This makes me pretty happy. Mike Ando has created a real, working Myst linking book.
Tag: video games
Closure review
Since Braid, 2D indie puzzle platformers have had somewhat of a resurgence (to put it mildly). Typically with such a release, we expect the game to have some unique, mind-bending mechanic, sport either retro pixels or hand-drawn art, and to be "atmospheric". Closure fits snugly into this paradigm. Going in, I was worried I'd be trudging through it, rapidly losing interest as the novelty wore off as has happened before with indie puzzlers. But this didn't happen; Closure grabbed me and, through its excellently designed levels and well-crafted difficulty curve, lead me through to completion in just a few play sessions.
Like many of its indie ilk, Closure's specific draw is its clever mechanic. In Closure, the world only exists when you can see it. Unfortunately for you, it's also in almost complete darkness. Patches of light are provided by portable glowing orbs and occasional adjustable spotlights. While you carry an orb, a path stretches out in front of you, but drop that orb and step out of its pool of light and you'll fall into nothingness. Come to a wall that's too high? Place your orb so as to leave the top in shadow and you can get over it easy. A spotlight tracking up a pillar provides an elevator. Tyler Glaiel, Closure's designer, explores strange possibilities revealed by this simple idea.
Bugs as narrative
I want to describe an interesting experience I had recently. Something which completely changed my experience of a piece of art and something which is almost unique to the medium of video games.
The other day I was pointed towards Souvenir, a work-in-progress from MFA students Robert Yang, Mohini Dutta, and Ben Norskov. In the creators' words:
Souvenir is a first-person video game about growing up and leaving home. The disorientation of becoming an adult is reflected in the surreal M.C. Escher-inspired world with multiple gravities.
Sounds like something I'd want to check out!
I loaded up the game, and I'm presented (after some initial confusing elements) with a house decorated with floating fragments of memory.
Stalker is dead. Long live Vostok Games.
GSC Game World, the recently closed-then-reformed Ukrainian development team behind the first-class Stalker series, has announced that they won't be continuing development on Stalker 2.
https://twitter.com/gscstalker/status/195186120387080193Instead they have announced the spiritual continuation of the series in an upcoming title Survarium.
https://twitter.com/gscstalker/status/195182555899756544"Designing to reveal the nature of the universe" — Jonathan Blow and Marc ten Bosch at IndieCade 2011
I watched this interesting talk on game design by Jonathan "Braid" Blow and Marc "Miegakure" ten Bosch. They espouse and explore a particular design aesthetic where the designer essentially plays the role of a mathematician. "Good design" then becomes a selection of orthogonal mechanisms (axioms), and an exhaustive-yet-minimal mapping-out of what's derivable (theorems), and then demarcation of the boundary. Since it needs to be fun, the real art has to come from crafting surprise and tweaking axioms to capture exactly what you want. They both make some very interesting points, and I thought this comparison with mathematics was a particularly cool and apt way to frame the ideas.
This aesthetic is particularly apparent in the examples they use in the talk, including Braid, VVVVVV, Ikaruga and the as-yet-unreleased Miegakure.
Watch it here: