Grumpy Gamer

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

Here are a couple of fine pieces of concept art from the game I'm making with the amazing folks at Double Fine. I'm so excited. This is an idea that has been in my head for a long long long time. It predates Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. It's a game that needed to be made. These are two of the playable characters. That's all I can say right now, but more will follow later.

Concepts 52

Concepts Art Games 52

Interesting Choices

AUGUST 20, 2011

After three ink cartridges, twenty five sheets of perforated business card paper, and a whole lot of work in Illustrator, the business cards are finally done. There are currently 50 unique cards, and I'll be bringing five copies of each to PAX (with the exception of a group of ten that lost one each of their comrades in the process, so those will be a bit rarer than the rest).

Sprite 52

Sprite Pixel Mechanics Localization 52

Interesting Choices

JULY 13, 2011

The goal of Bit Pilot is to stay alive as long as you can. Well, scratch that. The goal is to listen to as much of the music of Sabrepulse (an incredible chiptune artist) as possible, and the way you do that is by living as long as you can. You control a little ship in a huge asteroid field, with your only input being surprisingly tight touch-based movement controls.

Build 52

Build Games Indy 52

Grumpy Gamer

JULY 8, 2011

The vertical slice is one of the dumbest things the game industry has ever come up with. I threw this together to show how dumb it is. Not sure why I was thinking about it today, but I was. The publisher I'm working with now doesn't want a vertical slice, some don't, but there are quite a few that do. It's just a dumb way to build a game and it results in wasted time and money and doesn't produce the best game possible.

Prototyping 52

Prototyping Build Writing Studios 52

Grumpy Gamer

JANUARY 9, 2011

The fine folks at Game Forum Germany have been trying to get me to speak there for the past three years, but something has always come up and prevented me from attending, but this year I vowed to go. This year was going to be different. I've only been to Germany once before and most of that three days was spent at a hotel attached to the Munich airport doing PR for Total Annihilation.

Point and Click 52

Point and Click Puzzle Fighting Art 52

Interesting Choices

OCTOBER 5, 2011

On Friday I'll be giving a talk at IndieCade alongside Chris Hecker entitled A Dialogue on Depth. It's rather surreal to see my name in a list with a bunch of indie luminaries , but hopefully I'll be able to live up to expectations. As Chris pointed out, though, we're in a timeslot opposite the Experimental Gameplay Workshop , and pretty much everyone in their right mind will be over there, so it should be a small and intimate gathering.

Game Design 40

Game Design Game Designer Playtesting Tile 40

Interesting Choices

AUGUST 26, 2011

In Seattle right now, happy to be done with the talks so that I can relax a bit at PAX before heading off to Burning Man. The talks went well; as with anything they could have been better, but I learned a lot about presenting and I'm excited to apply it next time. Tonight I'll be on the Hollywood Squares - Game Design Edition panel, 6 PM in the Kraken Theatre.

Editing 40

Editing Game Design Game Designer Games 40

Interesting Choices

AUGUST 5, 2011

This is the fifth part of a series about working on Magic: the Gathering during my five years at Wizards of the Coast: Part One (Joining WotC, playing in the FFL, developing Champions of Kamigawa). Part Two (Developing Betrayers of Kamigawa and the Jitte mistake). Part Three (Developing Ravnica, unleashing Friggorid, and designing MTGO Vanguard). Part Four (Designing Ripple, the FFL during Time Spiral, designing Planar Chaos).

Racing 40

Racing Mechanics Games Development 40

Interesting Choices

AUGUST 14, 2011

Last Thanksgiving, I was drafting with a guy named Zak Walter who had invented a deck of what he called "draft conditions". They had evocative names like The Astrologist or The Pacifist and each one had a limitation on your drafting or your deckbuilding. Now, I'll never get tired of just straight up drafting Magic cards, but it was an interesting twist to the process as battles become more about the archetypes (who wins: the Pacifist or the Pugilist?

Balance 52

Balance Art Writing Data 52

Interesting Choices

NOVEMBER 22, 2011

To my knowledge, it isn't yet common for games to be commissioned in the way that works of art were commissioned by patrons throughout history. Yet that's exactly how Hokra , by Ramiro Corbetta (with audio by Nathan Tompkins), came to be. Hokra is a 2v2 sports game where the teams are fighting over control of a single ball. When a player doesn't have the ball, she can sprint, and when she does, she can pass in any direction.

Indy 52

Indy Game Design Game Designer Mechanics 52

Interesting Choices

AUGUST 17, 2011

Cooperative multiplayer is an oft-underused method of allowing people to play games together in a more accessible and casual manner. People are starting to warm up to it, though, and recent years have seen a surge of cooperative board games, as well as digital games like Starcraft 2 and League of Legends that are embracing co-op vs AI as a valid way to experience the game.

Co-op 52

Co-op Communications Playtesting Mechanics 52