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Game Maker's Toolkit Newsletter - July 2016
🕑 Added 2016-08-01 07:22:46 +0000 UTC Hello! Apologies for the delay. Here's what I got up to in JulyPost Script
As always, we kick off with some thoughts on the month's videos.
Downwell's Dual Purpose Design
As I said in the video, I was pushed to make a video on the crazy elegance of Downwell after seeing people not even recognise the game in my video on controllers.
I've long admired this game, especially after watching Ojiro's GDC talk where he explained how the game came together piece by piece just by asking the right questions and coming up with smart answers.
The video itself was easy to make. It always helps when you only want to show a couple games. Unlike…
This one, which has loads and loads of games. Just getting all the footage took an age: including a few hours spent figuring out how to get 60fps, 480p footage out of a GameCube game. In the end I used a Wii to HDMI adaptor, and had to use some homebrew to force progressive scan output on my PAL copy of F-Zero GX.
The video turned out okay, but I forgot to learn my lesson from the death video I did ages ago. I think I should probably have focused on a handful of health systems and explained them fully, instead of briefly mentioning loads of different ones. Next time!
As I said in my update post earlier, I got quite stressed out trying to finish up this video before the end of July, which lead to the conclusion that I need to slow down before I explode.
Boss Keys - Link's Awakening and Ocarina of Time
Boss Keys is definitely the culprit. I underestimated how much time they'd take to produce (the same amount of time as a normal episode) and because of that I've literally doubled my output. Which was silly of me!
But I'm really enjoying doing this series and I definitely don't want to stop until it's done. It's getting a good response and I'm learning a lot about level design as I go.
Next time I need to talk about why I value non-linear design, as I got a bunch of comments dinging me for dinging Ocarina for being quite linear in its level design. A which is a fair criticism: non-linearity isn't anything. But I need to explain why I think it's a valuable commodity that's tied to the Zelda franchise.
Sneak peek
I don't really know what I'm doing this month. I'm gonna throw some ideas out there and let me know if any sound interesting:
Looking at different survival games to see how they handle different mechanics. A deep dive into why Mighty No 9 stinks. Something on emergent / sandbox games like Thief, Deus Ex, and Dishonored. More puzzle design stuff, perhaps looking at Limbo and Inside.
Open to ideas from you guys, also!
I'm also working on the Majora's Mask Boss Keys and looking forward to getting that out there. The map for the Great Bay Temple may end up being harder to make than the one I did for the Water Temple!
And this month I will be playing No Man's Sky and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (and Abzu, Grow Up, and Bound) so maybe some ideas will spark from those.
Mark's Month
Hopefully you saw my earlier post about my trip to Tokyo. That was an incredible experience. It also pushed me to start playing Yakuza 2. I gotta catch up!
I also spent a few days down in Brighton for Develop.
One of the games I played there was a truly bonkers Vive game called Unseen Diplomacy. It's a room scale game, but it cuts the playspace up into loads of tiny rooms.
So you might go through a door, take an elevator, or even crawl through a vent on your hands and knees.
It's interesting how despite the fact that there was nothing physically stopping me from just walking through a wall, I never did. My brain quite happily accepted that these were barriers and I should avoid them.
I also looked quite ridiculous crawling about, putting my hand up through fake laser wires, in the middle of a crowded conference hall.
I played some other bits, saw the folks from Edge (I still need to buy that new issue and scan my article), saw the students whose game jam I helped mentor, and saw some other press friends and developers. A good time.
In terms of games - and I'll go into some these more deeply in the Playlist for $3 backers soon - I enjoyed Insomniac's simple but comfortable Song of the Deep.
Ultra hard steam puzzler Snakebird and ultra stylish Vita dungeon crawler Severed are now on iOS and I'm digging them both.
I just started Quadrilateral Cowboy and that's a riot. It's like a slick spy thriller, but with programming. You have to write code to temporarily shut off doors and cameras, and then run through a maze as your leet hacking skills makes surveillance shut off just in front of you. It's fab.
I've also been playing Pokemon GO, but it's just not working out. Battery drain and server issues aside, the game simply isn't designed for countryside losers like me. Here's an article from me on that subject.
I completely missed Headlander, Death Road to Canada, Furi, I Am Setsuna, and others. Just aren't enough hours in the day!
I also may have my first consultancy gig this month. I can't talk about it, but if it goes through it will be crazy awesome.
A Thank You
Cheers for your supportive messages regarding yesterday's post about needing to slow down. A huge weight came off me when I got your messages and now I'm excited to start work on a new episode.
In retrospect, the stress is entirely related to Boss Keys and underestimating the workload there.
My remedy will likely be to slow that series down to one episode a month. But we'll see. Cheers!
Comments
I'm really looking forward to your next videos - these ideas sound great. What I would find really interesting to see is a video that details how videogames have developed in an artistic sense - what were the first games that didn't emphasise play itself as much as the actual playing experience? Casey Jones actually already picked up on that with his suggestion of doing a video about good/bad walking simulators - what little mechanics do they need to have to make the story they want to tell more than just an animated choose your own adventure book? But those are just things floating around in my head - keep up the good work and don't stress yourself out because of bosskeys - I love the quality of your content and would rather see less then to see the quality suffer because you don't have enough time :)
Just wanted to say thanks for what you're doing and to join in others encouraging you to take it easy. If Boss Key's has to get pushed to a longer development cycle for the sake of your sanity then its worth it. Anyway, thank you for your part in encouraging others to think critically about games and the systems behind them. Looking forwards to the future!
Game Maker's Toolkit
Yes, I thought a lot about the review thing and you're right - the SF0 approach is basically how I'm going to handle it. Look in depth at one section of a game, and focus on the design of it. As for those games: I haven't played either, but I totally should. I'll add them to the endless pile :) Suda 51, however, I've played more of his stuff. I'd like to do some episodes on individual designers' games, so he could be a good subject
Alex Bradley
We chatted previously about the likelihood of you doing game "reviews" as they pertain to a particular mechanic, the way Feminist Frequency reviews some games by glossing over graphics and gameplay by focusing on how it represents and humanizes its characters. You got pretty close to a "review" with the Star Fox Zero video you did. I'm wondering if you've ever considered taking a look at some cult-classic games (two of my favorites, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Killer 7, stand out) and explain why they appeal so much to the people who love them... Or, while we're on Killer 7, it'd be neat to look at a body of stylized work by a game designer and highlight some of those threads: Goichi Suda's games come to mind.
Re: the Health systems vid - I think that the health systems are apparent and widespread enough that the mass approach actually worked fairly well. It was good to see the width and variety (or lack of it) on offer. Really interesting topic - would welcome more in-depth!
Casey Jones
It's a very niche topic, but I'd love to see an analysis on what separates a good Walking Simulator from a bad one. And on the subject of games you may like to try: ADR1FT is a very worthy game to try out. It ends up overstaying its welcome a bit by the latter half of the game, but the first half really, really captivated me and does a ton of really, really cool things with just the basic mechanics of movement that all directly tie into Character Survival in a way that I've never seen done in a game before. Careful, controlled movement, brilliant sound design, smart path gating by way of accelerated loss of player stamina, and BEAUTIFUL vistas make the game really, really shine in a unique way. Worth checking out!
Game Maker's Toolkit
Thanks Kai - fixed! Patreon's HTML editor is truly hateful.
