Some held-over iPhone reviews, mostly in fact from before the comp games came out.
Category: video games
Blogs of the Round Table: Denouement
Blogs of the Round Table is a group that writes on various game design issues, each month working from a new prompt provided by Corvus Elrod. This month the prompt is on a topic that’s come up several times for me, and that I’m thinking about again as I rework the ending of my WIP:
How can the denouement be incorporated into gameplay? In literary forms, it is most often the events that take place after the plot’s climax that form your lasting opinion of the story. A well constructed denouement acts almost as a payoff, where protagonists and antagonists alike realize and adjust to the consequences of their actions…
But the denouement is most neglected in video games where it is often relegated to a short congratulatory cut scene, or at most–a slide show of consequences. This month’s topic challenges you to explore how the denouement can be expressed as gameplay.
Latest Homer in Silicon
On Fable 2 (part of my slowly ongoing mission to play more of the must-play interactive storytelling list).
Clockwords: Prelude
Clockwords is a word/defense game by Gabob, who previously did Now Boarding (mentioned here). This time, they’re using a story that I wrote to go with their gameplay concept. I’ve really enjoyed this — it’s exhilarating seeing what the artist has done with my suggestions, and fun to work on something a little different from my usual format. The core gameplay lets you build words, but (in contrast with most word games) in a way that doesn’t absolutely restrict you to a set of letters on the board. If you’re the kind of person who gets frustrated by all the great words you can ALMOST make in Boggle or Scrabble, Clockwords might be up your alley. What’s more, as you play you gain the ability to manipulate which letters are available for future use.
This installment is just the Prelude; future installments will contain a lot more of the plot, and more variations on the core play.
New Homer in Silicon
…in which I talk about romance plots in games, including some IF and some other stuff. Partly a response to an article in NowGamer.
Guilty pleasures
After hearing about it for a while and thinking it basically sounded like a silly gimmick, I finally tried Achievement Unlocked; and I have to say that it actually is fun, as well as being a goofy send-up. Its sequel/relative This is the Only Level is not bad either, though some of the mechanics were irritating in practice; it struck me as a good sort of mental exercise for the designer (what are all the different twists we can put on this one simple challenge?) but less awesome to play.
These days I mostly don’t play time management games unless they’re sent to me for review, they’re demonstrating some new mechanic, or they show hints of having a more interesting storyline than average. The first few were fun, but I’ve now pretty much been there and done that. But I made an exception for Burger Shop 2. The first Burger Shop was simply very well constructed; and number 2 won my heart and my registration with its goodnatured jokes about casual games in general. The game opens with the protagonist of Burger Shop having mysteriously lost his empire and needing to rebuild it (the question that most time management sequels have to answer somehow or other, usually hamhandedly). One of the first things he does is to hire a detective, but the detective is useless and keeps bringing him pointless objects, in a screen that spoofs hidden object games. Other casual game styles are sent up in later screens.
There’s no great depth here, just strong design and a perky self-awareness that many casual games lack.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 