• #review
• #games
• #indie games
• #visual novels
• #interactive narrative

The so-called visual novel is a game format that’s very big in Japan and kind of obscure everywhere else. If you’ve never encountered one, you can think of the genre as computerised puppet theatre with a little bit of audience participation. They tend to be plot-driven affairs with enough gameplay to send a pure ludologist into a frothy rage (i.e. not very much). In the majority of these games, the player’s input is limited to clicking through dialogue and making CYOA-style choices every few thousand words....

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• #games
• #adventure games
• #interactive narrative

I usually don’t care too much about spoilers, but going into Life is Strange with no idea of what it was about, who the characters were or what the main themes or plot elements were led to some fun surprises. So if you’re in a position to do that, I’d recommend not reading any of this post below the image. To get it out of the way before we slip into spoiler territory – and I’m talking heavy spoilers – yes, I recommend this game. If you’re at all interested in...

• #review
• #games
• #indie games
• #interactive narrative
• #space sim
• #iji

I have a special fondness for space simulators. Two of the first games I ever bought online were Flatspace and Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, two very different interpretations of the idea that started with Elite in 1984. In all of these games, you pilot a spaceship and fly around the galaxy/universe doing whatever you want: exploring, fighting other ships, trading resources, and so on. Unlike many other genres of games, the actual gameplay implementation of a space simulator is extremely variable. In...

• #games
• #programming
• #interactive narrative
• #ludum dare
• #twine
• #post-mortem
• #gamedev

As promised in my previous post, here’s a bunch of stuff about the game I made for Ludum Dare 33. Minor, relatively vague spoilers ahead – play the game first if you’re going to at all, it’s pretty short. Ludum Dare, for the uninitiated, is a weekend-long game development event. The idea is to make a game from scratch – design, code, graphics, audio, etc – in a weekend. To facilitate this, each event has a theme that is only decided on right before the event starts. Ludum Dare...

• #games
• #interactive narrative
• #ludum dare
• #twine
• #gamedev

I made a game/story for Ludum Dare 33, a weekend-long game jam. The theme was “You are the Monster”, and so the game’s about being a volcano god. You have a city of human beings who make sacrifices to you, and if they don’t you make the volcano erupt and really spoil their day. It’s a hypertext work, so you read words and click coloured words, and that’s how you play it. You can play I Hunger on this very site, over here. The Ludum Dare page, for voting...