Anomaly Warzone Earth (PC)
Nifty take on “tower offense.” The formula grew a bit stale for me on PC because I felt like I didn’t have enough to do while I was waiting for my troops to reach the towers, but that might feel better on the iOS version where touching and panning is a bit more action-heavy than dragging a mouse.

Atom Zombie Smasher (PC)
The first of many Humble Indie Bundle pickups on this list, Atom Zombie Smasher is a charming top-down defense game. The presentation value sells the experience, much like in Firemint’s Flight Control. It’s a fun time-waster, worth the price of admission, but it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre so I don’t think I learned much from it as a designer.

Barkley: Shut Up & Jam Gaiden (PC)
Fantastic indie RPG that took me way too long to get around to playing. It’s absolutely hilarious from start to finish and features a battle system that rivals the Paper Mario games. You don’t have to be a sports fan to appreciate an epic drama in which the events of Space Jam are considered canonical.

Batman: Arkham City (PC)
It’s like Arkham Asylum, but more Batman-ier in all the right ways. Arkham City was probably my “game of the year” in terms of moment-to-moment joy while playing it. Again, like Saboteur and Assassin’s Creed, it gave me a map with a ton of dots on it, and I couldn’t rest until I had found them all. My only recommendation is to play it on console instead of PC – it’s quite buggy and isn’t worth futzing with the broken DX11 and Games for Windows Live features.

BIT.TRIP.RUNNER (PC)
This is really a rhythm game disguised as a “run forever” game. It’s one of the most unforgiving runners out there – the levels aren’t procedurally generated,  so if you screw up, you end up replaying the same stretches over and over again. It can get frustrating, but not in a terrible way. I intend to go back to it at some point.

Cave Story+ (PC)
This very loosely fits “HD remake”  criteria, but on the flip side, it’s the first opportunity to pay money for one of the best indie games ever made. I played the original Cave Story a while back and this version feels a bit more playable. It’s up there with other classic sidescrollers like Super Metroid and Mega Man in my book. Is there enough to warrant a playthrough if you’ve already played the original? Hard to say.

Child of Eden (Xbox 360 / Kinect)
I appreciated Rez but never loved it. I can’t even appreciate Child of Eden. I thought the gameplay consisted of waving my arms against the backdrop of an acid trip in addition half of the mechanics from Rez.

Civilization V (PC)
OK, I’m embarrassed. This was my first Civilization game. It’s just one of those franchises that, for whatever reason, I never got around to playing for myself. I played this one pretty front-heavy, going about 25 hours in my first week and then never touching it again. The pacing is a bit too slow for my liking but the strategy elements of the game are fantastic. I want to play it multiplayer, but I don’t have a group of friends that will sit and play with me for 12 hours (like Risk).

Deadly Premonition (Xbox 360)
A lot of people said this game was “so bad it’s good” in a B-movie kind of way. I got the bad part, at least.

Dead Space (iOS)
Dead Space’s controls are a pretty impressive blueprint for 3^rd person shooter controls on a touch screen. I transitioned to it after completing Dead Space on the Xbox 360 and I was right at home after a few minutes of experimenting with it. The game’s design leaves a lot to be desired – it’s rather formulaic, and if Doom 3 was faulted for having a lot of monster closets, Dead Space for iOS has monster rooms connected by corridors full of monster closets. Literally every other room in the game will close up with flashing red lights and throw waves of necromorphs at you that must all be defeated before you can continue. Those segments work OK in moderation, but it doesn’t fit the survival horror theme too well.

Dead Space 2 (PlayStation 3)
Dead Space 2 is a perfectly competent sequel. It’s highly polished and upgrades enough mechanics from the original game to feel fresh. It’s not quite the kind of jump I saw between the first two Uncharted games, but that’d be a lot to expect. Visceral made a third person survival horror shooter and beat Capcom at their own game  – when I forget Resident Evil 5 happened and consider Dead Space 1 and 2 to be RE4’s proper sequels, I’m a much happier person. One thing in particular that Dead Space 2 does better than the original is crafting unique atmospheres. A children’s daycare opens up into the silence of deep space. A quiet, eerie church leads into a marketplace where humans are frantically running for their lives. The game’s action sequences and shooting mechanics are good, but they wouldn’t be anywhere near as compelling without the awesome environments to explore. I appreciate their willingness to invest in new environments over new enemy types because enemies aren’t nearly as scary after you’ve figured out how to beat them for the first time.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Xbox 360)
This is a case of a game catering to my preferences so well that I don’t finish it. I’m super deep in sidequests and as a completionist it’s hard to move forward when I risk failing a quest that I can’t go back and do later. I’ll have to pick it up again soon. Maybe.

Dungeon Defenders (PC)
My experience with Dungeon Defenders went something like this: a friend of mine said “GO BUY THIS” and I said “OK” and then I logged in and played a game with his team and 45 seconds later my character gained 16 levels. I had absolutely no idea what was happening. I gave it another chance and started to learn the mechanics for myself, and now I can actually have fun with it. It’s only fun if you play with friends, but if you start off playing with friends, it’s really confusing because the XP system is completely broken.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (Xbox 360)
A lot of people berated this game for being an Uncharted ripoff. Naughty Dog’s recent hire of Enslaved’s design director tells you all you need to know about what they thought of the game. It’s not as good as Uncharted 2 but it’s absolutely worthwhile. From a story perspective, the game is probably stronger. The combat is a lot of fun and the environments are interesting enough to keep my attention. There were a few areas where I felt stuck (puzzles, bosses, etc) and the game didn’t help me along as much as I’d like, but considering it’s for a hardcore audience to begin with, that isn’t a total deal breaker. That lack of extra polish prevents a good game from being great.

The Gunstringer (Xbox 360 / Kinect)
If anyone tells you Kinectimals is the cutest game on Kinect, they haven’t played Gunstringer. The mix of live action and animated puppeteer scenes has a really cool effect. Unfortunately, my elbows started hurting about three levels in because I guess I take the pistol shooting motion a bit too seriously. That’s certainly a disadvantage to lots of motion controls – they punish the player for getting really into the game with arthritis.

Groove Coaster (iPhone)
Finally, a rhythm game for the iPhone that doesn’t suck. The music isn’t great – it’s a lot of j-pop, electronica, and garbled remixes from various Namco and Taito games, but it’s a good deal of fun to tap, hold, and drag along with the beats. I had absolutely no idea how the different ships and power ups worked, and I feel like I missed about half the game as a result, but it’s hard to complain when I got hours of enjoyment out of 99 cents.

Hanging with Friends (iPhone)
I find that hangman has considerably less appeal than Scrabble, so I don’t play this nearly as much as Words with Friends. The in-game items feel like cheating to me, and I feel dirty when I cave in and use them. It maybe takes the F2P model a bit too far for my liking. I still played it regularly for about four months before falling off, so props to Zynga. I just haven’t come back to it like I do Words with Friends.

The Heist (iPhone)
Super polished game with very little substance. The presentation is immaculate – “mission” updates are given to you by simulated phone calls that mimic the iPhone’s normal UI. The actual gameplay is  a compilation of four different games that could probably be found in the free section of the app store, but everything else is so slick that I don’t question my purchase.

The ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection (PlayStation 3)
I tried starting ICO again since I never finished it on PS2, but I didn’t finish it on PS3 either. I hopped into Shadow of the Colossus to play around for five minutes and put it down a few hours later. The framerate problems of the original are gone and that’s enough to make it worth another playthrough. It’s also the single-best reason I’ve found to own a 3DTV so far: the sense of scale created by the 3D effect in the overworld is really awesome, and some of the colossi battles feel even more spectacular.

Infamous 2 (PlayStation 3)
I couldn’t get into Infamous 1. I got through about an hour and a half of Infamous 2 before putting it down. I don’t know if it’s the camera, the combat, or what in particular I dislike about the series but it just doesn’t do much for me. I should probably do a decon on it at some point to see if I can figure it out.

Infinity Blade (iPhone)
For all the hype around Infinity Blade, I found the gameplay to be really bland. Sure, it’s pretty, but amazing 3D graphics don’t make a good game. Lots of people really like it, but it seems like a game about grinding to me. I don’t like many MMOs in part of the grinding either, though.

Jetpack Joyride (iPhone)
I picked this up after it went free because the description didn’t excite me – after all, I can only play so many endless running games in a year before I get sick of the formula. Turns out I was just a bit wrong – I’ve invested more time in Jetpack Joyride than any other iOS game this year, with about 14 hours in the month of December alone. The game’s presentation couldn’t be much better and it’s super polished. The addition of temporary vehicles and power ups to the runner formula make it feel new again, almost like a Halo to the last gen’s Goldeneye. Halfbrick is the team to beat when it comes to simple, addictive mobile games, and I’m anxious to see what they do to follow this up.

Killzone 3 (PlayStation 3)
I played Killzone 3 about as long as I played Killzone 2, which is about an hour. Something about the way Guerrilla Games designs their introductions totally turns me off. I’m not terribly interested in the story, all of the characters look/sound the same to me, and the gameplay doesn’t stand out much from its competitors. I have the same problem to a lesser degree with the Resistance series. One of the problems with my experience might have been the insanity of my setup: using the PlayStation Move controller guncon with 3D glasses felt pretty ridiculous.  The production value and AAA-ness of these games can’t be denied and I probably should just accept it’s not my genre.

L.A. Noire (PlayStation 3)
Yet another game I really wanted to like but couldn’t get through. The art and facial animations are as good as everyone says, but the gameplay is nothing short of boring. The detective mode feels like a poor man’s Heavy Rain and the driving has the trademark Rockstar Games DrunkOSteering that make you feel like even the smallest compact is a motherfucking semi. The interrogation scenes are a complete joke – they make the cycles between facial animations super obvious so you can tell when someone is lying. Someone wanted to make a movie but they made a game instead, and an entire studio suffered for it.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)
This is a game I really wanted to like. Skyward Sword initially looks and feels so much better than its cousins, but it quickly devolved into repetitive fighting with bad motion controls and slow crawling text. It also seems like Nintendo took the internet’s “LOOK, LISTEN” Navi memes and thought it meant we wanted more of it…because there’s a whole lot more of it. The game makes annoying pings and alert tones until you give in and allow it tell you something painfully obvious by way of precanned animations and more slow crawling text. For example, the above moment happens after the name of the new area has been displayed onscreen for about five seconds during an unskippible intro scene. Complete disregard for the player’s intelligence and time is a massive design failure that can’t be forgiven, even if it is part of a sacred franchise. Zelda games are stuck in the past and they need to at least start trying to compete with contemporary adventure games if they want to continue to be relevant.

League of Legends (PC)
I’ve got a decon on the way for League of Legends, but in the meantime, I’ll leave a few thoughts: I had no desire to start playing a DotA game this year, and I ended up investing more time into LoL than anything else. It’s my go-to multiplayer game and I have more friends who play it than anything else. I’ve also invested money into it despite being free to play. It seems Riot accomplished most of their design objectives and I’ll keep playing into 2012.

Little King’s Story (Wii)
A charming non-RTS akin to Pikmin meets Animal Crossing. Little King’s Story offered just the right amount of micromanagement for this genre. It constantly reminds you how Japanese it is, but it never tells you why it’s on Wii – it uses all of the buttons on both the Wiimote and the Nunchuck, but it doesn’t use the cursor or any motion controls whatsoever. It would have been better with a DualShock. Hopefully this will get re-released on PSN or XBLA so it can get a proper audience.

Lost in Shadow (Wii)
Winner of my award in the competitive “most clever use of shadows in a sidescrolling platforming game on the Wii” category, Lost in Shadow is a platforming game that cleverly uses shadows and gives 2.5D some meaning beyond a graphical style. The player controls a shadow and can only walk on shadows, so moving around light sources can completely change a room’s layout even though the foreground may remain the same. The difficulty curve is questionable, but it’s one of the most original titles of 2011 and worth a look if you can come to terms with dusting off your Wii.

Kung-Fu Rider (PlayStation 3)
My experience with Kung-Fu Rider was summarized by the “results” screen after I completed the first level, where the game displays pictures taken with the PS Eye camera intended to show how much fun you’re having. What I saw was my horrified face looking back at me, wondering what the hell I was doing. It hasn’t spent much time in the disc tray since then.

The Maw (PC)
Although I’ve been a pretty big fan of Twisted Pixel’s ‘Splosion Man, I never really got around to playing The Maw until last summer. It feels a little clunky - reminiscent of the middle era N64 platformers – but the cuteness of the characters makes it interesting enough to watch. The core gameplay is derivative of a number of other titles with buddy-buddy concepts, but it’s presented so well that it feels fresh. The puzzle design could have been better and it’s awfully short, but it is just a $10 game. Biggest design takeaway from this one was making memorable characters without using any dialog.

Mafia Wars 2 (PC / Facebook)
I have a bunch of friends at Zynga, and I check out the games they work on as they’re released. Mafia Wars 2 was one of those games. Although it keeps many of the CityVille / FarmVille mechanics, it also marks a significant departure from the standard Zynga compulsion loop. Play sessions last longer before you get blocked by energy requirements, and a variety of quests offer a sense of progression that the other games don’t have. Each individual system feels rather polished, but they aren’t stitched together in an obvious way. Much of the game’s systems can be enjoyed independently – building up your own turf, fighting other players, or completing missions are all valid ways to move forward. To some extent this lets players pick their own play style, but the systems aren’t compelling enough on their own for long.

Some of my contributions to the MPG Minecraft server.

Minecraft (PC)
Minecraft is a game about building things with blocks that destroys lives and ruins relationships. Check it out.

Ms. Splosion’ Man (Xbox 360)
Ms. ‘Splosion Man had the best opening of any game in 2011. I kept playing until I quit laughing, which wasn’t until about three hours in. I found it to be a lot tougher than its male counterpart from 2009, but It’s still a blast. Oh, dammit.

Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath (PC)
I missed out on the Oddworld games when they were released, so I picked up the Oddbox on Steam to check ‘em out. Stranger’s Wrath was a pleasant surprise. I’ve seen it described as a love-it-or-hate-it kind of game, in part because it’s different from the other Oddworld games and in part because the controls are so different from any other game. It successfully employs a first AND third person camera, and requires the player to constantly switch between them. There’s a definite learning curve but it’s also proof that such a system can work. The weapons are super inventive too. Every part of this game was somewhat memorable, but perhaps that was because it was my first Oddworld experience.

Outland (Xbox 360)
I really wanted to love Outland. It’s the bastard child of Ikaruga and Prince of Persia stuffed into a Metroidvania game. The art style is absolutely beautiful, but the game stalls after the first hour and a half or so. The puzzles go from being clever to being unnecessarily difficult, and it begins to feel like the developers ran out of mechanics. I might go back and finish this one eventually, but I’m only willing to invest a certain amount of effort into difficult platforming sections when platforming isn’t your game’s primary focus.

Orcs Must Die (PC)
It’s rare to see a tower defense game with so much character in any given year, but 2011 gave us two. Orcs Must Die is essentially a single-player only Dungeon Defenders with better animations, more imaginative towers, and a lot more levels. Although it’s hard to play one without comparing it to the other, I found both games to merit a playthrough on their own.

PAYDAY: The Heist (PC)
PAYDAY felt like Left 4 Dead without a soul. Maybe I’m getting a bit soft, but replacing zombies with cops bothers me when I can recognize the formula as something that usually has zombies. Some of the levels were well-designed, but most of the mechanics they introduce to the formula are ho-hum at best. Something feels arbitrary about the design when your equipment jamming is more dangerous than a SWAT team spraying you with fire.

PlayStation Move Heroes (PlayStation 3)
Where on earth did this come from? A game featuring the protagonists from all the best Sony platformers seems like a win on paper, but Heroes is doomed from the start with an unnecessarily complicated control scheme. It’s essentially a mini-game collection with a loose story that stitches together the different events…but even as a mini game collection, it doesn’t stand up to Sports Champions on its own platform.

Portal 2 (PC)
Some people said the single player campaign was too short. I think it might’ve been a little too long. The co-op was just right. Not much to say here because if you’re taking the time to read a developer’s blog, you’ve probably already played it. If not, why are you wasting your time reading this?? Portal 2 is one of those games that everyone should play.

Rayman Origins (Xbox 360)
This game could also be sold as “joy on a disc.” In fact, it might have sold better that way. It’s a quirky niche title – like most Michel Ancel games – and it’s an absolute blast for anyone who isn’t scared about the prospect of a 2D platformer being released as a full price retail game. The inventive level design is surpassed only by the hand-drawn art style. I wish it had online co-op so I could actually finish a co-op session of the main game, but that isn’t a reason to skip out on one of 2011′s best titles. I’m thrilled to see Ubisoft taking risks like this as a developer and publisher, and I’m deeply saddened it wasn’t financially successful.

Revenge of the Titans (PC)
Cute tower defense game with a pseudo retro style. Another Humble Bundle pickup, another game devoid of innovation but full of polish and hours of fun that justify owning it.

The Sly Collection (PlayStation 3)
I missed out on the Sly Cooper games back on the PS2, but as a fan of platformers and stealth games, I picked up the collection shortly after it came out. I was surprised that the game is rather unforgiving in earlier levels, given its kid-friendly appearance. But as someone who develops kid-friendly games, I appreciated the amount of depth in the gameplay. It’s every bit as good as the Jak and Daxter games, but perhaps not as good as Ratchet & Clank.

Sonic CD (iPhone / Xbox 360)
As a longtime Sonic fan, I picked up this “port” on both platforms. I hesitate to call it a port since it was a complete rewrite with a new engine, but hey – the backstory behind its development is almost as enjoyable as the game itself. It controls surprisingly well on a touchscreen, but when I played to get all the achievements and a full completion I used my Xbox controller. I’d love to see more classic games revitalized in this style.

Sonic Colors (Wii)
For those not in the know, I used to be a huge Sonic fan. I ran a pretty big Sonic website back when I was in middle school but couldn’t stay interested after Sega released a series of absolutely terrible games after the turn of the millennium. Every time the media says “this game is a return to Sonic’s roots,” I’m tempted to check it out, and Sonic Colors eventually became too tempting to pass up. It’s not bad. It’s better than any other 3D Sonic game before it, but it’s not without its annoyances. The 2D sections are well thought out and the new power ups actually add something to the experience. The 3D behind-the-back sections are still problematic thanks to the use of the Wii Remote’s d-pad, but it works a bit better with a retro controller. Games should not use digital input for 3D movement. It doesn’t work – I thought we figured this out back on the PS1, but apparently some people at Sonic Team have forgotten. Still, I think most games would be entertained enough by Colors to make it worth grabbing from a bargain bin.

Sonic Generations (PlayStation 3)
If Sonic Colors is “OK,” then Sonic Generations is “good.” It still has some flaws with “death by camera” and other silly issues that have plagued the series for years, but Sega essentially made two good games here instead of one great one. Parts of the game’s design seems kind of dangerous on paper – it alternates levels that use two different control schemes with the same character – but the presentation is slick enough to make it flow somewhat seamlessly. I picked it up and launch and have no regrets – it’s probably not as enjoyable if you don’t have the nostalgia factor for all the old levels, but it’s still a very solid effort and I’d be perfectly happy to buy more Sonic games with these controls.

Sports Champions (PlayStation 3)
Sports Champions might’ve been a good game if it was possible to play it without comparing it to Kinect Sports. As it stands, it feels rushed and kind of empty. Only a handful of the games are worth playing more than once. Bocce ball is fantastic, frisbee golf is pretty good, and I could see myself maybe playing ping pong again, but aside from that, it seems more focused on showing how the Move controller is different from the Wii Remote than it does being a good game. Whereas you have stadiums full of colorful characters cheering for you in Wii Sports and Kinect Sports, Sports Champions’ levels take place in empty outdoors environments where you hear nothing but birds chirping and the occasional wind gust. Could be great for an exercise game, but for a party game, I tend to want a little more excitement.

Terraria (PC)
It’s 2D Minecraft! It’s 2D Minecra–oh, wait, it’s actually more than that. Terraria is like Minecraft meets Castlevania, with a bigger focus on exploration and combat than building. In fact, I almost completely ignored the building in Terraria despite exclusively building in Minecraft. Shows what just a few design differences can do to differentiate a game from the ones that inspire it.

Tiny Tower (iPhone)
This was the only social game I played for more than a few days this year. I kept up with Tiny Tower for about a month. The visual assertion of growth found in building a vertical tower  was highly satisfying – I always felt like I knew exactly what my goal was and how I could achieve it – and the micromanagement of each resident was also a welcome change from other games that replace that kind of depth with an opportunity to make you invite real world friends. Tiny Tower stands a strong iPhone title regardless of whether or not you put money into it and doesn’t feel like a cash grab nearly as much as some of its competitors.

Tiny Wings (iPhone)
This game was my go-to time waster on iOS for the first half of the year. It’s also a really cool indie success story – one guy makes a game alone and it skyrockets to the top of the appstore, making him set for life. The art is nauseatingly cute, the music is catchy, and the gameplay is tight. You can’t ask for much more in a 99 cent game.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (PS3)
Since moving to LA, I’ve made a bunch of friends at Naughty Dog and I saw firsthand the sweat and tears that went into making Uncharted 3. It’s an absolutely beautiful game and offers thrills from start to finish. I think they went overboard in a few areas – I often feel like Drake is drunk when controlling him in crowded areas, where he puts his hands on everything in sight – but if you’re looking for an immersive, cinematic experience, you can’t do better than Uncharted. It’s much more of a playable movie than something like Heavy Rain and has amazing technical merits to go along with it.  The gunplay is fun, the puzzles are well-designed, and, as with its predecessor, the multiplayer is surprisingly deep. Like the summer blockbusters it mimics, it lags a little bit towards the end, but finishes with a bang and leaves you with a smile on your face.

Vanquish (Xbox 360)
I played about three hours into Vanquish on its “hard” difficulty and had little trouble until hitting a particularly tricky boss. After about 20 tries, I reluctantly lowered my difficulty level to “medium” – forfeiting my achievements for the playthrough – and tried again. It didn’t seem any easier. I lowered to “easy” and still couldn’t beat it. Hitting a brick wall like that is just about the worst thing I can experience in a game, which is a shame because Vanquish was a lot of fun up until that point. The game is super polished but it’s hard to go back to when I put it down at such a low point.

VVVVVV (PC)
This indie darling was clever, and had some tough-as-nails puzzles, but like Super Meat Boy I fail to see the appeal for more than a few minutes. Maybe that’s why it’s $5? I have a lot of respect for the dev, but I’m not terribly excited about these kind of games because they pass “crazy difficulty” off as “good design.” Yes, the game is designed reasonably well, but the best design is found in games that take complicated puzzles and make them accessible (read: Portal, World of Goo).

World of Goo (iPhone)
Like Plants vs. Zombies, I find new ways to buy World of Goo every time it comes out on a different platform. I’ve actually bought this one twice – the SD version on my 3GS and the HD version on my new 4S. It’s already a classic as far as I’m concerned, and I go back to it whenever I want to relive a lesson in the joy of simplicity. And it’s only $0.99!

]]> http://holdenlink.com/2012/01/what-i-played-2011-edition/feed/ 0 http://holdenlink.com/2011/04/a-students-guide-to-getting-into-the-games-industry/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-students-guide-to-getting-into-the-games-industry http://holdenlink.com/2011/04/a-students-guide-to-getting-into-the-games-industry/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:55:39 +0000 Holden http://holdenlink.com/?p=901 There’s one question other students ask me more often than anything else: “How’d you get your foot in the door?”

The economy sucks. Companies say they aren’t hiring. There are a ton of job search tools out there, but none of them seem to help. Sometimes we don’t even get automated responses to our applications, much less any feedback from an actual person. Yet somehow, some people are still getting jobs straight out of school.

I’m one of the lucky few, and now that I know where I’m going, I’ve had time to reflect on how I got here. There’s no clear-cut path to getting in, but there are plenty of things you can do to improve your chances – hopefully my experience will help somebody else.

Create an Online Portfolio

Way too many people wait until just before they graduate to make a portfolio and toss it online. You should do this as soon as you start college and add to it every semester. Add class projects. Blog about your experiences. It’ll make networking easier down the road.

Shell out the ten bucks a year for a real domain name. It looks a lot more professional and it’s easier for people to find. If you can get your domain to match your name, it’ll also raise your Google karma. If you’re a programmer, producer, or designer, it’s completely fine to use a prebuilt theme for a content management system like WordPress. If you’re an artist, you can still use something like WordPress, but you should think about customizing it to show off your skills.

Use your website as your opportunity to craft an experience that displays exactly what you want people to know about you.

Network Early

A lot of students seem to think that networking is the hardest part of the job search process. You don’t start off by knowing the the CEO of a major game company or someone who has the ability to directly land you a job. It’d be nice, sure, but it isn’t realistic.

Start off by getting to know your fellow students. They’re a fantastic foundation for networking. I made a game with someone on my dorm hall during my sophomore year, and he landed an internship. When I applied to the same company, I had the reputation of being “the guy who worked with the other guy,” and that went a long way in helping me get my first interview. It made me memorable to the recruiter because I associated me with someone who the company already knew to be qualified.

If you get to know a lot of your fellow students in your first and second years of college, you’ll end up “knowing people who know people” by your junior and senior years.

Make Something

Be the person who instills everyone with a drive to do something. Find a group that you really liked working on a project with in a class? See if they want to continue the project after the class is over. Find other people who want to make games. Start small, set a goal, and try to reach it. Maybe you just make a Flash game with a couple friends over a weekend. Don’t know how to make a Flash game? Find someone who does or find other people who want to learn how. Not interested in making a full game? Try making a mod.

A lack of programming skill isn’t an excuse to not make something. I’m a terrible programmer, but I still “made” an XNA game and released it on Xbox Live Indie Games in my second year of college. I worked with two student programmers and compensated for my lack of programming skill by being a designer, music composer, and artist. I wasn’t great at any of those tasks because I didn’t have any prior experience, but I was great at getting the programmers excited about making the game. That’s really all that matters for your first project.

If you wait to make a game until you have to make one for a class, you’re probably starting too late. I’ve heard a lot of students say they don’t have time to develop a game outside of class. I can assure you: you have time, you just have to be disciplined. If one guy can develop one game a day for 219 days straight, you can find the time to make one game over the course of a semester. Set deadlines and milestones if you have to. Use the IGF or Indiecade deadlines as a goal for getting something accomplished. If you really enjoy developing games, it shouldn’t a problem. If you’re worried your grades will suffer…well, you’re probably right. I wasn’t smart enough to do well in classes without studying for hours on end, so I chose to let my grades drop so I could make games. It worked out well for me and everyone else I know who did the same. Obviously you don’t want to flunk out of school, but you’ll learn to prioritize.

There are a few ways to do this wrong: don’t be the programmer who thinks they can do everything on their own. Occasionally you can, but you’ll be a much more attractive candidate for that first internship if you can show that you’ve worked on a team. Don’t be the designer who just has this great idea that will totally work and be successful if people would just make it. The reality is that programmers and artists, the people who make your ideas come to life, have ideas of their own – and often they’ll be better than yours. Real designers spend more time listening to feedback and refining ideas from their peers than they do designing things on their own.

Finish Something

Recruiter: “I see on your resume that you worked on a game called Project X.”
Student: “Yeah…I was making that for a while but I felt like I could do something better so I moved on and now I’m working on Project Y.”
Recruiter: “Oh, ok. That’s cool.”
Student: “Yeah. It will be.”
Recruiter: “OK.”
Student: “Yeah.”

This is where most students fall off track – they have a resume with tons of projects they’ve worked on, but nothing they’ve truly “finished.” Finishing one project and releasing it to the public is much more impressive to a recruiter than working ten times as long on four or five unfinished projects. It means you’ve successfully gone through an entire development cycle. You’ve started with an idea, executed it, and seen how consumers reacted to it. Starting a project is the easy part – it’s fun and exciting. Making all the content, fixing the bugs, and polishing the experience is the part that sucks the life out of you. It’s repetitive and often frustrating. But you’ll also feel much more accomplished when it’s actually finished.

Releasing a game can be as simple as uploading something to your personal website or Kongregate. Platforms like Facebook, iOS, Android, and XNA make independent distribution easier than ever, and as a result, it’s becoming more and more of a requirement for getting a job out of school. You know all those “entry level” job postings that say “minimum 1-2 shipped titles?” These count!

Feedback on your first game will probably be brutal. That’s OK. It doesn’t need to be good. In fact, it’s almost better for it to be bad. You’ll learn a lot more by having people tell you why your game sucks. Some people have the opposite problem – they’re afraid to finish a game because they know it isn’t perfect. The truth is that your game will never be perfect, and it’s OK. Games can be fun even if they aren’t perfect. If it isn’t fun, wrap it up and release it anyways – get feedback from players and figure out why it wasn’t fun, then fix it or move on. There’s a lot to be said for playtesting and polishing the user experience, but for your first project, being good isn’t as important as being shipped. You’ll learn from your mistakes and do things better the next time around.

Know What’s Happening

Do you want to make the next Guitar Hero? That’s great, but unfortunately no one wants to buy the next Guitar Hero. Be aware of industry trends – you need to know what games are popular and what games are failing, not just which ones are good and bad. Read a little bit of gaming news daily, if only for 15 or 20 minutes. Don’t just read one site, either: use something like GameTab so you can see which stories are popping up on multiple sites. That’ll tell you what the industry as a whole is buzzing about. Check out VGChartz every couple weeks to see what the best-selling games are. Read news sites like Gamasutra that are more business-oriented. As you start looking for a job, it’ll be really valuable to know that the company you want to work for just had a ton of layoffs or a company you hadn’t previously considered is opening up a new studio down the road.

Play Lots of Games

This is really important for designers and producers. There’s a big difference between playing games a lot and playing lots of games. Don’t play the same game for 100 hours. You might really like Call of Duty, but playing it past the five or six hour mark isn’t going to do a lot to make you a better game developer. If you only play games you enjoy, you won’t know “what not to do” when you’re making something new. This doesn’t mean you need to spend more time playing games – you can play ten different games for five hours a week instead of playing Team Fortress 2 or Minecraft for an hour a day. If you find a game you like and you want to play it longer, go ahead! Have fun, but learn to recognize when you reach the point where you’re no longer getting anything out of a game.

Playing a lot of games isn’t that expensive if you do it right. If you want to buy games used, go ahead, but even better than that for your budget is buying “new” games a few months after they come out. You can get just about any game for half of its retail price if you’re willing to wait. CheapAssGamer is an awesome community for finding deals as they happen. Goozex is a huge step up from GameStop if you want to go the used game route. GameFly is also a great alternative if keeping a physical library isn’t important to you.

Do you only buy games for PlayStation and think the Wii and Xbox are the embodiment of all evil? Tough. Get over it. Play games on every console. There is no single platform that gets all of the best games, and few employers are interested in hiring someone who only wants to make one kind of game for one platform. It’s OK to enjoy obscure JRPGs or play a lot of FPSes, but make sure you play the occasional platformer or random indie game too. I’ve been asked what kind of games I play in every interview. Being able to say “just about all kinds” and list three or four very different games is a good thing if you can do it honestly. It shows that you have a comprehensive knowledge of game conventions and that you’ll be able to pull from your mental library for just about any design or implementation problem.

You should also begin linking games and franchises to different developers and publishers so you can recall who does what in the industry. It’ll make networking with people a lot easier if you’ve heard of or played the games they’ve worked on, and it’ll help you recognize studios when they have job openings. It’s not as hard as it sounds, particularly if you keep up with industry news.

Go to GDC

Attending the Game Developers Conference is the best networking experience a student can get. Yes, it’s expensive. You’re already paying to go to school, though, and this will help you a lot more than any of your classes.

Start off by applying for the GDC volunteer program and the IGDA scholarship. If you don’t get in, it’s OK – you can still find a way to make it work.

Before you go to the conference, do the following:

• Make business cards with your name, field, phone number, and website. Print them yourself if you’d like – you shouldn’t need very many.
• Print a dozen or so copies of your resume. Most companies at the expo won’t accept paper resumes anymore, but it’s good to have them just in case.
• Research the companies you’re interested in working for that will be at the conference, and figure out why you want to work for them. Companies are not impressed with people who go around to every booth to see who is hiring. If they have to tell you about what their company does or what games they make, that’s not a good start. The GDC website offers a list of all the companies in attendance a few weeks before the conference every year.

If it’s your first time going, get an Expo Pass. Enjoy the sights and sounds, schmooze around the career pavilion, and have fun. Most importantly, do your research and find out where the parties are. The worst-kept secret of GDC is that the best networking happens outside of the conference halls. You’ll never find a better atmosphere for meeting people. Most people really like to talk about themselves, and a party with an open bar is a great environment for starting a conversation. Exchange cards with everyone you talk to – you probably won’t remember names the next day.

Your chances of landing an internship or job while at GDC are actually quite slim. Most companies at the career pavilion will tell you to submit your resume online and wait for a response. That hardly means the career pavilion is useless – use it as an opportunity to make yourself memorable to the recruiters and follow their instructions. Ask if there’s anyone in your discipline around from their company that you can talk to and learn more about their studio culture. Get their business cards so you can email them directly to stay in touch and reiterate your interest.

When you get home the week after GDC, pull out that stack of business cards and find out who you just met – use Google, MobyGames, or anything else you want. It’s OK to tell someone that you looked them up and found out they worked on your favorite Genesis game back in the day – in fact, it’s a great icebreaker. As a student in particular, you’re in a great position to ask for feedback on your personal projects. How cool is it to be able to say that you had a designer from a big studio playtest your game and offer ideas? You aren’t wasting their time by asking, and you’ll be surprised at how willing most people in the industry will be to help you out.

Never Stop Networking

Networking is more than meeting people – it’s about learning how to stay in touch. Facebook and Twitter are particularly helpful with this because they do a lot of the work for you, but don’t be afraid to send the occasional email. Again, this is a young, casual industry, and it’s completely acceptable to email someone who has the job you want with a question or favor to ask. You’ll probably find them asking you questions from time to time too.

Too many students wait for internship or job opportunities to hit them in the face - a flyer on campus advertising a company visit, a professor sharing a job opportunity with a class over email, etc. Take those opportunities when they come, but also reach out to companies on your own. Do you have a classmate or a friend who did an internship with a company you’d want to work for? Ask for an introduction. Don’t be afraid to email people. Worst case scenario is that you won’t get a response. Start this process early on – preferably as soon as you have a portfolio that you feel comfortable showing. Your school might have some sort of online system for finding jobs, and it might help, but be aware that you can bypass it and talk to directly to employers if it makes you more comfortable.

Closing

If you’ve done most of these things, you should be well ahead of the pack for getting that elusive internship or job offer. There’s no 100% guaranteed way to get your foot in the door, but I can say with confidence that the methods above can only do you good. Never stop networking or making things. Keep trying and you’ll land on your feet.

If you have anything to add to this article, please let me know! If you disagree with something, let me know that too!

Update: Fellow Tech student Dan Spaventa offers some complementary advice on things that many people take for granted:

“Be Passionate.” A big mistake I made early on and I see a lot of people make is talking/writing to people too mechanically. It’s important to get across just how serious and passionate you are about making games and your general love of game development …and you can’t necessarily do that if you are writing a generic John Deer letter to whoever it is you are trying to express interest to. Keep some level of professionalism in the letter or conversation, but never try to talk as someone you think they would hire rather than yourself who you are going to convince them to hire.

“Be confident.” Not everything you make is going to be the greatest game ever, or will come out exactly how you expect it. Be proud of your failures and be able to learn from them rather than feel sorry for yourself or push them under the rug never to talk about them again. If you don’t think you are good at what you do, how do you expect people in the industry to think so? I know when I went into my second interview I had the crazy eye. I wanted that job more than anything and I made it clear that I wanted it and was best suited for it by being passionate and confident about everything I had said.

“Be realistic.” Shoot for that dream job at game company X, but don’t be afraid to start out small and build experience at another company so that you may actually be an ideal candidate later down the road. Don’t just apply to blockbuster AAA companies and expect to nail a job as content designer or something ridiculously out of reach for an entry level designer. Still shoot for those positions, but also look to smaller companies and projects like Mom and Pop’s iPhone game development company.

Update (2): Lots of great feedback coming in. Former Pandemic / EALA software engineer Neil Mehta adds:

I want to echo one of Dan’s points: be passionate. When I interviewed people at EA and Pandemic, I was looking for 3 things: fit, communication skills and technical skills (in that order). Considering that there will be some weeks where I’m spending more time with you than with my girlfriend (weekends included), you’d better be worth it.

Resources

Here are a few links I may have mentioned in the article above along with some others that are generally helpful to have. If you think I’m missing something, please add suggestions in the comments.

Game Creation Tools

• Unity - http://unity3d.com/
  Unity is a widely-used 3D game engine that offers a free version for students and hobbyists. There are also a ton of great tutorials available for it, along with a busy forum community with a reputation for being kind to newbies.
• App Hub / XNA Game Studio - http://create.msdn.com/en-US/
  XNA is Microsoft’s free development platform for Xbox Live Indie Games and Windows Phone 7. They have some great resources for helping you get started too. Microsoft also offers free XNA subscriptions (needed to test / publish games on the Xbox) through MSDNAA (if you school offers it) or DreamSpark. And even if you don’t qualify for the free subscription, the annual free is under $150.
• Flixel – http://flixel.org/
  Popularized after the release of indie-darling Canabalt, Flixel is a great framework for Flash if you’re looking to create a 2D sidescroller. It has a very active community and offers compatibility with lots of existing tech. You also don’t need the expensive Flash suite to develop with it!

Indie Game Contests (Student-Friendly)

• Global Game Jam – http://globalgamejam.org/
  If you do one thing on this list, do the Global Game Jam. It only takes 48 hours of your life and you’ll (likely) have a playable game to show for it.
• Independent Games Festival – http://igf.com/
  The IGF is the most well-known of the indie festivals.  It’s free for students to enter, so why not? Deadline is usually in October or November, so it’s good for fall semester projects.
• Indiecade – http://www.indiecade.com/
  Another good festival with a big showing at E3. Indiecade’s deadline is usually in May or June, so it’s better for spring semester projects.
• Indie Game Challenge - http://www.indiegamechallenge.com/home/
  A relatively new contest, this one has less “prestige” than the others but has the biggest cash prizes thanks to its sponsorship by Gamestop. They have a non-professional / hobbyist category that works well for students.
• Dream Build Play – http://www.dreambuildplay.com/
  If you’re making an XNA game for Xbox 360, you should absolutely enter this contest sponsored by Microsoft. Winners have a shot at getting their game on Xbox Live Arcade.
• Experimental Gameplay Project – http://experimentalgameplay.com/
  For less-traditional games (or an exercise in prototyping), check out the Experimental Gameplay Project. They have monthly development contests for games made in seven days or less. Lots of good stuff has come out of here, like World of Goo and Henry Hatsworth. (Thanks, Lamine!)
• Ludum Dare – http://ludumdare.com/
  Another ”make a game in 48 hours” competition, but with a bit more structure. (Thanks, Lamine!)

Game Developer Blogs

• HobbyGameDev - http://www.hobbygamedev.com/
  Maintained by indie superstar Chris DeLeon, HobbyGameDev is full of great articles offering inspiration for any type of game project. There are also some interesting game criticism articles – similar to my deconstructions, but on a much higher level. 
• Wolfire Games - http://www.wolfire.com/
  Wolfire is perhaps better known for starting the Humble Indie Bundle than they are for their own games, but you won’t find them complaining about that. They’re one of the few developers to keep a devblog that highlights the day-to-day development of their upcoming title. It’s easy to read and the developers are often online to chat with.
• Extra Credits – http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits
  Well-written critiques of gaming culture with occasional tidbits of job advice. Not a “real” developer blog, but an awesome series nonetheless.  

Gaming News Websites

• Gamasutra – http://www.gamasutra.com/
  Generally regarded as the top resource for industry news, Gamasutra is operated by the same group that puts on the Game Developers Conference. It comes in a variety of flavors with network sites for mobile, indie, and digital games. There’s also a handy job search tool that may or may not be of use for you.
• EvoTab – http://www.evotab.com/
  Great game news aggregator by Reed Lakefield, original creator of the still-great GameTab. You can customize which sites it shows with ease, and it does a great job of letting you compare headlines from sources across the net. I prefer EvoTab for its lack of intrusive ads and easy color scheme, but take your pick.

Here’s the second entry in what I’m trying to make an annual piece – a complete list of every game I remember playing in the previous year, along with a few impressions about it. I especially enjoyed comparing this list to last year’s to see how my gaming habits have changed (more on that in a future post).

Alan Wake – Remedy (Xbox 360)
As someone who was never a huge fan of Max Payne, I was more interested in the game’s perceived similarities to Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space. The “use light to kill” mechanic was really cool for the first few hours before it became tedious and repetitive. I was also disappointed by the script and the plot – it seemed to think it was a lot smarter than it was, and I guess the developers expected it to carry the experience when the gameplay couldn’t. That said, it’s original, it’s beautiful, and it’s very playable – that is to say there aren’t many bugs or control issues. This fits nicely with Resident Evil 5 as a good game that could have been great. Finished: NO

APB: All Points Bulletin – Realtime Worlds (PC)
Read the decon for my detailed impressions.  I had fun with APB despite its flaws. Looking forward to seeing what changes are made when it relaunches later this month. Finished: N/A

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood – Ubisoft Montreal (Xbox 360)
This is actually the first Assassin’s Creed game I’ve played for more than an hour or so. After hearing so many people talking about it for the last two months of the year, I decided to pick it up right after Christmas and I haven’t been disappointed. I love it when open world games give me a map with a bunch of dots that represent things to do outside of missions – I feel like I don’t have to make the commitment of time to continue the story but I can still make progress, and Brotherhood excels at offering a variety of small tasks. I’ve sunk about 12 hours into the single player and I’m less than 40% into the story, and I still haven’t touched the multiplayer. Finished: NO (still playing)

Bayonetta – Platinum Games (Xbox 360)
January / February was a crowded release window for arcade beat-em-up games, with Bayonetta falling in last places for sales against Dante’s Inferno and God of War III. The production value of Bayonetta reminds me of Metal Gear Solid, and the gameplay is familiar to any Devil May Cry fan. I’m not a big fan of the genre, but I had fun with this game for a while. The gameplay is fun, even if it occasionally results in button mashing, and the presentation couldn’t be much better. I don’t really know why I put it down…probably just not my genre, but I would highly recommend it to any God of War fan. Finished: NO

Castle Crashers – The Behemoth (Xbox Live Arcade)
This is the first of many games I played this year that came out a while ago, but for whatever reason never got around to playing until now. I played through most of Castle Crashers with some friends at Tech, and it was a blast as a four player arcade game. It does such a good job of making each player feel valuable that I haven’t played it since because it’s hard to get the same group of people together to play it. Finished: NO

Cut the Rope – Zepto Labs (iPhone)
The iPhone was my top gaming platform in 2010…which I find simultaneously embarrassing and awesome. It’s embarrassing that I was completely and totally addicted for a game called “Cut the Rope” for a while, geeking out about its masterful use of simple mechanics to create fun, complex puzzles. It’s awesome that we’re in a day and age that for under a dollar, over 100 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners have access to a fantastic game that’s simple enough for anyone to play, but deep enough to attract seasoned hardcore gamers. I can’t wait for the next update. Finished: YES

Darksiders – Vigil Games (Xbox 360)
I’ve told a lot of people that Darksiders is the best Zelda game I’ve played in years. I don’t care if a game borrows heavily from an existing title as long as it manages to be better than its source material. Darksiders is a rare example of that actually happening. It’s a Zelda game, complete with dungeons and a new weapon or accessory every hour, combined with the combat system of God of War. So what if it’s not original – it makes the player feel like a badass for 15 hours without overstaying its welcome.  If it doesn’t define “sleeper hit,” I don’t know what does. Finished: YES

Defense Grid: The Awakening - Hidden Path (PC)
I picked this up because I had heard good things and it was cheap in a Steam sale. It’s a very simple tower defense game with all the mechanics you’d expect, but it’s amazingly polished. The “speed up” and “checkpoint” functions should be in every game in the genre – unlike most defense games, Defense Grid doesn’t punish the player for failure by forcing repetition of parts that have already been completed. If you fail on wave 49 of 50, it’s ok – you can just start back at wave 45 instead of restarting everything. I ended up buying the DLC so I could keep playing. Finished: YES

Galcon – Phil Hassey (iPhone)
I bought Galcon after watching a friend play the iPad version. Although the experience isn’t quite the same on the iPhone, it’s still an addictive little strategy game. Penny Arcade called it “Space-Risk in real time,” and that’s pretty much what it is. The online multiplayer functionality is particularly impressive for the iPhone, and it’s become one of my go-to games when I have a few minutes to kill waiting for a bus or train. Finished: N/A

Global Agenda: Sandstorm – Hi-Rez Studios (PC)
As the latest subscription-free MMO on the market, Global Agenda doesn’t have a clear identity. It’s really three games in one, loosely connected by a “social” overworld. PvE and PvP missions are confined to their own maps outside of a persistent game world. The bulk of the game, the mercenary missions, feel like rounds of Team Fortress 2 more than they do an MMO. That’s not a bad thing, mind you – it’s a lot of fun – but it’s not really clear what the developers were going for here. This is a fun multiplayer shooter with an MMO slapped on top of it. Finished: N/A

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars – Rockstar Games (iPhone)
It’s GTA on the iPhone. At the time, it was a showcase for what the platform was capable of. Now that Infinity Blade is out, it’s just another top-down iPhone game. It’s a lot of fun, and it doesn’t feel like much was sacrificed in the transition to the touch controls. The problem is that it doesn’t do a good job of dealing with being on a phone. If you get a call in real life during an in-game mission, say goodbye to your progress. Finished: NO

The Incident – Big Bucket Software (iPhone)
I don’t know how to describe The Incident. It’s…odd. I liked it. Here’s a video. Finished: N/A

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks – Nintendo (DS)
Spirit Tracks takes the repetitive open-world sailing segments of Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass and transforms it into a series of repetitive on-rails segments. The dungeons are good fun, but everything in between felt tedious to me. I put about five hours into it before putting it down. Finished: NO

Lego Rock Band – Traveler’s Tales (Xbox 360)
I actually have a half-finished decon on this one sitting around that I should wrap up someday, but this game became my go to Rock Band game for a while. It has a fantastic set list for the population of the world that doesn’t like metal, and the campaign elements add depth to the series that Rock Band 2 didn’t come close to. The simple addition of a “rock den” was enough to make me play songs I didn’t care about just so I could earn enough money to decorate my virtual space with Lego-fied rock staples. It pales in comparison to the stellar Rock Band 3, but it’s a great pick up now that it’s sitting in bargain bins all over the place. Finished: N/A

Limbo – Playdead (XBLA)
I didn’t like Limbo as much as everyone else. It’s not a bad game, but I certainly didn’t think it was brilliant or even one of the top XBLA games this year. Who knows, maybe I’m just missing something. I wrote about it here. Finished: YES

Machinarium - Anamita Design (PC)
I can’t resist anything labeled as an indie darling. Machinarium is a point-and-click adventure game – a genre I’ve only gotten into in the past few years, but it’s different from the other ones I’ve played in that it isn’t comedy-driven. The art is beautiful and often carries the game, and its ability to convey emotion without dialogue is Pixar-esque. It’s perhaps too difficult in some parts, but I found myself still wanting to experience more of the game’s world every time I got stuck so I invested the time necessary to figure it out. It’s a must play for fans of the genre. Finished: YES

Mad Chad - Rock Software (iPhone)
This is a pretty standard runner I bought simply because I’m an Ochocinco fan. The premise is cute, the gameplay is polished and functional, but the graphics and sound leave a lot to be desired. It’s only $0.99, but considering what else $0.99 can get you on the App Store, it’s probably not worthwhile if you don’t care about the character. Finished: YES

Madden NFL ’11 - EA Tiburon (Xbox 360)
The defining characteristic of this year’s Madden is the commentary by CBS announcer Gus Johnson. He’s much more exciting than previous announcers, but almost to a fault. The game goes from being an awesome football simulation to being hilarious when Johnson’s tone shifts so radically from play to play. “Second down. He drops back. FIRES DOWN FIELD!!!!! …and the pass falls incomplete.” The critics will tell you that the real defining characteristic is the new Gameflow play calling system, where the game essentially calls plays for you. To be quite honest, it seems like somewhat of a natural evolution to me, and the fact that it’s still optional means it isn’t as big of a deal for gameplay as everyone makes it out to be. Finished: N/A

Mass Effect 2 - Bioware (Xbox 360)
I was one of five people on the planet who were disappointed by the first Mass Effect. My friends told me about a sprawling space opera with deep worlds and emotionally compelling gameplay, and I breezed through it in about 11 hours when Bioware said it had 60 hours of content. Clearly I’m not their target audience. Mass Effect 2′s combat was significantly more polished, and I found myself doing more of the side quests just because I wanted to level up my gear before the big boss fight. When I got to one boss, I paused, saved the game, and did my laundry. Then I returned a day later and beat it, only to watch the credits roll. Apparently I missed out on this emotional connection somewhere, because I thought the game was approaching a turning point rather than a final battle. Apparently I’m not the kind of person who should play Mass Effect, but that won’t stop me from getting the third game this year. Finished: YES

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom – The Odd Gentlemen (PC)
I passed up Winterbottom on XBLA. For some reason, the art style really turned me off. It seemed cheap rather than stylized. Playing it on my laptop, though, I got over it and found a thoroughly enjoyable puzzler underneath. The graphics grew on me too. My only gripe is that the puzzles aren’t so much a test of wit as much as they are a test of skill – meaning you just have to be good with a controller to beat them. I would have preferred more of a balance between the two, but then again, maybe that’s what Braid is for. Finished: YES

Monday Night Combat – Uber Entertainment (XBLA)
From the previews, I assumed MNC would be a cheap Team Fortress 2 rip off. Although it isn’t revolutionary, and certainly isn’t my go-to game for Xbox Live multiplayer, it adds more to the genre than it appears at first glance.  It borrows mechanics from DotA and Team Fortress without remorse, but defines its own identity in the process with its sports-arena setting and humor. Worth a try if you’re a fan of quality downloadable titles. Finished: N/A

NCAA Football ’11 – EA Tiburon (Xbox 360)
NCAA ’11 is significantly better than NCAA ’10 in that it actually compares to its contemporary Madden counterpart. The new lighting engine creates the kind of graphical leap expected from a new hardware cycle – far beyond the annual iterations the series is used to. In terms of gameplay, not much has changed. My biggest gripe with the series has been and will always be that it pales in comparison to Madden’s production value. Although they try every year, Tiburon hasn’t really nailed down the feeling of a college stadium on gameday. Finished: N/A

Osmos – Hemisphere Games (iPhone)
I didn’t “get” Osmos on PC, but it hooked me on the iPhone. I’d like to buy a beer for the designer who came up with the game’s touch controls – it’s the only time I’ve seen two and three finger touches work well without getting confusing. This is actually the only game that has made me wish I could play it on an iPad, because it would probably be even more beautiful there. Finished: YES

PixelJunk Monsters - Q Games (PlayStation Network)
Although it lacks the addictive quality of PopCap’s tower defense below, the main attraction of PixelJunk Monsters is hidden in its co-op play. I played through a good chunk of the single player campaign and put it down before a friend introduced me to the co-op, and it feels like a completely different experience. It’s couch strategy at its best, and easily worth a pickup if you have someone to play it with. That said…it’s really damn hard. Finished: NO

Plants vs Zombies - PopCap Games (iPhone)
I had already bought this game on the PC, but the idea of getting zombies off my lawn while I’m out and about seemed appealing. The port made the game feel like it was made for touch controls, and some of the touch-exclusive parts were a lot of fun. Finished: YES

Plants vs Zombies – PopCap Games (XBLA)
I had already bought this game on the PC and iPhone, but the idea of getting zombies off my lawn with a friend while getting achievement points seemed appealing. The port made the game feel like it was made for the Xbox controller, and the multiplayer parts were a lot of fun. PopCap, care to make me buy this game on yet another platform? Finished: YES

Poker Night at the Inventory – Telltale Games (PC)
The gameplay in this one is nothing special, but the presentation is worth the entire $5 asking price in itself. Telltale succeeded in making me feel like I was sitting at a table with Tycho, Max, Strongbad, and the Heavy. Their banter and shit-talk is truly hilarious, and the sheer amount of recorded dialog is staggering. I played for about four hours before any repetition became noticeable. That said, it’s only worth picking up if you like poker and you like one of those characters. Finished: N/A

Prince of Perisa: The Forgotten Sands – Ubisoft Montreal (Xbox 360)
This game came out right about the same time as Disney’s Prince of Persia movie, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that hurt sales. The game is much better than the movie and can be picked up for less than the cost of the movie’s DVD. The single player campaign lasts about eight hours and introduces a few cool mechanics to the Prince of Persia universe, such as freezing water and restoring ruins to their former glory for short periods of time. It couldn’t be more different from the series’ 2008 artsy outing, but I had a lot of fun with it. Finished: YES

Puzzle Agent - Telltale Games (iPhone)
Puzzle Agent is what you get when you take Professor Layton and make it the puzzles less fun. Graham Annable’s art is awesome, the story is cute, and the environments are interesting, but the actual puzzles are uninspired and more confusing than clever. It’s probably the only game by Telltale I wouldn’t recommend to a friend. There’s a ton of potential in a sequel, though, because the puzzles were self-contained from everything else. Make good puzzles and I’ll gladly take a second serving. Finished: YES

Red Faction Guerrilla – Volition (PC)
Red Faction has always been about blowing shit up, and Guerrilla doesn’t disappoint. The ability to destroy entire buildings is a lot of fun and no game does it as well as this one. Unfortunately, the rest of the gameplay must have not been very special because I don’t remember it. I played through a good chunk of the game before moving on to something else. Finished: NO

Robot Unicorn Attack – Adult Swim Games (iPhone)
Open your eyes, and read the decon. Finished: N/A

Rush - Two Tribes (PC)
Rush is an addictive puzzler that flew under the radar towards the end of the year from Toki Tori developer Two Tribes. I picked it up in the Steam Holiday Sale on a whim and had fun with it for a while. It’s kind of like a 3D Chu Chu Rocket…if that makes any sense. Finished: NO (still playing)

The Saboteur – Pandemic Studios (Xbox 360)
I had a weird love affair with The Saboteur. I put over 60 hours into it, completing every single mission the open-world game has to offer, and I wanted more. I recognize it has a ton of flaws, and because I’m writing a decon on it I won’t go into too much detail here. To make a long story short, I think it was a game made just for me. The setting was fantastic, the core compulsion of sabotaging Nazi installations all over Paris was exciting and addictive, and the main character was likable. I’m literally the only person I know who loved this game, much less finished it, and I know some people think less of me for doing so. Hopefully I’ll figure out why by the time I post the decon. Finished: YES

Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse – Telltale Games (PC)
I’ve been a big Sam & Max fan ever since Telltale took over the series, and The Devil’s Playhouse was the best season yet. Getting a notification that a new episode was available each month was like finding Christmas morning in my inbox. The writing was significantly better than Telltale’s previous efforts, and the puzzles themselves were more clever than ever. I for one enjoyed the new control scheme as well, which took the series away from its point and click roots and made it more controller-friendly. I can’t wait for Season 4 to be announced. Finished: YES

Scribblenauts - 5th Cell (DS)
“Write Anything, Solve Everything” is a pretty damn big tagline to live up to, but Scribblenauts delivered. It has a massive vocabulary of objects that you can interact with to solve puzzles. Unfortunately, the nature of the puzzles means you can “write any number of a set of 10 words” to “solve everything,” as just about every puzzle can be solved with the use of a jetpack, a ladder, or a gun. It’s a really cool concept and the production value is staggering, but the puzzles don’t live up to the concept itself. Finished: NO

Shadow Complex – ChAIR (Xbox Live Arcade)
Lots of people seem to like this game. I thought it was more of a tech demo for how developers can use Unreal 3.0 as an engine for something other than first person shooters. Then again, I’m usually not big on the Metroid-vania genre as it is unless I’m playing Metroid or Castlevania (which flies in the face of my Darksiders praise, but whatever). The characters and the environments are really uninspired. I mean, really, who remembers the name of the main character from Shadow Complex? Anyone? Finished: NO

SimCity Deluxe - EA Mobile (iPhone)
Unlike The Sims, SimCity works well on the iPhone. It’s essentially SimCity 2000, and there wasn’t a lot from the PC version sacrificed here. I’ve accidentally lost my save data a few times because the game expects you to explicitly save (come on guys, ALWAYS do autosave for mobile!) but the controls are usable without making too many mistakes. Props to the UI designers for coming up with something that works with touch controls – color me impressed. Finished: N/A

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I – Dimps / Sonic Team (PS3)
I could bitch and moan like the old Sonic fan I am about how the physics are messed up and the level design isn’t right, but this is a great step towards bringing Sonic back into relevancy. The bosses in particular were well designed. I just hope Episode II doesn’t go backwards. Finished: YES

Splinter Cell Conviction - Ubisoft Montreal (Xbox 360)
Conviction is the first Splinter Cell game I’ve actually finished. The bigger emphasis on combat was a welcome shift to me, and even though I like “stealth action” gameplay, I get frustrated when games penalize me for enjoying the “action” part. With the exception of a couple missions, Conviction doesn’t do that. The co-op campaign and standalone missions are fantastic as well, and its split screen support for the dying art of couch co-op is very appreciated. Finished: YES

Split/Second – Black Rock Studio (Xbox 360)
Split/Second, also known as “Michael Bay’s San Francisco Rush,” is exhausting to play. That’s the biggest compliment I can give a racer that prides itself on capturing the feeling of speed. I was unable to play it for more than an hour at a time, but I slowly worked my way through it and learned how to deal with the massive explosions and obstacles flying towards my vehicle on every lap. It’s not “better” than Burnout, just different. Finished: YES

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – Blizzard (PC)
StarCraft II is a very safe sequel to StarCraft, which by many accounts was the greatest RTS ever made. I haven’t grown addicted to Wings of Liberty like I did Brood War, but I don’t think that’s any fault of Blizzard’s. The single player campaign has fantastic production value and stacks up well against the story modes for any genre. The online ranking system is reasonably well designed, but some players find ways to manipulate it by dropping out of games and taking advantage of certain win/lose conditions. Given another year of tweaking, this could become my go-to PC game. Finished: NO

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Nintendo (Wii)
This could very well be the best Mario game ever made. That doesn’t mean it’s the one I enjoyed the most, but it’s very difficult to name things I didn’t like about it. I wish it had more “new” content that hadn’t been explored in the first game, but it’s still a joy to play from start to finish. Finished: YES

Super Meat Boy – Team Meat (Xbox 360)
This is the opposite of Super Mario Galaxy 2 in that it’s a complete horror to play from start to finish. Super Meat Boy is unrelenting in its difficulty, and some of its challenges are just plain sadistic. The fact that it has the addictive compulsion to play “just one more level” makes it even more dangerous. When I play Super Meat Boy, I feel like I’m simultaneously being entertained and subjected to torture. It’s brilliant, terrible, and absolutely stupid in every way. Try it. Finished: HELL NO

Super Quickhook – Rocketcat Games (iPhone)
Super Quickhook is the spiritual successor to Hook Champ, one of my favorite iPhone games of 2009. I found Quickhook to have less charm overall, but the gameplay was more challenging and complex. I kind of want to see where Rocketcat takes the series next…it appears to be moving more towards Angry Birds than Bionic Commando like I had hoped, but then again, Angry Birds sells a bit better… Finished: NO

Trainyard – Matt Nix (iPhone)
“Trainyard” is far too simple of a description for the mind-bending puzzle game it titles.  The puzzles start out manageable - draw a line from one train depot to the next – but then get really confusing when multiple trains, different colored depots, and overlapping tracks get thrown into the mix. It’s a fantastic brain teaser – every bit as clever as Cut the Rope – and I’d like to see more stuff like this on the app store. Finished: NO

—

That’s it for 2010. Keep in mind that these are merely my opinions, and I’m not claiming to be any sort of an expert critic. Looking back is a useful exercise for me to identify trends and mechanics that are working across the entire industry, and hopefully I’ll be able to implement some of them in my own projects. Onward to 2011!

But you might also remember a time when the game was the one of the most anticipated titles around – back when it was revealed at GDC 2008, in a presentation by GTA creator and RTW CEO Dave Jones. That presentation happened to be the first talk I ever attended at a GDC, and it left an impression on me. I remember the entire room erupting with applause and cheers every time they showed a new feature in the character customization system. I remember the people around me instantly calling it a “WoW killer.” Then it suddenly disappeared from the media, and we heard almost nothing about it in the two years between that talk and its release. I’m not an MMO fan, but I really looked forward to APB.

I was working at Visceral Games when it came out this summer, and everyone in the office was shocked by the beating it took on Metacritic. We all wanted to play it to see the damage for ourselves, but due to the reviews none of us wanted to actually buy it. The cycle of doubt fixed itself when my lead presented me with a copy of APB as a going away present on my last day of work. I played it, analyzed it, and tried to come up with some insights that can be gained from it.

APB: All Points Bulletin

Developer: Realtime Worlds
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Genre: Shooter / MMO
Metacritic: 58
Price: $49.99
Subscription: $7/20hrs or $10/month

Background
APB is the first (and last) MMO by Crackdown developer Realtime Worlds. It places players in the city of San Paro, a modern metropolis where criminals roam the streets and everyday citizens have been given the go to bring them to justice. Players can choose which side to align with – “enforcers” or “criminals” – and do their part to eliminate the other faction. The premise is simultaneously obvious, awesome, and vastly underdeveloped for the genre. Cops vs Robbers is fun, and you could say the theme has proven to be mildly successful in games, so why not make it into an MMO?

World
Remember the description above, where I said San Paro was a “modern metropolis?” APB only lets you visit three areas of it, none of which are terribly large. The game has two “action districts” (Financial and Waterfront) and one “social district.” The action districts are where you’ll find PvP gameplay, and the social district consists of very little socializing but is free to play and doesn’t eat up game time. It’s also where you go to buy items for your character. The district select menu comes up when you login to the game, and it pretty much sticks to expectations for the game’s overall lack of polish.

The social district looks fine, and has a few cool features to boot. It reminds me of the few things that don’t suck about Second Life in that players can buy ad space on billboards with in game currency, create content such as clothing designs and songs, and sell them in a marketplace. I found its layout to be somewhat annoying because it forces the player to run from one end to the other to go from customizing a car to customizing a shirt. If players actually spent time there talking or doing in-game activities, it might be different, but as it was, it was nothing more than silly filler. It spits in the face of the MMO’s fiction, claiming that “nobody knows how or why” there’s no fighting in it, but sure, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

The action districts are where actual gameplay happens, and where players spend their prepaid game time. I’ll elaborate more on the gameplay in a  bit, but the world’s themselves deserve a bit of attention here. Both action district maps are fairly small, but they’re very well designed. The layouts are intuitive and make for interesting fights and cover situations, with a focus on navigating both the interiors and exteriors of buildings, from the basements to the rooftops. They feel like the open worlds they need to be. Graphically, they leave a lot to be desired – they’re rather bland in comparison to the player-managed social district, and the environment looks particularly out of place when filled with player-created content like avatars and cars.

Customization
With its robust customization engine, players only have to take the APB as seriously as they want to. The character creator lets you be anyone from a jacked-up, tatted-out gang member to an overweight soccer mom, and the car editor lets you make a matching sportscar or minivan to boot. The game features multiple editors that can be accessed from different computer terminals in San Paro’s Social District. If you haven’t seen a demo of this customization engine before, you owe it to yourself to check it out:

APB puts every other game with a character editor to shame. I was previously enthralled by the editor in City of Heroes, and this makes it look like a piece of crap. It’s absolutely unbelievable how easy it is to make something awesome with the tools they give you. I spent over an hour creating my character before I even got into the game because the designer in me was having so much fun.

It’s even more unbelievable to me that this piece of the game is so polished and feature complete in the face of everything else. It feels like a completely different game.

Gameplay
At its core, APB is a driving and shooting game.  Reviewers complained that neither driving nor shooting controlled particularly well, and therefore it was broken. It’s true that the controls are a bit weird, but then again, it’s an MMO. I can live with a little bit of lag if everyone else is having it too. The controls aren’t too bad if you take the time to get used to them.

Perhaps the bigger problem is that there isn’t a lot of variety outside of driving and shooting. In the game’s tutorial, you run up to a fence and press the “F” key to vault over it with a fluid animation. Then you walk up to a door and press the same “F” key to diffuse a bomb – an animation so laughably bad that the character sometimes even faces the wrong way or doesn’t touch the bomb in question. I’m not knocking the game for using context sensitive actions, but when you find out that nearly every mission in APB is based on running up to doors and holding “F” or preventing someone else from holding “F,” all with terrible animation, the game’s world falls apart.

When inside an action district, you press a “ready” key to be able to receive missions. Sometimes it takes as long as five or ten minutes for a mission to be delivered to you, and there’s nothing to do in the interim apart from customizing your weapon loadout or exploring the environment. You’ll either be assigned to a group mission, start a new mission, or sent to prevent an enemy team (cops or robbers) from completing a mission. This is where the game shines.

Being sent out to prevent other players from completing objectives feels great. Players from all over the city are called to a central location via the GPS. You can hop in a car with another player or drive on your own. There’s a ton of strategy for players to use, and teams actually have to work together to accomplish anything. A team trying to complete an objective might send someone out on the rooftop of a building to scout for enemies, and a team trying to stop an objective might try to flank the target site from multiple angles to prevent access. APB delivered on its promise with that experience.

If you die, you respawn close to the action. Fail cases are objective-based in relation to targets on the map or in relation to what are essentially miniature team deathmatch games, such as a case where the first team to 10 kills wins. Respawning so quickly feels odd in an MMO setting, but reveals the game’s deathmatch roots. That’s really all APB’s gameplay boils down to – team deathmatch inside an MMO, but it brings out the best in team deathmatch.

The game’s brilliance fades as quickly as it comes. Once one team wins, all players become neutral again regardless of team affiliation. There are obvious gameplay implications for doing it this way, but if the fiction and the gameplay demand for me to arrest or eliminate criminals as an enforcer, it doesn’t make sense that I suddenly can’t hurt them at all and we go our separate ways. APB reveals itself as a buddy cop fantasy, where you and your friends can be Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, but then you have to turn around and let the bad guys get away just when things start to get tough.

Conclusion
Even though I was annoyed by quirks with the gameplay, I kept playing APB because of the customization engine. I always wanted to reach the next level to unlock the next car or the next cool piece of clothing for my avatar, and seeing other players running around with the best equipment served to reinforce that. Realtime Worlds wasn’t kidding when they said no two players will look the same in APB, and that’s the coolest part of it. It’s just a shame that there’s not much to do with your character or your car once you have everything customized the way you want.

I feel like this game would be more fun if it wasn’t an MMO – that feeling of emptiness after a mission wouldn’t happen if there was no persistent world. Toss 32 players (16 cops / robbers) into a huge map with the objective-based gameplay, but end it once one team wins and start a new round. Keep all of the customization options locked into a menu system outside of gameplay. It’s GTA meets Team Fortress, and the MMO part seems to get in the way.

The rights to APB have been purchased by a free-to-play game company, and it should be back online sometime early next year. I’ll write a little update when I have a chance to get back in the game and see what changes they’ve made.

]]> http://holdenlink.com/2010/11/game-deconstruction-apb/feed/ 1 http://holdenlink.com/2010/06/game-deconstruction-robot-unicorn-attack/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=game-deconstruction-robot-unicorn-attack http://holdenlink.com/2010/06/game-deconstruction-robot-unicorn-attack/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:51:22 +0000 Holden http://holdenlink.com/?p=784 Open your eyes, I see. Your eyes are open.
Wear no disguise for me, come into the open.
When it’s cold (when it’s cold), outside (outside), am I here in vain?
Hold on, to the night, there will be no shame.

When I was trying to decide which game to deconstruct next, I listed the games I’ve been playing the most recently. Then I pulled out my phone to send a text message and Robot Unicorn Attack stared back at me. I stopped playing just long enough to write this article.

Robot Unicorn Attack

Developer: Adult Swim Games
Platform: Browser (link) / iPhone
Genre: Imaginary
Metacritic: N/A
Price: Free / $2.99 (iPhone)

Robot Unicorn Attack is a completely unoriginal game that managed to be better than its source material in just about every way. It clearly followed the example of indie darling Cannabalt, which is still a great game on its own. Whereas Cannabalt’s audience was limited to the hardcore gaming community, Robot Unicorn Attack made the gameplay more complex and found a much larger audience (over 27 million players according to the developer). It’s a rare failure of the K.I.S.S. principle. What’s so magical about this game?

Gameplay
The objective of Robot Unicorn Attack is to live as long as possible. The game instructs the player to “make your wishes come true” at the beginning of each round, with the subsequent reminder that “you will die.” The core gameplay consists of jumping, double jumping, and dashing from across floating platforms as the unicorn automatically runs to the right. The player’s score increases at a rate that grows every 5,000 points, and additional points can be earned by running into fairies or dashing through star-shaped rocks. The wish ends in a fiery explosion when the player runs into a wall, falls off the map, or hits a star without dashing.

The two button gameplay (jumping or dashing) is deceivingly deep. The player’s success or failure depends on the timing of each jump or knowing when to double jump over an obstacle versus dash under it. The game’s increasing speed makes reacting to each obstacle even more difficult. The camera can be problematic, and I still find myself occasionally blaming the game for randomly spawning a platform with an unfairly placed star on it when I crash, but I’m still steadily improving my scores.

Asthetics
IGN has praised Robot Unicorn Attack as “the best Erasure song you’ve ever played,”and it’s true that most of the game’s character comes from its soundtrack. The sci-fi sounds of jet boosters and explosions combined with the synthpop love ballad is extremely memorable in every way you don’t want it to be. Players find themselves humming the song for hours after they play.

The game’s art style mirrors the sound design with Michael Bay-worthy explosions set against platforms of purple grass and rainbows that could have come straight out of a My Little Pony cartoon. The ironic pairing of things that don’t belong together wouldn’t mean anything without the gameplay depth, but it makes the game a guilty pleasure to play.

The comparison to Cannabalt is a great reminder that game design only goes so far: production value and execution made this game the viral success that it is.

Replayability
Take away the music and there’s a key difference between Robot Unicorn Attack and it source material that makes it all that much more addictive: the combination of three wishes. If you have a great run in Cannabalt, you can share it and brag to your friends. If you have a great run in Robot Unicorn Attack, that’s nice, but it doesn’t matter unless your other two runs are just as good. The combined total of all three runs is the only score that gets recorded.

Players can find this annoying, but it actually serves as a way of making them come back to play more often. It eliminates blind luck from earning them high scores and rewards talent and practice. It effectively makes the game three times as challenging as it otherwise could be without changing the gameplay at all. The result is the most meaningful use of “submit a score to Facebook” that I know of.

Conclusion
A friend of mine referred to Robot Unicorn Attack as ”the perfect Flash game,” and I’m inclined to agree. It takes less than five minutes to play, but it rewards players who come back. The soundtrack gets stuck in players’ heads and lures them back to play more. Players aren’t afraid to share their scores over Facebook because high scores actually seem like an accomplishment instead of a cheap ploy to get more people playing.

This month I take a look at another downloadable title, this time for the PlayStation 3. I briefly played PixelJunk Shooter at E3, and although I was impressed with its visual style and ease of use, I didn’t know how long the game would be able to keep my attention with its simple mechanics. I picked it up based on the developer’s reputation for quality, and although it was a bit on the short side, it does a lot of things very well.

PixelJunk Shooter

Developer: Q Games
Genre: Shooter / Puzzle
Metacritic: 86
Price: $9.99
Length: 4-6 hours

Background
PixelJunk Shooter is the fourth entry in the Q Games’ PixelJunk series of PSN titles, following most recently the critically acclaimed PixelJunk Eden. It follows suit with the series’ reputation for high production value and polish. On the surface, the game isn’t very special – it’s a space-cavern exploration adventure along the lines of Subterrania for the Sega Genesis (I feel like this dates me), but its puzzle design is so innovative that it creates a very fresh experience. Its difficulty stems from its fluid-based physics puzzles, all of which force the player to think carefully about every move. The game isn’t particularly difficult, but it’s extremely clever.

Gameplay
Shooter consists of three worlds that have roughly five levels each. Each level is broken up into a handful of areas where  a handful of crew members from the ERS Piñita Colada have been stranded. The player is tasked with rescuing all of the survivors in each area, without letting more than five die during the course of a level. All survivors must be rescued or killed (no one gets left behind) before access to the next area until the the final area is reached, where an escape gate opens to leave the level. The player cannot backtrack to areas they have completed without replaying the entire level. In the final area of each world, the player encounters a boss that must be defeated to continue on to the next world.

The player’s health is displayed on a heat gauge at the bottom of the screen. As the ship takes damages or flies around magma, it gets warmer. If it gets too hot, it stalls out or explodes. The ship’s temperature gradually decreases when it is far away from hazards, and it cools off instantly when submersed in water.

The player’s deaths are not tracked – if you die at any time during a level, you start back at the beginning of the area. The only way to fail a level is to allow the lost survivor counter to reach five. The player can earn 1-UPs during the game that subtract one from that counter. If the player restarts an area after accidentally killing a survivor, the survivor will reappear in the level but the penalty for losing him does not reset.

The entire game is also playable in co-op mode. Playing with a friend almost completely eliminates the penalty for failure because it’s rare for both players to die at once. After dying in co-op mode, it only takes five seconds to respawn. The level only ends if both players die, meaning if one player can stay alive, it’s as if the death never happened.

The level select screen goes deeper and deeper into the cavern as you progress through the game.

Mechanics
Although rescuing survivors and collecting diamonds are the primary objectives, the meat of the game is found in manipulating various fluids. There are multiple kinds of fluids and gasses, and the player can move them around the level by blasting apart the rock that holds them back in each area’s caverns. As the game progresses, the player learns a system of rules for how fluids interact with each other that become the basis for most of the game’s puzzles:

• Water mixed with magma yields solid ground
• Water mixed with oil yields gas
• Water mixed with ice yields ice
• Magma ignites gas
• Magma melts ice
• Magma evaporates oil

Flying near magma or flying through gas slowly heats up the ship. Flying into magma or oil usually results in an instant death. The player must also consider how the fluids affect the survivors: they can survive forever in water or a short time in gas, but they instantly die in lava or oil. They can also get trapped in ice and freeze to death.

In some areas, the player will be able to use a dock to temporarily change the ship’s functionality via Metroid-esque “suits.” They might change the ship’s primary fire to shooting water or lava instead of missiles, or they might change how the suit interacts with the environment (i.e. reversing effects of water and lava). Each suit lends itself towards a particular type of puzzle, but they have downsides as well. The Water Suit is great for neutralizing lava or creating ice walls, but it takes away the player’s ability to attack most enemies because it can only shoot water or pull away chunks of ice with the grapple. The Magma Suit is powerful for melting ice and killing most enemies quickly, but it’s easy for players to accidentally shoot themselves with magma that gets deflected from walls and it can make navigating through gas very dangerous. One exception is the “Anti-Magnet” suit that repels the magnetic oil substance found in the later levels – allowing the player to guide the fluid around simply by flying near or through it. It’s a lot of fun to use, but it’s overpowered compared to the other suits because there isn’t a downside to using it since the ship retains all of its normal abilities. I felt like the second world was harder than the final one as a result.

Once a suit is equipped, there is no way to discard it until the area is completed. Suits reset at the beginning of each area, and there is never more than one suit available in any given area. Part of me feels like this is an obvious missed opportunity, but I also realize that it keeps thing simple. As it stands, the player can never get stuck to a point where the level must be reset, and it would likely be easier to reach a dead end when combining the abilities of each suit. That’s a good thing, but I still wish the game had more puzzles that played on the weaknesses of each suit. I found that I had to think the hardest when I was worried about dying more than when I was trying to get to an exit, and most of the suit puzzles minimize those situations.

Sometimes, the grapple is used to open doors like this one.

Aesthetics
The game uses a simplistic cel-shaded style similar to the other titles in the PixelJunk series. It lends itself particularly well to the fluid animations. At first I was a little bit confused about which kinds of surfaces I could shoot through because there isn’t much difference in their appearances aside from shading, but I quickly adapted to the game’s world and didn’t have any trouble after the first couple of levels. Then again, I was lucky enough to be playing on a massive HDTV in 1080p, so it might be a bit more difficult to see with a poor contrast ratio on a standard tube TV. The characters (enemies, ships, bosses) have minimal animation, but they still manage to feel alive in the context of the game. The style is nothing revolutionary, but it works well and I have a hard time picturing this game without it.

The game’s soundtrack is made up of the series’ trademark smooth electronic beats. There’s some subtle procedural music alteration during particular events in the game. When the player is engaged in combat, the percussion track goes from ambient to driving. It helps create a sense of urgency for dealing with enemies without being intrusive or jarring like a flashy graphical effect could be.

If you’ve played other PixelJunk games, Shooter’s aesthetics will be instantly familiar but they come across as far more polished than its predecessors.

This gas was ignited by lava, and it will blow up the pillars of ice trapping the survivors on the left.

Controls
The player moves his spaceship around with the left stick and changes its orientation with the right stick. Spinning the right stick performs a spin-attack that can dig away soil or deflect enemy fire. Either of the right triggers can be used to fire the currently equipped weapon, and holding down one of the right triggers operates as a secondary fire. The left triggers fire the grapple used to pick up items or survivors. None of the face buttons are used during gameplay.

Without its simple controls, the game would quickly over-complicate itself. The ship’s movement is just floaty enough to match the game’s outer-space setting, but it’s tight enough so that the player doesn’t blame the game for running into hazards. There is a very slight auto-aim correction on the primary fire, but I was only frustrated with myself (not the game) when stray bullets hit survivors.

The biggest gripe I have with the controls is the lack of a good tutorial. There are “how to play” slides available for viewing before the game, but like most players, I jumped in and figured I’d learn as I go. As a result, I was stuck for about 30 minutes on one level trying to figure out how to pass an obstacle when the solution was to spin-attack through it. I had never needed it before, and I was well past halfway through the game, so I simply didn’t know about the spin-attack ability. A playable tutorial of some sort is a necessity in almost any game when the controls aren’t self-explanatory – even overlays that explain the controls during the main game would have been sufficient, but it’s not right to assume the player will read a boring set of slides before jumping into the action.

Another frustration is the lack of a decent camera for the co-op mode. If one player moves off the screen into a secret area or proceeds to the exit, the other player is instantly transported there. Similarly, player two will die  via a Sonic the Hedgehog 2 drowning-style countdown timer if player one goes too far away. Perhaps a dynamic splitscreen system could have solved the problem?

Where’s the Fun?
This is the classic example of a game being better than the sum of all its parts. The gameplay is simple enough to be easy to pick up and play with a friend, but complex enough to avoid turning into a collect-a-thon. There’s very little change in difficulty, but there’s a lot of depth to the game’s puzzles (pun intended) and it makes you feel clever every step of the way even if there isn’t any sort of real penalty for failure. That lack of a fail state allows the game to offer a large variety of puzzles without getting too frustrating.

Watching the fluids interact with the world is a treat in itself.

The game also does an excellent job of giving the player feedback for every action. I  think it’s what made Uncharted 2 such a success, but on a smaller scale: even if the player is on a linear path, the game can fabricate an exhilarating experience by making players feel like they have a tangible impact on everything in the world. Shooter gets away with it by maximizing the use of its fluid animations. The player has minimal control over the fluids, but that limited influence has massive amounts of feedback because of the various ways the fluids can interact. The player feels directly responsible for every cool chemical reaction and every pretty visual effect.

Similar to PixelJunk Eden, the game displays the number of remaining collectibles in each level to encourage completionism. Survivors re-appear on each playthrough, but the diamonds do not. At first I was aggravated that I was going to have to redo all the puzzles and get each survivor all over again if I wanted to find every diamond I missed on my first playthrough, but then I realized that collecting every diamond would be a boring challenge if the game was stripped of its puzzles. Then I found out that on subsequent playthroughs, the game also enables a time-trial challenge with an online leaderboard. On paper, these features are obvious and certainly nothing innovative, but they add a good deal of replayability to an otherwise short game.

What’s Next?
Q Games has already announced that they’re working on PixelJunk Shooter 2, a very uncharacteristic move for a team that hasn’t made a sequel before. The EP, Dylan Cuthbert, says that the team was able to get all their big ideas into the first game during development, but there were still a lot left on the drawing board. I’m looking forward to see where they take it – PixelJunk Shooter is a lot of fun, but there’s also a lot of untapped potential.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney – Capcom, Nintendo DS
I was hesitant about the series ditching Phoenix, but in the end, I still got to yell “OBJECTION” at my handheld and that makes everything in the world OK. The updated investigation phase mechanics weren’t all that compelling even though they made good use of the DS. Maybe I was burnt out from the previous three games, but this one couldn’t keep my attention long enough to make it past the third case. Finished: NO

Auditorium – EA, iPhone
I played it first on PC, so buying the iPhone version was a no-brainer for me. It’s a great mobile game. The puzzles lend themselves well to the touchscreen, and levels can played in two or three minutes while waiting for a bus. I found the gameplay to be addicting enough that I finished it before I had the opportunity to play while waiting for a bus, opting to play it over Thanksgiving when I should have been socializing with family. EA offers more levels, but you have to feed the microtransaction monster to get to them. Finished: YES

Batman: Arkham Asylum – Rocksteady, PS3
As most of the mainstream reviews have already noted, this one was a pleasant surprise. It’s one of the best stealth action games out there, even if the AI is fairly predictable. The combat system was intuitive and fun despite being so repetitive. None of the mechanics would have meant  anything if Rocksteady hadn’t done such an amazing job with the game’s presentation. It truly makes the player feel like Batman, and even the collect-a-thon elements (Riddler trophies) were rewarding with Bioshock-esque tape recordings and backstory that went far beyond the genre’s usual offering. It’s a licensed game, but it’s also fun and innovative. What a concept! Finished: YES

Boom Blox Bash Party – EA, Wii
I’m clearly not biased at all when I say that every Wii owner should drop everything and buy this game right now. It’s a great puzzle game, and even now that I’m home without any obligation to play it daily, I occasionally find myself breaking it out to play around in the level editor or see what other users have created online. Finished: YES

Borderlands - Gearbox Software, PC
I was never much of a Diablo fan, but I loved the mission system in Borderlands. You can take on multiple missions at once and work on them in whatever order you choose, even stopping mid-mission to complete objectives from other ones. It’s one of the few open-world games that truly feels free. It’s also remarkably huge. I mostly played it alone, but my bad experience with multiplayer (on public servers) seems to have been one of the few bad ones. I’m looking forward to giving it a try with some friends. Still playing it now.  Finished: NO

Brutal Legend - Double Fine, Xbox 360
I thought this would be one of the year’s best releases, and it let me down. It’s still a great experience. The first third of the game is a blast, filled with excellent writing and creative gameplay with lots of variation. The rest of it, though, falls short of the quality I expected from Tim Schafer and Double Fine. The RTS segments (“stage battles”) are extremely lengthy, and they happen in rapid succession. It also didn’t seem to scale well in terms of difficulty – there was precisely one strategy for beating each of the stage battles, and although I was laughing throughout, it was more fun to watch than to play. The side quests were extremely repetitive as well. I understand it was originally designed as a multiplayer-only game, but the single-player experience is what was talked up during development, and it didn’t deliver. Finished: YES

Burnout Paradise – Criterion/EA, PS3
I’m late to the party on this one. I downloaded the game when it was released over PlayStation Network, and then slowly played through all the events over the course of a few months. At first I didn’t like the series’ change to open-world gameplay, but  now I can’t go back. Even though all of the events took place in the same world, it didn’t feel repetitive. I actually enjoyed learning the map and remembering landmarks to find shortcuts in each race. Speeding through the streets or across a narrow mountain path is exhilarating, but the crashes are absolutely beautiful too. It’s one of the few games I’ve played where failure is equally as rewarding as success – it’s just fun all around. My biggest complaint would have to be the lack of customization on the vehicles – there’s little reason to return to old cars once you unlock new ones, so the garage gets unnecessarily cluttered by the end.  Finished: YES

Chrono Trigger DS - SquareEnix, Nintendo DS
I own this game on Super Nintendo and PS1. It’s my favorite game of all time. I picked up the DS version after seeing one of my friends play it (on my recommendation). I couldn’t resist giving it another go and I have no regrets. There aren’t any graphical upgrades, but it’s a very sleek port. The new translation bothered me a bit, and then I was more upset that I’m enough of a nerd to notice the differences. The stylus controls leave a lot to be desired, but they didn’t mess up the standard controls. Can you ask for much more on a game that’s already great? Finished: YES

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 – EA, PC
My roommates and I played some skirmishes this summer and it played just like I would expect an RTS to play. The single player campaigns weren’t particularly fun in terms of gameplay – for me, at least, removing the social element of online play kills the genre – but I loved the cutscenes in all their cheesy glory. You can’t go wrong with Tim Curry. It’s a fun game, but every RTS is doomed to being released in the shadow of StarCraft 2. Finished: NO

Critter Crunch – Capybara Games, iPhone
If Katamari was crazy for instructing players to roll up the world with a giant snowball, then Critter Crunch deserves equal recognition for featuring a mechanic that equates to eating and vomiting cute little creatures. Feeding little critters to bigger ones is such a simple concept, but the addition of chaining (or “food chaining”) adds a level of strategy just thick enough to make it interesting without overcomplicating the brilliance of its simplicity. The presentation is top-notch, both of the gameplay modes are fun, and there’s enough content to last a good while. Finished: NO

DJ Hero – Neversoft/Activision, Xbox 360
At the very least, Neversoft deserves credit for not making this as a complete Guitar Hero clone. The controller is well-made and there isn’t as much carry-over from the guitar as you’d expect. My biggest criticism is the design of the note charts. Whereas Guitar Hero‘s notes are placed on a vertical fret board that moves towards the player, DJ Hero uses a circular turntable. The notes come in from the side and curve down to eventually straighten out. Unfortunately, this makes it very difficult to play the game with muscle memory because it means the horizontal positions of the notes are changing as they get closer to the target zone. The game also doesn’t provide enough feedback when the player misses a note – I was often left wondering why my combo broke, and when you don’t know what you did wrong, it’s easy to blame the game and get frustrated. Design issues aside, only a few of the mixes are worth listening to more than once and many of them reuse the same songs. If you can get past that, it’s the most original music game in quite some time and it’s every bit as innovative as the original Guitar Hero. Finished: NO

FarmVille – Zynga, Facebook
Check out my decon if you haven’t already. Millions and millions of users can’t be wrong, right? Finished: N/A

Flight Control – Firemint, iPhone
Another great example of a simple concept made into a fantastic product thanks to high production value. The basic concept is to use your finger to draw paths guiding planes to landing strips without letting them crash into each other. It’s surprisingly difficult, but the player can’t blame the game because it provides such excellent feedback. That makes it challenging and addictive rather than frustrating and passable. Flight Control is the new Snake. Finished: N/A

Flower - ThatGameCompany, PS3
I generally aligned with the critics on this one too. It’s the best implementation of motion controls I’ve experienced thus far on any console. When I say “experienced,” I also intend to imply that Flower is more of an “experience” than it is a “game.”  Rather than putting you in the role of a character or the pedals that you ultimately move around, the game puts you in the role of the wind. It’s oddly empowering and creates a sensation of flying unmatched by any other game. I don’t think I can categorize it as “casual” or “hardcore.” That said, it’s not for everyone – there isn’t much in the way of difficulty, and it’s very short-lived. Finished: YES

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 - Bizarre Creations, Xbox 360
As much as I like Everyday Shooter, I could never get into Geometry Wars. My roommates bought this through my Xbox Live account and it became their nightly addiction for a good while. We have a 60″ DLP 1080p HDTV, a 7.1 surround sound system, and somehow game gets more play time than anything else. I think I enjoy watching people play it more than playing it myself. I’m not particularly bad at it or anything, it’s just that I find playing it to be frustrating in the wrong ways. Losing in the game is an even split between knowing exactly what I did wrong and blaming the game for being cheap with its enemy spawn locations. Finished: N/A

Ghostbusters: The Videogame - Terminal Reality, Xbox 360
I found Ghostbusters to be an enjoyable one-time-playthrough sort of game despite its repetitive gameplay mechanics because it does such a good job of making you feel like you’re in one of the movies – sort of like Arkham Asylum. Without the nostalgia, it might have seemed like a rather mediocre Gears of War clone. I got very far in the game but didn’t have the desire to finish after I got distracted by work and other new releases. Terminal Reality shows a lot of promise with this game’s polish and presentation, though – much more than in their previous titles – so I’m actually hoping for a proper sequel. Finished: NO

Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure – EA, Nintendo DS
On paper, Hatsworth shouldn’t work. It asks you to constantly switch screens between a platformer and a puzzle game – neither of which are remarkably innovative or compelling – but somehow, the combination of the two makes it seem like a fresh experience. I had a blast in the game’s first set of levels, but then the difficulty curve went out of control. It was frustrating because it would take 10 or 15 minutes to play through a level and reach a boss, but after running out of lives at the boss, you have to repeat the entire level again. Sometimes that can be a good punishment – take a look at Mega Man for example. But the puzzle aspect of Hatsworth makes it unreasonable because it’s nearly impossible to get the Mega Man focus of precision platforming when your attention is split between two screens. Finished: NO

Hook Champ - RocketCat, iPhone
I fell in love with Hook Champ after grabbing it on sale shortly after its launch thanks to a nod from users over at CheapAssGamer. It’s a swinging-adventure game where the goal is to use a grappling hook to swing through underground caves as quickly as possible. The controls are masterfully executed for the touch screen – touching on either side next to the  character makes him move in that direction, and touching on either side above the character makes him fire his hook towards your finger. The developers add a couple twists to the formula like one-time-use rockets that give you an extra boost if you miss a swing and need to try again. There’s a lot of content for the asking price, and everything is extremely polished. It’s everything a good indie game should be. Finished: YES

I Love Katamari – Namco, iPhone
The reviews said this was a decent port, but it had a really sluggish framerate on the iPhone 3G that ruined the experience. I have a 3GS, so I thought I’d give it a try because it’s supposed to be a lot faster. It was still  far too slow to be enjoyable after playing through the PS2 and Xbox 360 incarnations of the series once you get past the first level. The tilt controls are a bit awkward as well, making it the only time I’ve found myself cursing while listening to the game’s trademark happy music. Finished: NO

iBlast Moki - Godzilab, iPhone
I picked this up when it was free during the Appvent Calendar promotion, and it ended up being one of the better puzzle games I’ve played for the iPhone. The core mechanic consists of setting time bombs around a level to propel the cute, round little Rolandos Mokis from the start to the goal. The formula gets interesting in each new set of levels where new features are introduced. One world’s levels take place underwater, so bombs also be set to prevent the Mokis from rising to the surface. There isn’t a lot of replay value aside from a basic gold/silver/bronze medal system, but it’s fun while it lasts. Finished: YES

Left 4 Dead 2 - Valve, PC
Although it’s not typical for Valve to release a quick sequel, you’d think they do it all the time by looking at Left 4 Dead 2. It’s an improvement over the first game in every way, and there’s more than enough content to warrant the price tag. Scavenge mode has all the fun of the original game’s Versus mode without asking for the huge investment of time to play through a whole campaign. Valve is just one of those companies that doesn’t make bad games even when they set themselves up for high expectations. Finished: N/A

Madden 10 – EA, Xbox 360
The last Madden game I purchased was Madden 93 for the Sega Genesis. I’ve stuck to the NCAA series since then, but my EA employee discount over the summer tempted me to pick this one up. I ended up playing it a lot more than NCAA 10. It’s extremely polished, the graphics and animations are stunning, and the presentation is unmatched. But that’s why the annual entries of Madden always sell so well, right? Finished: N/A

MadWorld - Platinum Games, Wii
It’s really gory, it’s really stylized, and it’s really repetitive. Most of the time, it fires infinite waves of enemies at  you and lets you kill them with standard attacks or quicktime-event based special attacks. Fun for a few hours, but I lost interest fast. For what it’s worth, it is one of the most graphically impressive games on the Wii. Finished: NO

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames - Pandemic/EA , Xbox 360
Mercenaries 2 is one of the few games that delivers on the promise of destructible environments, and it does destruction very well. The first two hours are a blast because the game gives you all the toys at the beginning, but then it gets stuck in the fetch or kill quests that most mission-based games succumb to. Blowing stuff up is so awesome that it makes everything else less interesting in context. Finished: NO

NCAA 10 – EA, Xbox 360
It’s always fun to create a player and rise to lead my own school’s team to a national championship, but after playing Madden 10 it’s hard to go back. I can understand that the presentation can’t be as sleek when there are hundreds of teams to worry about as opposed to the 32 NFL franchises, but it’s one of the few games where graphics make a huge difference in the gameplay. Madden‘s animation engine is better too – it’s almost as if the NCAA series’ tech is a year behind. Despite my insane levels of school spirit, I see little reason to own both games. Finished: N/A

Need for Speed Underground – EA, iPhone
When I got my iPhone, I heard that this was the best racing game on the platform. It sports great graphics, fully rendered cutscenes, and intuitive controls. In terms of gameplay, it feels stripped down from what I’ve come to expect out of the Need for Speed name, likely due to the smaller screen. It’s still a competent racer, but it lacks all the adrenaline of its console counterpart – and that’s a huge part of the genre for me. Finished: NO

Noby Noby Boy – Namco, PS3
It’s even stranger than Katamari, which I suppose is an achievement. There isn’t really any “game” here, it’s just a playground. I ended up wasting enough time with it to justify the $5 price tag. Finished: N/A

PixelJunk Eden – Q Games, PS3
I became bored with this game because I didn’t really understand how to play it. One of my roommates fooled around with it, and after hours of watching him play through it I wanted to pick it up and try again. It has a great visual style and the sound design is absolutely fantastic. I don’t like how the game makes you re-play each level multiple times without changing the scenarios – imagine being forced to re-earn each star in Super Mario 64 before getting the next – but it’s a great overall experience that’s worth checking out. Finished: NO

Plants vs. Zombies - PopCap Games, PC
My first day at EA, my co-workers told me to go home and buy this game. I obliged, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a great spin on the tower defense formula with tons of character. The Zen Garden was an awesome idea that encouraged me to finish the extra challenges after completing the adventure mode. Once I finally finished everything the game had to offer, I cleared my profile and started all over again to see if I could do it faster. I’ll probably do it again when it comes out for iPhone later this month. Finished: YES

Prince of Persia – Ubisoft, Xbox 360
I was a fan of the last generation’s Prince of Persia games, but this entry was a massive disappointment. The art style and presentation were great, but taking away the ability to die totally ruins the series’ formula of adventure. There’s never any danger or sense of urgency because you can die as many times as necessary to complete an area. There’s no reward for doing something correctly on the first try. For me, this meant progressing in the game wasn’t rewarding either, which translated to it not being fun. Finished: NO

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time – Insomniac, PS3
I’ve been loyal to the Ratchet series since the second game hit the PS2. Tools of Destruction was its enjoyable next-gen debut, and Quest for Booty was a decent downloadable distraction. A Crack in Time is a fairly standard sequel. The best thing it brings to the series is the moon exploration system. I went through the entire game and found every last collectible item because I actually enjoyed doing it – each sidequest is on a different moon, so it always feels fresh. Aside from that, I actually missed not having Clank for the majority of the game. The constant banter between the two protagonists gives the series a lot of character, and this game felt a little empty without it. Finished: YES

Rhythm Heaven – Nintendo, Nintendo DS
Everyone who attended Iwata’s keynote at GDC 2009 received a copy of this game for free. I played it on the trip home and long after. Unlike Rock Band which tests muscle memory, Rhythm Heaven actually challenges players with real rhythm puzzles. The controls are limited to tapping or swiping the stylus across the screen. It’s frustrating at times because it seems like it should be simple, but it’s quite difficult and the game isn’t very kind with its feedback – about as different as you can get from other recent Nintendo games – but it’s designed in a way that makes it hard to “blame the game.” It does allow the player to skip levels and come back later after failing three or four times. The amount of content they packed into the cartridge was a lot more than standard Nintendo fare as well. I still haven’t unlocked a handful of the mini games because I’m trying to get perfect scores on some of the other ones first. Finished: NO

Scramble 2 – Zynga, iPhone
Scramble is available for just about every social networking platform, and the free iPhone version is everything it should be. Online multiplayer, easy touch screen controls, accelerometer support, and slick Facebook integration make it a no-brainer for the low, low price of free. It might not have the fancy 3D graphics of EA’s Boggle, but the gameplay is identical between the two. Finished: N/A

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood – Bioware/Sega, Nintendo DS
At a recruiting event, I joked with a Bioware rep that this could be the worst game they ever made but it would still be the best Sonic game in at least a decade. It’s not terrible, but it’s a letdown for anyone who expected a Paper Mario quality adventure. The plot is weak, the graphics look rushed (it sparingly uses 3D models on a pre-rendered 2D environment, Final Fantasy VII style), and the gameplay is extremely repetitive. The Elite Beat Agents-inspired battle system is decent, but it takes too long to get through each fight. That problem is maximized by the game’s affinity for backtracking. Every part of the game shows promise, but no single piece is polished enough to warrant a recommendation. I invested about 7 hours into it before getting out the old Mario & Luigi game for GBA for a second playthrough instead. Finished: NO

South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! – Microsoft, Xbox 360
2009 was the year of the tower defense game. While Plants vs Zombies dominated the PC, South Park dominated Xbox Live. I bought it and played through the entire campaign with my roommates in a single night. Without the multiplayer component, it probably wouldn’t have been anywhere near as much fun. It features everything you’d expect from an honest tower defense game – mazing, upgrading, selling, etc. The South Park franchise adds a layer of charm to the formula, but it doesn’t really bring anything new to the genre. It simply does everything well. Finished: YES

‘Splosion Man – Twisted Pixel, Xbox 360
Check out my decon for a detailed breakdown of the game. Easily one of my favorite games from 2009. Finished: YES

Sudoku – EA, iPhone
Sudoku puzzles are a great way to pass the time while waiting for the bus or sitting in an office. EA’s offering can be as simple or fancy as you want it to be. It can fill in all the possible numbers for each square, highlight specific numbers on the board to make it easier to find sequences, or pull in puzzles from the newspaper and solve them instantly. My complaint is that the options to get help – hints or fill ins – are on the main game screen. This means it’s really easy to accidentally hit them from time to time, and there is no “undo” button. I don’t regret picking it up, but it could be better. Finished: N/A

Tales of Vesperia - Namco, Xbox 360
It’s doesn’t say much to call it the definitive JRPG for the Xbox 360, but Vesperia is my personal favorite of the Tales series. The characters are likable, the plot is decent, the graphics are beautiful, and the battle system is fantastic. The main story is also remarkably long with numerous sidequests to spare. I’ve invested about 35 hours into Vesperia, and I still don’t think I’m near the end. I typically can’t sit and play it for long periods of time, but it offers a detailed summary of the plot so far from the pause menu to refresh my memory when I need it. Hopefully I’ll get around to finishing it soon. Finished: NO

The Beatles: Rock Band - Harmonix, Xbox 360
It’s an understatement to say that The Beatles: Rock Band is the best version of Rock Band available anywhere. In addition to all the features of Rock Band 2, it offers harmonization support for three vocalists, unique dreamscapes (trippy backgrounds and venues) for most of the 40+ songs, and truly meaningful unlockables. It won’t make anyone like The Beatles’ music, but it’s gaming nirvana for anyone who does. Finished: YES

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition – LucasArts, PC
Apart from graphical upgrades and a new hint system, there isn’t anything Monkey Island fans haven’t seen before. I was disappointed that the “HD upgrade” simply replaced art assets. It looks great in screenshots, but the animations are still just as choppy as in the original. This made sense for something like Street Fighter 2‘s HD version, where framecounts matter to players for strategical purposes, but it seemed sloppy in Monkey Island. Still, I can’t complain too much because it gave me an excuse to revisit an excellent game. Finished: YES

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – Naughty Dog, PS3
The first Uncharted was a mystery – it was Prince of Persia with gunplay and a decent plot until the last hour or so, when it became Gears of War with zombies and monsters. The sequel outdoes the original in every way. It’s like a Michael Bay movie, except it’s enjoyable. The combat hasn’t changed much, but there’s a bigger emphasis on mixing combat with parkour and acrobatics. Between a lengthy single player campaign and a thriving online multiplayer mode, there isn’t any reason to pass it up if you have a PS3. As a designer, I found myself creating save checkpoints so I could go back and try to figure out how they made certain areas of the levels. For example, one fight takes place in a building that is literally falling over while you’re still inside it. Everything is sliding towards one side of the room, and the outside world is visible through the windows. It turns out they built a physics engine that allows them to do it without any tricks. Hats off, Naughty Dog. Finished: YES

Valkyria Chronicles – Sega, PS3
Another game I’m late to the party on, Valkyria Chronicles is an innovative strategy RPG that turned heads last summer. I was addicted to the game for the first seven or eight battles, but when they take over an hour each, it starts to feel more like work than play. It has a great cast of characters, but the developers seem to think the numerous cutscenes are a lot better than they actually are. There are at least six or seven of them between every battle. The difficulty curve is all over the place – each battle is harder than the last, and the game suggests that you re-play older battles to level up. The problem is that replaying the older battles are extremely easy because of the amount of experience you gain for completing them the first time. The battle system doesn’t lend itself well to grinding, and the game wants way too much of it. Finished: NO

…

That’s it! Keep in mind that these are merely my opinions, and I’m not claiming to be any sort of an expert critic. Looking back is a useful exercise for me to identify trends and mechanics that are working across the entire industry, and hopefully I’ll be able to implement some of them in my own projects.

When I decided I was going to do these deconstructions, Facebook games were the last thing on my mind. This time last month, I had never even played a Facebook game. I thought the very concept of Facebook games was backwards – I have Steam to play games on my computer, after all. Facebook should be strictly for staying in touch with friends. But after hearing that FarmVille has over 11 million active users on a daily basis – even more than World of Warcraft - I figured that there must be something about the game that the average Facebook user finds attractive. And in always trying to expand my knowledge of games, I finally gave in and started playing.

FarmVille

Developer: Zynga
Genre: Simulation
Metacritic: N/A
Price: Free / Optional Microtransactions
Length: Indeterminate

Background
FarmVille is Zynga’s answer to Farmtown, another popular farm simulator for social networks.

Gameplay
FarmVille is designed to be played in short segments of five to ten minutes every day. It’s a never-ending cycle of planting crops, waiting for crops to grow in real-time overnight or throughout the day, and then harvesting the crops before they whither. The objective of the game is highly open-ended, but players can progress by gaining experience points and “leveling up.” Each level unlocks a new set of crops for players to plant worth more than the previous ones.

The game uses two types of currency: “coins” and “farm cash.” Players earn coins by planting and harvesting crops, but farm cash is much harder to come by. To get more than one farm dollar per day, a player has to spend real money through Zynga’s payment system. In the in-game marketplace, some things can only be bought with coins, some things can only be bought with farm cash, and others can be bought with either.

Players can also earn “ribbons” (achievements) that reward them with coins, experience points, and gifts. There are four tiers for each ribbon, each more demanding than the previous. For example, the criteria for one ribbon might be “earn 10,000 coins.” The next tier for that ribbon could be “earn 100,000 coins.” The game keeps track of the player’s progress by offering helpful counters such as “only 2,460 coins to go.”

Being on Facebook, FarmVille taps into the social networking bug and lets players send gifts to each other for free and “help” each others’ farms by visiting and clicking a button to scare away crows or rake up leaves that litter the fields. The game tries to make players invite more friends to join at every turn, whether it’s through publishing updates to the Facebook news feed or sending explicit invites through Facebook’s notification system. As players make “neighbors” (or FarmVille friends) with their Facebook friends, they are able to build bigger farms. It’s worth noting that players cannot see anyone on FarmVille who isn’t already one of their Facebook friends, so it does not act as a tool to meet new people like many other online games.

Where’s the fun?
There is nothing particularly innovative about FarmVille‘s gameplay, but it still manages to attract millions of players. Obviously, then,  there has to be something more going on here than just a stripped-down copy of Harvest Moon. What keeps players coming back? I think we can learn the most from FarmVille from breaking down how users interact with the game.

I can think of a couple possible answers. For me, a competitive Counter-Strike, Starcraft, and Rock Band player, I felt the need to level up faster than my friends to illustrate my farm’s superiority. I also fell into the achievement-whore mentality, playing just one more day to earn the next ribbon and see what I would unlock. I consider this to be the traditional or “hardcore” gamer’s approach to FarmVille.

The other answer, which I witnessed on some of my friends’ farms, is to play the game more like the decoration-centric approach to The Sims. Whereas my farm was almost entirely filled with plowed land and rows of trees, some farms I viewed were full of animals, ponds, houses, and haystacks.

Example of what I call a "casual" farm

Example of what I call a "hardcore" farm.

For someone playing the unwinnable game to win, wasting space like this is absurd. To gain the most experience points and the most coins, the farm should be full of top-grossing crops, save for a little bit of room for trees and animals to work towards the ribbons you can earn for harvesting them. For someone who isn’t a traditional or hardcore gamer, though, the game takes on a different goal where experience points are merely a byproduct of enjoying the game at a slower pace. This is a “casual” approach to FarmVille, where players have fun by exploring what the game has to offer – as a sandbox of sorts, not by working towards arbitrary goals in hopes of being rewarded.

Lasting Appeal
I played FarmVille for almost four weeks before quitting. I am a level 23 farmer with just over 100,000 coins in the bank. I can buy just about anything in the game’s virtual store. But I noticed that most of my friends’ stopped playing after a while, and as a result, the challenge of leveling up the fastest sort of fell apart. The game caps at level 70, but I don’t have any desire to go any further.

12 million players does not make a game an MMO, yet many of FarmVille‘s hardcore players seem to treat it as such. Leveling up in an MMO is fun because of the social interaction with other players. That social aspect is so limited in FarmVille that it cannot sustain gameplay, so while MMO players can look back on their hours of gaming with fond memories, FarmVille players are left with a bad aftertaste. The variation of gameplay is somewhat greater than FarmVille‘s offerings in even the most vanilla of MMOs. As farms get larger, the game degrades to clicking every single patch of land on the screen three times: once to harvest a crop, once to plow the fallow land the crop leaves behind, and once to plant the seeds of a new crop in its place. When I quit playing, my farm was 18×18 tiles large, meaning I found myself clicking around the screen a total of 972 times in a period of 10 minutes to complete a day’s worth of farming – not including time spent to collect eggs from chickens or fruit from trees, or to re-arrange animals and fences to get ribbons. It’s not fun, but it’s the fastest way to level up.

Is this really fun?

In the Gamasutra article I linked to at the top of this post, one of the commenters quipped “It seems you win Zynga games when you realize they aren’t really games and quit. the lower level you are, the better you did.” I think this was true for me, and possibly for many hardcore or traditional gamers, but it’s wrong to assume it’s always the case:  some of my friends who I grouped into the “casual” category are still playing almost daily. They aren’t leveling up as quickly, but they seem to be re-arranging their farms a few times per week, exchanging gifts with friends, and rescuing lost sheep to their hearts’ content. If these types of players are still farming, then the game is a success for them.

Building a Better Farm
Being a “free Facebook app” is an excuse to some extent, but if a game that relies on a “five minutes per day” play attraction fails to keep a significant part of its audience interested after a few weeks of play, there’s a design failure happening somewhere. FarmVille is still in beta, and towards the end of my time playing the game, Zynga added a new RPG-element in allowing each individual crop to “level up” in terms of proficiency. I think this seems like a move geared towards the hardcore audience, but I’m not convinced it addresses the issue. FarmVille could benefit from more social elements, such as cooperative farming or teams working towards a goal. Players should be able to buy and sell crops from each other to earn high-grossing crops before their levels unlock them.

These types social elements in browser-based games are already a proven success. Cybernations, for example, has minimal graphical elements and shares FarmVille’s philosophy of gaming in five-minutes-a-day. Some people play it as such. The game’s “hardcore” audience, however, spends hours a week in the game’s forums engaged in foreign relations issues with other teams or alliances. Cybernations‘ ultimate failure is in allowing this battle of alliances take over the game – unaligned players are always at risk being attacked because no one will step up to defend them, and being a member of an alliance is demanding of much more time than many players are willing to invest. In terms of FarmVille, the game needs to offer hardcore gamers a way of playing for more than five minutes a day while still giving them a purpose. The most compelling reason to play these games, at least as far as I have seen, is to be a part of a team working towards a goal that players cannot attain by themselves.

Finding an Audience
Facebook has over 300 million users worldwide. 12 million of those users are playing FarmVille. It’s a big number, but it’s only 4%. By contrast, there have been about 32 million Xbox 360s sold worldwide. 8 million of those Xbox 360 owners, or about 25%, own Call of Duty 4. It’s clear that Facebook games have a long way to go before they reach the relative appeal of the most popular console games.  Not everyone on Facebook plays games, but not everyone who plays FarmVille is a gamer. Many gamers on Facebook won’t play games on Facebook. Why?

I realize that Facebook and the Xbox 360 don’t exactly have the same target audience, and Xbox 360 owners are more likely to play games even though they have to pay money for them. But look at the iPhone – a device for a broad audience where games have consistently topped the list of most-downloaded applications. There’s something that FarmVille or Facebook itself is doing wrong where a barrier to entry is being created.

For me, the barrier was installing the app to my profile. When apps were first introduced, they were intrusive and annoying. I hate having my news feed overwhelmed by silly apps my friends are using that I don’t care about. As a result, I always deny apps access to my profile when they ask. My decision to start playing FarmVille changed that habbit a bit, but I’m still more hesitant about installing an app to Facebook than I am to installing an app to my iPhone, despite the former being a much easier process overall.

Summary
The Good: Extremely easy to learn, fully playable with minimal time investment, free.

The Bad: Sometimes too simplistic for hardcore audiences, limited social interaction.

I realize this decon was probably a lot longer than it needed to be. Hopefully you can learn from it. I would advise any developers out there who haven’t tried FarmVille to give it a shot – everything points to these types of games playing a bigger role in the future of our medium. If you’ve already played it, please share your thoughts with me in the comments below – there’s only so much I can deconstruct on my own!

]]> http://holdenlink.com/2009/10/game-deconstruction-farmville/feed/ 7 http://holdenlink.com/2009/09/game-deconstruction-splosion-man/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=game-deconstruction-splosion-man http://holdenlink.com/2009/09/game-deconstruction-splosion-man/#comments Sat, 05 Sep 2009 06:55:03 +0000 Holden http://holdenlink.com/?p=430 Here’s a concept I picked up from my room mates over the summer who interned at Pandemic Studios. Every week, one member of the team would pick a game and give a presentation on its strengths and weaknesses. There’s a lot to be learned about design by paying attention to the details that many players may overlook at first glance.

As a personal experiment, I’m challenging myself to do one “game decon” every month for the next year. It’s one way I think I can work to make myself a better designer while providing some interesting reading material. I’ll try to not just pick “good” games, but this week I’ll start with one of my recent favorites…

‘Splosion Man

Developer: Twisted Pixel
Genre: Platformer
Metacritic: 85
Price: 800 Microsoft Moon Dollars ($10 USD)
Length: 4-10 hours

Background
‘Splosion Man was conceived by Twisted Pixel’s lead designer, Sean Riley, as a game about “a guy who splodes in a world only made of glass.” The team started production in the middle of developing The Maw, their first original title. The game puts the player in control of a strange man-creature who “splodes” all the time without explanation. The game is controlled with the joystick and one button (which makes the character explode). The game’s plot is nearly non-existent, but the little story it offers is derived from its setting in the labs of the evil “Big Science” corporation.

I’ve always been a sucker for good XBLA games, but ‘Splosion Man might be the best yet. I’ve told a few people that I think it’s the best game since Portal. After finishing up the single player game and getting about halfway through the co-op, I still feel like it’s at least the most satisfying gameplay experience since exploring Aperture Science. Both games take place in laboratories, and both games showcase cake as the ultimate object of desire. Twisted Pixel makes the homage obvious.

Gameplay
‘Splosion Man features 50 single player levels, 50 co-op levels, and 3 boss battles. The core goal of the game is to use timing and skill to cross obstacles and reach the safe room at the end of each level. Puzzle elements rely almost exclusively on wall jumping and using exploding barrels for propulsion, but it’s the player’s timing of those elements that adds complexity to the game as it progresses.

The puzzle design in ‘Splosion Man is significantly better than any platformer I’ve played in the past decade and every bit as good as the test chambers of Portal. Solutions are creative and often brilliant, yet  usually obvious. I never found myself blaming the game when I failed a level – I always knew exactly what I did wrong, and although it was occasionally frustrating, the sense of accomplishment when I finally had a successful attempt was well worth it.

The co-op gameplay in particular is wonderfully fresh. It’s impossible to progress through a level without working with your teammate(s), and there’s no advantage to doing “better” than the other players. For the most part, it’s easy to pick up and play with a friend because of the intuitive one button mechanic, but the complexity of the puzzles begins to rivals those in the single player version towards the end.

The boss battles are a nice change of pace, but unlike the rest of the game, they are beaten largely by trial-and-error. I felt like I had to die before I even had a chance at getting it right, and as a result they were my least favorite part of the experience. Fortunately, though, there are only three of them!

Accessibility
Especially after listening to accessibility complaints about my games, I have a great deal of respect for developers who make intuitive tutorials. My respect for Twisted Pixel is even greater, because they managed to make a game that doesn’t need a tutorial. As shown in this video of the first level, they throw the player into the action with no backstory and no explanation whatsoever.

How did they do this? The intro cutscene is just 11 seconds long, yet it explains everything you need to know about the game. You are a crazy man who explodes. Scientists are scared of you. When you splode out of your cell, you kill a scientist and look happily onward at the other one who runs for his life. Then you have control. Because it’s funny to see yourself explode, you do it. And pressing any of the face buttons will do just that. Twisted Pixel assumes that the player has a brain – after all, they were able to purchase the game off Xbox Live Arcade – and therefore makes the assumption that they will be willing to experiment with the gameplay rather than forcing a step-by-step tutorial.

Affordances of the 2.5D Camera
‘Splosion Man is controlled entirely in a 2D plane, but the developer’s use of unconventional camera angles captured my interest. Playing the game with co-workers at EA, I noticed some players were annoyed with the camera and blamed it for their deaths. Others didn’t mention it, but talked about how the game made them feel awesome.

There are some areas where the camera goes a little bit crazy and that can be annoying – particularly when you backtrack and the game doesn’t expect it. At the same time, it creates immersion in a 2D world. Subtle tilts that focus on the character’s expressions are common and feel so natural that they go unnoticed after a while, but the camera quickly pans around while zooming in and out during certain sequences to create a layer of chaos on top of the exploding man. Leaving the camera with a pure 2D view simply wouldn’t have been as effective in supporting the game’s mood.

Sense of Humor
‘Splosion Man’s charm is also rather Portal-esque. Scientists explode into steaks, shattering glass creates heavenly bell tones, and  a finding the hidden cake in every level results in a triumph of childish joy. There’s something inherently funny about a character who runs around and explodes “just because,” but Twisted Pixel’s ability to express so much emotion through him in absence of plot is remarkable. Destructoid’s Ashley Davis wrote a great article about game’s use of idle animations – a touch that is often overlooked in modern games. ‘Splosion Man will run around with his arms stretched out making airplane noises, giggle and laugh at every turn, make pop culture references without being cheesy, and use fat donut-eating scientists as shields for laser turrets along his way out of the Big Science facility.

The game’s marketing campaign further illustrates the developer’s excellent sense of humor. Check out this viral video in the style of a really bad 80′s inspirational ballad, featuring a live-action rendition of the character:

When you ‘splode it lifts me higher
as I soar on wings on fire
You’re the bro that I have chosen
’cause you’re the ‘splode beneath my ‘splosion

Sound Design
‘Splosion Man‘s music is jazzy and upbeat all the way through. The developer has released the entire soundtrack for free on their website if you care to give it a listen. It suits the mood of the game quite well. In-game, it makes subtle use of procedural music alteration. When you’re running around at a leisurely pace, you hear trumpets and pianos twiddling along with the melody. When you’re exploding, they change into a grungy electric guitar. It’s something most players probably won’t even notice, but it added another layer of depth to the game for me. The change in music makes the game feel more intense while you fly through the air, timing jumps from wall to wall and barrel to barrel. But when you’re standing around or running and laughing at the character’s animations, the music goes right back to being happy. It serves to reinforce the other aspect’s of the game’s presentation.

What’s Next?
Twisted Pixel just announced their third original title, “Comic Jumper,” at the Penny Arcade Expo. It appears to be a side scrolling platformer/shooter and maintains the comedic tone of The Maw and ‘Splosion Man.

Summary
The Good: Easy to learn, hard to master. Hilariously wacky. Great value for ten bucks. Decent replayability. High production values. Excellent music.

The Bad: Occasionally frustrating levels. Huge difficulty spikes. Questionable UI design.

That’s it for this decon. I hope you enjoyed it, and please share your thoughts on the game below!

I’ve wanted to write a proper postmortem for Audiball for some time now and I’ve been putting it off for far too long. Below, I try to summarize six months of my life into a few pages of text. Audiball was not a commercial success, nor was it groundbreaking in any way, but it was my experience with game development and I’ll always be proud of it. Read on if you’re interested in the game’s original vision, what sacrifices were made, what unexpected events changed development, how the game’s soundtrack was composed, how you can learn from my mistakes, and how an announcement trailer can be the longest fifty seconds of your life.

Background

Before starting development on Audiball, I was hooked on Jonathan Mak’s Everyday Shooter. Of course he’s already credited in the game for inspiration. It did a great job of using non-traditional sound effects in each level to blend with the game’s soundtrack. Each level used a different set of sound effects for shooting, explosions, combos, and just about everything else. It’s really what made the game exceptional as opposed to, well, your everyday shooter.

Everyday Shooter

At the same time, I was playing quite a bit of Rock Band with my roommates. The speakers on our TV blew out while we were in the middle of a difficult song, and while the guitarists and drummer were able to continue without a problem until it came back on, the singer promptly failed out. I guess I had never really considered that Rock Band is just a test of muscle memory. It’s why Guitar Hero is able to take away all the colors of the frets and players still know which buttons to push: the colors are irrelevant once you know where they are, it’s only the positions that matter.

It was then that I got curious about the idea of focusing on the colors of the frets rather than their positions. It would be a completely different way of using the guitar controller. Of course, that also meant that no skills would carry over from any other guitar game. Playing Audiball for the first time would be similar to playing Guitar Hero for the first time; the guitar controller would be a new controller all over again. Then came the challenge of trying to make it “fun” as opposed to “unintuitive.”

Rock Band doesn’t lets you play music much in the way that you play a game, but you don’t produce music or influence it in any way other than “off’ or “on” when you miss or hit notes. I wanted to explore making something that was “the opposite of Guitar Hero” in that multiple aspects of the player’s performance would determine what they heard coming out of the speakers. I didn’t want to try to make a music composition program for a guitar controller because I didn’t see how that could be fun – of course, Guitar Hero World Tour ended up doing it later that year anyways. Instead, I tried to let the player work towards a visible goal (the gameplay) while using the sound intensity to reflect their progress towards that goal (the  reward).

Initial Design (March-April 2008)

The game was initially drafted on a giant whiteboard in our residence hall in spring of 2008 – one of the few resources we actually did use from Georgia Tech. We had just gotten back from the Game Developer’s Conference and were itching to get to work. We dubbed it “SoundOff” as a production name. The idea was to create a game where the player had to get a number of balls from one side of a level to another. Every time the player strummed, a ball would launch from a cannon. It would collide with different colored “enviromods” (environment modifiers) that would do various things to change its trajectory.

Original Logo

Sound was only played when the player successfully activated an enviromod. I thought that I would be able to compose sound clips that could play concurrently and design levels that made sure these clips were played in a particular order. This was a mistake for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that designing the level to sound a certain way completely defeated the point of procedural music.

Early Screenshot (Build 34)

The HUD changed quite a bit throughout development. The first design for the game called for a Guitar Hero-esque panel that would show the balls as they approached the circles on the screen. Before it was even coded, I realized that although it would make it easier for people to play, they would completely ignore the rest of the game and it would be reduced to a fancy visualization. It was decided that the entire screen would be the game’s main area, and we would try to stay as far away from Guitar Hero references as possible so as to avoid the notion that we were “competing” with it. Suddenly, the game itself was a lot more difficult to grasp because the player no longer had anything familiar to ease them into playing.

Final Design (September-October 2008)

In its most basic form, we realized that the game was nearly impossible to play when the user had to keep track of multiple balls at once. Even when the user only had to press frets to activate them (with no strumming involved) there were balls flying out of control everywhere with no method to the madness other than mashing buttons. It certainly wasn’t fun. So we had to figure out a way of controlling the gameplay without necessarily slowing it down. I came up with the idea of using timers to pause between collisions, and once it was prototyped in a few different ways we settled on each ball having its own timer rather than the enviromods having a limit for all the balls inside them at once.

This ended up being one of the core elements of how the game plays. The timers give the player between three and five seconds to (1) notice that an enviromod needs to be activated, (2) find the corresponding fret on the neck of the guitar, and (3) strum to launch the ball in their desired direction. This sequence is the best representation of what I intended Audiball to do as a rhythm game. No matter how a level was designed, every solution resulted in a rhythm created by the player, and players had to keep that rhythm constant to successfully pass a level within the time limits.

2nd HUD Design (Media Player)

After the Guitar Hero HUD with the sidebar came a design styled after a media player. The pause menu was designed around this time too. Although the pause menu’s look in this stage remained intact in the final version, the rest of the HUD changed dramatically. There were far too many numbers on the screen at any given time, and it was too distracting for a game that plays as frantically as it does.  One thing that did stick from this iteration of the HUD, however, is the word “audiball.”

Early "Enviromod"

For the Independent Games Festival we had hoped to submit a 10 level demo. We ended up with four, two of which were scrapped from the final game. There was only one audio track finished at that point too, and it was set to all four levels. Obviously we didn’t get anywhere in IGF – our judges summary a few months later revealed that we were praised for innovation and docked for audio, consistent with our opinion of what we submitted.

The other 13 levels in the game came together over the next three weeks. Two levels were completed two days before release. We worked right up until the wire to get it out. When we weren’t working, we were watching people playtest. I loved watching people playing the game because everyone approached it in a different way. Players being confused and not knowing how to play was the game’s biggest problem (one that could have been solved with the inclusion of a tutorial) but at the same time it was refreshing to see experienced gamers pick it up as if it was the first game they had ever played. Everyone was on equal ground. I recall my roommate’s girlfriend passing a set of levels only for him to fail miserably minutes later – my roommate being the hardcore gamer of the two. Feedback showed that the game was fresh and fun to play, and we couldn’t have hoped for more in our first project.

Music Composition (October-November 2008)

Audiball was my first experience with program music. I had written things for fun before, but giving it a purpose turned out to be a compeltely different challenge. More challenging was that it was my first attempt at procedural music. The final soundtrack ended up being more “guided” than procedural due to a combination of technical limitations and lack of compositional skill, but nonetheless I enjoyed writing it.

Each song was made up of a series of sound clips that were played on top of each other. Some songs had as few as 6 different clips, others had as many as 20. Getting it composed and split up was only part of the battle: getting it into Microsoft’s less-than-perfect XACT architecture was agonizingly difficult. I created target renders of what I thought the tracks should sound like, and then we tried to mix and match them in the game to make them sound similar. For example, here’s what the flow sheet looked like for the “Fast Techno” track:

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU......

You can download the entire soundtrack on my Audiball page if you care to give it a listen.

The game’s official trailer was made in two days – one day of music composition, and a second day of recording and putting the video together. When I say two days, I actually mean the full 48 hours. It’s a lot of work to make a game look good. The trailer ended its run with a 6 / 10 score on GameTrailers with most people criticizing the graphics, but intrigued by the concept. We were happy about the intrigue, and tolerant of the criticism. The game’s visual style just didn’t come across as well as we had hoped.

Conclusion

Audiball was a fun first project that had a lot of promise in concept but was seriously flawed in execution. Fortunately, the flaws weren’t enough to prevent it from being a fun game. Anyone who played it for more than 10 minutes could figure it out, and most of those who did enjoyed it. We didn’t anticipate players to give up after failing just once and putting it down in two or three minutes. The game’s concept was probably far too unique and challenging for us to tackle as our first project, but I’m still happy with how it turned out.

So many of the problems with the game could have been fixed with just a little more development time. It’s aggravating to see how we spent months working on a game and just fell short of creating a complete package. Better production values would have gone a long way to make it an exceptional game for what it is. It may not have sold significantly better, but it would have felt much more professional as a whole. As an indie company, we had no reason to give ourselves an arbitrary deadline. We’ve learned to never compromise the quality of a product for the sake of getting it released. It’s better to take an extra five months than to have regrets.

I hope this write-up adequately illustrates the game’s design process for all who have interest, and I sincerely hope that other bedroom developers out there can benefit from it. Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any more questions about the game, and check it out on Xbox Live Indie Games if you haven’t already – it’s still available for download, and should be as long as the service is running.