but that sounds like a bit of a stretch to me. Anyway, at $4.95 who's complaining? I ordered four (you can order up to five before the shipping jumps up) to have three to give away as small gifts.

Gamer

I watched Gamer last night. You know, the one where game players control real flesh-and-blood humans in a gory death match, broadcast on live TV? If you haven't heard of the movie I'm not surprised, considering it vanished about as quickly as a movie can. If watching it is at the top of your to-do list though, run away, as this post will spoil you silly.

The movie takes place in a not-too-distant future where The Guy From Dexter has invented a thingy that replicates the cells of your brain to...he invented mind control. What he does with this awesome power is get people to pay to watch death row inmates shoot each other, and give players the chance to control them in combat.

I knew from previews that this wasn't gonna be great, but I wanted to see it anyway, as the movie is based on a pretty common fear of the effects of increased realism of games and the implications of sex and violence in a realistic system. While the movie focuses on the "Slayers" death match game, the far more interesting "Society" is what raised the most questions. "Society" is like Second Life, but people can choose to play an avatar in the game or be an avatar, giving up complete control to whoever is playing you. Like Second Life, "Society" consists mainly of fucking and doing drugs in silly costumes (if that's not cultural commentary I don't know what is!). But of course, the avatars are real people made into puppets. There's plenty here that a different movie could have sunk it's teeth into; it's almost a shame they wasted it on an action movie.

Ultimately the movie falls flat because rather than confront the idea of a society engrossed in these pastimes, the movie portrays the players as what folks would like to believe they are, douche-bag teens and fat people, even "deviants" with (gasp!) tongue peircings. And of course it all boils down to The Guy From Dexter's evil plot to extend his mind control to everyone, allowing him to control what they buy, watch, and do. This final reveal seemed particularly unnecessary, not to mention ignorant of the far more terrifying implications of the humankind portrayed by the film: that controlling the consumer tastes of the globe doesn't require anything nearly as fancy as biological mind control, and that, in many ways, we've already surrendered control to Google, Microsoft, Pfizer, and on and on and on.

Polar Bear Payback

We launched a new game yesterday at AS. Polar Bear Payback chronicles one pissed off bear's mad dash for revenge against humanity for trashing the world and shrinking the polar regions. Is it brilliant? No, but it's got a healthy dose of blood, so who cares really? It's also a nice long game, which always impresses me with flash content. And it's pretty fun. Take a break from Robot Unicorn Attack for a few minutes and give it a shot.

Teleport-Tac-Toe

I hatched another business card board game idea today. It's Tic-Tac-Toe with an inter-dimensional twist. The mock-up above shows what would be the back of the business card. One player plays dimes, the other pennies. Each turn the player can either play a new piece or move an existing one. Pieces can only be played on white squares. The goal is to get three in a row, but one of those three has to be on the center square.

The teleportation element is that the board acts like a Pac-Man screen, wrapping around. A piece can thus be moved from the top left to the top right, or from the top left to the bottom left, and so on. I'm imagining two possibilities for gameplay: first, that teleporting into a blank space could capture enemy pieces if they are surrounded on at least two sides. This would remove the piece from play (though the player could play it back in a new empty space). The other option is that you could teleport into occupied spaces, but only if you could slide the occupying piece into a blank space in the same direction of travel. That sounds confusing, but I'll illustrate it once I've played it out a few times. Also, until testing, I have no idea if this is going to be fun or not. It may be too solvable, just like regular tic-tac-toe. We'll see.

Last but not least, if this game makes the cut, I'll definitely want to re-brand it in a way that removes the tic-tac-toe references. When I think of that game I think solvable, impossible to win, uninteresting. It'll be "Space Cargo Embargo" or something.

Down in the Valley

I didn't play Burnout Paradise when it first came out for the 360 in 2008. Those were my early days of “next gen” gaming, when I was still indignant about having to pay $60 for a video game. But with with 2009 coming to a close I put it on my Christmas list and the 'rents picked it up for a steal. It is, as all the reviews said, very cool. I am not a fan of racing games in general, but I am a fan of sparks and metal rent asunder, and Burnout Paradise delivers. For those not in the know, the racing series has been around for a while, but what has always set it apart is the focus on crashing. When you crash, the game slows down, the camera zooms in, sparks fly. And you drive on real roads, with traffic. Previous games even included modes where you earned points for each successive car that crashed when you started an accident, allowing you to cause massive chaos. It's awesome.

So Burnout Paradise brings open-world driving to the formula, and the result is Paradise City: miles of road spanning city and countryside, and dozens and dozens of events. The seamless environment is great, because you can run a race from the beach to the county, and then just pick up a new event out there and do something else. Instead of levels or courses, everything is connected. But there's something that bothers me about the game. There are no people. Miles of beach front sidewalks go untouched, crosswalks are left barren. Most bizarre of all, not a single one of the thousands of cars that populate the city has a driver.

The lack of people in a game about glorifying horrible crashes is not so hard to understand. There are the technical considerations of modeling people and animating them, mostly so they can try to jump out of the way, and figuring out what happens to them when the car they were cruising in is compressed into a small pile of scrap. There is the rating consideration too, as adding people inadvertently adds a great deal of violence to a game that has none. Most of all the decision was probably about focus and design. Adding people means crashes have a kill count and pedestrians live in fear of every 12-year-old player with a desire to chase them, and that's just not what the Burnout series is about. So people were a problem, and they left them out.

The lack of people creates another problem, however. For myself at least, driving my driver-less car through the active-yet-uninhabited city is off-putting at best, mildly terrifying at worst. The game's visuals stress realism in all aspects of the driving and the environment, but the game comes off like a strange dream. I am reminded of that episode of The Twilight Zone where the guy wakes up without any context and walks into an abandoned town, where breakfast is cooking on the stove but there's no one to eat it. In Paradise City I can almost see the kids skating around the corner far ahead of me, but no, they aren't really there.

A roboticist in 1970 coined the term “Uncanny Valley” when describing the nature of human and robot interactions. It goes like this: If you were to measure a person's emotional reaction to a robot (or a CGI character, or puppet, etc.), you would see that reaction become more and more favorable as the robot looked more and more human. But there comes a point at which the robot looks almost human, but not quite, and the emotional reaction becomes strongly negative. That's the valley. If the robot continues to look more and more human, you can eventually pull out of it, at which point you should use the robot to replace you and do the menial chores of everyday life while you live la vida loca.

There are a number of explanations as to why the valley exists. My favorite is that by looking so human, the “being” creates a connection between its human elements and the inhuman ones, and basically it's terrifying. A classic example is the movie The Polar Express. Back in school my professor told me he had heard it described “as either a horrible children's movie, or a pretty good horror movie.” One of the sited reasons that The Polar Express was so revolting is that the characters don't have tongues inside their mouths. When they open, they reveal a bottomless maw of black soul-sucking darkness. Yeah, its scary.

To bring the discussion back to video games, my point is this: the theory of the “Uncanny Valley” highlights the problem with disconnects between what we perceive and what we expect. The fundamental idea behind the valley applies broadly, especially in video games, which are all about created worlds, characters, and spaces. I hit on this point in my critique of Assassin's Creed II, which you should read here. The short version is that ACII suffers from a disconnect between the narrative, in which you play a hero seeking revenge, and the gameplay, in which you play a murderous psychopath whose crimes go unpunished. If, as in Assassin's Creed II, the game casts the player as a hero narratively, but then encourages un-hero-like play, you're in the valley. If you create a visually rich world filled with sun-drenched ocean drives, promenades, highways, and country roads, and then leave it with no people, it becomes oddly terrifying.

I mentioned earlier that the case of Burnout Paradise was likely a design choice, but many of the gaps that appear in the presentation of modern games stem directly from the unfortunate use of graphics as the yardstick for achievement. The industry business model seems to be to use graphics to sell the game, and make the gameplay just good enough not to piss everyone off for buying it. But the more convincing the the game environment, the less I'm willing to forgive the rough edges. Burnout looks beautiful, even real, but that means the lack of population sticks out even more.

Another example is Dragon Age: Origins. The game builds off of the Bioware predecessors, and is the best looking yet (minus Mass Effect II maybe, which I haven't played yet), but that becomes one of it's biggest flaws. The game looks beautiful, but plays almost identically to KOTOR, a game I played six years ago. I really hit a wall when I realized that the environments, which look very organic and interesting, play as if you're on a flat 2D map. And there are countless other recent examples of these valley-like disconnects in modern games. Moreover, there will be countless more. Not all areas of game creation advance at the same pace, due to budget, time, priorities, laziness, and on and on. Where two of these areas don't match up, there lies a possible “Uncanny Valley” for players.

Games have just barely been around long enough to begin the “art” discussion, and one of the common, and worst, arguments in favor of calling games art is just how pretty they've gotten. I've got plenty to say about that one, but that's for another time. For today, I'll say this: games have nearly run out of mileage in pushing toward hyper-realistic graphics, physics, etc. The farther you push one element, the more disconnected it becomes from the rest of the experience. To truly go the distance in delivering an immersive experience, the game elements need to match. A less technically impressive, but well matched experience will win over a fancy mismatched one any day, at least on my screen.

More on that to come.

Game Design Challenge

I've been out of town, hence the blog neglect, and I'm working on a long piece that's taken more work than I thought. In the meantime I thought I would go ahead and propose a game design challenge, both for myself and for anyone who wants to join in. The challenge is this: design a game that fits on a business card. Why? Plenty of reasons. The size will require minimalism, and the games will be easily portable. They will be cheap to make with professional or at home printing, and thus easy to share. And restrictions are fun!

This all began when I was designing my first business card about six months ago. I thought it would be nifty for a game designer's business card to have a tiny game on the back. At the time, the card was for a conference for my job at Cartoon Network, so I ended up creating some pixel CN characters and identifying myself as a production coordinator (which, at the time, was more accurate anyway), but the idea stuck. Plus there's real appeal for me in non-digital games. They can be prototyped faster and played more easily, and are a good way to "practice" without the investment video games require.

The rules for this challenge are very flexible. I'm imagining a board game, where the card serves as a tiny board, but you don't have to look at it that way. The card could simply hold tables, numbers, dots, whatever. Perhaps placing multiple cards next to each other creates a flexibly sized game board? The game can use both sides of the card, and does not have to be a business card, it just has to fit on one. The design needs to be tailored to the small scale of the card, not simply shrunk to fit. Both single-player and multiplayer games are great. Perhaps the perfect game would include instructions on the card space as well (allowing you to leave them around to be discovered by strangers), but for multiplayer games the owner could always just explain the rules.

For pieces, the games should not require anything that can't be accommodated with spare change or something similar. Pennies could be counters, a dime heads up could be player one, tails player two, etc. I'm willing to allow the rules to call for a die, but nothing beyond a regular d6. Better yet would be for all game related decisions to be determinable with a coin flip.

Above is a quick mock-up of my first idea, hatched this afternoon: LifeRPG. In the game the player starts at the blue shield in the upper left. To move, the player has to complete a task in real life. It could be going to the gym, dodging an impulse buy, or speaking up in class. It could be cutting down your debt by a certain amount or skipping desert. It's the player's choice, but the object is to make a game out of real life. Players get one square per accomplishment, marked by X-ing out the square.

To win, players simply escape the maze, but if they choose to head for the red circles they get a chance to win treasure (determined by a coin toss or die roll). Treasure won is marked in the empty boxes, and can be redeemed by the player for a treat. If the player is cutting down on their debt, the treasure could equal a meal out, guilt free. If they're trying to exercise more it could be a free day off from the gym. The point is the treasure should be a sweet reward, but not something that will derail the purpose of playing the game.

The larger box would determine how treasure was won, but I haven't entirely worked that out yet. Maybe there are numbers 1-6, with two numbers winning treasure, two giving you a free move, and two giving nothing. Maybe treasure is won by a coin toss, and this area could be used for flavor text: "You've found some pirate's gold!" The final box is for marking your level. You level up every time to complete a card, plus one for every treasure you choose not to redeem.

Last but not least, this mock-up is only one of many in the complete set. There could be multiple floorplans for each type, and types could include dungeons, snow caves, lava fields, etc. Players would be encouraged to keep the game going, and maybe they could even relate the stories of their adventurers online and share their accomplishments. How many levels can you achieve?

So that's it, a challenge and a first idea. I'm hoping to generate a whole bunch more. Don't get too caught up in mine though; there are many ways to approach business card board gaming. No reason why there couldn't be a business card eight-player war game. Surprise me. If you hatch an idea, email me a concept or mock-up. Better yet, make the thing and send a picture. I'll post everything I get. There's no time limit, as I'm treating this as an ongoing personal project. Let's see what happens!

Robot Unicorn Attack

 

Robot Unicorn Attack is the newest game up on adultswim.com. It's like Canabalt for the trapper keeper generation. The player sends their unicorn bounding across purple floating platforms, grabbing fairies and smashing stars for points. With each star you smash or fairy you grab without missing any, the point value of each increases. 

The game also adds double-jumping and dashing to the Canabalt control scheme, and therefore a second button, so while it lacks the perfect zen of a great game of Canabalt, RUA has a degree of frenzy all it's own. The game moves faster and faster the higher your score climbs, until your inevitable demise. It reminds me of Tetris or Lumines late in a game, where you know the end is coming, and no matter how well you play you're never quite in control.

Last but not least Robot Unicorn Attack has a truly perfect soundtrack, a syrupy 80's fantasy that matches this game as well as (and more hilarious than) the woeful techno beats pursuing Canabalt players. I'm sure not-so-friendly comparisons will be drawn between the two, but the emphasis here on point multipliers really makes it a different kind of game. Try it for yourself.

New Header

For the two people I know of who check out this page with any regularity (Mom, Dad, I'm talking 'bout you), you may have noticed I changed the header. Woohoo pixels. My original intention was to change the header every week, but I realize I won't have time for that. Instead I'm aiming at once a month, with something special for holidays if I remember. My ladylove won't let me forget Valentines, so I'll probably have a special one then.

So why pixel art? It's a 'less is more' thing, and it's turning into a bit of a theory about game art and game design, but the half-chewed thought bits haven't really digested yet. From where I'm sitting there's more power, maybe even more possibility for connection, with characters and environments given the most minimalist presentation that still makes it clear what's what.

More on that in the next full length post. For now, enjoy the climbers.

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.