2684 posts tagged with game.
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Utopia Must Fall
Utopia Must Fall is a browser game (for mobile too) that evokes the days of 1970s and 80s vector scan arcade games. There are nods to Asteroids, Gravitar, Tac-Scan, Space Fury and other more modern titles like Geometry Wars, with gameplay reminiscent of Missile Command but with a research and upgrade upgrade system.
The password is CEASEFIRE if it asks.
Randomness or the Perception of Randomness?
"All this leads to the inevitable question, which one – perceived randomness or true randomness – should a GM aim to use in his [sic] games? After careful consideration, I don’t think there is any one right answer to this question; depending on the circumstances, either could be correct." A neat previously featuring random maps.
For when "Crusader Kings" is a bit much
Sort the Court is a charmingly addictive "kingdombuilder" of sorts that's perfect for a lazy Saturday. Designed and written by Graeme Borland in just 72 hours for Ludum Dare 34, the game casts you as a new monarch who must judiciously grow your realm's wealth, population, and happiness with an eye toward joining the illustrious Council of Crowns... all by giving flat yes-or-no answers to an endless parade of requests from dozens of whimsical subjects. It's possible to lose, and the more common asks can get a bit repetitive, but with hundreds of scenarios and a number of longer-term storylines, the game can be won in an hour or two while remaining funny and fresh.
See the forum or the wiki for help, enjoy the original art of Amy "amymja" Gerardy and the soundtrack by Bogdan Rybak, or check out some other fantasy decisionmaking games in this vein: Borland's spiritual prequel A Crown of My Own - the somewhat darker card-based REIGNS - the more expansive and story-driven pixel drama Yes, Your Grace (reviews), which has a sequel due out this year
The Golden Underpants of Genghis Khan
Food for Fish is an underpants-infused game you can play in your browser thanks to WebGPU, so try it in Chrome, Edge, or Safari Technology Preview. [via waxy.org]
This is not a post about lying in fiction or games
Some say that lying non-player characters can motivate player characters, at the cost of paranoia. Some say that characters in crime fiction may be justified in their dishonesty. Marvel comic books are full of liars. Psychology experts have advice for you about how to spot liars. Some recent research has addressed factors associated with designing video games with falsehoods.
A relevant previous Ask. [more inside]
Finally, your checkers can nuke again!
Quadradius is back, baby! (Note that it is still in development mode and has not yet gathered many players, so arranging your own matches may be necessary).
Previously.
TATS
The six directions: North, South, East, West, Anth and Kenth
On Steam right now is a game that lets you play Mini Golf in four dimensions, called, naturally, 4D Golf (Steam, $20). I don't mean in the sense that time is a fourth dimension, it's set in a fully 4D world: you decide which slice of it is revealed in the visible 3D world at any time. Here's a trailer. (1 1/2 minutes) Here's Youtuber Icely Puzzles playing the beginning of it. (43 minutes) Here's the video devlog. It's from CodeParade, who also made the hyperbolic plane exploration game Hyperbolica. At the end of the release announcement video, its creator mentioned that there is a secret feature in 4D Golf that makes it even more bizarre, but telling its existence is a pretty major spoiler.... [more inside]
Mathematic!
Over on Mathstodon.xyz, Alexandre Muñiz comes up with an interesting puzzle game:
I call it Reverse the List of Integers. How it works is, you start with a list of positive integers, (e.g. [7, 5, 3]) and your goal is to make the same list, in reverse ([3, 5, 7]). You have two moves you can make:User @ch33zer chimes in with a basic web implementation (followed by other attempts, including a visual version), and @GistNoesis offers some code for exploring the problem space to brute-force solutions. [more inside]
1) Split an integer into two smaller integers. (e.g. [7, 5, 3] → [6, 1, 5, 3])
2) Combine (add) two integers into a larger one. (e.g. reverse the last e.g.)
There are two restrictions that seem natural for making this into an interesting game:
1) You can never make an integer greater than the largest integer in the original list.
2) You can never make a move that results in the same integer appearing in the list more than once.
Do you know how to make a proper cup of tea?
Most of us know how to make a proper cup of tea. But perhaps you'd like to test yourself with this wonderful tea making simulation game. Exquisite!
(other delicious and refreshing games made on the same platform here).
ZachsMind: "It's awesomely awesome!"
Culled from a cancelled FMV 3DO game from 1996, you may never have seen anything so incrediculous as the 7 1/2 minute trailer Duelin' Firemen. While the trailer has been bouncing around the internet for 16 years (previously from 2007 by hypocritical ross), a higher resolution version has turned up that's almost watchable. It contains Rudy Ray Moore, the Rev. Ivan Stang, Mark Mothersbaugh, Dr. Timothy Leary and Tony Hawk. The Youtube channel of a documentary about the game's making has some other obscure clips from it. [more inside]
Accessible Flash Friday Fun
The ultimate goal of all this micro-design and shuffling about malarkey
"Procedural narrative is the design strategy, emergent narrative is the goal, the player’s experience." Game design previously.
Finalists for the 59th Nebula Awards
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has announced the finalists for the Nebula Awards. [more inside]
"I have a Bubsy 3D poster on my wall, it brings me daily inspiration!"
Garfield (2004) was a game for the Playstation 2 and PC. It was a pretty lackluster 3D production where the idea was to help the cartoon cat clean Jon's house within eight hours (real time!) or else be put on a diet. The few places that reviewed it gave it extremely low scores (0/10!). Youtuber planet clue recently had a look at the game (20 minutes) and, while agreeing it's no great work of art, saw that there was still a bit of fun to be had, if it could be made to run on Windows 11, and if one could get over its issues. So, they went about hacking it to correct its more egregious flaws, and when they were done put their improved version online, as Garfield+ (Windows only).
Hello! There's a Borg on the bridge!
Star Trek: Borg - Remastered is a 1996 FMV Star Trek game featuring John de Lancie remastered into HD & made playable in browser. yt trailer. A review of the original game.
No Vehicles In The Park
Why it's impossible to agree on what's allowed.
No Vehicles In The Park is a little game by David Turner made to illustrate how difficult it is to to have policies on things like moderation, spam, fraud, and sexual content that people agree on, even in a trivial case.
Hat tip to Dan Luu
Hex Marks the Spot
"As is true throughout the history of innovation, whenever there is a problem, it usually turns out that multiple people arrive at similar inventive solutions. That was the case with the development of the hex as a basic unit of division in board games." Hex maps also have been noted to have problems. The internet is, of course, full of lists of favorite hex and counter wargames. (While a counter may be gorgeous, and may be found in your kitchen, it is not a kitchen counter, which can be dangerous.) Hexcrawls have been part of Dungeons & Dragons for a long time, though they have spread to other RPGs over time, though some people prefer pointcrawls to hexcrawls. It should be noted that hexes had ludic uses[SLPDF] prior to the modern era of board wargames and RPGs.
The games MeFites play - it's your weekly free thread
Dungeons and Dragons? Scrabble? Wordle? Animal Crossing? Tabletop Role Playing Games? Board games? Chess? Go? Some other game of any kind? Or a game you've made, on your own or in a team, for work, fun or personal satisfaction? Or talk about anything and everything in your life and your world as this is your free thread. [more inside]
i've heard of chiptunes but
Warning: sharp, startling static sounds
Turns out if you crash a GBA game and wait a couple hours, it will start singing the entire content of its memory to you: Dumping the ROM of a GBA game by crashing it
Turns out if you crash a GBA game and wait a couple hours, it will start singing the entire content of its memory to you: Dumping the ROM of a GBA game by crashing it
Happy 50th birthday, more or less, to Dungeons & Dragons!
Tom Van Winkle (01/10/2024), "Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons": "Fifty years ago this month, the first 1000 copies of the original Dungeons & Dragons were printed and then boxed up at Gary Gygax's house. It's supposed to have been late in January of 1974, but we don't have a specific date. January 1974 is good enough for me. And what counts as the specific origin date, anyway? The final draft? The actual printing? The availability for sale? We're close enough. I'm saying it's been fifty years right now." [more inside]
The giant space hamster is a beast; the space hamster is a monstrosity
The Monsters Know What They're Doing is a blog that examines all of the D&D 5th Edition monsters, according to their rulebook stats and descriptions, and offers strategy ideas for the interested DM.
Jennell Jaquays, 1956-2024
Rebecca Heineman on Blue Sky today: "Until we meet again… Jennell Jaquays 10/14/1956 - 01/10/2024." Intro to a 2022 interview: "an accomplished artist whose works were published in many D&D and other products; her adventures the Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia are held up to this day as examples of the best in dungeon design, and after working in the tabletop industry moved over to computer gaming where she worked on the Quake franchise." In 2017, she was inducted into the Gaming Hall of Fame. RPGGeek entry listing her many publications. Memorial threads at EN World, r/RPG, and r/OSR.
Gamedev Willie
By the time works resumed passing into the public domain in the US in 2019, countless people had grown up believing nothing would ever do so again. Techdirt invented a unique solution: an annual game jam in which all entries must include material from at least on newly public-domain work. The sixth has just begun - Gaming Like It's 1928! (Itch page. Pages for previous jams including submissions: 1927, 1926, 1925, 1924, 1923. Previously on Techdirt (including winner announcements and spotlights), Metafilter. Recent MeFi post on newly PD works.) [more inside]
Location 🗺️📍 + Year Taken 📷📆 = Points 💯
Ten interesting dissertations on games, play, and meaning
May-Ying Mary Ngai (2011), "From entertainment to enlightenment: a study on a cross-cultural religious board game with emphasis on the Table of Buddha Selection ...," highlighted in 2021 by George Pollard on Twitter / IA / Nitter: "around 830 C.E. a man named Li He ... invents a game named 採選 Cǎixuǎn, Selection with Dice, about promotion and demotion in the ranks of the state bureaucracy," giving rise to Shengguan Tu (pics: 陞官圖 / 升官图). Serina Laureen Patterson's (2017) "Game on: medieval players and their texts" discusses fortune games like "Chaunce of the Dyse" (see also), "Truth or Dare" / Q&A games with a chosen king/queen, e.g. "The King Who Does Not Lie" or "Le jeu du Roi et de la Reine," and more. [more inside]
(I haven't gotten past 15 words)
20 Words // 20 Seconds is an addictive typing game by Kevin Hutchins where you have 20 seconds to type 20 words based on prompts that refresh every time you type a new word.
the penguins are gathering in a circle
Vaporwave goodbye to the waking world in dreamcore95.exe, a chill, short idle game with impeccable vibes and, if that's not enough inducement, also a defragging widget.
Tolkien or Antidepressant?
"What you do only matters to the decision makers when Things Go Wrong."
Trust & Safety Tycoon is a free browser-based game exploring the difficult choices and tradeoffs involved in managing a trust and safety team. From the folks who brought you Moderator Mayhem (previously). More about the creation of this game.
Those skeletons should unionize
Underlevel (itch.io, free but Windows only for now) is a game made in 48 hours. It's got silly and charming graphics, and it's a lot of Halloween-themed fun! You're the skeleton lord in charge of a five-level dungeon, but a knight has invaded your domain and means to destroy you! Rally your lollygagging skeleton minions, to both lead them to the safety of the downstairs and destroy as many of the gem-laden pots on each level as you can, before the knight gets to them first and smashes them to raise its experience level! If you can't play it (that Windows thing, argh), here's a playthrough on Youtube. (9 minutes) [more inside]
All Forza Drivers, Start your Engines
Forza Motorsport accessibility is shaping up to be some of the most comprehensive of any game this year, and is available for early access now.
Particularly intriguing is a variety of assistance for blind drivers, which is a first in its genre. [more inside]
Connecting people through the power of language
Chants of Sennaar [Launch Trailer] “Chants of Sennaar is a language-based puzzle game based on the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. In this retelling, your character makes their way through five floors of a tower, each of which is home to a different community with a different language. Using a pictorial journal, you assign every word you find to a picture, slowly piecing together each language as you go. You use the words you learn to solve other puzzles, navigate the tower, and understand what others are saying. All this is made possible through decoding language — and I can’t overstate how fun the process is.” [via: Polygon]
Escape from Dogtown.
Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 Phantom Liberty Is the Game It Should’ve Always Been [Siliconera] “Though examples of other titles having a redemption from its initial launch exist, such as No Man’s Sky, I never had the motivation to give these games a second chance. But this changed with the Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty DLC, as CD Projekt RED finally made good on the promises the RPG made when it was originally released in 2020. Even for those who don’t purchase the Phantom Liberty DLC, you’re in for a treat, as the base game feels much more exciting than ever before with the Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update. [...] Everything from the action sequences to the terrific performances to even the storytelling, this is what I hoped Cyberpunk 2077 would have been from the start. I enjoyed my time with the DLC, and the 2.0 update changes so much that I actually plan to finally beat the base game and see the new ending now. If, like me, you’ve been on the fence about this game or were disappointed in the RPG in the past, I recommend giving Cyberpunk 2077 a second chance.” [Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty | Update 2.0 Overview] [Phantom Liberty - Official Cinematic Trailer] [more inside]
Leaked documents from the FTC vs. Microsoft case spilled a lot of beans
It's been a terrible morning for Team Xbox, as a major leak related to the FTC investigation of the Activision Blizzard deal has revealed all kinds of information that Microsoft surely never intended anyone to see. And seriously, this is huge! We now know that Microsoft has been planning an Xbox Series X refresh (potentially arriving in late 2024), and an entire release schedule from Bethesda dated July 2020 (new Bethesda games including DOOM, Dishonored, Fallout & Oblivion) has also been doing the rounds. There's more coming out of this as well, such as a new Xbox controller that appears to be launching alongside the new Xbox Series X revision, and even the revelation that Phil Spencer was interested in acquiring Nintendo back in 2020! The leak also revealed Microsoft's plans to release a new next-generation console in 2028. Via:[Pure Xbox][Polygon][Eurogamer][The Verge]
Master of puppets.
Lies of P carves a singular space out of the Soulsborne genre [Polygon] “Lies of P is the latest addition in the ever-growing lineup of Soulsborne-inspired games. On paper, it definitely dresses the part. It’s a hack-and-slash game with obtuse mechanics; challenging areas delimited by sweet, sweet checkpoints; and dramatic entrances for each and every boss encounter. The standout element is its narrative, which sets the tale of renowned lying apologist Pinocchio against the Belle Époque era.” [Gameplay Trailer][Story Trailer][1 Hour of Midgame Gameplay] [more inside]
“digging its own grave in search for gold.”
Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off [The Verge]
“We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user,” the company shared on its blog. “We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.”Popular video game engine Unity is making big changes to its pricing structure that’s causing confusion and anger among developers. On Tuesday, Unity announced that on January 1st, 2024, it would be implementing a pay-per-download pricing scheme that would charge developers a flat fee any time a game using Unity software is installed. [more inside]
Farming, fishing, friendship... faeries?!
Fae Farm is the cozy game I’ve been waiting for since Animal Crossing: New Horizons [CNN] “Fae Farm places you in the sprawling land of Azoria, where you can harvest crops, catch critters, reel in fish, raise animals, defeat monsters, show off fashionable looks, craft items and decorate to your heart’s content, not to mention befriend villagers and even date and marry one. The game takes a lot of cues from cozy games that came before it, including Wylde Flowers, Littlewood, Stardew Valley and, of course, Animal Crossing: New Horizons — but its magical world and abilities, plus its unique art style and convenient game mechanics, make it stand apart from some of the competition and may even set a new standard for cozy games in general.” [more inside]
TAG TEAM WITH DESTINY
WrestleQuest [Launch Trailer] “WrestleQuest fuses turn-based gameplay of traditional fantasy RPGs like Final Fantasy or Earthbound, with the fantastical world of pro wrestling. In WrestleQuest, players explore a fantasy realm dotted with gyms, arenas, and even shrines to the legends of yesteryear. Combat takes place in the ring (usually) and follows a familiar turn-based cadence, with wrestling moves and action points nimbly taking the place of spells and mana. Land a particularly devastating move from the top rope, and a guy’s plastic arm might pop off. No worries, he just sticks it back on. [...] The characters — 12 of them playable, 400 of them NPCs, and about 30 of those real-life, old-school heroes from the past 40 years — are all action-figure representations. Some aren’t even wrestlers. The world in which the main protagonist “Muchacho Man” lives is a fantasy realm of toys, the kind a middle-schooler would spread out on the bedroom floor and mash up in glorious crossover, non-canonical throwdowns.” [via: Polygon | Game Review]
Ground control to Major Todd
Starfield | Overwhelming Scope [Game Informer] “Even in the increasingly crowded marketplace of big, expansive games, Starfield stands out. Leveraging the gameplay Bethesda popularized with The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, Starfield expands the breadth of exploration to a galaxy of solar systems, planets, and ships. It populates those environments with a rich palette of activities and missions that tap into the outer space fantasy. It’s a staggering span of content to wrap one’s head around. At times, that scope threatens to impair the focus and pacing, and moment-to-moment gameplay is not always a strong suit. But players can expect to uncover hundreds of hours of experimentation in a richly imagined sci-fi playground, and that thrill is worth experiencing.” [more inside]
Word --> Ward --> Draw
Wordward Draw is a browser game in which each word you type must be either an anagram of your previous word or identical to your previous word with just one letter changed. If you can reach certain goal words (which are gradually revealed), you get to see a little picture. That's it! See all the pictures! [more inside]
a cyberfunk love-letter to Jet Set Radio
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: Better Red than dead [Shack News] “Set in a funky, futuristic New Amsterdam, the world of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is ruled by crews of graffiti artists-slash-DJs-slash-superheroes(?). The constant power struggle is a bid to become “All City,” the top of the top. You start as Faux, someone seemingly crucial to the current rankings. But before you can escape a mysterious holding cell and figure out what’s up, another crew leader lops your head off with weaponized vinyl. You wake up with a new (robot) head, a new name (Red) and a new crew, and set off to get your head back and become All City on the way. [...] If you’re an old school Segahead, there are definitely a few holes in your heart in need of filling. Jet Set Radio, which hasn’t seen a new game since the Xbox, is one of the biggest. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk has appeared like a beacon of hope to fill that void, and it does so while bringing new stuff to the table. This game is like a long-lost Dreamcast game in so many different ways, and most of them are good. Clearly, the developers at Team Reptile understand the concept of love.” [Launch Trailer][Gameplay Trailer]
feed the fire.
Armored Core 6 brings mecha to the masses [Polygon] “The rebooted Armored Core is not a sprawling adventure game à la Elden Ring or Bloodborne, nor does my experience with those games make me a capable mech pilot. Instead, Armored Core 6 is a reconsideration of a classic game series infused with a decade of studio growth, expertise in combat and level design, and the heightened expectations of FromSoftware fans. Armored Core 6 is a faster, more refined Armored Core experience that streamlines the mecha franchise in clever ways. [...] It’s noisy, chaotic, and starkly beautiful, all this clanging metal, ricochets, and explosions. It’s unlike many of the FromSoftware games you may have played over the past decade, to its benefit.” [Launch Trailer][Overview Trailer] [more inside]
Metazooa
South Scrimshaw
South Scrimshaw, Part One (free gog.com) is a beautifully hand drawn visual novel/documentary about a whale calf in an alien ocean three million light years away. PCgamer. Youtube walkthrough.
more cyberpunk than cyberpunk
After Cyberpunk 2077's rocky launch, it's time to bring back Deus Ex [PC Gamer] “Currently published by Square Enix, the Deus Ex series has been on hiatus since 2016, after the (mostly good) Mankind Divided failed to match sales expectations. But the huge attention and commercial success Cyberpunk has garnered, combined with its equally significant problems, has opened up a window for the series to return. This would really be things coming full circle. Deus Ex essentially served as the template for Cyberpunk 2077's core, boasting the same blend of fighting, sneaking and hacking. It also shares plenty of themes, like body modification and corporate conspiracies. For all intents and purposes, Deus Ex is a cyberpunk game. [...] Deus Ex's superiority is particularly evident when it comes to the RPG side of things. Putting aside the bugs and the technical issues, Cyberpunk's biggest problem is that its RPG systems are either poorly implemented or simply don't work at all.” [more inside]
“I'm having a good time despite being really terrible at it.”
It's okay to be bad at games [EX | Substack]
“The thing that I eventually came to realize is that it's all about people's expectations. Everything when you're talking about difficulty in games has to be framed in terms of, how do people expect this run to go? And how did it actually go? And are the points of difficulty in the places where I expected them to be? A game is marked out as hard if you expected to be able to do things and you couldn't do them. And it is marked out as easy if the things you expect it to be able to do you could do even if there's a lot of repetition.”A Q&A with Bennett Foddy, the high priest of videogame difficulty.
Let’s Get Really Nostalgic About The Early Days Of PlayStation
At a GameStop store on Launch Day of PS2 in 2000 [YouTube] ““There was a sense that video games were toys. And Sony is not a toy company.” That’s how a new mini-oral history about PlayStation revolutionizing console gaming begins over at IGN. The words belong to former head of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, and they ring true for anyone who grew up with an NES or SNES. The Nintendo consoles built for angular cartridges could take a beating like children’s building blocks, and the games often revolved around colorful worlds full of knights, dragons, and magic mushrooms. In the ‘90s, PlayStation felt like something entirely different. [...] In addition to the pitch of bringing arcade-level graphics into the home, there was the idea of a video game console that could channel the same feeling of cool imbued in the Sony Walkman and your older sibling’s collection of grunge and hip-hop CDs.” [via: Kotaku]
How Lara Croft lived and died in Derby.
20 years on, the Tomb Raider story told by the people who were there [Eurogamer] “There are conflicting reports about the origins of Tomb Raider, but everyone agrees that it was Toby Gard who created the Lara Croft character and came up with the idea for a third-person adventure game in which the player explored tombs. Legend has it that Frances Gard, Toby's younger sister, was the inspiration for Lara Croft. The devil is in the detail - some remember seeing prototypes that included an Indiana Jones-style male character, and that Core's bosses were terrified it would spark a lawsuit. Others insist Gard had envisioned a female character from the very beginning, although at first she was called Laura Cruz. Whatever the truth, Gard was the driving force behind Tomb Raider, even if others played a crucial role in bringing his vision to life. Jeremy Heath-Smith is clear in his mind how Tomb Raider came to be. "Tomb Raider came out of my trip to the States," he says, "where Ken Kutaragi showed me the PlayStation. "I got back on a plane, flew home, and called an off-site meeting of the company.” [The history of Tomb Raider][YouTube] [more inside]
This game makes me feel very seen.
Tourist To Your Own Culture By Veerender Singh Jubbal [Gamespot] “Venba is a game that has been on my radar since its announcement trailer was released in 2020. It comes from a mainly South Asian development team, with its aesthetics, character designs, and sound design drawing its inspiration from the culture to tell a story about a South Asian family trying to reclaim and archive their own underrepresented culture after immigrating to Canada. It is an incredibly ambitious title to pursue when many video games do not try to engage with having cultures or identities outside of the white/western represented. Venba is about trying to figure out your own identity (or sometimes lack thereof) in an all-new environment. This new environment is not kind or accommodating to people who are not considered white, and if you are underrepresented from a culture of color you are swayed and forced to assimilate, leaving what made you unique behind to survive this new place.” [Game Trailer][YouTube] [more inside]