Back in the early days of this web log, I wrote a short series of articles about “awesome” game ideas, as distinct from “good” game ideas. One of the three game concepts I put forward in that series was this: “A platform game where the player may drastically grow and shrink at will.” Well, imagine…
Today: New-style single-stage quests are now in place. (multi-stage quests are still TODO, probably for post-MS1) The screenshot here is of a very simple starting area; a graveyard on the far left (needs a model), a spawn area in the background on the left, an inn in the middle (with an NPC quest-giver standing in…
I’m a day late in posting this, as the weather here was shocking enough yesterday that I didn’t even turn my computer on. But it’s really worth mentioning that Terry Cavanagh has just released his epic platformer VVVVVV. There are already a good number of lavish reviews on the net, so I’ll just give the…
There’s an interesting article over on tentonhammer.com about the method being used by the number-crunchers at Cryptic, for adjusting character stats when gaining levels in Champions Online. I find this sort of behind-the-scenes view at the number crunching to be fascinating, and probably justifies my intentions to abstract that sort of detail away from MMORPG…
In discussions about video games, one often hears about the length of particular games. About how in The Good Old Days, even action games were expected to be twenty to thirty hours long, whereas modern video games have now dropped to about six hours long (with some well-reviewed games such as Portal now as little…