What you see above is my computer screen during the past weekend (each hour reduced to 2.5 seconds), as I make two games for two events that were held concurrently. One is a competition called Ludum Dare, on which, during the 48 hours of its duration, participants are expected to create a game by themselves and ‘from scratch’. The week prior, participants vote on a theme. ‘Advancing wall of doom’ won this time, which is not one I’m too fond of, but I did participate and make a game. Or two, in fact, because for the other event, my usual two-hour Klik of the Month, I made a game based on the same theme.
Heart is the name of my Ludum Dare entry. The game is not final, and neither is the name, so let’s say it’s the competition version’s name. It was inspired by Stephen Lavelle’s Defect. It was made for Flash, using the Flex SDK and coded in Actionscript 3. I’ll probably post more about it in the future, when I decide that the game is finished.
After seeing videos and reports of some of the talks at this year’s Independent Games Festival, I’m saddened. Sure, all those indie game developers are having the time of their lives out there, and the scene seems to be growing and doing very well for itself. The problem is, it’s just all a bit empty. There’s a lot of whizbang, but very little substance. Most of these game developers make games for the sake of making games, which is a good thing to do for themselves, but ultimately doesn’t result in a product that will be relevant for the end user, and to society as a whole. So many game developers, from the mainstream industry and the indies, repeat that they want to make fun games, and ‘fun’ is that end goal that every game needs to accomplish. And if you look around, you will see that most games are indeed catering to our senses, because what else is fun if not pleasure? I mean, addictiveness is a desireable quality in a game, according to most game reviewers out there—but do gamers really wanna be playing packs of cigarettes all the time? Don’t they wanna get something positive out of the experience, be stimulated every now and then? Don’t their minds (as opposed to their brains) wanna be challenged, or nurtured?
I, at least, want more communicative games, games with ideals, games that have some new things for me to think about. I want more utilitarian games that explain a process to me, or ease me into a concept, or teach me something. There’s nothing wrong with the videogames being made nowadays; there’s just not enough of them that go beyond being fun. I’m not the only one who thinks like this, either; here are a few individuals and teams who also have things to say on this matter: Chris Crawford, Raph Koster, Jason Rohrer, Values at Play, Serious Games Initiative.
The good news is that there are such games out there—they’re just not exactly the norm. Since I got involved in the indie game making scene, I’ve seen some of them; just a tiny portion of the spectrum, but they still remain largely outnumbered by all of the just fun games. I’m talking about subtle communicative experiments like Coil. About attempts at creating interactive storytelling, likeStoryteller. Strong aesthetic games like flOw. Ideological games like The free culture game. Also, a couple of the games that won awards at the IGF went deeper than the standard indeed, like Blueberry garden, and Between. The games that I just linked are brief, and free to play directly from your web browser, so give them a try if you haven’t.
I want more of these games, and games that go beyond. I want games that have a good reason to exist. I hope to make such games!
I’ve completed a new videogame—another entry in another TIGSource competition. The theme, this time, is ‘cockpits’. My game is pretty much on the fringe in the way it implements the theme, though. What I originally intended to make was some manner of car driving game, inspired by the original Out Run, since I’m such a big fan of the series, and because I love the aesthetic of that kind of low-tech 3D. I might do this in the future; we’ll see how creating such an engine will go for me. But the game I ended up conceiving, because I only had roughly a week to make it (until the deadline was extended another week), is not about driving anything at all, it is merely about looking; how much more simple can a game’s interface and set of verbs get? You are still in some kind of convertible sportscar, but you’re just sitting on the passenger’s seat.
I’ve coined the term ‘narrative exploration’ to describe Viewpoints, because the very core of the concept is about exploring, but not a physical space, like in, say, Metroid, but, instead, a space of different possible stories—a narrative space. The concept itself was shamelessly ripped from Terry Cavanagh’s Pathways —a short game I can wholeheartedly recommend—, though his execution is different from mine (I’m not quite that flagrant).
Also, for this past April Fools’, I made a variation of Viewpoints and released it as if it were the finished game for the competition. I took the Out Run and Sega inspiration further, and created something quite ridiculous. I call it Winner. (It may be worth mentioning that some of the contents of this variation were taken straight from Sega-made games.)
Another Klik of the Month, and another game made in two (and a half) hours. This time it’s an audio game, no graphics. To tell the truth, the idea for this game seemed much cooler in my head than the result, but what am I going to do. I might make a more involved game with the general idea for this game in the future. If you play it, please, excuse my poor diction.
As of today (yesterday), I am a professional graphic designer. My final project, which I now refer to as Campodecolor (Spanish for ‘Colorfield’), was the same videogame I have been talking about for some time, the one about visual composition. It’s not finished as a project, but an important milestone has been reached: its first purpose has been accomplished, which was to get me my degree. Of course.
Here’s my project report (in Spanish), which is a bit out of date and a bit incomplete, but I guess it shows the main arguments that support my project. I have touched on these a bit in past posts, and I might do it further in the future, because they are based on my opinion that videogames, as an artform, can be a relevant contribution to society.
For my defense I had to —evidently— show the game, and do a presentation of basically a recap of the same points already covered on the report. On top of that, during the past week I recorded some playtests, and edited a brief video with that material to show to the committee that graded my work. It was pretty funny to watch the testers stumble around and finally grasp the mechanics a bit, though some came to the conclusion that the game was more about the music than the visual aspect, which, I suppose, is a compliment to the sound design in the end.
I have uploaded the version of the game that I presented today (yesterday). The algorithms are still lacking, I’m afraid, but I plan to make them my top priority now. The dynamic audio is created using the minor pentatonic scale, with the sound of a Rhodes piano, as recorded by Guy Cockroft. I’m glad it sounds as well as it does, considering the notes are selected randomly from the scale. Since it seems to be crediting time, I have to thank Stephen Lavelle and muku for their invaluable help and suggestions on all aspects of my game. Also, of course, my teacher throughout this whole process, Eduardo Castillo. (continue reading)
increpare (Stephen Lavelle) just released an entry for the CODEAR Single Boss Game competition that is currently running, called Infidelidad (Infidelity). Since the competition is held by the ADVA (Video Game Developers Association of Argentina), I offered him to translate it into Spanish, and so I did. The dialogue is brief but quite comical, and I had lots of fun doing the translation. The game itself is short, but sweet. Put a smile on my face.
increpare (Stephen Lavelle) acaba de lanzar su entrada para la competencia CODEAR Single Boss Game: un juego de nombre Infidelidad. Ya que el evento está organizado por la Asociación de Desarrolladores de Videojuegos Argentina (ADVA), le ofrecí traducir el guión, y eso fue lo que hice al final. El diálogo es breve pero cómico, y me entretuve bastante realizando la traducción. El juego es corto, pero me hizo reir.
As a Christmas gift, I made a game that stars my little sister (she’s two-and-a-half) and the rest of the (her) family as ‘supporting actors’, or ‘enemies’, if you will. Since I didn’t have a lot of time to make it, I went with a really crude style, probably inspired by Life of D. Duck II. I also recorded voices for everyone (and even some things, namely toys), and a brief guitar tune. The goal was for it to be surprising and funny rather than fun to play, so I made what amounts to a Road Fighter clone, but simpler. In this case, though, you guide Antonella upwards, avoiding objects and people. I called the game La Hazaña de Anto (Anto’s Feat). It didn’t take them long to finish it, but everyone got to play, so I think the difficulty was just right. They laughed and enjoyed it quite a bit. Mission accomplished!
A first: I finished my Klik of the Month Klub entry within the time limit. It is, sadly, a step down from last month’s. This time I didn’t really know what to do, until I just decided to go for this idea of exploding fireworks I had at some point. I didn’t feel particularly inspired. The result is not really a game, more like a short-lived toy. Matt helped out with the music, once again, and it really fits.
I’m honored that The Lake was linked by awesome blogs such as Indie Games and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Although some people found some hilarious bugs, and many had trouble getting it to run (due to Construct’s dependence on some recently released DirectX runtimes, but read on for more on this), the reactions were mostly positive. So, mission accomplished!
The abovementioned runtimes can be downloaded from Softpedia, if you’re having trouble getting them. They’re a hefty download, sadly. As people have commented, it’s kind of ridiculous to download over 80 megabytes to play a game that will take under five minutes to finish. Oh, well.
