clyde

So I enjoyed the game. I've skipped this thread to avoid spoilers, but now that I finished the game I read through it. I'm going to go ahead and assume that everything I want to talk about (really a list of sundries) is a spoiler and I don't remember which episode was which so... I liked it.

I would love to, but I get an error. Unfortunately there is no obvious way to contact the developer to figure out how to fix the problem. Seems to me that an ability to comment on itch.io pages or atleast a "contact" link would be useful for these occassions. Edit: feeling hopeless, I went ahead and read your spoiler. I enjoyed it.

I got stuck in AntiChamber early on and I've been too intimidated by the need to remember my previous discoveries, that I haven't gone back in. I'll give it another go. Games at the level of scope, distribution and exposure like AntiChamber and Night In The Woods and Papers Please are an interesting part of Stewart's argument (or possibly just my interpretation of it). Take Night In The Woods for example. If I'm not mistaken, this game is funded through Kickstarter and looks like it will eventually be purchasable on Steam and the Humble Store and all that. This is fantastic that its happening. I am very much looking forward to playing Night In The Woods because it looks to offer something I can't find elsewhere that I will value. Not only that, but the method of funding is an exciting part of the game's development and I'm sure that it will have an effect on the my experience with it. This tier of "indie games" are what I think Stewart is referring to when he says "indies with capital". I don't think that he is dismissing those games, but I think he's trying to point out that the majority of published games-criticism and the broader consumer games-culture understands how to talk about those games; they understand the way to express why they are worth the consumer's money and time. This is not a problem. The problem is when these games are perceived as the most accessible tier of game as a worthwhile creative goal. I can't make a game at the level of AntiChamber, it requires technical know-how, time and or money, and a level of discipline that I neither have nor desire to attain. Not only is it not likely that I can make a game of that quality, but many others have their own personal situations in which it is not a likely potential. This, of course, doesn't mean that games like of AntiChamber's caliber shouldn't be bought, enjoyed, and appreciated; it just brings to mind that if games must be of that caliber in order to be worthy of being played and discussed, then the medium of games is going to continue to express far fewer perspectives than it is capable of. If we can begin to see the medium of games as something more similar to a language than to a product (and not only considering the examples which reach the level of polish that qualify the game as a marketable product) then we open ourselves to the ability to appreciate games more like how we appreciate music. There is a cultural understanding that a little kid learning piano might not be a concert-pianist and we have the vernacular and value-system to understand that, but there seems to be a prevalent attitude that making games will only be worthwhile if you make Minecraft, getting a job at EA, or selling your game on Steam. I'm excited about the thinking, acting, and communities that provide alternative value-systems. I'm still working all this out, so excuse any assertion of confidence I'm making. I think that this is an interesting subject and I appreciate y'all talking about it with me.

I am so excited that you played Galah Galah.

I'm conflicted here because I want to recommend some of my favorites, but I recognize that you might not enjoy them and I would hate to sour you on this enormous pool of content. But I'm a sucker, I'm going to do it anyway because what gamer is capable of not making recommendations when asked for them. 1. Cowboy Living by thecatamites. This is the game that we are discussing in the 50 short-games games club this week. It's free, it's short, it's pretty easy (except the part where you have to shoot the desperado). Go over to that thread for the link and here is hoping that you share your opinions about the game. There aren't many of us there and any contribution would make the discussion even more exciting. It's actually been great so far, but it feels a bit cloistered at the moment. I think this is a great example because part of the point is that the way we value games is typically based on things that Stewart mentions in his essay here; the verdict of whether or not the game is good or bad, does the product meet the expectations we have as consumers. I suspect that there is a lot of potential here to see that the particular discussion a game enables is a way to value it. https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9515-50-short-games-by-thecatamites-game-club/page-2#entry307848 2. Galah Galah by Jake Clover I'm recommending this one because this is the game that made me want to play more freeware. I had started to play a few games (I think I was looking at Live Free, Play Hard or Freeindiegam.es every once in a while). I had seen some positive words about Problem Attic but when I played it I found it frustrating and offering very little for my efforts, but Problem Attic had prepped me for the idea that "broken" could be interesting. I think some of the screen-shots of Galah Galah caught my eye around that time and so I tried it out. At the beginning of the game I thought that the art was terrible and that the game was broken. I actually restarted it a few times. But then things happened in the game and I saw that I hold certain mechanical, aesthetic, and narrative expectations for games as objectively correct and I'm potentially missing out on experiences that I find very interesting. The same is true for DOTA but Galah Galah didn't require a massive time-commitment from me, it just required me to doubt my convictions and allow myself to be in a child-like state of wonderment. I've since played a few more Jake Clover games and I enjoy seeing how they inform each other. Playing his games feels more like listening to The Mountain Goats (not in tone) than going through the Mass Effect series. I linked it in the first post. 3. The Fabulous Screech by Jonas and Verena Kryratzes I choose this game as my third because it demonstrates a relaxation of the narrative expectation differently than how Galah Galah does so (and in a way that I find just as valuable). I just happened across this one and it will never appear on my Game-of-the-Year list, but I enjoyed it. I was talking to a friend of mine about why I love college-radio. I was stating that there are some songs that I just want to hear once and then have them disappear. His response was one of understood agreement when he said "You can enjoy a song without having to put it on the soundtrack of your life." http://wip.warpdoor.com/2014/06/16/the-fabulous-screech-jonas-kyratzes-verena-kyratzes/ These are three recommendations, but I'm not going to claim that they have some sort of cannonical quality. I think that part of the idea in Stewart's essay is that games don't have to be valued in those terms. It's like how we don't assess every sentence that we over-hear in public based on whether or not it's better than the current reigning champion for best-sentence-I've-overheard-in-public. My main suggestion would be to just browse freeware on one of the curation sites I linked in the first post when you are sitting in front of your computer and you don't have anything specific you want to play. I play a lot of games that don't stick, but even when that happens with freeware, I get a little taste of something different. You might even experiment with how different the experience is of interacting with the game's creator with a comment or tweet. Even when some of the games just feel like poorly implemented clones, there is a potential value-perspective that is directly opposed to the consumer-model we've grown used to. Stephen Murphy demonstrates this incredibly well in the third issue of The Arcade Review (not free), where he explains that many of the games made with RPG Maker 2003 are beside the point and that the real thing of value was the subculture and its rituals that grew around that game-engine and its particular idiosyncacies. I'm currently very excited about starting to view computer-games as something more akin to music-culture, rather than walking around a shopping-mall looking for a pair of work-shoes. Thanks for the interest Dosed.

Here is The Cowboy Code according to Gene Autry for reference: Here is the cowboy-code ala 2014:

What a coincidence! I just played a game that has the walk-through embedded in it. http://kittakaj.itch.io/secrets-agent

For the week of August 11th, 2014 we will be playing: Cowboy Living by thecatamites You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here.

I made another one that rotates around spherically. https://db.tt/wJE4K5sT

Have you tried putting a rigidbody on both of them? The one that doesn't hasn't had one can still be kinetic if you don't want it to move. I'm just guessing, I don't really know.

I'll try to find a happy medium by just using a walk-through when I get stuck.

I wasn't able to solve the first puzzle in The Last Express. Now that I know how, I think I'll give the game another shot and then come back to listen to the rest of the podcast. I've never played a game with a walk-through. Maybe I'm missing out on yet another type of experience. Maybe this can be my first game I play with a walk-through.

From Wikipedia in 2020:

Inspired by the latest issue of The Arcade Review, I just went into Unity wanting to make something glitchy. Painted Boxes by clyde https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/92741283/painted%20boxes/Builds.html -There is no sound -You can use wasd or the arrow keys, but the Xbox-controller gives you better colors. -There is no end or restart. -There is not much optimization. The instantiated cubes are never destroyed, so hypothetically, the frame-rate will continue to deteriorate as time goes on.

You should work at one of those game-tips hotlines. Thanks for telling me, now I can actually read what all of the lines say! I agree with your assessment though. Now that I am leet at Anxiety World, it's not nearly as effective in evoking the anxiety and exhibiting the interpretation I was enjoying.

After reading your description, I'm reminded of another experience of waking. Sometimes when I'm very worried about something, I'll go to sleep only to be hit with a recollection of all the stuff I was worried upon waking up. These concerns are usually from something like an emotional fight, financial calamities or an urgent medical condition. It's like they pour back into my RAM as soon as I become conscious, with a speed similar to that depicted in this game. I think I didn't associate Anxiety World with this type of experience because of the banal worries that I could manage to read. The only examples I can think of are the games where you suddenly wake up from a nightmare-sequence, but those are depicting overwhelming fears in dreams, not the concerns of reality.

Something about the sacred-heart, straw-hat wearing man in a diving-suit is striking to me.

Do any of y'all have opinions about the new maps? I like all three for drastically different reasons.

Marked for Death has opened up the levels for me again. I hadn't realized that my paths were exclusively bee-lines to hardpoints and flags until I had to start racing V.I.P.s that are circumspecting the level as I race toward them. Right now, I'm mostly playing Attrition on the new levels just so I can learn how many floors there are and the basic layout.

Insurgency is having a free weekend on Steam. If you enjoy hardcore-modes of objective-based games like Search & Destroy in Call of Duty, then don't hestitate to download this game and try it out. It gets incredibly tense, very fast and the spawn-wave/objective style works to make the game feel rewarding without being too incredibly punishing. I'm playing a lot of it lately.

Ah, I didn't know there would be voice-acting. I don't like auto-progression because I'm used to playing visual-novels where I can just click through the dialogue at my own speed and when a cat does something or someone talks to me, I don't have to worry about pausing or whatever; it just doesn't progress without me.

Not only does it cut out the middle-man, but it allows you to tailor your feed into something special; the culture of gaming becomes less and less homogenous.

What is a critical play-through?

Well I'm going to continue to watch until I hear otherwise or go to bed.

With all this twitch talk today and the wine in my system, I've become curious again. Are any thumbs streaming on a regular basis? Are any thumbs streaming right now?