The Quixotic Engineer

This weekend I committed to finishing a small Twine game I’ve been dabbling with intermittently for the last year. It may seem a little esoteric (and rather silly) if you’re unfamiliar with the game genre being parodied, but hopefully it’ll still convey the general idea.

You can play it directly in your browser by clicking the title below:

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The interactive fiction platform Twine has been around for many years, but recently it’s been at the centre of the DIY game creating movement. Rise of the Videogame Zinesters heralds it as an accessible development tool for those without programming experience. New voices are joining the game-making world, and the variety of Twine games is truly remarkable: personal games, satirical games, Kafkaesque games, sexual games, and many more.

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I’ve been feeling rather stealthy lately, playing through Dishonored and Mark of the Ninja over the last few weeks. Playing them back-to-back has contrasted them rather sharply in my mind, though neither title suffers for the comparison. Rather, I’d like to highlight how certain elements of Mark of the Ninja’s design align perfectly with how I like to play stealth games.

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This week saw the release of Valve’s new beginner-friendly level editor for Portal 2, dubbed the “Perpetual Testing Initiative”. Many have praised this new software for its accessibility, and have advocated it as an entry-point for first-time level designers. I had a chance to experiment with it a little myself, and I’d like to explore some of the specific principles Valve employed to create this remarkably approachable editor.

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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]