And would destroy the tourist rush to the stage to a minus ...

First, we link.

Ragdoll Metaphysics, a column on Offworld by Jim Rossignol in which he goes off into the speculative technological aether and then writes about it. Not to be a dick about it, but if there's ever going to be a Times Literary Supplement for gaming, stuff like this could stand as a baseline starting point. Previous posts?

Arma II, an ode to the surrealism of simulation.
Milo and Kate, or artificial people are the new games.
Cloud Gaming is the nebulous shape of ubiquitous gaming.
JG Ballard, boredom, and the violent promise of videogames.

Not into the bleeding-edge future shit? John Harris is an old fogy like you. Valuable for being something other than reminiscing about console games that are less than 10 years old. I guarantee some unknown, intriguing material in here. Whether anything inspires you enough to undergo the retro-gaming gauntlet and actually play any of this stuff is another thing. Which is ironic, of course, because almost any modern desktop computer could crunch the code while rendering high-end 3D animation at the same time. Which is to say that even disregarding the whole copyright clusterfuck, emulation is behind where I wish it were. Although, again, this may just be another case of Windows envy.

20 RPGs (10 from Japan, 10 from, um, elsewhere)
20 Atari Games
20 Mysterious Games (in the sense of discovery playing an important role)
20 Unusual Control Schemes
20 Open World Games
20 Difficult Games

Each of these lists has a handy "printer format" button, which I used, and now I have this huge sheef of papers full of odd old games and little snippets of what's exceptional about them.



Second, we be internets.
Did you know there's a new emoticon? Probably you did. It took me seeing this over a dozen times to realize what the fuck it was. XD And now that I've seen it the struggle begins to never, not ever, use it again. Good times.




Third, we play on the games.

At the top of my games I'm-excited-to-get-to list,
The Crypts of Despair (PC "simple" roguelike) Although I have yet to find anyone on the internet that's truly freaking out about how wonderful it is, Jason Rohrer checked it as one very tangential influence on Passage, which I took as a tacit recommendation. It's a simplified roguelike, a genre I'm continually fascinated by but often intimidated away from due to its almost otherworldly complexity.

People have said it's fun, and people have said it sucks, and even websites that should, by their very nature, have something significant or insightful to say about it only talk about how if you can, "get past the graphics..." Get past the graphics? The graphics are the reason why I want to investigate further! Look!



Are you telling me that this turns most people off? Let's put off the rant regarding "people's" graphical preferences and just say, dude. C'mon.

I did finally get to try Judith, but didn't have enough time to see it to completion, which is a little ridiculous. Also downloaded Cactus Arcade, but have barely even begun to explore my way through it. Not sure if I'm going to be overwhelmingly in love with either, and perhaps it's time that I start attempting to chronicle my disappointments a little better instead of being such a cheerleader. Criticism is important to me as a reader when I'm taking recommendations.


It's an odd time in the mainstream gaming industry when the gulf between East and West is more pronounced than ever.

We're back to contemplating the things we'll never see, and this from the big publishers at that. Imagine what could be happening on the independent front. After all, from the handful of examples I've been able to extract (Cave Story, La-Mulana, Underworld Trip, and Warning Forever), there's no way to tell if these are the few shining gems, or just the tip of an iceberg no one's yet fully realized. (Although there's no reason to wonder if there aren't icebergs we're not even aware of. Poland, Portugal... who knows? I guess we're trusting the fine-meshed net of Indie Games, TIG, and Offworld. And the safe assumption that an international game maker would be able to cobble enough English together to say, "Play my Tajikistani game, you decadent Western son of fool.")



Alright, we're winding down, here. What else in the world. This kind of blew my mind, then didn't, then did again. His work is going to be worth a lot of money.

Can you stand more gaming stuff? Is it all just way too much? Are you begging for relief? Okay, indulge me. Two more that you may like, and then one with nothing, I swear, nothing to do with gaming. And is sort of my new favorite show. A little. Maybe.

Video Games from MUSCLEBEAVER on Vimeo.

[Grumble grumble] Not thrilled about this (embedding unfortunately does not permit turning off auto-play, which I cannot abide), but the last video, the un-game related video, is an odd project by British television personality Robert Llewellyn in which he has tiny, unobtrusive cameras installed in his car and picks up guests, driving them to where they need to be and sometimes having a wonderful conversation, and sometimes less so. My first episode, and the most recent, features this description. Clinical psychologist, writer, broadcaster and rather clever fellow Oliver James gets a lift into Oxford where he appeared at a book festival. Trust me when I say that there's a good chance you will be entertained by their meandering conversation. Further recommended episodes pending, perhaps.

Watch my gears spinning. My gears have no teeth, but still.

Had my thrice-annual trip to Connecticut to visit with extended family. Bizarre. They're multiplying. You're next, someone grumbled, not really joking.

Bah. Offspring.

Japan produces greater wonders than progeny without even trying very hard. (Of course, their falling birth-rate is a serious societal issue that may eventually become as much of an interest to an international audience as their remarkable technical achievement and leadership in the exciting frontier of placing [launching, if you will] scantily clad insufferably cheerful young bouncy people onto mechanical horse-riding simulation devices.)

Do you ever look at something you've just written and wonder, "what thing made me?"

Perhaps I'm just in a philosophical mood. I suppose that I leaned back in my chair and ceased typing for about two minutes in order to pursue a day-dream regarding a potential theory of planetary motion in which the Earth, Heavens, and all else orbited fixedly around wherever in the world a curvy woman rode a riding machine would suggest as much. This theory is clearly impossible, of course; as if two such women were to attempt to ride separate riding machines anywhere in the cosmos simultaneously then our entire known universe would be ripped apart from the tear in space/time.

[Stroking beard] Yes. I think not so.


Coda

Indie Gaming Rundown; we will embed you.

Here's an indie that I came about a hair's width away from buying. The clincher; Leopard, and a Mac graphical capability I'm not sure I possess. Yup. Chunky pixels for me. Preferably not styled, if you can. Just geometric shapes on flat fields of color, please. (I'm just kidding, mostly. When I finally get Leopard, I'll figure out if I can run it, and if I can, I'll give them my $10. Maybe. Tale of Tales is really interesting in what they're doing, but they still limit themselves by their ambition of creating nothing more reaching than a pretty space to explore. That has value, but isn't an ark you'd want to float on forever.)



Chris Crawford Jason Rohrer Arte television documentary:
Alright, so, this is big. Like, really big. Probably the best piece of game-related film I've ever seen. Completely timely, and yet fully aware of (and celebrating) the incredible history of the medium of games.

Here's the link for the full movie download. It's a big file, mp4, which will require new Quicktime if you're like me and never update your computer. In the end, though, this is probably the best thing I've watched this year. Balance of Power looks really hardcore.

One of my favorite scenes was the strange encounter with Pixeljunk Eden, a game that I've heard a lot about but never played (and probably never will, but I suppose that's its own topic, mostly economic). Listening to them describe their "grumps" and their wristwatches felt so beside the point. Not to mention that moment when Rohrer said, "Well, we all know 3-D is just a fad." Uproarious laughter. "I'm not joking." It felt significant to me, in that while Anthony Burch perhaps has a point here:



(that he mercilessly belabors) I think he's overlooking an incredible amount. How indies look is such a minor, tertiary issue. Should they look good? Yeah, maybe. So Dwarf Fortress is an abject failure? Or You Found the Grappling Hook failed in what it was doing? Because the edges are sharp, and the colors un-gradiated? If the rope were visible (with fraying threads and beads of water) then it would be a better or more fulfilling game? That's a failure all right, but not of the game.
(I'm probably being a bit unfair toward the overall argument that he was trying to make. Maybe the tone of the video in general just gets on my nerves. There is no good indie-gaming online television. Thankfully, there are some really great podcasts and lectures. I don't know. Maybe that Arte documentary made me feel rather bummed out about gaming as an industry. Still, I know I'm looking in the right places, because I'm playing some of the best games I've ever seen.)

DESIGN REBOOT HD from superbrothers on Vimeo.

DOT MATRIX REVOLUTION* from superbrothers on Vimeo.

I've been listening to a lot of Jonathan Blow lectures lately. He sometimes raises a concern about the type of audience that the industry is catering to, and what the larger significance of that direction might be. I'm coming to realize that, in a sense, the reason why these concerns feel relevant is that we've already lost a lot of ground. In looking at the area of graphics, people like to define certain types of games as "retro," which depending on the argument you're trying to make is either an attempt to pigeonhole and belittle what is possible in an indie effort, or make some kind of personal, self-aggrandizing statement. "Well, when I was on my Commodore." Rather than thinking Hi-Def and 60 fps (it's gotten to a point where when I read about modern gaming I'm completely at a loss as to what these specifications are really referring to), retro, lo-fi, or whatever, I would prefer to be thinking in terms of either what a game is doing in terms of what it invokes internally (abstraction in games has always succeeded as a conceptual framework on which further imaginative wandering can be hung), or in a visual design way, such as typographically, color theory, balance and asymmetry, etc. There are probably other elements of visual interest that I'm completely overlooking.

Also, Glum Buster must be happy, since they (he) just got a big, loving mention over on Boing Boing. I was about to write something about the percentage of people that would be likely to pirate Glum Buster, before suddenly remembering that GB is, in fact, free to download, and with a portion of donations given to charity. Indie game makers; they live in shires. (The problem of indies making money is actually a fairly serious one that I'm not in a position to talk about knowledgeably.)

My own Glum Buster progress was pretty roundly halted by one really killer puzzle that was more reflexes than brain power. But up until that one sticking point, my experience (I think I was just over half-way done) was pretty fantastic. That's one of the games that I'm most dying to finish, at the moment.

Through a rather convoluted path of interest, I've found myself thinking about the concept of "open world" games, which, though interesting, I feel is a rather narrow area of focus. Open world is less interesting, to me, than what it means to explore a space. What are your motivations for doing so? A pattern of item acquisition is a typical bread trail to encourage someone to explore a virtual space. But item acquisition can only be separated into either foraging, digging up items of little relative worth and no individuality, or pog collecting, accumulating unique items for the pleasure of examining them. Foraging behavior can be found in almost any modern game, and pog collecting is still quite popular as well. Siren did this really well, as does Psychonauts (some of its scavenger hunt items actually had very funny descriptions, maybe the only thing I actually did find amusing), Pokemon, the Sims, Shenmue. Harvest Moon tries and fails. Even when it's done well, it still feels wanting of something. I wonder if everyone doesn't have one round of pog collecting that they can engage in satisfactorily, and after that it isn't just a series of diminishing returns. After all, it's only an imitation of fairly base materialistic impulses. That's bound to create problems. (That's not true if you're collecting items that are interesting in and of themselves, but that is a serious challenge.)

Indie games don't really seem to rely on these techniques, by and large. They seem to be something else entirely. Instead of trying to successfully supply a narrative of quality, they aim to open up an abstracted interior space for speculative narration. Fan fiction, you might call it. At least, Enviro-Bear 2000 did that.



Das Überleben Dem Großen Sprung (PC)
This game doesn't leave any space open for an interpretation of its narrative because there is only the frame-work of its mechanics. It's lucky that those mechanics are completely exhilarating, something I don't think you can get watching videos. Although it's easier to improve with a stationary fall, you haven't really seen it in action until you start experimenting with the different methods of rotation. (Another really interesting aspect of independent game development is the bizarre fragmentation taking place. Below is what this game would look like made by a design team or programmer that totally doesn't get what I'm interested in, but was very instructive in making me realize what was valuable in Das Überleben Dem Großen Sprung. Specifically the sound. Das Überleben doesn't have music. It suggests a radio station, which I've never seen before and view as quite clever, creative and brimming with potential, but each level does have a sound design, consisting of roaring wind, falling water, and churning sounds of an abyss. Yes, please. If I'm going to fall eternally, I'm going to get pretty tired screaming like an idiot and listening to the worst, most generic extreme guitar bullshit I can find; who wouldn't rather just fall in silent concentration?)



(Please mute this video before playing.)

Das Uberleben Gameplay Video

Queens by Noonat (Browser)
Not a unique game, but special for the emotional space that it successfully puts you into. Games that are actually hard tend to feel more vindictive now, in this stage of game design, and Queens relishes that sensation.

Warning Forever by Hikoza T. Ohkubo (PC)
My most recent new game. I'm not terribly well versed in the depths of the Dōjinshi shmup culture, which is quite large, terribly nerdy, and yet unnervingly static. I've never delved, because it always looked wider than deep. Warning Forever gets a lot of praise, though, and I've felt something of a hole since finishing Gamma Bros, so I decided to take the plunge. WF is essentially a skeleton. You have a ship that starts with its entire capability set activated from the start. You have one gun that doesn't get upgraded and is as good as it's going to get. It's capable of fine aiming in 360 degrees, and in a variable spread, and controlling it is natural, fast and exciting. There aren't stages, only bosses, and those bosses are supposed to change their structure as you play to reflect response toward the techniques you're exhibiting. Now that very core aspect is something that I feel I have yet to only barely observe, which could only mean that it's subtle.

Alright, finally got a second session, this time with sound. Wow. So this is what indie guys were freaking about about at that time. I found an interview with the developer of Everyday Shooter (which I still haven't played) that checks WF as an influence.

I feel a vague desire to be dismissive of Warning Forever simply because it's a shooter. Don't we have enough of those? Well... that's kind of missing something. Although WF isn't unique in what it is, it is quite singular in how it does what it does. I wasn't going to post a gameplay video since YouTube isn't very friendly to fast, clean, elegant vector graphics, but... well. Okay, here's a Russian playthrough and discussion with actual resolution. I suppose if it hasn't been cross-platformed by now...

Обзор Warning forever from Vitalii Zdanevich on Vimeo.

Wall jumping for Queen and Country.

We Come in Peace / Shoot to Kill by Superbrothers. (Totally random; I only got back into N after seeing a screenshot on the Superbrothers website.)

Time again for another N tour. Today we're looking at the last two episodes of the third column, with each episode consisting of five levels. N saves your progress after beating every fifth level. If you quit out without passing that fifth, you start from the first level of the episode when you come back. Cool? Let's go!

Episode 28

Domestic disturbance
Looks more complicated than it is. This level is generous with providing cover, springs, and other little things that result in a fun, simple progression of exploration and quick mastery of each component. You string these together, and you're done.


Covered
We've seen the double laser drone stages before. This one is not bad at all. A decent rhythm, some finesse in jumping, and we're out of here. (I'm probably just not accurately remembering the amount of dying it took to clear.)


Plummet
Very tricky. Climbing up the chamber on the left is easy enough, but the moment you enter the bottle-neck the rocket fires, requiring you to clear the hall immediately, which ends up being very problematic. I managed to snag the coins above only once, and died in the descent following. The fall in the right chamber looks complicated, but I just free fell down the right wall, walked off the white bounce brick further down, and moseyed into the exit with the rocket right behind. The bottleneck was where all the pain was collected.


Death star
This stage was a show stopper. Even after you've determined the optimal order to hit those four switches, trying to contend with this many gauss turrets is brutal. You're simply constantly surrounded by targeting reticules, some of which will occasionally solidify and discharge. There's little you can do to avoid getting shot down, making this level a matter of attempt after attempt until fortune smiles and allows you to squeeze through. It took a long, long time, and I was glad to be out of there.


Bespin
Very tough. Getting out of that tiny pocket containing the exit switch is a nightmare, with the rocket right on you, and a high enough height that dropping directly to the ground will kill you. I ignored the mines (getting out of the left just seemed simpler) and the gold (the gauss turrets were completely harmless at the speed I was going, and I didn't feel much incentive to give them or the rocket more opportunity to kill me), concentrated on getting it done, and eventually did so. Those laser drones ended up being all show, and never really played much part. Very fast and reckless level; a blast.

Episode 29

Crossfire
After Death star I was expecting this one to be impossible, but the size and openness of the room made it not terrible. The biggest issue is figuring out a method of getting back down without killing yourself falling.


Hounds
Another segmented design. I think I was mostly lucky in evading the gang of zap drones, and that was it. (I ignored some gold that probably would have been fairly easy to collect, which began putting pressure on the clock for the rest of the episode.)


Skating the edge
We have a new winner for my least favorite level. I hate this level. That kind of irrational, animal hate; teeth gritted, fists clenched. Here are my reasons. This stage is frustrating. There is no strategy to the room. Basically, this room says, "We will cripple you, to the point where we can kill you barely trying." That lone laser drone, its behavior made extremely erratic and unpredictable by its shifting line of sight. And then, just when your fingers manage to touch the door switch, the gauss turret just lazily pecks you out of the sky. Or your descent velocity is insufficiently slowed by the angle of the shards, and your legs break on landing. Even after skipping down multiple consecutive shards as you fall. Nope, dead.

Just the agony of climbing those first four shards. It's indescribable. This level is meant to punish you. Up until now you have been nothing but an airborne projectile. This level is about making it hard (near impossible) to jump.

After beating it I can admire how unforgiving it is, and how devious. Even those springs littered along the ground transform into something deadly, since they can easily knock you up into the laser, and also constrain you on the ground, making you vulnerable to that high, lazy gauss turret. Good riddance.


Bombshelter [remake]
This is the one that broke me. It took two, massive sessions to figure out the rocket room on the left side. Two huge sessions, just on that alone. It was that impossible. I probably dreamed about it. In my head I envisioned (in B&W) a dark, smoke filled room of scientists and tactical planners, like what you'd see in an old movie (I think in this fantasy I was some kind of NASA/Air Force guinea pig, head shaven, eyes twitching). I had to sit there and deconstruct each move. I had to explore the area to the right ahead of time, again, because I knew that when I finally cleared the rockets I would want to be able to finish the stage with some degree of certainty. I don't know if other N players do this, but, honestly, it became a question of statistical probabilities. I considered my chances of clearing the rocket room so remote, so slim, that to die on the exit (which is quite a thing in itself) would simply break me too much. So I learned it first. Fairly early. And then just died in the rocket room like an automaton. Eventually, what did it for me was collating outcomes from both sessions, learning to link those maneuvers together, and learning to reset the rocket room between those maneuvers. Which I know doesn't make any sense. I'd have to show you. Slowly. Because it must have taken over four hours to figure out. That's kind of sick, now that I think on it. (Briefly, it was what I [rather embarrassingly] labeled a "surgical entry," bouncing in along the left wall, wall-jumping down to the thwump room, then I had a path to the coins [rehearsed over 100 times], reset the missiles by entering the tube again slightly, then out and up the right side, wall jumping to the angled "exit platform," which I found through what I labeled a "mirror point," a place in the rocket room where I could enter and exit at will, hence supplying the final step in the progression of moves that would result in my clearing the room. Working in reverse, simply. Hence the eventual "string it all together" strategy. Make sense? Of course not.)

Easily my greatest N achievement to date.


Patrol
I used a tool that is utilized so infrequently in N that it's often easy to forget it exists. Time. Or my time limit, life-span, timer bar, however you want to think of it. The center of the room, where you need to be, is full of things that will kill you. The typical double teaming laser drones, but also a chaingun drone for good measure. After about 30 deaths, it occurred to me to try something. So I stood still, and waited for those three to leave, and be replaced by a sole chaingun drone. Which is still more than adequate to kill you (another half-dozen deaths or so), but in the end a breeze compared to the initial line-up. It's not a leader-board positioning strategy, but I still felt clever as hell for figuring it out.