This may be the best thing ever made. A true example of post-modern game design.
blog 
gallery about rss archive| Friday | February 5th | 2010 |
This may be the best thing ever made. A true example of post-modern game design.
| Monday | February 1st | 2010 |
Flotilla, a new game from BLENDO Games, looks to finally pick up the space-strategy mantle that has been largely forgotten in recent years, confined mainly to interesting indie titles such as Eufloria (and admittedly Flotilla is also quite indie!)
As displayed in the tutorial video released recently, they seem to be doing some very neat things with 3D space and tactics. However, what really caught my ear was the amusing decision to juxtapose quiet piano music during its slow-paced unfolding of combat underway. Given BLENDO’s great work on the more art-game side of things with Gravity Bone last year, I’d certainly say Flotilla is worth keeping an eye on.
| Tuesday | January 19th | 2010 |
Those that have been following Cloudherder for a while are no stranger to the fact that I am very much a fan of Bear McCreary as a composer. The sheer amount of thought and care that goes into his compositions really show in both the intricacy of the music itself, as well as the staggering attention to detail each cue reflects when tying in with the fiction it accompanies.
Thankfully for us, he is also very well-written and introduces the public to each work he’s involved with in a behind-the-sheet-music view that details everything from the themes and how they’re composed to the talented instrumentalists that play his work.
Bear’s latest blog entry goes into great detail about his most recent project, Dark Void. While it appears that the game may not be living up to the great ambitions of both the developers and his score, the music itself is—even divorced from the associated material—a perfect example of how to create and evolve effective themes, motifs, and associate them in an extended and nonlinear form while still accommodating for live instrumentalists in an inventive way. (That was, admittedly, a bit of a mouthful.)
Even if you don’t understand exactly all of the technical terms being thrown around, give it a look and listen. It’s a rare glimpse into the creative process of a very talented composer.
| Monday | January 4th | 2010 |
Every day the same dream… is a fantastic experiment in interactive game design. While it at times could be interpreted as being pretentious and artsy, the game creates a study of game design in a side-scrolling world. What happens if you make all the choices the game expects you to make? What happens when you don’t? What happens when you go the other way? Break free of the traditional tropes of automatic gaming reactions and become a new person.
| Wednesday | December 23rd | 2009 |
This past spring, composer Bear McCreary posted an announcement about his involvement with the game Dark Void, including a snippet of the main theme. He also added an additional chiptune-style remix he created using samples of NES synths. At the time, it was simply an homage to his favorite game series, Mega Man. Later, Capcom’s Unity Blog used this remix to help fuel a hilarious April Fool’s joke about a complete re-tooling of Dark Void to make it an 8-bit NES style game.
Fast-forward most of the year later, and we come to Capcom’s holiday gift to us all: The 8-bit game is real, and in the works for DSiWare, PC and mobile phones. Due in January, the game Dark Void Zero is an amusingly nostalgic jump into the “long forgotten” franchise Dark Rift, later renamed Dark Void and revived to “create” the 360/PS3 title to be released next year. In its revisionist history, Capcom created Dark Void as an NES game that was forgotten due to the entrance of the Super NES and its overshadowing presence. Now, a re-creation of the original title has been salvaged for all to enjoy!
While the game itself looks to be a fun jetpack-fueled shooter ala a fusion of Contra and Mega Man, one thing caught my attention: The trailer used to announce the game contained that same 8-bit Dark Void theme! Sure enough, what used to be an homage is now being transformed into canon. And if that wasn’t enough, Bear is breaking out the chiptunes in full to create the soundtrack for the entire Zero game. Listening to the clips alone you can hear both his unique style fused with callbacks to classic Mega Man textures and drum fills. I’m sure this must have been a dream project for him, and it’s going to be great hearing the full end-result come January when the game releases for digital consumption!
| Thursday | December 17th | 2009 |
Following in my tradition from last year, I’ve put together a gallery featuring nearly all of the notable games of the year! As a disclaimer, same as before, these are the games that caught my attention and I spent a decent amount of time playing. Even though this list is huge, there are still some things missing. Enjoy!
| Wednesday | December 9th | 2009 |
Ever since the Spike Video Game Awards nominees were announced over a month ago, I’ve had a blog post a-brewing in my netbook. It originally started as an attempt to go through the list and rationalize the options, give my opinion on what should win, and what will most likely take the popular vote. While that’s all fine and dandy, it’s ultimately pointless. The games that got nominated are obviously qualified in one way or another.
The real shenanigans spawn from the topic of four individual categories that span the bottom portion of the nominees:
Now, even just looking at the categories leads one to question the validity of what Spike’s setting up here. The most obvious one being, what exactly is going to be the difference between ‘Best Performance’ and ‘Best Voice’? Upon first glance, you might think that it has something to do with a specific performance in a game versus just having an awesome voice. Apparently not! To the nominations:
| Friday | October 30th | 2009 |
The Cloudherders have the best friends ever. Also: geekiest friends ever.
| Friday | October 16th | 2009 |
I’ll forgive Naoshi Mizuta for stealing my awesome idea just this once, because what he’s doing with it is really interesting. I kid, of course, because while I’ve always entertained the concept of mixing orchestral ‘tunes with chiptunes, I haven’t actually done anything with it yet. So, beating me to the punch, is the really fantastic (samples of the) soundtrack to Final Fantasy Gaiden: 4 Warriors of Light.
The entire concept of the game is going back and saying hey, what if the original Final Fantasy was being made today for the DS? Therefore everything, from the world design, gameplay systems and music, gets reborn and is both old again and new.
From the samples of the soundtrack released so far, there is a really fantastic assortment of sound samples that range from old NES synths to a more 16-bit oscillation style synthesis to modern instrument samples. By picking and choosing, it seems Mizuta was able to milk the best qualities each generation’s sound style had to offer—from the driving crunchy triangle wave basses to the gorgeous square and sine wave leads, as well as modern percussion and even live instruments such as the great trumpet solo found in the main theme.
I’m a big fan of this approach, and may begin to adapt to it myself going forward. There really isn’t much of a downside to utilizing every tool in a medium’s tool belt when all you have is the richness of music history to back you up.
Very much looking forward to hearing how the rest of the soundtrack shapes up as well as the full tracks themselves! We should find out in a little less than a month when the game and soundtrack launch in Japan.
| Friday | September 18th | 2009 |
Best Half-Life 2 mod? Absolutely!
| Thursday | September 10th | 2009 |
I’ll be honest here, I don’t really care what Apple’s up to with their big press conferences and the like. I’ve been swept up in the “OH MY GOD WHAT’S NEXT” hype before, but ultimately it boils down to shiny reflective slide-shows, white anti-aliased text, and a very hypnotically assuring voice.
However, today you may have heard that Apple has officially entered the portable gaming war with some pretty amazing statements regarding the iPod Touch in comparison to the DS and PSP. Let’s take a look at some bullet points.
iPod Superiority - What Other Devices Lack
Seriously, that’s one of their slides.
Now, I’m not a marketing genius, but I can smell something in the air… WAIT HERE IT COMES—
PSP Superiority - What iPod Touch Lacks
See, that wasn’t so hard. OH HERE COMES ANOTHER—
DSi Superiority - What iPod Touch Lacks
As you can tell, it’s pretty easy to come up with a short list of proprietary and trademarked features that may be arbitrary inclusions but are oh so important.
I’m not even going to touch their number wars as far as number of “games” goes: 21,178 games? Really? Really? HAVE YOU PLAYED THEM ALL MISTER APPLE NUMBERMONGER?
Okay I’m done. Good night!
| Wednesday | September 9th | 2009 |
Friday September 4th, 5:00pm
I’m sitting in the corner of a relatively low-traffic area of the Seattle Convention Center, taking advantage of the gracious free Wi-Fi. A couple of scouts from Team Fortress 2 walk by, chatting. Across the room, a wall of windows gives way to the Seattle skyline. In front of it, a plush green-clad Prince from Katamari Damacy bobs around energetically in a circle with other enthusiastic attendees. It’s the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo.
A floor below me, a hundred people are sprawled out on beanbags with laptops, PSPs, DSes. Where I’m sitting is probably the only free space to let my legs take a breather.
Four hours earlier, legendary game designer Ron Gilbert—creator of games such as Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Islands—spoke to the packed main theater. He shared memories of days where he had a piecemeal computer yet no games. He solved this conundrum by watching arcade games, taking meticulous notes, and created versions of them himself at home. He spoke in praise of the indie games movement with its increasingly public presence, relating them to the early days of creative game design where seven people could sit in a room and make a game without need of market research or investor consultation.
Several hours before that, I wandered through the packed show floor and began to make my way through the future releases on display. A stop at the Sony booth began with a brief glimpse of the bizarrely cute EyePet being demonstrated on a table flooded with back-light so as to function in the darkened hall. The little critter scampered around on screen in its doppelganger world being captured by the PSEye observing the table.
Toward the back of the booth was a single TV that caught my eye: a hands-on demo of Heavy Rain, Quantic Dreams’ anticipated PS3 adventure game. I watched the attendee ahead of me as he confronted the situation that the demo presented him: While searching a convenience store for clues to a serial murderer, the player—controlling a classic gumshoe detective—must deal with what happens when the store is held up at gunpoint. While the clerk and thug argued at the front of the store, the detective made his way to the front of the store. Along the way, precariously-shelved goods threatened to fall off their shelves. Carefully, with analog control, he replaced said items to remain stealthy. Too fast, the presenter noted, and he might attract the same attention dropping them would cause. Successfully sneaking up behind the thug, the detective was able to knock him out after a brief struggle.
My playthrough wasn’t as stealthy. Choosing to confront him head-on, I approached the thug from a distance. Upon being noticed, he trained the gun on me and shouted to put my hands up. I did, holding both shoulder buttons. As I slowly advanced toward the thug, nervously blurry options began popping above the detective’s head, thoughts swirling about how to deal with the situation. Through carefully chosen topics, I eventually convinced the thug that he was better than this, to put the gun away and go home. Another successful outcome.
Other games at Sony’s area included an intense encounter in Uncharted 2, one that I was precariously thrown into after another attendee put the controller down after reaching a particularly difficult shootout. It took me a while to get the hang of it; enemy soldiers positioned both down the street to my front and in the alley to my right. There were probably at least five or six deaths while I plotted the perfect take-down. Enemies fell, a tank burst into the street, and I found myself in an almost impossible standoff. That’s when the game stepped in to pat me on the back for surviving, triggering a cinema where new girl Chloe appears heroically on car-top, figuratively punching the tank in the face with a rocket. Great acting and animation abound as the two plot their next move through the city. And scene.
At this point, someone I knew spotted me and we began to chat. Look for more post-PAX impressions soon!
| Tuesday | July 14th | 2009 |
It’s ancient history in Net Years (circa 2007), but The DM of the Rings is a fantastically funny read. Using screen captions from all three LOTR movies, author Shamus Young imagines Tolkien’s plot as if it were being played as a D&D campaign.
Noble causes? None. Clever plots? Nope. Remembering basic information? You wish. Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas go off in search of booty, babes and notoriety, wreaking havoc on NPCs all across Middle Earth, leaving their hapless DM to grind his teeth and consider “lightning rolls.”
| Sunday | July 5th | 2009 |
Adventure games were once a staple of the PC gaming scene. For me, actually, it was the solid basis of all things PC game. Whether it was getting absolutely boggled by the puzzles in Myst, or getting freaked out by the ambiance in 7th Guest or The 11th Hour, or laughing my ass off to the Secret of Monkey Island, or being blown away by what simple imagery and brilliant storytelling could do with The Longest Journey. It’s a shame that the art form of the adventure game has fallen by the wayside in recent years.
Thankfully, there are some independent developers out there such as Amanita Design that are putting their all into crafting new inventive point and click experiences. Machinarium is one such game that looks absolutely breathtaking. Set in a grungy futuristic robot world, it apparently is the story of a little guy thrown in the trash heap, adventuring back into the big city to find his robo-girlfriend. Along the way, he can squish or stretch his mid-section to various heights to aid him in solving all kinds of puzzles to proceed on his way.
So far the game is looking great, and in motion absolutely backs up its painted look; one fear I had since seeing the screenshots. Also of note, especially in the preview video, is the music. With all luck, the game will be releasing this October, and I’ll be sure to play it through and report back on how it holds up!
| Friday | July 3rd | 2009 |
About four and a half years ago, one guy (Daisuke Amaya) nicknamed Pixel put together an entirely self-made retro action-adventure game called Cave Story. Through the great efforts at Aeon Genesis, an English translation patch was made with the blessings of its original creator. About a month ago, I finally realized its existence.
One thing particularly striking about the game is how it melds its personality through the combination of its various elements: gameplay, story, visuals and sound; all created by the same person. In the same way that Everyday Shooter was a personal reflection on Jonathan Mak, its creator, Cave Story is certainly a reflection of Pixel. Though the characters are small and cute, its music up-beat and catchy, there’s a smart story being played out between the various creatures that populate the game’s scenario. It’s not just a series of progressively more difficult levels with bosses at the end, but rather an evolution of Metroid’s game design fused with a memorable cast you might find in an RPG.
When considering independent games, it’s easy to get caught up in the notion that it’s all amateur acts until someone gets noticed and consequently published. Certainly a lot of the crowd populating Xbox Indie Games (formerly Community Games) doesn’t help kill this notion; most of the popular titles I see rising to the top consist of programmer graphics and sound in need of a better ear. Yet, this is the image of indie games that is becoming popularized due to the ubiquity of console gaming. However, there are gems like Cave Story that suddenly appear and become classics among gamers in the know.
If Cave Story had been released either on the NES or SNES in their eras, I believe that we’d be seeing a huge following today with a multi-faceted franchise backing it up. It’s one of those games that you could have sworn you’ve played years ago. The music is instantly recognizable and hummable the moment you come back to the game after a few days away. It’s everything that makes me appreciate games, and for some miraculous reason it’s also legitimately free. If only there were more people of such high standards of creativity and generosity. Absolutely support Pixel and give his game a shot!
Leif writes words, music, code and bug reports; somehow he's still sane.
Nickherder is a science and engineering kind of guy, but we forgive him for it.
SaRRa is using her fancy university degree to blog.
Legal Drug makes the coffee, eats the food and drinks the booze.
Layout & design by Leif Chappelle.
Logo by Sam Lewontin.
Unless otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by the authors of Cloudherder under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Posted by Leif on Fri Feb 5th at 11:18PM
Posted by SaRRa on Fri Oct 30th at 5:09PM
