My Games Design

I'm on a break for the holidays so thought it was about time I wrote something about what I've been playing over the last couple of months. I've left Spore off this list as I've only recently gotten in to playing it again and want to post about it in more depth later on. Since September, I've managed to complete two games. The first is episode two of the Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (PC version) developed by Hothead Games . You join Gabe and Tycho again on their quest to find the giant robot destroying New Arcadia (and which destroyed your house in the first episode). Basically, it was more of the same as the first episode but I'm not convinced it was quite as fun. At least in terms of the turn-based combat, I got more out of the mimed attacks and colourful clown blood spatter, than I did of beating up rich snobs and mental patients (cue ethical discussion here...). I did enjoy it though, because of the humour that co...

Ok, so this isn't the 'games I've been playing' roundup I've been meaning to do but I've got a rotten cold at the moment and so that's going to wait until my head is a little less foggy. But a friend of mine did send me a link today for a pretty cool game that I thought was worth sharing: Crayon Physics Deluxe from Petri Purho on Vimeo In addition to Echochrome and World of Goo there does seem to be a fair few simple yet elegant physics types games out there at the moment. They seem to engage people very much in a problem solving way i.e. on a tactical and spatial level and with less emphasis on have to hit the right buttons at precisely the right time. I guess, along with my masters project and the reading I've been doing, I've been thinking a lot about the different ways in which games engage and how these can be related to learning. The question "how can digital games support learning?" now seems ridiculously vague. It would be bette...