Posts Tagged Video game
The Greatest Collectible of All Time
Posted by The Management in design on February 16, 2009
One of the famous coin arrows in Super Mario World.
In-game collectibles are a staple of platformers and play a big part in various videogame genres. They help to fill out maps, provide points bonuses and aid the player in overcoming the game’s challenges. They also flesh out the setting, sometimes even being used as part of its architecture, e.g., the coin-arrows in the various Super Mario games.
Apparently all clocks in Final Fantasy VI are secretly powered by elixirs.
Collectibles seem to speak to the kleptomaniac side of our personality, encouraging us to take all that we see. In console RPGs, it’s common to break into people’s homes, rummage through their belongings, and generally pillage the entire world that you’re trying to save.
And why not, really? After all, as players we want to be rewarded for exploring. It’d be awfully dull going from one empty room to another, so letting us interact with the game as if it were an episode of Supermarket Sweep might not be such a bad idea.
Ruben & Lullaby
Posted by The Management in games on February 7, 2009
Created by Erik Loyer, Ruben & Lullaby is an iPhone/iTouch game that quickly grabbed my attention.
The titular Lullaby?
The premise of the game is a very identifiable one: a couple having their first fight. It’s meant to be an interactive graphic novel, with the illustrations supplied by Ezra Claytan Daniels. The black ‘n’ white ‘n’ single-tone art is reminiscent of what Michael Cho did for Everybody Dies, relying on thick outlines tracing the individuals’ major characteristics. This approach creates a clean look that’s very easy to make out — something that should be vital to a game based on reading and responding to people’s emotions.
The controls are fairly simple too: rub the screen to calm a character down, shake the device to make him/her angry, and tilt it to switch focus between characters. This is a very limited toolset with not a lot of depth, but at the same time it makes Ruben & Lullaby that much more approachable. There’s no complex gestures or movements to memorize, and the interface is more than enough to tell an interactive story. I particularly like the tilting mechanic as it’s easy to associate it with physically turning to face a person.
Overall the whole package is very attractive and should be easy enough to pick and play for any casual user. I’m not sure how successful it’ll be, but it’s definitely an interesting game and I’m curious as to what might follow it.
About
Hi, my name’s Radek Koncewicz, and I'm the Creative Lead of Incubator Games, a small development studio I started with a few former coworkers.
I think a lot about videogames, and when I find the time, I post those thoughts here on this blog.
Orange Box Designer Commentary
Posted by The Management in design on February 27, 2009
Valve first tried out designer commentary with the Lost Coast standalone demo. Apparently it was such a big success that they decided to do the same for all the games in the Orange Box.
Now Valve is a group of some very, very smart people, and it shows.
Escape from City 17 at the end of Half-Life: Episode One.
Generic behind-the-scenes specials tend to tell the same old story: the development cycle was hectic, but the team eventually persevered and released a great product (even if it was a little flawed and missing some features). In between all that you might come across an interesting tid-bit or two, but don’t expect any mind blowing revelations.
The commentary on the Orange Box, though, is full of pure-gold nuggets. In fact, playing through its four commentary-enabled titles will probably teach you more about various aspects of videogame production than any game design book. If you haven’t checked it out but are in any way interested in videogame design, I urge you to do so now.
Here are just a few segments I picked out:
Read the rest of this entry »
behind the scenes, design, developer commentary, episode one, episode two, Game design, games, half-life, Lost Coast, Orange Box, portal, steam, team fortress 2, valve, Valve Corporation, Video game
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