Electron Dance Highlights
Discussion: Tabletop Christmas
From this month's newsletter (sign up if you want to read it):
Following my wife's example, I decided to use Christmas as camouflage - I bought three board games I was interested in and pretended they were presents for everyone else.
Dear subscribers, if you feel like chatting about anything at all from the newsletter, please speak your mind in the comments here.
Twilight’s Last Gaming 2018/3: Dissembler
I don't do Game of the Year, but I can do the games I enjoyed the most this year. This is the third of three.
Dissembler (Ian MacLarty, 2018) and I were inseparable for months.
Twilight’s Last Gaming 2018/2: Subnautica
I don't do Game of the Year, but I can do the games I enjoyed the most this year. This is the second of three.
In Miasmata (IonFX, 2012) your primary adversary is the landscape. It is easy to become lost unless you approach the world with care. Nothing else has quite scratched that same itch but Subnautica (Unknown Worlds, 2018) came close. The underwater world of Subnautica is beguiling yet terrifying. Open yet inaccessible.
If the exploration component was packaged in a crate it would bear the legend: "Handle With Care".
Twilight’s Last Gaming 2018/1: Cultist Simulator
I don't do Game of the Year, but I can do the games I enjoyed the most this year. This is the first of three.
I had a peculiar relationship with card game Cultist Simulator (Weather Factory, 2018). It was a bit... S&M.
Why We Do This
This is the seventeenth part of The Ouroboros Sequence, a series on puzzle games.
In the last exciting episode, I made reference to the flow channel, where your puzzling skill is a perfect match for the challenge before you. But at the far end of the flow channel, a player can be swimming in euphoria. Your diamond sharp skills etch into the most brutal challenges. You can even see through some puzzles like glass.
This is not to be confused with merely making it to the end of a game. And I'm not talking about finding the puzzles easy. I'm talking about when it feels like you've ascended from reasoning into instinct.
It is why we subject ourselves to the frustration. We are in pursuit of an exotic experience that is not as common as you might expect.
Dead in the Water
This is the sixteeneth part of The Ouroboros Sequence, a series on puzzle games.
The Steam store page for genius puzzle game Recursed (Portponky, 2016) highlights two reviews.
One is my very own, published on Rock Paper Shotgun. I wrote “Recursed’s brilliance is how it spawns complexity from a few simple constraints.”
The other is from the one and only Jonathan Blow who worked on a puzzle game you might have heard about. “I played for a while,” wrote Blow, “but it seemed really slow / simple.”
I’m only going to warn you once. Strap yourselves in.
Discussion: Perfection Is
From this month's newsletter (sign up if you want to read it):
Thief came out in the same year as Half-Life and one the latter’s qualities I gravitated towards is that you weren’t Big Shooting Dude - just some scientist who is just trying to survive a disaster and accidentally discovers a talent for sowing death. Thief is even better than that.
Dear subscribers, if you feel like chatting about anything at all from the newsletter, please speak your mind in the comments here.
A Field of Flowers
No Man’s Sky. Go anywhere. Encounter unique flora. Encounter unique fauna. Encounter unique rocks. Trade with other species. Encounter unique rocks. Swim in the sea. Fly in the air. Sting like a bumblebee. I treated the hype and wild speculation with the contempt it deserved.
I still don't know how I stretched this project out over two years. But there's a Behind The Scenes video with some answers...
LINKS
- Bateman & Zagal's paper, "Game Design Lineages: Minecraft's Inventory"
- Electron Dance interview with Ed Key
- Blake Patterson's tweet of the strange creature
- Jeff Vogel's article referencing stealing ideas to make new work
UNRELEASED BAD GAMES
- Original @moshboy tweet
- @mousefountain
- @fromsmiling
- @ragzouken
- @brie_irl
- @erikaverkaaik
- @molleindustria
- @regisRquoi
- @boxheadpixelart
- @david_is_neato
- @saltire
- @jplur_
- @PaleFeatherZen
- @horsman
- @Sleeper_Games
- @sam_suite
- @Fenreliania
- @Burrito_Tim
CREDITS
MUSIC
- Stephan Bodzin “Birth”
- Cid Rim “Surge”
- Colleen “Ritournelle”
- Oliver “MYB”
- Skalpel “Theme from ‘Behind the Curtain’”
- Professor Klik “Bust That Bust This”
- Stanley Myers “The Martian Chronicles Theme”
- Funki Porcini “Back Home”
- Bernard Herrmann “The Day The Earth Stood Still Theme”
- Kölsch “Opa”
- Ron Grainer “The Prisoner Closing Credits”
- Stu Phillips “Buck Rogers Theme (Closing Credits)”
- Sakari Oramo, The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra & Helsinki Chamber Choir “Graffiti: Bar 403”
- Superpoze “For We The Living”
- Monstergetdown & Rhett “Sanctuary”
- Biosphere “Shenzhou”
- Louis Philippe “Your Life”
- Adhesive Wombat “8 Bit Adventure”
- The Dead Texan “Aegina Airlines”
- Nitin Sawhney “Daybreak (feat. Faheem Mazhar)”
GAMES
- qrth-phyl, Verran
- No Man’s Sky, Hello Games
- Quarries of Scred, Darkest Kale
- Recursed, Portponky
- Bioshock Infinite, Irrational Games
- Out There, Mi-Clos Studio
- Mirrormoon EP, Santa Ragione
- Proteus, Key & Kanaga
- Minecraft, Mojang
- Noctis IV, Alessandro Ghignola
- Pac-Man, Namco
- 3D Monster Maze, Malcolm Evans
- Dungeon Master, FTL
- Mercenary, Novagen
- Ultima IV, Origin Systems
- Elite, Braben & Bell
- Star Raiders, Atari
- Zork, Infocom
- Adventure, Atari
- FLOP, Bennett Foddy
- Domina, Bignic
- Archaica: The Path of Light, Two Mammoths
- Chromatron, Sean Barrett
- Aargon, Twilight Games
- The Incredible Machine, Kevin Ryan
- Deflektor, Vortex Software
- Laser Chess, Mike Duppong
- Breakout, Atari
- Sky Diver, Atari
- Video Olympics, Atari
- Space Invaders, Atari
- Pelé's Soccer, Atari
- Bientôt l’été, Tale of Tales
- Soma, Frictional Games
- Only If, Creability
- Faith, Airdorf Games
- Cart Life, Richard Hofmeier
- Endlight, Bigpants
FOOTAGE
- Donald Trump 1980 Interview, NBC News
- Farage: ‘Let June 23 be the UK’s Independence day’, ITV News
- USA Trump World Tower Celebration, AP Archive
- Boris goes bananas as Brexit battle bus visits Stafford, Staffordshire Newsletter
- The Inauguration of the 45th President of the United States, The White House
- The ITV #Brexit Debate – David Cameron, Nigel Farage on the EU Referendum
- The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
- Horror Express (1973)
- No Man's Sky - E3 2014 Gameplay Trailer at Sony Press Conference
- Planet of the Vampires (1965)
- Mary Poppins (1964)
- A Clockwork Orange (1972)
- Farscape episode “We’re So Screwed, Part III: La Bomba”
- The 2017 Game Developers Choice Awards
AUDIO
FREESOUND AUDIO
Film Update: Nov 2018
I have been working hard these last few weeks and took a day off work today, just to meet a self-imposed deadline. It's not done done, but I feel okay making the date public.
The Monte Carlo Player
This is the fifteeneth part of The Ouroboros Sequence, a series on puzzle games.
Monte Carlo simulation is a statistical technique where we let a computer rip through hundreds or thousands of randomized experiments, revealing a rich timescape of alternate futures from which we can make deductions. It’s a way of breaking an impasse of uncertainty in a problem. For example, we can use Monte Carlo methods to determine the fair price for a complex financial option whose payoff depends on the future movements of a stock.
And it struck me, as I was making random stabs at a level in Stephen’s Sausage Roll (Increpare Games, 2016), that puzzle enthusiasts engage in a similar exercise.
Keep In Touch
Subscribe for Updates
Recent Comments
"I'm still here! This year has opened with the completion of a big project at work and all I'm doing in the evenings is recovery..." – The Monte Carlo Player
"OK, so one of the effects of my catastrophic hard drive crash is that I get to re-solve Snakebird. (Except for the star levels, which..." – The Monte Carlo Player
""It doesn’t sound like roguelikes are your thing?" I think I've picked the wrong words but what I wanted to say was: roguelites always seem..." – Discussion: Tabletop Christmas
""At some point soon it will stop nagging you to do things and then you’ll have no idea what to do. ;)" Quoted for truth!..." – Discussion: Tabletop Christmas
"I'm glad to see tabletop games in discussion, unfortunately the only game I was playing this last months is chess, but online. There is some..." – Discussion: Tabletop Christmas
- Older »