See here.
Author: emshortif
Inform in Education, Reprise
Jeremiah McCall reports that he had a fine time presenting on his use of Inform in history simulations for the classroom at the Games+Learning+Society conference in Madison — and wound up giving an interview for Christian Science Monitor, as well.
Some responses to his presentation can be found here and here.
Casual games and marketing
Gamasutra has an article on Big Fish Games’ CSO explaining that the “hardcore” and “casual” aren’t sufficient categories to divide the market up, and arguing that we need more categories with more kinds of game. Which is true, but I can’t help finding it a little ironic considering the source.
Meanwhile, I’ve been playing some of Chocolatier’s The Great Chocolate Chase, which is a time-management variation on their usual theme. It’s almost entirely a replay of Diner Dash, Cake Mania, Vogue Tales, etc., which is disappointing. It’s also not as well tuned as it could be: at least, I got relatively smoothly through quite a few levels and then have completely bombed out at level 40, which I can’t pass despite many replays: even if I manage to serve every customer without turning any of them away (quite a feat at this level), I’m not making my target for the day.
I’m very slightly curious about the (slender, minimal) threads of story built into the game, but that may not be enough to propel me past this plateau.
Aqua Forest review
The iPhone’s Aqua Forest game is another of those inventive rarities that could only exist on this platform. It’s simulation for simulation’s own sake: you draw on the touch screen a configuration of physical substances — from fixed walls and pivoted gears to water and fire and explosive powder — and it all begins interacting. Tilt the screen, and you change the effective direction of gravity. It’s a miniature laboratory with sufficient complexity that you can implement everything from your own marble labyrinth to a mesh of gears to something resembling a steam engine — at least in theory.
It really is pretty jaw-dropping. There are some cute little puzzles that are designed more to teach you the way the simulation works than to stump anyone for very long; it’s clear that the designers mostly wanted you to go out and play in the sandbox yourself.
A Match-3 Game I Don’t Hate
The opening of Apple’s iPhone App store is a depressing demonstration of how much imagination the assembled developers don’t have. There are lots of re-implementations of old standards like Tetris. There are a gazillion to-do list applications, and a gazillion-plus-one Sudoku collections, which will I guess be handy if the world’s magazine stands and airport bookstores succumb to Dalek invasion. There are half-assed social networking things which will let you broadcast mindnumbing trivia about your day to everyone you know, but only if you get your fifty closest friends to use the same system. There’s even a little application to make it look as though your phone is a glass of beer, and it tilts when you tip it. Ha ha ha. I mean, I suppose if I were a developer for the iPhone I’d probably write some dumb prank applications for it too, but I’d like to think I would then have the sense not to market them. It’s a little sad how high a proportion of the offerings fall into that category.
However. There are also a small handful of items that make me think, the way the Wii did, that I’m encountering a genuinely new set of game possibilities.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 