The Last Book

Last weekend, I attended the second annual Global Game Jam at NYU. The Game Jam is a sort of worldwide endurance/speed game-development event in which teams come together and in the course of 48 hours conceive, design, and produce an entire game. The results tend to be quick, dirty, and a little rough around the edges, but often innovative and off-the-wall.

This year, the theme was "Deception," and in the GMT -5:00 time zone, the design constraints were "Rain, a Plain, or Spain." You can check out all the games created for the event at the GGJ website.

I'd like to present our team's game: an action/strategy game for the iPhone called The Last Book.



In The Last Book, civilization has been destroyed by a neverending rainfall. Everything, it seems, has been washed away. Generations after the onset of the deluge, you are the Librarian, tasked with protecting the last book in existence, the only remaining example of the written word. Keep the book dry by collecting and diverting the falling rain, and do your best to hold back the flood.



The rain falls relentlessly, wearing down whatever it touches. Play by arranging pots to collect the water and protect your structure from damage. As the pots get full, you can dump them safely out in the wells. Over time, your pots will wear down, too, so use your kilns to fire up new ones. Protect your kilns, also, because the rain will quickly put them out if they get wet.

Just hold out until the clouds break (two minutes) to collect your reward.

And at all costs, don't let any rain fall on the Book!



Controls: Tap the pots to move them. Select the brick you want to place the pot on, or tap a well to empty the pot. Up to three emptied pots will be stored in each well; tap the well again to retrieve a pot. Tap a kiln that's fired up to start a new pot, then tap it again to remove the pot when it's done.

Currently, in order to play The Last Book, you must have a Mac with the iPhone SDK installed. Download the package and compile the game file in Xcode to play.

For those who are unable to try it out personally, here's a video showing the gameplay:



The Last Book was made with a five-person team, which we christened Brainfall Studios. It was a wonderful group to work with, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to get to know them. Here are the credits:

Design, Story: Jess Haskins
Level Design: Ray Reilly
Programming: Ulf Schwekendiek
Art: R.M. Sean Jaffe
Music & Sound: Justin Mathews



(The team from left to right: Sean, Ray, Ulf, Jess, and Justin).

We had a great time, and we're all interested in continuing to work on the game to flesh it out and eventually release it on the app store. I'll be sure to let you know about it when we do!

For now, here's the link to the game's page on the GGJ site: The Last Book.

Grinding for glory

In Upgrade Complete!, you play a Galaga-style shooter to blast enemies and collect money for upgrades in order to max out your game — not just your ship, but everything from the music and graphics to menu buttons to the copyright notice. You even have to buy the shop screen and preloader before you can load up the game. Not only a cheeky parody of mindless grinding games, it's actually well-balanced and surprisingly fun to play.

Roots to robots

It has been fascinating to follow the evolution of Amanita Design's work from the original Samorost 1 through to their latest offering, Machinarium. The first, while it introduced an innovative visual style and type of gameplay that inspired a slew of imitators, was formally little more than a loosely associated collection of hallucinatory set pieces. Machinarium, by contrast, is a much more mature and focused game. Samorost 2 was an important intermediate step, utilizing motifs from the original game and just beginning to rationalize that surreal, oneiric world by introducing elements like characters, plot, spatial continuity, and logical causal relationships. Machinarium takes the final step and brings us to a world that is solid and grounded, with rules and interlocking parts that fit together like — well, like a machine.

In Samorost 1, nothing was grounded — not even the ground.

It's like the druggy haze of Samorost 1 was already starting to clear in Samorost 2, and now with Machinarium Amanita has clambered out of the beanbag, combed its hair, put on a suit and tie, and gone out into the real world. Interestingly, the references to hallucinogenic substances that peppered the Samorost series (the name "Amanita" refers to a type of toxic mushroom, which is also the studio's logo) are largely absent from Machinarium, and the earthy roots, furry forest creatures, gnomes, and cosmic little green men of Samorost have been replaced by an industrialized metal cityscape of dive bars, jails, factories, and bombs, populated by rusty robots and hunks of junk, cops and crooks and gamblers and beggars. Is this what the world looks like when you come down?

The brave new world.

Paralleling this aesthetic evolution is a complementary formal one. Samorost 1's "click anywhere and things happen" mechanic has been gradually whittled down to a more traditional system of agency, and in Machinarium the player directly controls the main character, a charming tin-can robot, who walks, stretches, collects and manipulates items within his immediate sphere of influence. (Except for during the first two minutes, that is, where the player acts on the environment at large in order to bring the pieces together to assemble the robot in the first place — a final transition from the old ways to the new.) Gone is the out-of-body dissociative experience of Samorost 1, where the player's and main character's motivations were aligned, but their actions disjointed: the player operated directly on the environment while the sprite sat down and watched, with the player in the role of an unseen godlike manipulator, or maybe the world itself. It was the perfect gameplay model for what represented essentially a really groovy trip.

Sitting back and taking it all in.

It would have been interesting to see that mechanic developed further, but Amanita chose the opposite route and made the game world and mechanics more concrete, not less — and Machinarium is definitely the stronger for it. It's a rich, tightly-constructed game, made with purpose and clear direction. I would love to see Amanita — or someone else — go down the other path someday, though. It's perhaps a greater challenge to make a sustained, meaningful experience out of the whimsical illogic and disembodied agency that characterized Samorost 1. Can the player's sense of identity be even further shaken? Can the bounds of cause and effect be further strained? Can the resulting journey cohere and add up to something more than a succession of novel and entertaining images?

The first denizen of Samorost you encounter: a toked-out dude with his hookah.

Amanita seems to have shelved the hookah for now, and I'm glad to follow them out of the wild and into this exciting new urban junkscape. But I wouldn't mind going back occasionally into that wild forest, just for a little while. Just one more hit...

Pixel pushing

Small Worlds by David Shute. Technically a platformer. Less about running and jumping than the thrill of discovery, or uncovering.

Playing Pure Hidden

For my assignment to play a new kind of game I'd never played before, I played the 60-minute demo version of Pure Hidden, a hidden object game with interludes of other casual puzzle games and interactive toys. (The website also contains a light browser-based version to try.) It was my first time with a hidden object game, and I was pleasantly surprised. I really rather enjoyed playing it.

The basic goal of the game is to locate and click on objects hidden within a scene. Unlike some hidden object games which present a cluttered room or other physical space, the images in Pure Hidden are more like 2-d collages, so the items can be silhouettes, outlines, or transparent overlays, irrespective of solidity and scale.



The game has two modes, “score” and “zen,” and in the latter mode can be played meditatively, for relaxation and pleasure. Hidden picture games live and die by their imagery, and Pure Hidden has beautiful images and very high production values. The smooth visuals and well-designed soundscapes create a very pleasing sensual experience, which is what makes the zen mode appealing even without the challenge of formal limits. I chose to play in the score mode, which introduces pressure to perform in two main areas, speed and accuracy.

In each themed stage there are about 20 items total to find, but your list only contains about half a dozen items at a time. You must click on the listed objects in the scene to clear them and make space for a new item to appear on your list. Clicking anywhere on the screen that does not contain one of the listed objects will incur an accuracy penalty to your score. Objects are for the most part easily recognizable with few ambiguities, although there were occasional pitfalls – for example, a level that contained both a watch and a stopwatch (clicking on the stopwatch when only the watch was on the list incurred a penalty), or the inclusion of cultural items that might not be universally recognizable, like maki in a Japanese-themed scene (which I probably would not have been familiar with if not for all those hours logged rolling them up in Katamari Damacy).

In case of any uncertainty, you must balance the risk of a false click against the time you spend deliberating and searching. Indiscriminate clicking in the hopes of “hitting something” is not a successful strategy and will only tank your score. It is helpful to try to keep several objects in mind as you scan the screen rather than hunting for one at a time. It is also important to note the location of any distinctive objects that you spot – if they are not yet on the list, it will be easier to find them when they do appear.




In between the hidden object levels are several other types of minigames and non-game activities. Generally, these lack the artistic polish of the hidden object levels and are less engaging – they come across as generic and familiar without any innovative twist or even the basic sense-pleasure that might make the experience novel or worthwhile. In one, you must click on a bunch of fast-moving sheep to make them jump over a fence without hitting it; in another, you must rotate a series of pipes to make them connect in a continuous line; in another, you play with a very simple musical toy, popping a series of bubbles to produce sound samples.

These are all good, basic mechanisms that have been used to produce highly successful and engaging casual games, but Pure Hidden doesn’t do much with them to justify the effort. It would have been preferable if Pure Hidden lived up to its name and was just purely hidden images, because the mixed-bag minigames dilute the game’s core strength: attractive, visually interesting hidden object collages with objects that are appealing, recognizable, and just difficult enough to find to create a challenge (with or without formal scoring).


(Reposted from Bluespace, my academic design blog)

You gotta do what you gotta do

You Have to Burn the Rope, a very short game with very well-defined goals. Do what you have to do, then sit back to enjoy end credits that are longer than the game itself. You've earned it, hero!

The Blue Beanie

The Blue Beanie is a new game by digital artist Daphne Lim, a student at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia, with music by Mark Holdaway. Inspired by Samorost, it's lovely new addition to the genre, a brief but beautifully executed piece with a gentle atmosphere of whimsy and woodland fantasy.

Thanks to Monalena for the tip.

Choose your own vignette

Game designer Daniel Benmergui of Ludomancy has been experimenting with some very interesting stuff. In some brief posts on the subjects of Experimental Gameplay and Defying Genres, he sounds the call for a radical departure from run of the mill games and tried and true mechanics, and his growing collection of innovative, unclassifiable game prototypes in no way belies these intentions.

I wish I were the moon looks to be the inauguration of a new genre. (Perhaps an inevitable side effect of successfully defying genres is creating them.) The game consists of a small scene of movable characters and objects, and how you manipulate them determines the outcome of the story. This is done with a camera which can take snapshots of the elements in the scene and place them in a new position, a kind of copy-paste mechanic. If there is a goal at all, it is to replay the game different ways in order to discover all of the possible endings — but Daniel freely admits that even this is a "gimmick", and the real point is simply to explore the emotional experience of the game.

While the underlying mechanic is unusual, the style is equally singular, with its simple pixellated graphics, dreamy, poetic atmosphere, and quiet, understated storyline, which is inspired by Italo Calvino's story The Distance of the Moon.





Storyteller is the next game to build on this mechanic. The gamespace is a triptych of three moments in time that tell a miniature fairy tale, and the characters can be moved around in any of the three timeframes to instantly change the outcome of events.





Third is The Trials, which allows for the elements to be duplicated instead of simply moved. This game, like its predecessors, explores themes of conflict, longing, and contentment.





Finally, there is Night Raveler and the Heartbroken Uruguayans, which also showcases similar themes (love, loneliness, loss), but with a new mechanic: you play an alien (?), floating around the city strategically cutting the lines that join people and letting new ones form. Some may find true love, and some may be left in the cold. As with the other games, this one is about exploring the consequences of your choices.





And this is why I suggest that Daniel has created a new genre: Gregory Weir of Ludus Novus has created (I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors, an intriguing game modeled on the style of I wish I were the moon, with a storyline inspired by Lovecraft. You play a tentacled sea creature who is revealed for the first time to the humans of the world above, its attention attracted by the enchanting colors of balloons, and the choices you make determine the outcome of this tricky first contact scenario.

Gregory has been kind enough to share an illuminating postmortem of the game in place of his usual column on GameSetWatch.

Last night I dreamed I was an immense beast, floating in darkness. I knew nothing of the surface world until I fell in love with the majesty of colors.

Fourth annual Halloween roundup

Happy Halloween, all. Here are some offerings in the spirit of the season. Enjoy.

Exhibits

A large collection of vintage Halloween postcards on Flickr.
Via Mira y Calla.






Spookshows.com is a treasure of vintage things suitable for Halloween, like this collection of vintage poison labels, or poster art advertising spook shows.
Via Mira y Calla.







The Art of Mourning is an excellent collection of antiques representing various funeral and mourning mementos and paraphernalia. There are also some articles about mourning art and practices through time.
Via Regina Noctis.









Cabinet Magazine visits the Museum of the Dead, a small church in Palermo that curates a startling display of preserved corpses.

There are no tickets and no reductions for this visit to the underworld. A fat, unspiritual, greasy monk just takes the money and throws it into a basket with unexpected abruptness. A guidebook I buy later dresses up the visit and, after a serious discussion of burial customs in different cultures starting in antiquity, talks about all the artworks lining the stairs going down into the catacombs. I don't notice these important paintings. It seems a minimal space, stripped bare of all pretense that what lies ahead is anything but grim.






Games

Ben Leffler is the talented designer behind the spectacular Exmortis series of games (1 and 2; there's also the horror short Purgatorium). I had hoped there would be an Exmortis 3 ready to offer you for Halloweentime this year, but no, it's still in development. There is, however, Goliath the Soothsayer. Rejoice. Play.
Walkthrough at Jay Is Games.





There's also a new sequel to The Bat Company's horror series, Atrocitys: Atrocitys 2: The Revenge. Point-and-click scarefest. Be warned, subtlety is not in their toolbox.





Scuttlebuggery is the latest flash oddity from super-stylish gothic design studio My Pet Skeleton. It's sort of like a game of liquid soccer played between beetles with drops of absinthe and formaldehyde. Is that clear?





In Zombie Inglor, you are an ordinary man who has been bitten by a zombie, and you have fifty days to find a cure. Saving the village from the zombie infestation would be nice, too. This is a neat little RPG game with adventure and combat elements, with some nice touches like day/night changes, weather, and fully voiced characters.
Via Regina Noctis.





How will you fare when the outbreak occurs and undead roam the streets? Take the Zombie Survival Quiz to test your fitness, wits, temperament, and knowledge.





Video

It's time for the annual pilgrimage to Childrin R Skary for the newest works from this prolific gothic animation studio. Check out the films playing in the theater, or visit author Katy Towell's non-Childrin site, Crookedsixpence.com, where you can find more movies like the gorgeously spooky Never Woke Up.







For a whole pile of Halloween-themed animation, check out Newgrounds Presents Halloween 2008, a Flash film fest and competition from the popular Flash gaming site with ten cash prizes for the best entries. Some notable entries:

The Dark Room is slow, dreamlike, and gory, and features some very nice background locations. Aside from that, it's hard to tell just what happened.





While it may not feature the slickest animation around, Vampiric Wit is a short, humorous entry that wins points for its clever premise.





.Alice. is a moody little piece, short on plot, that aims to recreate the effect of a horror movie haunted highway scene. Very cinematic in style.





Fear.net is a horror-themed video site that offers a mix of full movies, clips and excerpts, shows, shorts, and other videos. It's a slasher/thriller/horror lover's playground. Try the Halloween FEAR Fest for some seasonal fun.
Via Regina Noctis.

ADDENDUM: io9 has just posted a great list of several places to find free horror movies online in addition to Fear.net.

For more, check the "Halloween" label for past years' offerings.

Into the underground

City of Ember is a new favorite blog. Taking inventory of the world's tunnels, bunkers, cellars, caverns, and other dark subterranean locales, like the catacombs under Paris, the lavish Wielicza Salt Mine, or Darvaza, the Door to Hell in Turkmenistan, it's like a lushly-illustrated travel blog for the underworld.









The Entrance to Hell is a great Flickr photo pool full of mysterious portals.











Take your own plunge into the underground in CHASM, a very simple but satisfying game in which you must pilot a ship through a deep, narrow tunnel. The only thing I could have wished for was an option to reverse the Y axis, as my fighter pilot instincts inevitably kicked in whenever things got hairy and I'd plunge straight up or down into a wall, completely intending to go the opposite direction. May you fare better than I.





Under New York is an urban exploration site dedicated to exploring the dark, abandoned parts of the city. Most of the sites involve the metaphorical underside of the city, but there are quite a few interesting subterranean expeditions under Tunnels & Bridges. While the pictures are small and too few, there are a few gems — most taken looking back at the world above.