Way back when Rock Band (the first) came out, I saw that someone made some kickass G.I. Joe band-mates, and figured that I’d try and have some fun with the Create-A-Player myself.  After forcing myself to find inspiration (it hardly ever works), I kicked around the idea of making the ultimate band.  One so epic [...]

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Don’t let it be this game. Seriously, friends don’t let friends build Fantastic Contraptions. I don’t know what’s cooler:  making a machine that works, or seeing how mind-blowingly awesome everyone else’s machines are.  For the level depicted, you could build a machine that looks more like a plow (that’s how I solved “Awash,” the level [...]

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Back at the GDC Game Design class I took, one of the things they really stressed was “fiction.” Making sure your game adhered to a fiction could help set it apart, make it stick in someone’s head, or even help make your game mechanic make a bit more sense. It’s important for something even as [...]

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New-ish Flash game DOEO seriously reminds me of the same crazy aesthetic that drove Katamari Damacy, being that trippy new-aged fun almost drug-trip of a look. It’s not horribly innovative game-play-wise, but what I find striking is how all of the little elements combine to actually want to make me want to keep playing. The [...]

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Thanks to all of the great comments in the previous threads, I decided that I wanted to do one more final analysis of the entirety of Portal after the previous two articles, mainly so that I could either convince myself one way or the other regarding my theory on why GLaDOS tortures Chell (and therefore [...]

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One of the more satisfying results of the Game Design Workshop I took was the elective for the Three Musketeers.  We were asked to come up with an alternative 3 or 4 player version of the game, one where the ruleset would remain consistent, and maintain as much of the “fiction” as possible. For those [...]

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Would it kill you people to pick your own god-damned weeds?  What do you mean, “who, me?”  Yes, you, Admiral, you ungrateful ass.  Why am I picking weeds on your property, anyway?  And then you have the gall to bitch and moan how I’ve been gone for a few weeks?  I’ve been busy, jerk, unlike [...]

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I was playing some Dicewars earlier this week, and after finding the multiplayer version of it, started wishing that I could play with some of the rules of the game to make a slightly different game. After all, that’s what Dicewar’s creator did in order to come up with their alternate version of Risk. I [...]

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A Lifetime to Master. Look, playing games shouldn’t be needlessly complicated. A lot of hardcore folks out there think that controls which the “casual player” can understand implies that there is not a lot of depth to them, and therefore no sustainable complexity with which to derive a “tournament” level of play. It seems that [...]

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Lately I’ve been playing a lot of “casual” games when I have a few spare cycles at home. The vast majority of them have been webgames, mostly of the free variety. It’s become a small addiction/hobby of mine to find the gems among the rough. I suppose I should write about the “casual vs. hardcore” [...]

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