sergiocornaga

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Everything posted by sergiocornaga

  1. It took me a while to get into this, maybe just because I empathised with the agonizing premise. The climax of the game (is it a climax if players can skip it?) was amazing; the interplay of text and audio there is even better than in Duchess. The game's matured so far beyond the original build uploaded here (the shift of setting is particularly welcome) and I congratulate the team on that. Good work, y'all. I noticed a typo: Lastly, a question: do the other characters continuously get the protagonist's name wrong and she never corrects them?
  2. [Release] Introduction To Video Games

    I loved this. I'll be eagerly awaiting a more polished version, so I hope you won't put it off! I beat all the games (and felt particular proud of figuring out The Wizard, though you communicated the mechanic well) except Nineties Cockpit Freakout... I'm not convinced that game has an ending, but I did manage to fly off the screen edge and make everything break. Brilliant aesthetic/controls/everything in that one. Dot Gobbler might be my favourite though, I felt genuinely tense playing that at times. P.S. Do you have a Twitter account?
  3. The Individual and the Organization.

    I generally dislike articles that urge developers to drop certain pursuits and focus on other ones. No exception here. I feel character-focused games and systems-focused games can easily co-exist, and already do. There are probably even crossovers. From what little I know of Lords Managements (nice one, wordfilter), they seem to combine complex systems and characters in a way that suits both needs anyway? But I'll leave that discussion to someone more familiar with the genre. According to the (imperfect) MDA framework, specifically the 'aesthetics' component, games can target some combination of various mental/emotional needs, and the importance of these aspects of games will vary from player to player. I tend to agree with this view and interpreted the article as subtly suggesting people just stop catering to one of these popular aesthetics in favour of a less popular one. During a recent interview I did to assist with a friend's PhD on narrative in games, I reached the conclusion that characters (and to a lesser extent, the setting or wider 'world') are what I care about most in video games or any other applicable creative medium. Bogost says "at their best, game characters and game stories are still mostly like bad books and films and television, but with button pressing" but doesn't specify why the medium is intrinsically less capable of portraying these things, perhaps because it isn't intrinsically less capable. Maybe I failed to engage with this sufficiently, but it won't be leaving me with much food for thought. EDIT: oh yeah, promoting the idea of diversity as an unobtainable goal that we shouldn't even bother with seemed weirdly insidious to me? Like, the sort of thing that might appeal to the GG crowd even? I'd never expect this sort of thing from Bogost, though, so someone please tell me if I've misread the tone horribly.
  4. Twine Recommendations

    You are a Blob! is whimsical to a point where it might actually appeal more to world-weary adults than children in want of grit and drama. I dunno, maybe that's just a stereotype, so I figured I'd suggest it anyway.
  5. Is this game title bad?

    Be warned, I'm about to be a bad person in two ways by bumping a 100+ day old thread with some negative feedback. I'm friends with Erik Hogan, developer of the 2008 Derelict. When I first saw the 2014 Amnesia Fortnight project, which had the same title and setting, I found myself with really negative feelings towards the pitch, thinking it was highly derivative and that essentially the same game had already been made, regardless of any actual differences. Seeing the opening post of this thread filled me with deja vu, though thankfully I was too bemused and self-aware to immediately dislike your own project. So, to me, subjectively and coloured by own personal experience to an extreme degree, this is proven to be one of the worst titles a game can possibly have. I can honestly think of no other time a game title has turned me off so completely, a distant second would be when the extremely compelling Good People Die became the overly confusing Virtue's Last Reward. I'm just one abnormally opinionated person, though, so don't let yourself be too influenced by me. Your logo is awfully nice, after all.
  6. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    I spent way too long trying to work out what the item next to Moppy is. I figure it's probably a mop.
  7. 868-HACK

    Before you get your hopes up too much, I'm pretty sure it has no effect on the horde of enemies that shows up every time you first enter a new sector.
  8. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    My gut reaction to this (I'm guessing a common one here) is along the lines of "man, I really would love it if thecatamites made a Final Fantasy game!" Some further scrutiny makes me reconsider. What repels me most about RPGs is their often unnecessarily long playtimes and inevitable monotonous grinding. FF35 condenses Final Fantasy elements into a fast-paced playable trailer, cutting to the next humorous take on some RPG trope before I have time to be bored. This approach definitely wouldn't work for a longer RPG. Basically, I'm saying he cheated. Of course, arguably this is already thecatamites' take on an entry in the Final Fantasy series (meta content is common throughout the 50 Short Games collection, and those games aren't any less the games they claim to be). There's also Space Funeral already.
  9. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    Most broadly I would say it's all 18 games made from October-November 2014, although Click click click and Let your mind fall to rest are debatable inclusions. Chris Priestman wrote a little about them and I wrote even less.
  10. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    I actually had the awesome experience of discussing increpare's recent 'break-up' series (title given presumptuously) with a friend in person a few months ago! It is a conversational topic I never thought would arise organically without planning, and yet it did. There is so much to dissect in increpare's work, and some great comments on the site from people who've already attempted it. Choosing a specific selection would perhaps be the hardest part... or maybe chronologically from the beginning is more feasible than I imagine. Anyway. This 'section' of 50 Short Games (from Operative Assailants until possibly as late as Moppy Returns depending on how many wild guesses I feel like making about thecatamites' psyche) is one of my favourites, or at least the one I find most interesting. Sea of Love in particular has unexpectedly stuck with me the most of all of the games, to the point where I can hear its soft, low ditty playing in my head now despite not having heard it for a year. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be much help when I try to write about it at the moment. Hopefully I can catch up later. I'd also like to try answering the essay questions from Nasty.
  11. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    Just putting it out there if thecatamites is still reading, I'd be really interested to know what this is actually supposed to be, if anything.
  12. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    Is this sort of thing what you mean?
  13. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    Perhaps it suggests all three have the potential for fetishism, and that this typically involves adhering rigidly to some nebulous group of rules? Or maybe that people are more focused and less likely to grow bored of development and go on unusual tangents when working on a game about their fetishes than a more general/traditional RPG? I don't know, ten minutes isn't a very long time!
  14. Original Songs in Games

    I learned in the process of making my mega-post that you can include 4 videos instead of 2 if you wrap them in [media] tags. Also, with unusually great timing, virt just released a full length version of the Weapons Up jingle from Double Dragon Neon, and looks to be working on extended versions of the remaining songs.
  15. Share short games you enjoy that require no fee.

    Yeah, I got it running on 64-bit Vista. It may require the installation of some unknown vastly outdated version of QuickTime, are you getting any potentially helpful error messages? Incidentally, I just dug up the rest of my Strangethink Art Machine output for the benefit/detriment of anyone who chooses to look below (again, a couple have some additional editing):
  16. Original Songs in Games

    Jake "virt" Kaufman seems to love including vocal tracks in games he's scored. They are often sung by WayForward employees, which is pretty adorable. The entire Double Dragon Neon OST is peppered with vocals, but the ending is probably the grandest example: Mighty Switch Force 2, another WayForward game, also features a sung credits song, though it doesn't play much of a narrative role. Then there's Cursed Dawn from Bloodrayne: Betrayal, several songs from Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?!! and lastly (that I know of) the forthcoming Shantae: Half Genie Hero, which is slated to have at least . KOZILEK & doseone crafted that alludes to the title and objective of the game. It's a sequel of sorts to . The rest of the GUN GODZ soundtrack (available here) incorporates indecipherable Venusian rapping, but I feel that falls outside the scope of this thread, with the possible exception of Phonecall. Doseone was also responsible for the Samurai Gunn soundtrack. His EP release features rapping on several tracks, but I believe the game uses the instrumentals with the exception of . Beyond Good and Evil . Laura Shigihara contributed . I haven't listened to it, as I have yet to play that game. She also used vocals in Plants vs. Zombies in credits, in both Japanese and English: The World Ends With You is filled with vocal tracks, though I don't think they relate to the story directly. . Going back a bit further, two adventure games I fondly recall from my childhood open with vocal songs about death. The 11th Hour, the sequel to The 7th Guest is the first, opening with a song called . The other is Discworld 2, which features this original number sung by Eric Idle: Conker's Bad Fur Day features this somewhat scandalous sung scatological sequence: Newer entries in the Sonic franchise include a bunch of vocal songs of varying awfulness levels. Sonic Unleashed has , Sonic Colors has , Sonic and the Secret Rings has , Sonic R has too many to single one track out, . Sonic Adventure 2 features such gems as , , , , , and . As an aside, if you like any of these (especially the last one) you might enjoy , provided you feel like listening to 12 minutes of graphic Sonic smut. Elsewhere in Sega land, Burning Rangers features a vocal song ( and English available). Clockwork Knight has , and its sequel . Lastly, I feel I would be remiss in not mentioning You Have To Burn The Rope. It's a very short game, so anybody who hasn't heard its song should just play it.
  17. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    Following L's declaration that this is "the most erotic KNP game I have ever reviewed", I'd be interested in knowing how erotic others find this game.
  18. New people: Read this, say hi.

    Hello! I joined a while ago but only just found this thread. I am not a regular podcast listener, but I recognise some of the usernames here.
  19. Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

    I've been thinking the same thing. I want to unlock the final plane, the Urauser. But some of the missions rely on ridiculously unlikely things, like me being able to defeat a special enemy (that I've only encountered twice in 13 hours of play) with a random weapon. I'd personally recommend at least reaching the point where you've unlocked all the main ship parts and defeated a blimp before quitting, though! Why? For instance, surely you don't have a problem referring to Bender as "him"?
  20. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    I agree that it's confusing. I recall being surprised by the result of walking into it the first time I played. I do have a theory about it, though. As you basically pointed out, the game is comprised of setpieces from other game genres (Zelda main room, JRPG mouse encounter screen, and mouse interactions in the style of Pong, Tamagotchi & dress up games). The eye icon could be derived from the 'look at' cursor/action common to adventure games and interactive fiction, especially given thecatamites' past use of AGS. I think the little description of the room you get after walking into the eye supports this reading. If this is the case, the implementation is a lot stranger and clumsier than the rest of the game, which is part of the reason I like it. I could easily imagine thecatamites drew the eye and bottle icons on paper without a specific implementation in mind, and then just went for the fastest/easiest approach when actually putting the game together.
  21. Share short games you enjoy that require no fee.

    I run a free games recommendation blog that is probably relevant to this thread. I'll try not to duplicate material from there here, though. So far I've tended to only post games released in the last month, but lately I keep encountering older ones I never knew of. Perhaps this can be their home? To kick things off, today I found out that Patrick McHale makes games from time to time, mostly in the form of charming micro adventures where everything takes place in tiny black and white boxes. For those unfamiliar with this name, he is the former creative director of Adventure Time and the creator of Over the Garden Wall, an animated mini-series that will air in its entirety November 3rd-7th. I hope you'll watch it. A couple of his games I had played before, but was unaware they were his. They were made for the Adventure Time game jam, masquerading as creations of Ice King, a character from the show. They were made with SilverCreator, an old OS X game making tool that you can get here if you have the means to try it. This tool was also used to make The King of Everything. I found this one of his most charming games, thanks in part to its simple drawings and clunky/nostalgic use of Windows prompts: He also has a couple of HTML-based games, Sleep Adventure and Interactive Cat. The former has a similar kind of charming clunkiness which you'll soon see in the instructions. The latter is very simple (barely a game at all, mayhaps) but pretty cool. I like your screenshots a lot, so I hope you haven't stopped using it entirely like I have. I found it fun, but too hard to remember all the commands or control certain things I wanted to. I made several misguided attempts at representational art, but they're on another computer, so I'll post them here later if at all. For now, here's the image I made when I posted it on my aforementioned site. It's one of the few I was happy with that I felt wasn't misleading about the capabilities/intent of the program (disclaimer: features a little additional palette editing):
  22. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    This actually reminds me more of Octopus Decision, but I imagine that's more the way you've described it and less how it will actually be executed. Hi clyde (and everyone)! This will likely be the only thread here I end up posting in or not.
  23. 50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

    It was almost exactly a year ago that I first played this game, and I just found its ZIP file from that day still residing in my neglected downloads folder. At the time, I naively declared it the "greatest mouse-based game of all time" and believed myself. However, other mouse-based games have been released since, such as Guitar Mouse X, along with thecatamites' own Mouse Corp. and the previously mentioned Saint Basil. In light of this, does GREAT! Mouse Friends still stack up? To that I say, yes! I believe that Saint Basil is the only one to exceed it in terms of cuteness (the attribute I value most in my assessment of any media), but I am unable to look past Saint Basil's use of scene repetition (as opposed to containing an ending, or even enough original material to fill the entire length of the song). For this reason I would still bestow this compliment upon GREAT! Mouse Friends above all others, but only if pressured by a third party to choose a single recipient. 8.7/10. The eye icon is one of my favourite things in the game (aside from the obvious first choice of mouse tickling). I love the way you have to walk into it to examine the room, it seems so hacked together and is probably the most abstracted form of a Video game verb/convention that I can think of. I also like how the icon parallels the protagonist's own giant singular eye, as revealed in the RPG battle spoof screen you get upon bumping into a mouse.