Indie Game Spotlight – Today I Die
Indie Game Spotlight is the hopefull to continue being weekly feature where I will highlight an independent game that deserves attention. Given the difficutly these developers have in being heard, every little bit helps. Some will be free, some may cost money, but they are deserving of some attention.
This game is a relatively older one, as far as I can tell it came out back in April. Created by Daneil Benmergui with music by Hernan Rozenwasser, Today I Die is another art game. Again, not a bad thing, as the feelings the game tries to evoke in the player is part of the enjoyment.
Today I Die defies normal video game genres and conventions. If I had to liken it to something I;d call it a descendant of point and click adventure games. Your mouse pointer is your only means of interaction. You are given no instructions beyond “Click Here to Start.” The only words are the shot three line poem that takes up part of the screen. It’s a puzzle game that embraces its simplicity, in both mechanics and art design.
Design wise it runs with the idea of giving you no instructions and instead allows you to explore and with a few simple aesthetic choices is able to guide you to what you are suppose to do. It’s not long and can be finished in under five minutes, but that would be missing the point. It’s a game not so much about beating it as experiencing it.
After playing it, you can follow the link to where you can download it for free or donate some money. You need Flash and can play it in your broswer here: http://www.ludomancy.com/games/today.php
Indie Game Spotlight – Small Worlds
Indie Game Spotlight, at the moment, is an irregularly schedualed feature where I highlight an independantly funded and created game. Each game will be one worth taking a look at as abreak from the usual AAA and other studio made titles. These games need all the visibility they can get and I’d like to do my part for those I think deserve a look. (I hope to have the time to make this a weekly feature.)
Small Worlds is an indie entrant into the Causal Gameplay design 6th challenge, going on right now. The competition’s deadline was October 18th and it has been up since then. The compition’s parameters are as follows:
Design a game that incorporates our theme (see below). It doesn’t have to be complex nor large in scope. Since you will have just 6 weeks to complete your design, simple ideas are probably the best way to go. You may use any browser-based technology platformyou are comfortable with (Flash, Unity, Shockwave, Javascript, etc.). If we can embed your finished game file on our competition page, you may use that platform to design and develop your game.
For the 6th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, we are asking for entries designed to incorporate this theme: EXPLORE. You are free to interpret that any way you choose; however, the extent to which your game embodies the theme is left up to the competition judges to decide. Use your imagination and be creative. We will select the best entries submitted to represent the competition just like we have done before. Impress us with your game design and production skills.
With that in mind David Shute created a game that emphasises the theme perfectly and with an increabaly atmophereic resonance. Small Worlds is a platformer that utilizes very old school pixel art design that creates a canvus almost as much as it creates a level. The game did have some issues with the jump button that that the creator did apologize for, saying:
“I’m really sorry the jumping control is so screwy – In an ill-fated attempt to streamline the movement code, I changed the order in which key presses are processed, which had an unintended side effect: ‘Jump’ gets ignored if you’re moving sideways off a ledge or walking down a slope.
I’d really love to be able to upload the fixed version right now, but a deadline’s a deadline – and for better or worse, this is the version I submitted.
As soon as the competition’s over I’ll send Jay the improved version though – It’ll give me a chance to fix some other (minor, cosmetic) problems that slipped through the net too.”
He and all the other contestants were allowed to upload updated versions. Another note, Small Worlds proudly wears the Art Game label, whether or not it was intentional. I don’t wish to spoil anything, but it is an expirience well worth having. The game is work safe. Try and play it in an eviornment where you wont be bothered. The music, by Kevin MacLeod is that good.
I am amazed that Small Worlds took only 6 weeks to make, not because it is brimming with compexity in its code or visual, but rather its concept. The design is subtle and intricate that it is able to draw you in with a few colored blocks and slowly reveal itself . It is so basic and succedes at being art better than most AAA PC and console titles published today. Don’t take that as a negative, art is not the direct opposite of fun or engaging; the two words have nothing to do with each other. The best works are those that are engaging and consumable as well as deep and meaningful. This is one of those games.
The Big Triangle in Game Design
An interesting article came to my attention today about the Big Triangle. For those who don’t know the Big Triangle is a concept that Scott McCloud explains in his book Understanding Comics. I highly advise reading the book. The link below is the translated post of the original. Here he surmises on the usefulness of this categorizing system for games as more conducive to game design. Recently there has been talk about the unhelpfulness of modern game genres and whether if there isn’t a better way to categorize them. This is an interesting way to think of things and change from First Person Shooter, Third Person Shooter, Real Time Strategy, Action/Adventure, Rhythm, Platformer, etc etc.
Rather than repost all the thoughts here I’d rather just link you.
http://wordsonplay.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/the-big-triangle/
Indie Game Spotlight – Norwegian Wood
I haven’t got a full intro ready for this new and hopefully weekly feature. Indie Game Spotlight is planned at the moment to be every Friday to highlight and inform you, the readers, about an independently developed game. That is a game not funded, designed, developed or otherwise made by a large studio, or in some cases, a studio of any kind. This is a little late due to sever problems and we didn’t have access for a while. Anyway, on with the inaugural edition.
In the wake of The Beatles: Rock Band coming out a few weeks ago, No Fun Games Studio created a very different sort of rhythm game. Norwegian Wood, named after the early Beatles song of the same name, it is less a game about following the music of a game, but avoiding it.
It is a simple game, with only one song, which due to licencing regulations you have to supply the mp3 for yourself. You don’t need the music and can play it in silence, but it is a bit dull to do so. There are four instruments in the corner of the screen that when that instrument is played it launches a spray of notes for each time a string is plucked. You play as the disembodied head of the late John Lennon controlled with the arrow keys as you try to avoid all the flying notes. You rack up points for not getting hit and after some time you gain multipliers. Should you be hit you lose the multipliers and 100 points per hit. There is an online scoreboard and frankly I don’t know how some of these people got such scores.
It’s simple, it’s fun and each try wont take any longer than the song that inspired it. Quick warning, it is incredibly addictive. My top 30 score has since been erased from the leaderboards. Give it a go.
You can download the game and check the high scores here: http://norwegianwood.gangles.ca/
Uncharted 2 Mod Mode
There have been plenty of games before that have had a variety and widespread modding community. Some games have even opened up their engines and provided tools so that amateur modders could delve into the system More deeply and more efficiently. Unreal, Half-Life, and Neverwinter Nights come immediately to mind. Now Uncharted 2 seems to be a console game to add such a comprehensive set of tools.
They aren’t as in depth as say Valve’s Source Engine or the ability to create levels like Little Big Planet, but Uncharted 2: Among Thieves offers a set of Machinima tools in a “Cinema Mode.” You can take recorded video footage from matches and change camera angles or alter things and upload the edited recording. But probably most impressive is a green screen mode that allows you to take the characters from the game and put them into any setting the game can offer and move them around as you will. It even allow you to use the blue-tooth headset to record dialogue that the game with lip-sync the character’s lips too.
I’m not sure how indepth the movie creation aspect of the game will be or if it will allow you to drop in you’re own features, but as a basic concept it is an interesting new look into the possibilities of user generated content.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves comes out October 13th for PS3 at $59.99.
Upcoming Tech – Procedurally-Generated City
So I was messing around the internet was I was passed this link. Video Games, specifically open world sandbox type games, have a notion of external architecture, but little to no internal architecture. Basically you see the outside to a lot of buildings, but you either aren’t allowed inside of them or into only some of them. One marketing bullet point on the game True Crime: Streets of NY that extolled the game on being larger than any before it by having at least one building a block be enterable.
This is a five minute video demo, no sound, of a new set of algorithms by Marco Corbetta and Miragoli Gianluca that creates buildings with complete destructible interiors. The video itself also has word overs explaining details of the system.
Following the link are two other quick demo videos showing the behind the scenes architecture of the program. With game systems and PC’s pushing the limits of what the next technically impressive thing, here are two people who do something much more impressive and remove another stopgap to the uncanny valley of game worlds using less than state of the art tech. That deserves a look, no?
Link: http://createdigitalmotion.com/2009/06/18/ever-woke-up-in-a-procedurally-generated-city/
How to Market Your Indie Game With No Budget
Despite what the title might suggest I do not have the answer. I have no made a game nor do I market them. Yet.
What I do have is a link to an article that explains what can be done. Most games live or die on their marketing. In fact I’d say all games do so, including the big budget AAA titles. Ever hear about Bionic Commando? No … exactly my point. If you did, did you know it came out weeks ago? No .. exactly my point. If you said yes to both questions then I say the reboot not the remake for Xbox Live and if that wasn’t what you were talking about then get out of here, you’re spoiling my point.
Quality can only get you so far. There is no point in making that bedroom masterpiece if no one knows it exists. Rodain “Nandrew” Joubert wirtes a splended 4 page article on how to do just that. Let people know it exists in a meaningful way. The biggest point being that Game Journalists are your friends and want to know about your game, because they have an awful lot of space to fill up. So send them copies for consideration, make deals for exclusive videos or screenshots. (*Hint*Hint*)
Anyway here’s the link: http://www.devmag.org.za/articles/78-ZERO-BUDGET-INDIE-MARKETING-GUIDE/1/
Flower: A Dad’s Expirience – User Experience Design
Last weekend after a movie I sat my Dad down and started up Flower for him to try out. Now my Dad hasn’t tried a video game since the mid-90s and those were the PC adventure games. We’d play them together. But given Flower’s casual nature, simple controls and pleasing aesthetic, I figured he would get into it and I wanted a non-gamer’s take on it.
I quickly explained the controls, all two of them, started him on the opening level and then watched him play. It took a little while, but he was enjoying flying all over the place.
While the overall experience was pleasant for him, if I wasn’t there to nudge him in the right direction when asked he might not have gotten as much out of the experience as a normal gamer would have. For starters the game doesn’t explain the controls explicitly. If you are paying attention throughout the start up screens and the room you might figure out that it works by tilting the controller. Then you’d only have the problem of pushing a button to move forward. But on your own you would have had this problem in trying to understand what the buttons do.Through experimentation you’d learn that X would send you forward, but it might cause problems if the player didn’t realize that all the buttons do the same thing as they try to figure out any differences.
At one point my dad asked me, “what am I supposed to do now?” This was before he hit his first flower. As an environment he thought it was pretty, but it needed a purpose and that purpose wasn’t obvious. Once he got the hang of it he began looking for the halos that surrounded the colored flowers, but to find them he often went to get an areal view, because he couldn’t find his way or where the next one was. Many of the visual clues that gamer’s take for granted escaped him. In the first level he didn’t connect yellow grass with where the flowers would be based on the earlier experience at the beginning of the level. he often ignored the few seconds where the game took the camera away from him and kept trying to play. This was a problem, because he then found he didn’t know where to go next.
The problem may come from the total immersion style that Flower goes for. Most games have a definitive break between gameplay and cutscenes or in game indications to signify them as such. Flower just moves the camera. There is no switch in the engine or even a cut in camera angles to signify a change. The simple shift in the camera in the same manner that the petals flow doesn’t signify stop laying and pay attention to this. A person who plays games even only occasionally would be able to pick up on this, but a non-gamer might not be able to understand some of the language games have crafted for themselves. Flower is using the basic language of games, but is doing it far more subtly than nearly ever other game out there. The break between the parts are nearly unnoticeable.
Finally there is the last section to the design. The end of the level. To end the level you simply enter the swirling vortex at the end. This wasn’t understood at first by my dad. At first he took no notice of it and was looking for more flowers despite having bloomed them all. He then saw it, but just saw the swirls as wind and nothing special. I eventually gave up hoping he would figure it out and just told him.
The design choices for Flower seem a bit divided. On the one hand they are creating an environment to be experienced, but also they are creating a symbolic narrative. The first requires a quick rundown of the controls and what some basic interactions, but the latter needs a non-intrusive interface. The designers did a good job in trying to meld the two together, but I think that it only ended up going against one of the things they were shooting for. The choice to rely on game language to convey the game requires the player to be a gamer or at least subconsciously aware of it. However, this is not the case with non-gamers that Flower is trying to be open towards.
That was a look at the design of the game, now you can follow the link to the game’s aesthetic effect on the experience.
http://www.thegamecritique.com/recent-posts/flower-a-dads-expirience-aesthetic/205/
The 13 Basic Principals of Game Design
I did not come up with these myself, you have Matt Allmer of EA to thank for that. Reading them over they make sense when you read them, but it is easy to see how they can get lost in the shuffle. From a game critiquing standpoint you can articulate why something seems off or doesn’t work. When working on a game it is easy to say that this feels boring and unengaging, or there is something wrong here I feel confused or it could simply be a case of nagging little man in the back of your mind reminding you that you are playing a video game and are not being sucked into the experience. Yes, you know you are playing one, but you do not want to know that while you are playing it. In these cases it is sometimes hard to know what to fix or even where to look. These principals I don’t think are the end all be all to good game design, but with creativity there has to be a level of structure.
Either way its a good read over at gamasutra. Read it here.
BoRT’cast over at Man Bytes Blog
BoRT stands for Blogs of the Round Table. It is a monthly challenge run by Corvus Elrod of Man Bytes Blog. There he describes a challenge and any that wish to take it up in a post can. For the month of January the challenge was as follows:
Putting the Game Before the Book What would your favorite piece of literature look like if it had been created as a game first? In a time when bits of Dante’s Divine Comedy are being carved out and turned into a hack-n-slash game, I find myself longing for intelligently designed games–games with a strong literary component–not merely literary backdrops. So rather than challenge you to imagine the conversion of your favorite literature into games, I challenge you to supersede the source literature and imagine a game that might have tried to communicate the same themes, the same message, to its audience.
Feel free to ignore the technical constraints of the era in which the book was written. In fact, feel free to ignore the technical constraints (within reason) of today and push the envelop a bit. Also notice that I didn’t specify video game. Feel free to imagine a board game, card game, RPG, or sport, that could have been created during the same time period as the book in question. Be as vague, or as detailed, about the design particulars as you like. Work together with another blogger, or work alone.
I look forward to seeing what you come up with!
Well many blogs contributed their design concepts, including yours truly. It was an interesting game design challenge and will be further continued in February:
Turning Over a New Leaf: (We’re trying something new with the topic this month, so please read carefully.) February’s BoRT invites you take a game design suggested by another blogger in last month’s Round Table and build upon it. You should ignore the literary source of the original design, but attempt to communicate the same themes and/or convey the same mood as the proposed game. This means you can alter the game genre, change the setting, and add new layers to the game mechanics. This is not an opportunity to critique a previous design, but to honor it by striving to reach the same goals, while adding your own personal touch.
After the January challenge concluded at the end of the month, Corvus held the first ever Round Table podcast. He drafted in three guests to talk about their favorite entry and why it was their favorite. They also get into some of the design aspects of the ideas. It’s a good listen and only around 30 minutes long.
You can listen/download here:
http://blog.pjsattic.com/corvus/2009/02/bortcast-january-2009/
A New Year, An Awesome Book, and the Candy-O-Matic…
For whatever reason, there comes a point when our logic and experiences take over. To put it frankly: our internal grown-up wins the war against our imagination. Which brings me to just a few words about an amazing book, rather, an awesome book, as in: An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton. The book, in the style of all the books many loved as a kid, was a huge hit when the first edition was published and because of its success of course, it’s being printed again, to be made available to ship some time in January (if you want a copy you should probably grab one now). The illustrations are detailed and magical, reminiscent of drawings that a child would make or one’s own early mock-ups of inventions that were never developed as planned… like the mansion made entirely of bubble gum… or the ray gun that turned enemies into a goldfish. And much like the beloved Dr. Suess books, it’s needless to say that not only is it inspiring but it rhymes too… and rhyming is always fun whether you like to admit it or not.
Here are a few images from the book:
[Images from http://www.veryawesomeworld.com/awesomebook/inside.html ]
More can be found about the book from http://radder.bigcartel.com/product/an-awesome-book and http://dallasclayton.com/products/
It’s Chanukah!
Chanukah Menorah!
Chanukah is the Jewish Festival of Lights which takes place every December and lasts for 8 days and nights. Chanukah celebrates the recapture and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem by Judas Maccabaeus in 164 BC.
According to the Book of Maccabae once the Temple had been reclaimed a lamp was lit; this lamp according to Jewish law had to be kept lit and never put out! The only problem was that there was only enough oil to keep the lamp lit for one day. This of course is where the miracle comes in; the oil in the lamp lasted eight days, just enough time to aquire more oil.
To commemorate this miracle a lamp is lit during every night of Chanukah and placed in an eight-branched candlestick called a menorah. Here are some menorah examples:
Now this is an interesting Menorah, it is seems to be made out of nails!
Although this next one may not be religious none the less it is fairly interesting….especially if you are a cat lover like Fred is…
This one is very nice, I especially like the flame effects,
This one is also quite interesting,
And here I will leave you with what a typical Menorah may look like all lit up on Chanukah!
I hope you have all enjoyed this little menorah show. Hopefully you may have learned a little something about this Festive and fun holiday!
Happy Chanukah!
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune – a critique
Warning: This is not a review. If you want a review of this title go here, or here, or here etc, etc. This is a critical look at the game itself, both design wise and from the perspective as a piece of art. Oh and another note, MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD. This is written with the idea that anyone who read this has played the game.
Uncharted is a year old, but I recently got my platinum trophy and I feel that enough time has passed that I can take an unhindered look at the game.
First the basics, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is about Nathan Drake, a supposed descendant of Sir Francis Drake in the search of a lost Spanish treasure they later find out is El Dorado. He has an elder partner Sullivan and female journalist/documentarian, Elena, following him around/chasing him with a camera. Unfortunately Sully couldn’t keep his mouth shut and told Gabriel Roman, a man who he owed money to and who put a contract out on his life. He brought along a bunch of pirates and mercenaries to help in getting the treasure. This leads everyone to an uncharted island in the middle of the Pacific, thanks to a WWII Nazi map. Just run with it, it makes less sense explaining it than it does in game. I wont bother with a full plot summery, because one, that would be boring and two, I’m expecting that you have already played the game or have read it elsewhere.
If you read other articles of mine you may have noticed me gushing over this game a little. It is a phenomenal, well executed, tightly designed game. I mentioned it before in relation to how it merges story elements with its gameplay ones. Because of this, to look at Uncharted one has to look at the term cinematic gaming. Uncharted is the very definition of well-executed cinematic gaming.
I would rate the architecture of the game was one of the best I’ve seen in the last few generations let alone years. I played through the game numerous times and never once hit a glitch. The loading screen that happens during gameplay where I am warned not to turn off my machine during appears only once: at the beginning of the game. It is seamless throughout. I checked the game data next; this is where the disc downloads data from the disc to facilitate load times. The other great games of the PS3 have any where to half a gig of data to MGS4 incredible 4.5 gigs of downloaded data, which gets replaced after ever chapter. Uncharted has none. Everything runs off the disc. The 13megs are for when it was updated with trophy support.
On the gameplay aspects, everything within the game has been refined to a mirror shine and I don’t just mean the graphics. Few games respond like Uncharted do. The cover system works as well as it possible can and the shooting has certain nuances that I didn’t know about or take advantage of until I played through on high difficulties. The collision detection is far better than I’ve ever seen. Objects are recognized perfectly and there is no clipping between the models. Finally the platforming has been called reminiscent of Tomb Raider, but it flows much better so I would liken it more to Prince of Persia, minus the ability to wall run.
Graphically it is one of the best looking games in the present generation. The environments are vibrant and realistic and a wonderful change from the browns and grays of modern gaming. The animations are top notch as the development team put extra effort into facial animations and character movements. What’s even more amazing is the detail that goes into differentiating the enemy characters. Each one is different. Roman is sophisticated and calculated in his movements. Navarro is very hard and deliberated. Eddie Raja is like a man unhinged, flailing wildly all over the place. The mercenaries are very professional in the firefights and are tougher opponents because of it. The pirate characters on the other hand are more ambitious in their attacks. They take more risks than the mercenaries. One of the animations has the character jump out fast and fire wildly around. This makes them an easy target, but infuses a lot of personality into them. Another type of pirate will advance steadily and take hit time with his shots with a very powerful gun.
The heroes also have their own animations that personify them beyond just polygonal avatars. For instance, Drake is not a superhuman, he is a real person, a highly skilled person, being an adventurer, but among us mere mortals and his animations display this in the subtle small movements. Up until chapter 4 I was convinced Nathan was just another video game character Mary-Sue persona that can get up from just about anything (until the player takes control of course). Then the intro cutscene to chapter 4 has Nathan acting all heroic, making Elena get out first and he tried to take control of the plane, for like 2 seconds, after which he exclaims, “What am I doing?” and then proceeds to leap out of the plane, count at a rapid pace, of which I am almost positive he skips a number and pulls the cord a little too late and get caught on a statue. This reminds me of the good Indiana Jones movies where he would survive by the skin of his teeth. In the platforming sections where the grips Nathan is holding on are crumbling, you’ll hear him pleading “oh, no, no, no.” Which brings me to my next item, the voice acting.
The voice acting is top notch. In the first chapter, when the pirates are seen in the distance, Drake gives Elena a gun and asks her if she know how to use one. She nervously replies, “Yeah, sure. Just like a camera. You point and shoot.” The delivery is perfect with a nervous waver in her inflection. We know that this person can use a gun, but is rather nervous, if not frightened for what is about to happen. Sullivan gets his own little moment that separates him from being just another stock character. After the first firefight is over and the boat blows up, Sullivan is introduced and helps the Elena in and complete ignores Drake’s hand. It happens with such a sense of panache that it presents Sullivan’s character perfectly and the game continues with it every time he shows up.
The story is told though a variety of ways. Cutscenes are the most obvious means, but the game also uses in-game conversations, environmental and quick button clues that shift the camera to look at certain points. Even the animations in the gameplay are telling about the characters. And none of these elements are really intrusive on the experience. The cutscenes are short. The longest one couldn’t have been more than a minute or two long. The conversations take place during lulls in the fighting or other action-oriented sequences, like travel time or puzzle elements of the game so you aren’t distracted. There are a few points when the game will flash the R2 button in the corner. If you hit it Drake will look to the point of interest, but it isn’t necessary to push it, but if you do, it adds to the experience. The time that sticks out the most was during the complex hiding the treasure. In the second section, before opening the gate the R2 icon will appear. If hit, it will make Drake look into the corner and see a figure scamper away on a different stairway in the distance. This is foreshadowing to a future plot development. After you hear Drake comment, “What was that?” you move on. It isn’t necessary, but is fun and remakes a useful literary device into the language of video games.
I’ve heard the allegation that the story is cliché and that its filled with stock characters and a lot of the story falls flat. I don’t think that’s true. Does the story have elements from over half a dozen different movies and adventure serials? Can the characters be boiled down into archetypes? Yes on both counts, there is no way to deny it, but there are enough nuances in the story and the characters that it doesn’t matter. The characters feel alive and the story compels you to want to continue with the adventure, not just for the gold. There is a good section of the game where they give up on that in favor of getting out alive, until they realize all the boats are with the bad guys…who are looking for the gold.
Uncharted has been likened to the Indiana Jones movies, but those in turn were based off of the old adventure serials of the 1930s. The pacing of the story follows that model instead of a movie and it shows. That model is much more suited to the medium of a video game. Games that are based off of movies always seem to have the need to add levels or stretch out certain plot points just so it will be a worthwhile gameplay experience. That is all well and good from the gameplay side of things, but it suffers in the story telling department. However, serials are much more suited to this type of medium. There are set backs, new twists or rather further developments whose scope is not limited to a two-hour time frame.
The game is tight in every sense of the word. Not once did the game hiccup on a glitch or bug. The story elements all mesh together. You may think I will put far too much thought into the game in the next segment, that I am reading too much into it, but I think of it more as a natural occurrence of great design with a compelling story all polished to a mirror shine. When a great design team brings on a writer at the start, one who has credentials on previous games something wonderful comes out of it. The following is a result from the compilation of all the quality work I detail above.
A major theme running through Uncharted is greed. I’m sure that seem pretty obvious given that the characters are searching for El Dorado and I was willing to leave it at that, until I thought about it a little further. The story revolves around El Dorado and everyone wants some piece of it, but each character’s motivations as to why they are after it are different.
The bad guys are almost uniformly motivated by greed. They want their stake in the treasure. Navarro is slightly more nuance in wanting the dangerous, mystical dust inside the golden statue. The good guys are also after the gold, with Elena more interested in the story of finding it than the material worth itself, but you cannot really call them greedy. They don’t throw away everything else for their avarice. In fact it’s this difference that makes them more relatable and puts you on their side despite the fact you are killing legions of human beings.
The true display of greed for the characters comes in what the characters are willing to give up and how far they are willing to go in their search of El Dorado. (I’m sure there is a Heart of Darkness reference I could make here.) Eddie Raja and his men sacrifice their lives for the gold in the face of their fears and common sense of what has been happening to them the entire time they were on the island. The one time Eddie wants to abandon the search, he is threatened to be cut out. Navarro sacrifices everything, his men, any semblance of honor, and the life of his employer; he holds the price of his ‘weapon’ above all else. Gabriel Roman is behind all the bad guys and is financing the whole thing, but he’s only going so far so that he’ll get a sizable return. Money is his only objective and foolishly sacrifices his life and literally humanity for it. The Spaniards are the ultimate representation of greed consuming them. Much like as described in Dante’s Inferno, they have succumbed to their sin and have become the embodiment of that sin. They are slavering humanoids only interested in killing and feasting on their prey. They consume others in a metaphorical fashion of how greed had consumed them. The entire island itself is a further display of the effects of greed in its almost angel of vengeance like repercussions, from the crumbling fortress, to the sunken city, to unholy cathedral.
On the other side of the fence are the three ‘heroes.’ Let’s go with protagonists. They all start out with aspirations to get the treasure before the other guy, though Elena is more interested in the search itself. They do not remain solely focused on El Dorado as other factor change their priorities. Drake wants to save his skin, valuing his own life over the gold and later the lives of Elena and Sully, once he learns he is still alive. Elena’s moment comes at the rickety bridge, when she fall through the wood and is clutching the camera with one hand and Drake with the other, in a situation more than slightly reminiscent of the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Elena makes the better choice in those two situations. Finally, Sully, like Drake, just wants to get out of this alive. The treasure becomes secondary and they are only still hinting it because their ride off the cursed island are still hunting the treasure and later is revealed that the treasure is a danger to the whole world and so they act altruistically for the last chapter and half of the game.
Maybe I did over think a game that’s aspiration was to be like the old adventure serials of the 30s and 40s and only provide a source of entertainment. Maybe I did, but what is also evident is that my analysis of the game holds up when you think about it. Was it the designer’s intent to have thematic resonance in the game? I don’t know, but I doubt that much literary thought was put into it. It just occurred naturally as the team tightened up every other aspect of the game.
If on the other hand you like this type of analysis applied to video game you can check out my new site dedicated to this sort of thing. See it at www.thegamecritique.com. I will continue to give design related analysis, for what its worth, here on Creative Fluff.
TheGameCritique – a new website is here
The story goes like this: As time went on at Creative Fluff and I was found to be the main contributor for the game design section I was eventually made into that section’s content editor. We were looking into how we could expand the examinations of games. The first point we looked to was how were we going to handle reviews. Our esteemed Editor-in-Chief, Megalongcat, decided it should be on a five point scale and left the task up to me on what criteria would constitute our scores. We are a design web site after all, not a game review site. As I thought and worked on it, I realized that we either have to look solely at the mechanical functions of a game’s programming or as its effectiveness as a whole as a work of artistic expression. The problem with the first was, we are not entirely qualified to speak intelligently on that subject. The issue with the second is the fundamental idea that you can rate a piece of artwork quality by its cultural significance with a numerical score. Trust me I tried. Instead of numbers I assigned a concept to each number related to its effect. It makes more sense when fully explained, but not by much.
Then I thought, what if I turned it around. The review score is a conclusion reached from the text evidence of the written part where the reviewer relates his experience of his time with the game. What if I had the review score at the beginning of the concept and used it as a thesis rather than a representation of its worth. Of course after more consideration and discussion, if that is where we are moving with the idea of examining specific titles, then why would we need a score at all? Sufficed to say, the entire idea fell through. But it spawned a new one. I was still interested in exploring video games critically. That is when another of our contributors, Katharine O’Brien, stepped in with the question: why don’t we set up a sister site for the specific purpose of doing just what I had envisioned?
And so we are. From the writer of such articles as “The Portal Effect” and the “Single Player Game: Story vs. Gameplay” series, a new website devoted to the idea that games are an art form and that they should be examined critically.
TheGameCritique.com is up and running.
19 Amazing Playing Cards from Around the World
Images from http://thecontaminated.com/cards-of-life-and-death/
Czech Nationalistic cards by Emanuel Neumann, c.1895
Images from http://www.wopc.co.uk/czech/index.html
Hand painted Dasavatara Ganjifa cards, c. 1950
Images from http://www.wopc.co.uk/india/dasavatara.html
Image from http://www.wopc.co.uk/japan/unsun.html
15th century Italian playing cards
Images from http://www.wopc.co.uk/italy/italia.html
The Book of Trades by Jost Amman, 1588
Images from http://www.wopc.co.uk/germany/ammon.html
Images from http://photography-arena.blogspot.com/2008/10/ukraine-human-feature-playing-cards.html
Images from http://www.wopc.co.uk/germany/ambraser.html
Waddington’s Barribal Series, 1933
Images from http://www.wopc.co.uk/waddingtons/barribal.html
‘Unique’ playing cards by Ian Roth
Images from http://www.wopc.co.uk/usa/ianroth.html
Pippoglyph playing cards by Ben Crenshaw, 2004
Images from http://www.wopc.co.uk/usa/pippoglyph.html
Images from http://www.wopc.co.uk/otc/aboutea.html
Images from http://www.wopc.co.uk/reviews/thedeal.html
Image from http://adnil.com/CARDS/jong.html
Invisible Playing Cards by Peter Woudt, 2002
Image from http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay_Invisible%20Playing%20Cards_10451_10001_15115
Frank Lloyd Wright playing cards by Frank Lloyd Wright
Images from http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/golden-klimt/index.shtml
Images from http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/aleister-crowley-thoth/index.shtml
And finally a very strange Chinese deck I picked up, with images of Chinese aristocracy. They also have little educational blurbs on each card, and apparently had a little trouble with the English translations.
The Unfinished Swan – A Preview
This here is a little interesting indie game that I came across a while ago. It’s not finished without any plans for a release date as of yet. So why show it to you? From what we’ve seen, the game does something very unusual in games. Like Portal and Fracture it looks into design space that I loosely call special manipulation. Unlike the previous two game where they change the area or level design around them, this game reveals it.
Unlike most first person shooters that have a gun used to kill enemies to allow you, the player, to move on through the level, here the paintball gun is used to reveal the level so you can move through it. I suppose you could do the whole level blind, but where would the fun in that be. Instead of describing it further, why don’t you just watch the video.
The Unfinished Swan – Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.
The paintball gun aspect means that there are no enemies per say, instead the world could be called the enemy. It is a puzzle game, reminiscent of Portal. You have to figure out how to get from one end to the other. That much is evident. It is unique in its approach.
Beyond just the design aspect of being a really innovative idea, but it is also creates a artistic design that creates an ominous atmosphere, both ‘inside and outside.’ I’ll explore that meaning when it comes out on my new site. So see it there. (*hint hint*) Any possible story could be chilling, if this is any evidence.
I can’t wait to see where the designers go with this. The man responsible for it has also worked on The Misadventures of P. B. Winterbottom, another indie design gem yet to be released.
Find out more here on his blog: http://iandallas.com/
And the game: http://iandallas.com/games/swan/
Home for the Holidays
Well, they’ve done it, somehow. Sony will release Playstation Home later today. (Had to double check the clock on that one.) Amazingly Sony will be able to keep their promise of releasing it for everyone before 2008 is over. There was a countdown on some site to see if they could do it or not.
I was lucky enough to be a part of the closed beta for Home and I haven’t written up on it before, because, frankly, I was worried I would be violating some non disclosure agreement if I did. I was too busy to look it up anyway. Since it’s being released today and I don’t care anymore, I’ll give a quick rundown of my impressions.
1. Everything it does, it does very well, the program works smoothly and without many hiccups. If you really try with other people there are a few clipping issues.
2. There is not a whole lot to do in the closed beta. The stores only had minor amount of stock in the last few days. The bowling alley had a few arcade games, which is really meta if you think about it, pool and bowling, which I never got to play because the lanes were always full.
3. The movie theather is nice, though once again a very meta expirien, watching a movie on a screen within a tv screen. Though there was only one movie and not a very interesting one at that.
4. There is spots for advertising and its used very sparingly. But it does mean it will remain a free experience.
5. Character customization is very deep, wit the face anyway. Wish there were more ways to create different skin and hair colors.
6. It is always sunny. No matter what time of day it is. I suppose that is a good thing, but kind of weird when you’re in the winter lodge you can buy and the fire is roaring at high noon.
Really it works. You can find people on your friends list easily, communicate, much easier to do if you have a USB keyboard or headset. My issue is a lack on content, which will be fixed now that the beta is open. Many companies have offered not only billboard advertising, but activities and rooms of their own. Which shifts me nicely into my next complaint.
I have no idea how to get to the special locations. I can find my way in the world and via menu to the 5 main areas: common square, your room, bowling alley, movie theater, mall. Beyond that I am at a loss. There were supposedly three special room devoted to Playstation releases, but I couldn’t even begin to know where to look. Maybe they were just closed off when I joined and will be changed when the beta goes open tonight.
Final word: this is not a game. Don’t think of it as such. This a much more interesting way to get people connected on the PSN. you can get games going, watch movies together and generally hang out, though I find AIM easier to work with, but it does give a nice visual to whom your talking to.
Playstation Home goes into Open beta December 11th, downloadable on the Playstation Network.
People’s Design Award…Last Day!
The Cooper-Hewitt’s People’s Design Award voting ends today at 6:00pm EST. In case any of you would still like to cast your vote there’s still time yet.
If you would like to have your say on the matter of which design is the best you can do so by visiting http://peoplesdesignaward.cooperhewitt.org/2008/ for instructions or go directly to the voting page: http://peoplesdesignaward.cooperhewitt.org/2008/browse/all/0
Rock Band: Back in Black
I talked about the role the metal band Metallica has with the rhythm games as they were releasing a big track pack that week. Now its another great High Voltage band’s turn in the spotlight.
AC/DC has long been wanted in the likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but has only recently made the transition in Rock Band 2 with “Let There Be Rock.” On November 2nd for the PS3 and Xbox360 and November 16th for Wii, AC/DC will be releasing AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack. As with their upcoming new album Black Ice, this disc based track pack will only be sold at Wal-Mart locations and their Sam Club subsidiary. Hell, It Ain’t a Bad Place to Be. If you want to play the tracks in Rock Band 1 and 2, they will come with an authentication code that will allow the tracks to be played in PS3 and Xbox 360. There are no plans to make these songs available for download at this time.
All of the 18 songs are live versions from various shows throughout their Highway to Hell carrier. Here’s the track list:
-Thunderstruck
-Shoot to Thrill
-Back in Black
-Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be
-Heatseeker
-Fire Your Guns
-Jailbreak
-The Jack
-Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
-Moneytalks
-Hell’s Bells
-High Voltage
-Whole Lotta Rosie
-You Shook Me All Night Long
-T.N.T.
-Let There Be Rock
-Highway to Hell
-For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)
Game Preview: Fracture Demo
The demo for Fracture came out on the PSN last Thursday. I’m a little late on this. I’m hoping to get faster at these. I’ve got like three or four articles backed up. But you don’t care about that. You want to hear about Fracture.
This is a demo, but its short, really short. It’s only a little longer than Heavenly Sword’s demo. There is a lot to go over in the demo. I’ll start with the most touted part of the game, the new environment changing weaponry. The main question that has been raised is, can this mechanic sustain an entire game? The detractors say it’s a bit too gimmicky and only one tool, while other cite Portal as a game that did that sort of thing well. After going through the demo a number of times, I say no. Not on its own. Portal was a masterpiece success not because of its mechanic, but how it used it and the world it formed around it. That and the game was only six hours long. I’ll explain what I mean.
The main weapon in Fracture is a machine gun with two extra functions. You can’t swap out this gun for one lying around. You have a second slot for that purpose. The extra functions are connected to the left and right trigger buttons (L1 and R1). When shot into the dirt one will raise the level of the ground, the other will cause it to lower. These allow for some basic puzzle solving of the run and gun variety. See a sewer pipe filled with dirt, shoot it out of the way by lower it. Can’t jump over a wall; raise the dirt in front of it to get some height. Raising the ground also can create a shield in an otherwise open section of the level. Doing it under an enemy throws them into the air. There are two sets of grenades that serve the same function. The lowering ones act as normal grenades in the absence of dirt. The only other landscape-using weapon in the game shown is something like a bomb tunneler. It travels under ground and blows up either when you hit the detonate button or it hits a wall.
Those are the functions and from what I’ve seen this is a clear example of the Portal Effect that went over in my previous article. The idea is that this is an end result and not a new source of design space. Portal as great as it was could not support new ideas or expand the concept further than it had. I believe that Fracture is the same way, though this maybe because the designer decided to go the shooter route. Really the two games take up the same kind of design space of exploring new ways to distort/change the landscape around the player.
In Fracture there are plenty of other weapons, rocket launcher, sticky grenade launcher, sniper rifle, machine gun. A few others are shown in the loading screen at the beginning, but are not in the game as shown. From other previews around the net there are even more guns that can terraform, but they didn’t show up here. Other than the gimmick there is really nothing else new here. The gimmick is fun, especially when they added real gravity physics to running up and down surfaces does give an additional sense of strategy of how you can use the landscaping tools, but honestly the way the shootouts are, I doubt you’ll have the time or the reason to use any of them. Now come the most dreaded part of this preview.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. The character is also a gruff, grizzled supposedly brown haired marine in a suit of armor with regenerative shielding with a HUD that is explained as seen by the character through an ocular implant. The story is about fighting a general who was gone off and declared war or something. It’s your job to take him down, except he has an army at his back full of genetically enhanced soldiers. This is all we get from the demo, though I suspect that there isn’t much else there.
Overall the sound is good, the visuals are a little sub par and there are times when the game has to freeze for a second or two to load. Honestly this seems like another run of the mill shooter. The idea of terra formation and deformation sounds interesting, but did they have to put it into a shooter. That’s an idea that sounds like it could have been a great platformer or game based on exploration.
Fracture is a third person shooter by the developer Day 1 Studios set to be released on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 7th.
Little Big Planet Coming to Parsons – Preview
On September 20th to 21st, exactly a month before the game hits store shelves, Sony Computer Entertainment of America will bring the highly anticipated game to Parsons The New School for Design. The purpose is to let a large number of design students get down and busy with the creation toolset for a marathon 24-hour design off. Are you all getting excited yet?
More than 120 students will be broken up into teams of 5 people to design a level. Afterwards each team will present their level to a panel of video game designers from Media Molecule, the creators of Little Big Planet, Parson’s faculty, and media representatives. They will judge them and award the winner levels with a special section of the game, the “City of Parsons” if you will. Are you all salivating yet?
Wipe the drool off and wait until I’m finished. As you may or may not know, depending if you’ve read the About Us page or not, some of our contributors come from that prestigious institution. Best part is that our very own Fred McCoy, aka Megalongcat will be participating in the event and afterwards will be able to give an in-depth view into Little Big Planet a month before the rest of us unwashed peasants can touch the game. Stay tuned.
Metallica and Guitar Hero?
Metallica has only recently embraced the music video game genre, such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, as a medium for their music, but now that they have they have gone the whole way. First it was only their classic single “One” for Guitar Hero III and a little later “Enter Sandman” for Rock Band. They followed that up with a downloadable Rock Band track pack including the blistering “Blackened,” the melodic “Ride the Lightning” and seemingly never ending “…And Justice for All.”
That was last year. This year they’ve gone even further. It started with news of an Activision filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stating that they were going to be releasing several titles with the Guitar Hero name in the 2009 fiscal year. That begins April 1st 2008 and ends March 31st 2009. Don’t ask, I don’t get it either. Among them was Guitar Hero: Metallica, most likely in the same vein as Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Later confirmed at Microsoft’s E3 press conference. At the same event, Harmonix released the Rock Band 2 track list to the public. On it was Metallica’s “Battery.”
This Friday, to coincide with their new album, “Death Magnetic” hitting store shelves, the whole thing will be available for download for Guitar Hero III. Now we knew this already, but here’s the new information. It will be forward compatible with Guitar Hero: World Tour. I remember reading earlier that it would be available for download for both games and as separate entities. Either that was an error or Activision decided to get their act together. I hope the latter, meaning we’ll continue to get good decisions from them.
“Death Magnetic” will be released September 12th for store bought copies and Guitar Hero downloads. 1440 Microsoft Points on the 360 and $17.99 on the Playstation 3.
The Single Player Game: Story vs. Gameplay Pt[2]
I said previously that there is a debate going on between the gameplay elements of a game and the storytelling aspects. This of course is not an actual dehbate with words, but one expressed through the designers’ games. Last time I went through the extremes in the medium and then various techniques over the years designers have tried to combine story and interactivity. You can read it here. (Edit: Part 3 can be read here.)
One more technique designers use that I didn’t get to last time follows the rule stories have endings. In interactive fiction there are two types of endings. Those that the player has been led to by the events of cut scenes and those that are dependent on the action the player has taken. The later set of games that have multiple endings reflect the consequences of how you played the game, but most fall into a black or white duality category. Where the consequences are either all is right with the world or everything has gone to hell. Fallout 3 is truly ambitious in offering around 120 different possible endings. I will reserve judgment until I see how different those endings really are. If there is meaningful difference between them I will call it a success, but if the end cut scene is merely the same actions with a different backdrop then it is anything but that.
Recently games have further evolved in their efforts to blend the two. While games still continue to make games of the start and stop variety, games have also evolved further into two notable styles.
The illustrious Grand Theft Auto III popularized the first style. It is now known as the sandbox game. Of course there are many imitators, but few actually managed to accomplish a quality title with an open world. The idea here is to create a world and let the player loose into it to let them do whatever they want. Of course there is a main story, but there are also many side stories or quick play ideas that the player can take part in at any point he or she so wishes. It offers total freedom, or as much as can be accomplished in a video game. Action/Adventure games are given this title, but it also applies to many RPGs.
The idea is to allow the player to do what they want, but the designer, if he wishes to do his job properly, then must be able to allow the story to be able to progress at its own pace. Some games accomplish this, others still force a certain amount of inflexibility because of the demands of the story. To keep the two merged requires a certain kind of story that allows this kind of leeway. Grand Theft Auto IV is the story of an immigrant and his integration into the American lifestyle. He just so happens to take jobs along the way and confront his past. This allows the player to do what he wants, when he wants to.’
Finally there is the last of major styles of note on how to combine these two elements is what has been called cinematic gaming. It takes elements from movie story telling and integrating it into an interactive experience. In a way it is another type of start and stop game, cut scenes in this case, but the points in which this happens are short and far between. It also uses a number of other techniques described in the previous article. Atmosphere, environmental clues, in game dialogue, subtle hints and so forth to bring an all around experience, but also one more thing. Something that is much harder to nail down in describing it, but I’ll give it a try.
Cinematic gaming is like a threshold of quality for the sandwich games.’ It is the fluidity of the story coming out like a Hollywood movie, but still allows the game to take place. The game allows the player to move through the level without there being the feeling of a start and stop. The idea that the story and gameplay are so integrated with one another that neither stops for the other.
Really this is the ultimate use of the techniques innovated by the games that came before it. Half-Life may have introduced the idea of having characters talk outside of cutscenes to further the story, but though the player remained the experience they were still locked down to wait for the scrip to finish before they could move on to the next part. It still had the stop and start. Cinematic gaming takes this technique and allows movement and the game to continue. The voices are a soundtrack in addition to the gameplay. Also cutscenes for the most part have been shortened for these types of games and camera angles and techniques are used to highlight moments in the game while never stopping it.
I could try and define it all I want, but the best way to explain it is through examples. Two of the best games that I feel pull of the cinematic gaming concept are Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Each of these games do simple things that add to the experience to the game. There is a point in Uncharted where there is an indicator to press the R2 button comes up. It isn’t necessary to push it, but if you do the camera angle changes a little to look up and you catch a glimpse of foreshadowing and Drake saying, ‘What was that” In Sands of Time when entering a new area the camera sweeps around like the camera is on a crane to give the player a sense of what they will have to do.
Shadows of the Colossus also did this. When you start the fight the camera give you a shot of the colossus that just makes you say almost each time, ‘You expect me to do what!’ In each of these examples it happens for less than ten seconds. These are only some small examples of what is being accomplished right now to blend the two elements.
It may seem that I have come down hard on single player games where the gameplay is merely the ham between the cutscene slices of bread, but I don’t mind the essence of the idea. What I mind is the execution when the story is done in such a minimalist manner, where designer’s sacrifice story for gameplay or vice versa. There are many single player games that I hold in very high regard for the ability to blend gameplay and story, the aforementioned Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, along with Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid and Indigo Prophecy just to name a few. Whether or not you liked the games or their stories, they pulled off the combination of the sandwich formula admirably.
Of course the holy grail of gaming is to have a truly interactive experience with the player having dynamic effects on the world around him, both in gameplay and in story. Of course this might not be achievable with any amount of technology, due to the human mind being a somewhat unpredictable thing. (googafal) But we can always hope.
Game Preview: Alone in the Dark – Revamped
Alone in the Dark is the new installment in the horror franchise of the same name that came out on the PS2, Xbox 360 and PC and was almost universally panned as a game that had great and innovative ideas, but had horrendous, counterintuitive, and unfinished execution and a uninteresting and clichéd story. Developer Eden decided not to go the Lair route and complain that no one understands their artistic vision, but instead took the massive number of criticisms leveled against the game and went to work addressing each one for the PS3 version of the games, which hadn’t come out due to longer production time.
First of all they fixed the camera controls, by giving it all to the player via the right analogue stick. Of course I thought this was basic game design now a days. On the other analogue stick, control of Carnby has left the near tank like controls to the more smooth character controls that we expect from our games. Combat remains on the analogue stick and now utilizes one of the trigger buttons to lock on to an enemy. This solves two problems in one go.
Inventory has not been revamped. It is no longer real time, which sounded like a good idea, but in tight spots it was nothing but a hindrance. The inventory is also more accurate when making your choices. Additionally a slot has been freed up, as now your flashlight will never need new batteries. It was an integral game mechanic, making it temporary is not a good idea. Oh and mixing items doesn’t care what order you put them in anymore.
As for the game overall, the sections with the devil roots no longer clog the game at the end of a chapter to become monotonous work. Now its integrated into the main mission keep things with a consistent variety. That last phrase makes sense if you think about it. Also the vehicles now have weight to them so the physics engine doesn’t send them spiraling out of control when you hit a pebble. Oh and there’s a new action oriented section taking place in a subway station.
Sadly there is nothing that could be done with the story, but you can’t have everything, especially if it’s as bad as all the critics say it is. Despite that I am still excited about Alone in the Dark.
I was hoping against all hope that they PS3 version would be better and fix all the problems. And lo and behold they did. I’m actually glad that Eden decided to swallow their pride and actually make a game good. I can name a number of other games I wished this happened to.
I don’t think any other developer has ever done this and if they did certainly not in this short a time. I am excited about the atmosphere and to try out the new innovative mechanics in their proper form.
Alone in the Dark will be released on the PS3 November 18th.
