The Quixotic Engineer

A few weeks ago, the gents from the Moving Pixels podcast invited me to join them in conversation about League of Legends. League is an extremely popular free-to-play game in the style of Defense of the Ancients, and I’ve been rather hooked on it for the last few months. Jorge Albor, G. Christopher Williams and I discuss what we love (and hate) about the game, Riot’s clever business model, and the type of community that competitive games attract. You can download the podcast or subscribe on iTunes at the link below:

Moving Pixels – League of Legends

Since it’s been seven months since my last post, here’s a quick list of what I’ve been up to lately: I gave a talk at Juegos Rancheros (Austin’s indie game collective) back in November. Pax Britannica was ported to Montreal’s Arcade Royale and demoed at the Prince of Arcade showcase. Mostly, though, I’ve just been working hard on Starhawk (look for it on shelves May 8th!) However, all this does not excuse my writing hiatus; I’ll endeavour to resume regular blog cromulence over the next few months.

[Sona & Jax Lunar Revel fan artwork by RUshN]

While I’m not typically a shmup player, lately I’ve been enjoying a great indie shooter called Jamestown. It piqued my interest with its colonial Martian setting and beautiful pixel art. However, the game’s lasting appeal rests in the strength of its peculiar Vaunt mechanic.

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SpaceChem is a remarkable puzzle game about fake chemistry. The game challenges you to build a factory in order to transmute the given input molecules into the given output molecules. While chemistry is the theme, on a mechanical level it has more in common with programming. The methods used to tackle challenges in SpaceChem are akin to real techniques used by computer programmers. I’d like to elaborate on these manifold similarities, as well as explore how games like SpaceChem could be used to promote procedural literacy.

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If you follow me on Twitter or elsewhere, you may be aware that I moved from my native Montreal to Austin, Texas last year to work for a new studio called LightBox Interactive. We’ve been requisitely tight-lipped about our project until this last Friday, when we finally unveiled Starhawk to the community.

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I’m still not quite sure what to make of Deadly Premonition. Everything you’ve heard about it is true: it has atrocious combat, compelling mystery, laughable graphics, memorable characters, inappropriate music, etc. The game is full of fresh ideas and has stuck with me for months, but I still wouldn’t feel comfortable broadly recommending it. I would, however, like to examine one particular section of the game that I think was both absurd and oddly well-designed.

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