My Games Design

So like I said I was in Nottingham last week for a couple of things, as well as the ITAG conference there was the GameCity 5 . I went along last year too, so had a better idea what to expect this time. The festival had the usual marquee in Market Square though one half of the arena was devoted to EA and the Nottingham Primary Care Trust who partnered up to "bring you the Best Health club in the WORLD" (according to the GameCity website anyway). That was a bit weird to be honest - games promoting fitness... still not sure I've got my head around all that though that doesn't mean I think it's a bad thing, just different. The other side was much closer to home though, as it was full of couches and TVs so people could comfortably try out different games: Like the new Lego Universe - a massively multiplayer experience that has just been launched. It looked cute and funny, though I got the impression it's being aimed at younger players. And Confetti Carnival, devel...

Go and play Machinarium . It not only looks good - it's set in a sort of rusty cute looking robot world - but manages to engage without a single word of dialogue being spoken (at least not as far I've played it). It's an independent point-and-click puzzle solving adventure without the tedious dialogue. Don't get me wrong, I love the narrative and humour of the Monkey Island games and I've even been playing the new episodic ones but it's the pretty much the same formula,though it is done well. But you can also get that wrong - like with A Vampyre Story . Czech designers Amanita Design have done something different here and have managed to communicate a storyline through the use of thought bubbles and (pretty cool) drawings alone. Not only that but they've included a really clever little mechanism for getting help within the game. I think I've mentioned this before, but I do use walkthroughs when I get stuck. There are just points where I don't h...

This is going to be a quick post, so I can bring your attention to t he Professional Gamer's (or Costas from LostInGames ) post on some smaller budget games he has been playing. I can thoroughly recommend " Today I die " which is free and essentially some form of interactive poetry, while Braid has been on my list of games to play for quite a while now and I'm almost embarrassed by how long it's taking me to get round to play it. I do want to add a game to the list though - The Path from Tale of Tales . It's a horror game inspired by Little Red Riding Hood but instead of following the path to Grandma's house as instructed, you're encouraged to wander off into the woods - where all the interesting stuff is... It only costs $9.99 and can be downloaded from here . It's already been reviewed e.g. Leigh Alexander's review on Kotaku and for a much better description of it than I could give check out Fullbirght's take on it here . I think the ...

It's time to talk about Spore . Designed by Will Wright (who gave us Sim City and The Sims ) and produced by Maxis there has been a lot of hype surrounding this game, partly because it took so long to develop. In Spore, the player gets to follow and make choices about the evolution of their species through a series of phases: Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization and Space. Now I got the game back when it was released in September and got through the first four stages relatively quickly, but then I hit Space. I'm not even sure you can compare the Space phase to the previous ones because it is ridiculously huge. In the earlier phases, it is fun to watch your creation evolve, but it also feels like there is a lot of repetition going on e.g. in terms of how you interact with other creatures, plus I don't get why things like the camera controls seem to differ at each stage. But anyway, once you get through all that and unify your civilization, you discover space travel and th...

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 I'm not sure if this counts as a seventh generation game as such, but it has only just been released and I did really enjoy playing it so I'm going to write about it. Created by Mike 'Gabe' Krahulik and Jerry 'Tycho' Holkins from Penny Arcade , in conjunction with Hothead Games, On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness allows you to enter the 1920s world of New Arcadia. After a bit of a random intro sequence where your house is crushed by a giant robot, you get to join Tycho and Gabe as part of their Startling Detective agency in order to figure out just what is going on. Then you're off of on an adventure involving Tycho's niece Anne Claire (who has been recast from the comics as some sort of scientific/engineering genius), battling various hobos, robotic ' Fruit Fuckers ', clowns, mime's and barber shop quartets with your trusty rake, exploring Desperation St, Hobo Alley and Pelican Bay on a quest that will ultimately involve destroyi...