What's coming up

Axel Lindberg

David Cage's games have almost non existant health but still manages to capture the essence of distress and panic by including more dramatic music or making the character you're playing suffer from it's consequenses (eg hurting yourself in Heavy Rain impacts your running speed during the last segment in the mill)

I'm loving the direction you're going with boss keys Mark!!! for games that use health in interesting ways you've gotta check out Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland where your currency and health are one and the same, it's a very interesting game that explores the money/health crossover in almost every aspect of it's design.

Health related: I was watching an interview with Matt Nava from Giant Squid at E3 2015 (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5x-XKyyZNU)" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5x-XKyyZNU)</a> he talks a bit about how they were using other systems that don't give you a "game over" state in Abzu, I'm assuming similar to the way it works in Journey (later in the interview a shark eats one of the player's drones). Journey is a good example of a health system where "losing health" doesn't mean you fail and start the level again, but you're still motivated to avoid losing health. Especially in the early game you learn to love flying and then all the forces that prevent you from flying feel extra oppressive in contrast. Perhaps there is some more footage from this E3 that has detail on Abzu's alternate systems. Just as an extra note on Abzu there's a great blog post they wrote on fluid motion (<a href="http://giantsquidology.tumblr.com/post/144615245984/fluid-motion-in-abz" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://giantsquidology.tumblr.com/post/144615245984/fluid-motion-in-abz</a>û). Anyway, health sounds like a super interesting topic, can't wait!

Hey Mark, if you want to talk about health in gameas, you could look at the two amnesia Games and their relation to health. In the first one you almost die instantaneous if a monster gets to you, whereas the second title "a machine for pigs" allows you to be hit by monsters and still live. I at least found the first one to be way scarier because of that

Games that do something different with health - well, Smash Bros' system is a fantastic alternative to HP bars in my opinion :-)

Ossian Olausson

I was completely enthralled when the Kojima Productions logo flashed up on the screen, and i heard the bombastic music. Hideo tells us that he doesn't give a fuck about Konami anymore and tells us to enjoy the cinematic right? then theres a naked guy on a beach (naturally i think Norman Reedus is the coolest guy in the world since i'm a AMC Walking Dead fan so i was pretty excited about that), and he has a baby and a cut on his stomach or something? And there's these flying guys in the sky and his blood is black(?) I didn't reeeally get it but i don't think that matters because it felt cool anyways like his work always does, i got somewhat of a grasp of Death Stranding, and boy am i excited. Grow Up seems pretty cool, couldn't really see what was different from the first one but nevertheless stoked about that and also the new Zelda seems spectacular, open world-esque definitely 'll be keeping an eye on that. C ya around Mark, good luck on these next videos!

Game Maker's Toolkit

Ah nice, haven't checked out Doom yet. I know Warhammer something or other does something similar but will definitely get my hands on Doom and check that out. Thanks Oskar!

Oskar van Velden

Hi Mark, For games that do something special with health, I think of the new DOOM. There you get health back when doing a melee-finisher (Glory Kill) on enemies. And of course the way how Bloodborne handled their health -with attacking quickly after receiving damage, results into getting some or your health back.

Game Maker's Toolkit

I'm not against it, but I'll probably just end up dissapointing everyone because what inevitably happens is I'll have an idea of what videos I want to do next, then I'll play something or think of something and get so excited about it I'll ditch all the other videos and do that! So if you guys picked a topic I'd end up delaying it for 6 months :P But I'm sure I can find ways of bringing in requests or voting in some way. Will keep it in mind. Did want to do this game club / book club thing, too, but keep being busy with freelance work.

Alex Bradley

This is unrelated to the question you asked, but... have you considered asking patrons to vote on some of your ideas ahead of time and setting your release order on that? It might not work because of a) the creative process, b) the amount of time you need to capture / edit the video, or c) not wanting to give away ideas that could be utilized by other creators or spoil the surprise of a new episode. Personally, I'd love to have the sneak peak and begin thinking about the future episodes / getting excited for them.

Alex Bradley

No spoilers, but hours of gameplay. I've watched the trailer and the amiibo trailers, but nothing else. Which sucks because I'm not getting a good look at the interface, but I really don't like that they're posting whole sections of the game, even if they end up being small in the grand scheme of the game's scale.

Dr Tenma

Mark, just to let you know, Nintendo has shown the new Zelda without any spoilers on propose (which it may not be the best way of showing it) so maybe you can even have a small look at it.