It's got me thinking as to when a game really becomes interesting, both for me as the creator, and potentially for other people. Fair warning: this turned out to be a bit of a rambling post really, maybe serving more as a place to collect my thoughts than anything else, but perhaps it offers some insight into my 'creative process', such as it is. And hey, it's written now, so up it goes :)
Since starting this blog, there have been a few times when I've started working on a game and considered writing a post about it. Perfectly fine in itself of course, but if there's no finished product to link to on the Games page, I wonder if it's really worth doing. My art skills leave much to be desired, and particularly early on during the creation of a game things are going to look extremely ugly and bare bones. In a few previous posts (here and here) discussing some WIP games, I also brought in other games, using screenshots from those for the title image and hiding my own stuff further in.
It's got me thinking as to when a game really becomes interesting, both for me as the creator, and potentially for other people. Fair warning: this turned out to be a bit of a rambling post really, maybe serving more as a place to collect my thoughts than anything else, but perhaps it offers some insight into my 'creative process', such as it is. And hey, it's written now, so up it goes :)
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The early 20th century naval management and combat game Rule the Waves (and their earlier combat only game Steam and Iron) was first brought to my attention through one of Tim Stone's excellent Flare Path columns on RPS. I tried and enjoyed the demo of Steam and Iron, but the talk of designing, building and organizing your own fleet of ships was what really enticed me, so I settled down to wait for Rule the Waves. Another Flare Path column (which also captures what's so exciting about the game wonderfully) alerted me to the release, and so here I am in charge of the Italian navy from 1900 to 1925.
I played Splinter Cell: Blacklist for the first time recently - running through some coop missions with a friend - and he, having played it before, advised me to be a bit careful with some of the upgrades you can purchase for your character, since they can make the game far too easy. It's been a while since I played a Splinter Cell (the third in the series might have been the most recent one), and while things have changed a fair bit, the basic gameplay principles were easy to pickup, and we had a lot of fun. But even as a relative newbie, looking through some of the upgrades it was easy to see what he meant.
Since my last Vietnam '65 AAR back in March, there has been a large update which looks like it might address the concerns I had about difficulty - there's a new level of AI, fog of war, and bad weather, along with various other small changes that look good. So I'm going back for another engagement.
While looking through some old GameMaker projects, I came across a fun little coop game I made some time ago. It's a tough tactical side scroller, where death comes easily if you make a wrong move. You've got good equipment and the enemies aren't smart, but they are quick to launch ambushes and have numbers on their side.
NOTE: I am aware the game is not in fact 8 Bit in any sense of the term, but I still think it's a cool name. You can download it from the Games page. |
What's All this then?I like making and writing about PC games - mostly strategy games. Expect after action reports, thoughts about design and gameplay, and maybe even a few prototypes. Archives
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