clyde

This tutorial on making gameObject fractals is rad. I worked through a third of it this evening and really enjoyed it. http://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/constructing-a-fractal/

Don't bother playing this one. The graphics suck so much that they didn't upload a screenshot so that you wouldn't see how much the graphics suck.

Maybe we should make a new rule where we skip any games that don't have screenshots. You know... because they don't have screenshots.

Yeah, I'm probably going to spend a week figuring out how to convince everyone that I'm not doing the thing that is highlighted in this game. . . and failing.

I think the idea is that the patient can't hear properly now that their ear has been bitten off. So they answer the wrong question. I don't know what that question would be though. If I made the joke I'd probably re-write the ending answer with something like "Chicken."

For the week of December 29th, 2014 we will be playing: Nasty by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here. You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here.

I interpreted this as a soggy loaf of bread.

I'm not doing the game a week thing, but this is totally what I've learned about making games quickly. I feel like I have two types of projects now: the ones where I have time to just fiddle around and endlessly tune mechanics until I get something neat; and the jam-games where I just need to put enough art assets up to make it look like a legitimate screen-shot and then figure out how to make some of it move.

Tychocelchuuu recommended A1 Reviews a while back and I never got around to read them. Seeing some of these excerpts has convinced me that I've been missing out. This is really good stuff and informative about the sensibility from which 50 Short Games was made. I love the style of writing that you describe so well in the above quotation. A tendency I notice (and enjoy) is the way the initial moments of learning a game's systems is leveraged for player-engagement similar to that of instinctual survival. A good example of this is the subject of our recent conversation over Twitter about American Baseball. By the time you figure out how to play, you have had some time to build up a sense of responsibility for your performance and suspicions about how much that performance matters, and you have no warmup-round within which to tease out. So you find yourself onstage trying to do the best that you can. The WarioWare games and Revenge of the Sunfish do this, but because they involve multiple games in quick succession, the player has no time to digest what just happened. the inexplicable regret of failure I experienced after my first playthrough of 2hrs 1man show was interesting in a different way than my eventual successful playthroughs where the game became awkward because I couldn't really end it. The trainwrecks tend to feel either super-short or exhausted when I play them and I agree; those inherent qualities of the tools and culture that you speak of seem to surface more easily within that spectrum. ///////////////////////////////////////// Sea of Love After a few dissatisfied playthroughs, the title lended meaning in a rather obtuse manner. I began to see the game as an explicit and clumsy metaphor representing the process of being alone and attempting to find romance. Added to that, the method represented was depressingly acquiescent; I got the sense that the highs of romantic fancy and the lows of repeated discontent with willing partners had averaged out into this routine of just showing up, saying the right things and waiting to see what you already know, that they are boring or possibly a bit entertaining. And then you do it again. In this reading, I found it interesting that you didn't play as a fish in the sea-of-love seeing how many other fish there are. The circumstances presented seemed like a paradoxical existence where the player-character doesn't believe the platitudinal advice on love will work, but has to make some effort, and this repeatitious grind that pays off little (at most) is the only perceived option. The other day I was telling a friend of mine who is actively disinterested in games about 50 Short Games and the immediate comparison I came up with was 69 Love Songs. Sea of Love has managed to make that comparison much more concrete. Sea of Love is not remotely a game about love. It's a game about love-games, which are very far away from anything to do with love.

Watching the BBC's The History of Racism and this particular excerpt (0:43-1:35) was so succint that I became excited to share it.

This article makes me ask some interesting questions such as: -What is femininity when abstracted from women? -What is the relationship between femininity and women? http://killscreendaily.com/articles/remaking-Video game-canon-rachel-weil/?utm_content=buffer0de9d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer Also look into "anti-racism" It's useful to find out that racism is not some sort of natural tendency to favor one's own race, but instead a fiction created to delegitimize the rights of one group so that the race in power can steal all their shit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-racism On a related note, I watched this video this morning which points out that current U.S. policy towards native americans is strongly tied to this technique of systematic dispossession. http://billmoyers.com/episode/american-indians-confront-racism/ But all this would probably fit better in the Social Justice thread so we don't derail intersectional feminism.

Paperknife http://paperknife.itch.io/paperknife Super interesting, I'd love to be good enough to complete it or patient enough to play it 15 times. I love it when narratives are about personal difficulties. via SuperbiasedMan.

Super Space Angles A minimal shmup with a clean aesthetic where your bullets ricochet. It works very well. http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/9009

I hope you post your thoughts on them eot.

Both are mixed-bags for me. I like StrongBad, the Heavy, and Brock. Everyone else is annoying and unfunny to me. Well... Sam is not funny, but I don't find him annoying. In fact, he's kinda pleasant to be around and it's not dependent on his humor-value. It would be cool if this was made in such a way where you could populate the table with DLC characters of your own choosing, but I can't imagine how that would work considering that their banter is relationship-specific. If you could buy characters individually, they would all just talk about themselves instead of having opinions about each other.

I started playing this series during the current steam-sale and really enjoy it. Is there another thread where people provide their wishlist of characters to play with? It seems like the obvious question. I want to play with Dragon Age and Mass Effect characters so bad. I don't know though, everyone but Morrigan is so dry and humorless. Still, I'd love to play with Leliana and Alistair, mostly so I can listen to Morrigan and Alistair bicker.

That's how I see it. I think of those globes as navigation tools. I think I get what you are saying. I struggle to explain how the high artificiality is appealing to me. Or maybe the problem is that I'm having a hard time reliably predicting when I switch gears from believing an illusion and investigating craft. I am preoccupied with the obtuse intentionality of Hernhand for over half the time I spend in it. I really like that. I'd just like to take a moment to thank you all for being members of this fine forum because I can't imagine being able to pretend like anyone would care about what I'm about to say anywhere else. So it's weird, and I need to restate that I can't say that Hernhand is better than Bernband or vice-versa; I'm fascinated by what happens when you compare these twins. Where my descriptions and generalities usually distinguish between two works, I have to provide extra effort to examine what makes one of these so different from the other. Bernband is exquisite in its ability unify its parts and create a tight, closed loop that feels free and exciting, and whole. Here is the paradox: Bernband is seemingly convincing in it's illusion and Hernhand's appeal is partly the transparency of the way it is put together; but Bernband feels fully designed while Hernhand feels representational of real experiences. Maybe it's because of my personal experiences and the particular places I've been, but Hernhand feels like exploring a strange city whie Bernband feels like I'm in a super cool amusement-park. The pace and pay-off of discovery is often similar, but Hernhand feels real in the level of specificity it suggests. Bernband certainly has some specificity, walking past a recital-rooms is totally a valid experience that is neat to see in a game and one I've had the pleasure of awkwarding, but for some reason I identify so much more with listening to a pond gurgle, walking past three figures drinking while listening to a broadcast in a foriegn language, and then finding a mediocre sax-player giving it their all for an audience of rodents. It's not better, it's just different and something that has more resonance with me. There is a lot more to be said about the way the two games compare; bothe have portions that could easily be mistaken for walking toward a game of lazer-tag, but one has campy blacklit geometric designs on the wall paper, while the other has monumental architecture fit for a legendary arena battle. The amount that the bar-atmospheres variate in Hernhand compared to the level of variation in Bernband is also worth discussion. Bernband is more of a college town where the regulars crawl whereas Hernhand is a place where the bar you frequent is a notable part of your identity. One things I really disagree with you on is the quality of Hernhand's sound-design. The ambient sounds provide me with a lot of enjoyment.

For the week of December 22nd, 2014 we will be playing: Sea Of Love by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here. You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here.

I love the song in your trailer.

I've decided. I considered some alternatives, but it is always 50 Short Games that I am considering alternatives to. I touch on what I think is so special about 50 Short Games here.

Some bullshitter once told me that if a mountain remains untouched by people, a stone will set at its peak that is an exact replica of the mountain itself. That's what Operative Assailants is to me. It is a set of games within a game much like 50 Short Games is a set of games that share a certain something. If I had the motivation to do so, I could write my thoughts on each one of the operatives (or are they assailants?). But I've been wanting to write about the collection-aspect itself and this will make for a good practice round. What is the power of a collection? I'm working on a secret game right now. If you are participating in the Klik & Klaus: Sekret Santa Klub 2014 on Glorious Trainwrecks, you are not allowed to read this until the 25th of December: The reason I'm telling you this is so I can explain what you start to realize from cutting evokative words out of magazines for multiple hours. National Geographic uses a distinct vocabulary, as does Shutterfly-catalogues and books on the history of western art written in the 1960's. Books, or bounds, are collections whose words and images aren't glued together and homogenous exclusively by explicit argument and chronological narrative; they are tied together mostly by voice and nearness. National Geographic is obsessed with words like Worlds and explore. They also measure everything's height in statues-of-liberties. The Shutterfly-catalogue struggles to expand its vocabulary beyond 40 or so words; it tends to use words like make, create, personalize, and gift. A LOT. The history of western art book turns into a straight up history-book once it gets within forty years of its printing-date. When it covers the subjects that predate the 1920's it uses culture, intellectual, civilization, progress, and empire on pretty much every page. It's not the subject matter that skewers the book so much as the vocabulary chosen by the author's intent. Operative Assailants and 50 Short Games do the same, but its important to consider not only the coalescing characteristics of a collection, but also its ability to stretch. What does a collection of games or scenarios supply that an individual does not (especially in reference to the digital game-medium)? There are more subtle uses of multiple perspectives than a straight up Rashomon-effect. We can feel the broadening of a fiction from permutation of angles without establishing a full synergetic systems-understanding. The best thing about Operative Assailants and 50 Short Games is that it accomplishes this so expertly while appearing goofy, casual, and effortless. Pete manages to get over his fears and draw up enough courage to face danger so bravely, that he will finally be able to prove that he belongs on the team of operative assailants. Meanwhile Car-Car exhibits the non-chalant priviledge that claims of nepotism amongst the crew have decried, by driving past Mogey's failed suicide-bombing. It's a whole system of this humor. The failure is on a management-level. These asunder events and narratives drawn by the marker of the same author don't legitimize their irrelevance and dispersal through an eventual Fate-suction possible only by the corralling of an all-powerful author, but instead imply an inherent solidarity by failing or non-eventing in their own separate areas. It's fucking brilliant and quite a relief to be honest.

I don't disagree with what you are saying. I might disagree about the sound, I played Bernband again last night, I'll likely play Hernhand tonight and get back to you on my thoughts of how the sounds compare. I do love Bernband's use of sound, pointing out the rhythmic nature of how you arrive in new soundscapes after going through a door and the shrillness of horn-playing room are really good examples. I love both games, but like I mentioned earlier, it's the way they relate to each other that makes the pair extraordinary for me. They feel like simulations of the same world with drastically different priorities. Those priorities are highlighted so well when in direct comparison to an other that relates so strongly. I absolutely agree that Bernband does a much better job of welcoming the player; the pacing of discovery and the way that getting lost is quickly and reliably rewarded is incredibly strong accessibility design. I don't think that Hernhand prioritizes alienating the player though, though it does alienate the player, I believe it's more of a side-effect of another priority; that priority being simulation of a certain kind of space. Rock, Paper, Shotgun just put a piece up about Bernband and in it they link a youtube-video of walking around Tokyo. Everything is so dense that you just get a feeling that so much potential is in each cranny. Restaraunts that are laid out in aisles stacked on each side of an alley-way, and you wonder "Which of these places would I end up frequenting if I lived there?" Bernband is simulating one of these places. Hernhand is simulating docking at a more sparse atmosphere. There is no substantial night-life in Hernhand's world. It gives me the feeling that we are just docking for the night near these sky-scrapers in the middle of a desert and I have some time to kill. Much of that time is spent wandering across barren landscape. I think this is the priority, the sense that you have very little feedback to determine whether or not leaving the ship will even be worthwhile. Just some buildings in the distance and a herd of grazing animals in the other direction. That priority leads to long periods of not being sure what you are doing. I am coming into Hernhand with a thick amount of context. I have been playing a lot of Jake Clover games and enjoy them more than most. For me, Hernhand is largely a movement from 2D, MSpaint games into three-dimensional space. Not only am I accustomed to and hopeful for Clover's outsider-art garish designs, but Hernhand is a unique opportunity to see how the path-design sensibility that Clover has developed exclusively in 2D space initially translates into a 3D space. The clearest example of this is the oddity which is a large plane floating in 3D space with an optimal path lying in one straight line across its center. Until you go underground, its as if Clover has taken one of their 2D games , rotated the camera to look straight down the intended path and then added in the ability to turn and wander from that line without providing content to keep your from falling off this stretched 2D game. Bernband is doing similar negotiations between two-dimensional and three-dimensional utilities, but path-design is incredibly considerate of three dimensional space in Bernband. This is the type of thing that makes the tandem-quality of this pair so exciting for me.

Regardless of how your personal circumstances have brought you to that perception, I would really enjoy hearing about what aspects of Hernhand you consider weaker. I've been dying to have this conversation for months.