Learning and Games and Learning Games

Did a bunch more work on my Greek teaching game the last couple of days. (No new screenshots, though — most of the changes have been improvements to the complexity of gameplay, but not visible in a shot.)

I’m sure my ActionScript is annoyingly naive and that I will hate it once I’ve done a few more projects. I’m so used to Inform, and being able to envision exactly what I need to write before I start typing anything, that it’s novel to go back to a context where I have to laboriously piece out how to do something, figuring out each step in turn. (Well, it could be worse. There are a lot of basic universal programming concepts that don’t have to be figured out from scratch.)

At the same time, it’s awesome finally to be able to construct my own Flash game. I’ve played so many of these things over the years that it’s like I’ve been mutely listening to a language and am now finally able to try speaking it back.

I’m still futzing with the gameplay.

Continue reading “Learning and Games and Learning Games”

Jay Is Games opens a competition for IF

JIG is running a competition for short IF games with the theme of “escape”, designed for play and judging on their website. This is a cool opportunity to showcase IF for an audience of casual gamers (some of whom are already IF fans but don’t follow the community regularly). And there are some nice prizes for the top-ranking games, as well.

Entries are due Jan. 31, 2010, with a three-week judging period to follow.

Latest Playing: The Shadow in the Cathedral

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“The Shadow in the Cathedral” is one of the best IF games released this year. Maybe not the best, but that would be a large claim to make considering that it’s competing with Blue Lacuna, Make It Good, The King of Shreds and Patches, the top couple comp games… it’s been a good year for IF.

But Shadow definitely belongs in the top tier.

IFDB review over here.