http://www.molleindustria.org/everydaythesamedream/everydaythesamedream.html
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.
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!
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!
http://www.1up.com/1upblogs/5/1ups_rpg_blog
Roleplaying Games belong to a vast genre that spans a good variety of media: table-top dungeon romps, epic linear adventures, free-form character development sandboxes, or flailing at eachother in fields. Aside from the latter, a relatively new blog that’s popped up at 1up.com called The Grind aims to cover the best of what RPGs have to offer.
Headed up by Jeremy Parish — an online writer that I’ve known of since I started frequenting the internet for games news at The Gaming Intelligence Agency (RIP) and have had the pleasure of lunching with — the blog has gotten off to a great start with coverage of a variety of upcoming titles, as well as beginning several weekly columns that cover specific topics.
In one of the first posts, Parish attempts to dissect exactly what it is that makes an RPG today. We see so many games taking up the mantle of “…with deep RPG elements!” that it would be easy to peg many recently-released titles as RPGs as well as their assigned genres. Do character levels beget a genre label? Or is it having a skill tree, or inventories, or equippable relics? There are certainly some tropes of games PR that would have anyone believe in a game’s RPG nature. Parish doesn’t come to any conclusion on the matter, but there doesn’t really need to be. An RPG can be simply a series of level grinds though a story, or it can be a toolset that aids other genres’ development. Whatever makes it fun and worthwhile is what we cull from its lack of definition.
I highly recommend checking out the blog if you’re drawn at all to RPGs and their intricacies. It’s some great writing on the subject, and all matter of timely stuff.
It’s not often an indie game goes for the epic scope. Most that you see being passed around are smaller artsy types, often with an intriguing art style to make up for its lower budget.
Zeno Clash, however, an Independent Games Festival finalist for 2009’s Visual Arts award (to be released some time early this year), is going to be attempting the bombast with its surrealistic punk-fantasy take on a first-person brawler.
The creature pictured to the right is known as the Father-Mother, a hermaphrodite that the main character Ghat happens to be a child of. Though not much is known about the story yet, the summary on the game’s website mentions that Ghat must run away from his family clan on an adventure. That would certainly be my most logical course of action if I were living in a fantastical universe and born to a clan that all shared the same mother and father.
In any case, this one has piqued my interest and would be a worthy one to keep an eye on. I’m sure more information on it will come about closer to the IGF awards this March at the Game Developer’s Conference.
Posted by Leif on Mon Feb 1st at 10:41AM
