Monthly Archives: June 2012

Auro Kickstarter News Programming

Kickstarter Success, New Programmer and Auro Developments!

06/29/2012 – 6:56 pm

Our Kickstarter was a smashing success!  We want to say thank you so much to all those who contributed, as well as those who passed the link around.  Even though we hope we’d be able to make AURO either way, it’s really nice to know that there is a demand for a game like AURO out there.  If you know a little about our history, you might be able to see a bit of irony in us making almost exactly 15K for this Kickstarter (if you don’t know, the reason that it’s funny is expressed here).

Anyway, it’s great, and we’re super happy about the whole thing!  We learned a lot, so expect us to write some kind of “how-to-Kickstarter” type articles in the next few weeks.

New Programmer!

The other big news is that Cardinal Quest developer Ido Yehieli has left the team.  It was always sort of the plan to have him get us to this point of having a working alpha and a successful Kickstarter.  Ido is, like myself, a game designer at heart, and so he’s really got his hands full with his own exciting projects (you can keep up on them over at http://blog.tametick.com/ ).  Now that we’ve got the Kickstarter funds, we can actually pay a programmer.  We’re currently trying someone out for a trial period (and they’re doing quite well), so we’ll probably have an announcement about him in the upcoming weeks.

AURO Developments!

This whole time, we’ve been chugging away on AURO.  During the last month we’ve made a new tileset, designed and implemented an entirely new HUD, revamped how attacks work, redesigned the abilities several times over, and much, much more.  Here’s a screenshot of the new HUD design, if you’re curious (old tileset seen there).

This isn't the final hud ARTWORK, just the new layout. Old tileset shown.

So, a really big thing here is that we’ve done away with the “folders” setup that was there before.  This means half as much clicking is required to play!  Hooray for that.  But also, you’ll be able to see cooldowns counting down (or possibly filling up) after you use abilities.  This does mean that you’re limited to five disciplines, but I think that’s more than enough.  Also, you’re limited to two scrolls, but again, I think that’s actually a perfect amount.
So off we go!  Expect to hear big news and see big updates in the next month, which we hope will be the most productive month for AURO development ever.  News about the beta will be forthcoming soon, too.
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Culture Game Design

Why Mojang’s “Scrolls” Can Not Possibly Be Good

06/25/2012 – 11:51 pm

This article is addressed, largely, to those readers who are exclusively videogame-players, and haven’t entered the world of designer boardgames.  There really are two worlds, and each has their own understandings and knowledge and biases, a surprisingly small amount of which are shared among the two.

For instance, in the boardgame world, it’s pretty well-understood that Monopoly is a god-awful game (it’s ranked #8,009 / 8,025 currently on Boardgamegeek, which is basically the board-game Mecca).  You’ve probably noticed though, that with videogamers (and non-gamers), actually, the consensus on Monopoly is pretty mixed.  I’ve heard a bunch of people say they “love” Monopoly, despite the fact that there really isn’t anything there for an adult to love.

I’ve never heard a board-gamer say they “love” Monopoly.  The strongest defenses I’ve heard board-gamers give for Monopoly were things like “naw, it’s not *that* bad” or “it’s better than Candyland” or “the original version of it is actually pretty good” (which is silly, because that’s a different game).

Of course, it doesn’t matter how many people like or dislike something – but I think that people do have to be invited to question things, and if they’ve never met someone who feels a certain way about something, it can be difficult for them to wander down that path.  It’s even more difficult when all you’ve heard about “X” is that “X is awesome”, to come to any conclusion other than “X is awesome”.

 

Scrolls

So back to Scrolls.  Firstly, the gameplay itself looks pretty interesting – more interesting than 99% of any new videogames coming out I’ve seen.  Looks one part Heroes of Might & Magic, one part… well, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes.  Both of which I like… ish.

Honestly though, gameplay wise, this could be better than either of those.  There appears to be some system where you’re trying to attack the other player’s stones, which seems really interesting and could have a lot of emergent complexity.  I would absolutely LOVE to get a nice tactical online multiplayer game, with a healthy playerbase.  Like a turn-based Starcraft, or something – that’d just be fantastic.

So… why can’t Scrolls be good?  Because it’s a collectible card game (or CCG).

 

read more »

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Culture Game Design Hardware News

What I Want To See In Hardware

06/23/2012 – 10:01 pm

I’m not the only one who wasn’t excited by this year’s E3 presentations.  In terms of games, it was obviously bad.  Actually, it sort of feels like everyone just accepts that the software will all be bad every year, and it’s become this kind of meta-game of trying to come up with something to say about them.  Often, it will be some big discussion about something tangential to the actual software itself (like the recent hullabaloo over the latest Tomb Raider game).  Anything to keep our minds off of how our favorite hobby became a joke over a decade ago, was killed, and is now stuck to the bottom of our shoe like toilet paper.

But nevermind about the software.  Today I want to talk about the hardware.  Actually, though, I don’t want to talk about Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft’s hardware.  What is there to really say?  They’ve all missed the mark.  They’ve come nowhere near doing anything that would interest game-players (or game designers).

I may temper that a bit and say that Nintendo almost came close with the Wii U.  It was almost the right idea.

Oooh, SO close. Unfortunately the Wii U can barely support even two of these things

I’d like you to please imagine this very simple scenario…

Imagine you and three friends are sitting around in your living room, each with tablets in your laps.  Each tablet has its own controller attached to the bottom of it, and the screen is a large (slightly larger than an iPad, maybe) surface.  All four of you have one of these tablets in your lap.  They connect wirelessly with each other (just like a Nintendo DS does), and they can also be hooked up to your Wifi.

What’s so cool about this?  Mainly, two things:

 

Secret Information

When I first saw the Wii U’s separate screen, the first thing I thought was about the possibilities for secret information among players.  The idea that there could be one player who has game information that another doesn’t could usher in a whole new generation of actually new games.  People who play boardgames know exactly what I’m talking about.  Traitor games, simultaneous action games, Poker — really, any card game where you have a “hand” has an element of “he has some information that I don’t, and I have to try to figure out what that information is”.

This is an example of a hardware innovation that – unlike touchscreens and motion-waggle accoutrement and Sega Action Chairs – actually does invite incredible new kinds of gameplay.  Imagine playing a traitor game (for those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a cooperative game that has one or more “traitors” whose identities are hidden), in real time, for example. read more »

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Culture Review

On “Indie Game: The Movie”

06/12/2012 – 9:23 pm

It’s clear that Indie Game: The Movie is not a movie that was made for me.  It was made not for developers, but instead for people who really have no idea what an “indie developer” is.  In other words, most people.  That’s fine – I have no problem with one of the purposes of this film being a public declaration of the existence of the indie developer.

It may be a bit of a problem, though, that that’s just about the only clear purpose of this film.

To those viewers that the movie was made for, I’m speaking to you, now.  There are some things that you need to know.  Mainly, the following two things:

1.  Not all “videogames” are actually puzzle platformers, and

2.  Not all indie game developers are spoiled, depressed and pretentious

 

Puzzle Platformers

You may be sad to learn that this bold new wave of indie developers are still basically just tweaking the same game that you remember playing back in the 1990s or even earlier.  All of the games shown in the movie are just clones of older games, with a new theme, and some gameplay gimmick.  Also, if you go and look around on the internet, you may find that it’s really true!  Wow, there really are nothing but puzzle platformers everywhere!  The number of puzzle platformers getting made every year is staggering.

However, there are some digital game developers out there who are doing new, interesting things.  Chris Hecker’s Spy Party, Rodain Joubert’s Desktop Dungeons, Tarn Adams’ Dwarf Fortress, just to name a few.  It would have been great to see a little of that in the film.  Now, I do think that the growth of digital gaming is extremely stunted (for a few reasons that I’ve gone on about many times over), but other than a fleeting shot of Minecraft, the viewer would have absolutely no idea that digital gaming has advanced at all.

Actually, for years I’ve wanted to write an article addressing the “puzzle platformer” plague, but I never did, partially because I thought “okay, well, it’s so bad now, it’s probably going to get better.”  But it hasn’t gotten better.  Right now eight out of ten of the top posts on reddit’s IndieGaming subreddit are about (directly or indirectly), puzzle platformers.  People are excited about a new Abe’s Odyssey?  Really?

Now, I might be a bit biased here, because I don’t like puzzles.  But seriously, even people who do like puzzles have got to be getting tired of this by now.

 

Most Developers Are Normal People

Of course, it’s a movie, and so I do take the presentation of these “characters” with a grain of salt.  In fact, I’ll preface everything by saying that it could be that the people in this film were presented in a completely unfair way that made the appear to be nothing at all like who they really are.  I am only addressing the characters that I was presented with. read more »

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Auro Game Design Kickstarter

AURO: The Design Challenges of “Attacks”

06/07/2012 – 4:58 pm

We’ve been in a state of closed alpha for almost six months now, and in that time I have been really lucky to have the time I needed to nail down some gameplay stuff for AURO.  By the way: I have also posted this on our Kickstarter page, here.

The tactical skills, being a cornerstone of the gameplay, have always worked in the design, as a concept.  However, one of the big questions was:  What about attacks?  How should they work?  In the spirit of trying to take nothing for granted, I have posed the question, “maybe the player shouldn’t be able to attack at all, and just rely on disciplines.”  It was pretty clear that that wouldn’t work out.  The player needs some very easy, super-accessible way of defending himself that doesn’t require using a special ability.

On Health and Damage

The obvious, standard answer to what “attacks” should do is deal damage.  However, there’s an issue with that, regarding AURO.  Actually, I think it’s generally a sign of weak game design generally if attacking, something you’re doing extremely frequently in a game, has no effect except for “reducing the number of hit points the target has”, in a game where the goal is to kill enemies.  The reason that this is too direct.  It’s as though in Tetris, instead of having to get lines to get points, you could always just press “up” or something on a piece and trade it out for some points. read more »

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