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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.