Playing Games, Making Games

I recently wrote an 8-page analysis on Rez as part of my Video Game History class. Rez, for those who are new here, is my favorite game ever made and is a rail-shooter from the dreamcast era with trippy graphics and trance music, with more trance music instead of sound effects. The game is basically a sensory spectacle and very short - you can watch the whole game here . It is one hour long. Writing the analysis was a fun job, which involved watching a lot of footage of Rez HD. I learned a few things about the game in the process, namely that Rez is the missing link between games and movies. Looking at the entirety of Area 5, the game completely controls the pacing of the player's experience - the player does not get to decide when something happens. He is completely railroaded into scripted events, always moving to the next level on schedule. And yet no one would say that Rez is not a game. Rez basically exploits the mandatory movement of the rail shooter genre to turn the game in...

It is hard. But man, I can't remember the last game that made me spend an entire weekend playing it. I got it last saturday and had accumulated 15+ hours of playtime when monday rolled around. I wish I hadn't. It's going to make this exam week harder than it should be... But yeah, Demon's Souls. A weird and somewhat awkward name, hard to pronounce. A weird control scheme (square to use a potion? Really?). A ruthless difficulty level, possibly amplified because I was dumb enough to pick "Magician" as a class and pick up EVERY SINGLE ITEM, even those guarded by dragons. The combat is hard to get used to and very skill-focused for an action RPG. This is the kind of fighting system you'd expect from, say, God Hand. I ended up falling into the playstyle where I constantly hide behind a huge shield, using only quick jabs with a rapier to do damage and retreating at the first sign of danger to throw fireballs. I was absolutely terrible at the game when I started ...

Time for a rant about game design. Every once in a while, someone in a game development team jokes about adding something silly to the game. Maybe a unit with an unpronounceable name, or a gun that fires teapots, or an enemy that kills you and deletes your saved game. That's funny! It's a joke. A funny proposition. And yet far too often, someone adds "you know, we should actually put that into the game." and the designer says "yeah, this isn't a serious game, it'll be a joke". There's something profoundly wrong here. Having a game that doesn't take itself seriously and has less-than-serious dialog in it is perfectly fine. But those games are designed in an extremely serious and rigorous fashion. Take Plants vs Zombies, whose premise is fairly ridiculous and has you planting exploding potatoes. It's a silly game. But its design isn't silly - a ton of work has gone into making every plant interesting and unique in their own way, with th...

You can get the new demo here . The core gameplay is finally in there, with 15 levels to show it off. The game will take care of explaining the controls. It's a cooperative platformer. You can play it alone or with a friend - try both, and tell me which one you find harder. Have fun!

Hello Internet, allow me to introduce myself. I am 21-year old professional flipper of bits (or as some call it, a programmer), currently studying to acquire a bachelor's degree in bit-flipping (also known as computer science). My interest in bit-flipping was born from an interest in games - I was told that to make games, one had to become very very good at flipping bits. So there I am. I care a lot about about games, and spend ridiculously large amounts of time making them. I've worked in games industry as a programmer, and I want to eventually work as a game designer. This blog will talk about games - sometimes I will talk about my own games, sometimes I will talk about other people's games. --- As of late, I've been working on this game: There's a rough demo version out there somewhere. That's all for this first post. If you care about games as much as I do, you can tell me by e-mailing me: nagnazul (at) gmail.com. If you'd like to help me make games, th...