The Quixotic Engineer

This week I’ve been eating up all the coverage from GDC, scouring blogs and Twitter and attempting to live vicariously through the writers in attendance. The dozens of fantastic presentations have given me reading material for weeks, but I was especially blown away and thoroughly inspired by the Indie Games Summit. Jim Rossignol described 2008 as the year indie development “was confirmed as a vital, valid movement within the world of gaming”, a statement that is strongly supported by this year’s presentations. The excitement, potential and innovation coming from small development studios is simply staggering.

Inspired in part by Petri Purho’s “5-minute game” magic trick, I decided to see if I could put together a small functional game in the scope of an afternoon. I didn’t quite meet my time goal (for reasons I’ll explain below), but finally did put together a small game called Rockwell, Papyrus, Skia.

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How do you turn older gamers off a beloved iconic character like Mega Man? Reimagine him as a generic anime reject? Replace Dr. Light with a cast of plucky pre-teens? Add Pokemon-like collection elements? Take all of the above and you basically have the Mega Man Battle Network series.

While you could be forgiven for dismissing the game due to its designed-by-committee visual design, I contend that beneath its surface lies a unique and intriguing battle system that’s easy to learn but difficult to master. It’s a seamless mix of real time combat and strategic deck building that allows a skilled player to defeat a challenging enemy in seconds without taking a hit.

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I picked up a copy of Burnout Paradise last month, an open world racing game that’s over a year old now but is still commendably being supported by its developers. However, the timing of my purchase wasn’t by chance; I decided to take the plunge because the developers finally added the option to restart a race without having to drive back to the starting line. In my mind this was a major flaw, the one that made me initially lose interest and walk away from the demo. With that sorted out I could finally sit down and really enjoy the game.

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A discerning few of you may have noticed the distinct lack of major game releases post-Christmas. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest; I’m still savouring the haul from the Fall. However, if you’re looking for something new and different to play, I have a few suggestions from the world of indie gaming that are definitely worth your time.

Tag: The Power of Paint [PC]

Tag is a game designed by a group of students at DigiPen, and was a winner at the 2009 IGF Student Showcase. It’s a first person puzzle game wrapped in a shooter, along the lines of Portal. You are equipped with a paint gun, which you use not only to colour the bleak greyscale cityscape but also to explore the game space. Painting a surface green makes it bouncy, red increases your speed and blue allows you to stick to walls.

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Over the last few days I was given the opportunity to fly out West for an internship interview with a large Redmond-based software company. The interview was a really great experience and probably deserves its own post down the road, but today I have something far nerdier to talk about.

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