As it stands, I’ve got three games that have good stories but no gameplay yet.  Here’s a quick runthrough of them.  These will most likely be the last three games for my contract with Armor, unless something cooler comes around.

1)  Chivalry is Dead

This is a game about the roles we put ourselves in, and the relationships we form with each other.  The White Knight feels obligated to save the princess from the castle, mostly because he knows that this is the sort of thing that the White Knight is supposed to be doing.  CiD sits somewhere between drama and dark humor at this point–I’ll very likely shift it more towards dark humor as I continue to write for it.

2)  Fix

Fix may or may not be a prequel to Company.  I haven’t decided yet.  Limbo has put me in a “whole game in one level” mood, so that’s how Fix plays.  If it ends up being a prequel, then you’ll be playing as Kathryn.  Either way, the game features a recurring motif of the player occasionally passing through a strangely realistic house, and watching it slowly become more and more decrepit as you get through the game.  Braid is to Company as Limbo is to Fix.

3)  Grief

In development hell for quite a while now, but still present.  I’m taking a break from this one to work on one of the other two first, because the gameplay that was coming along just plain old wasn’t good enough.  It wasn’t fresh enough, it wasn’t satisfying enough.  Wasn’t anything special, and that’s no good, so I’ll let it sit on the back burner for now, until I figure out something better.

I don’t get all that much fanmade content (excluding the extremely badass Spewer tattoo), but someone just sent me a poem that they wrote about Company, and I figured I’d share it with the class.  Props to Kevin Hoecherl, you’re pretty awesome!

“the company of myself”

a finite square of greenest grass
with two flowers separate, alone, at last
united in loneliness, colorful solidarity
holding aloft their petals in a sorrowful scene

perfectly matched to complete any trial
hearts synced together, relying on each other for survival
a perfect hideaway, kept in a safe place
until today i awoke, to find its loss without a trace

now only the companionship of myself in this solitude
the remorse for what i was unable to do
as the dawn breaks, the stars fade to gray
and all thats left is the meaningless charade

repetitious shadows that deliver me safely
along with overwhelming guilt that enslaves me daily
two flowers remain, a testament to all we went through
but i miss you. i miss you. i miss you

Viricide has been packed up and sent off into the real world, so you’ll hopefully be seeing it on various game sites pretty soon.  At the time of writing this, it’s on at least Armor and Kongregate.  Reviews are about where I expected–Generally, people like it, but it’s not for everyone and some people dislike certain things here and there.  There are plenty of positive reviews, but those are no fun, so here’s a sampling of the negative ones, courtesy of ArmorGames.com and its userbase.

What an emo game writer…

This got fucking depressing towards the end

gay

storyline makes no sense

I very don’t like this game

Fun, but not that fun at the same time.

The tiny enemy is the worst bastard ever in a flash game.

holy cow she sounds like oprah

boring
and graphic is dumb
voice is dumb

Bad game, using mouse for shooting just plain sucks

I like the chalkboard sound before the armor games logo thats about it.

The Company of Myself just won the award for Best Indie Game at the 2010 Mochis, which is a part of the Flash Gaming Summit.  I couldn’t make it out to the event because it’s in California and I’m not, but David, the music guy for Company, got out there and accepted the award in my absence.  I’m also nominated for some kind of “rising star” award from the Tech Council in my area, but that’s not until early April.  Interestingly I got the phone call for that while I was waiting on the announcement about the Mochis.

I keep track of all the comments on the site, but I watch the comments for the Grief demo particularly closely, because it’s the project that stands as the most important to me.  Company did extremely well and got me a fair bit of recognition, and a lot of that is due to extensive testing and feedback from Average Joe, the very best and most influential member of my audience.

(For those just joining us, Average Joe is anyone and everyone in my audience.  That includes you.)

Something that comes up here and there is the green square that you play as in the current demo.  A lot of people seem to think that this is actually the art for the character (Henry) in the game.  As it stands, I haven’t locked in a character artist for Grief, so I don’t have an nicely animated man running around, and instead, all we get is a lovely little placeholder graphic, which is the green rectangle.

Way back at the beginning of my work on Company, I used similar placeholder art for the character, Jack.  Instead of green, he was a red rectangle.  The same assumptions were made back then–People thought that the red rectangle was the final character art, and I had to explain myself, much like I’m doing now.

So, then, here’s The Point:  As with everything in the Grief demo, the character graphic isn’t final.  Even the things that already look “good” (backgrounds, crates, effects, etc) aren’t final.  It’s all going to change in some way or another before the game is released.  And as it stands, there’s no story or puzzle solving in the demo, but of course, they’ll be in there eventually.  And yes, the gun fits into the story.  And no, this isn’t a shooter.  For a more detailed explanation, check the beginning of this post.

Breach is close to finished, now, as is YFYIAR.  They both are mainly just missing sound.  YFYIAR also needs a sponsor, but it’s understandably difficult to find one–The game is pretty risky from a business perspective, just because it’s a text game.  If you’re a sponsor with some cojones, be sure to give me a ring.

Most of my dev time lately has been spent on Breach 3, which won’t be called Breach 3, but that’s still what it is, so whatever.  YFYIAR is pretty close to being done, and at this point I’m waiting on David to hammer down the music (which is approaching something awesome very quickly) and sound (which ought to add something nice to things).  Grief is briefly paused while I finish up these other projects.  Chris is still messing around with art styles in various mediums, so progress is being made there, it’s just not progress that I’m responsible for.

Anyway, Breach 3.  I haven’t said anything about it yet, other than tossing out a quick demo (which is updated now, by the way, so go play it).  The game is my attempt to maneuver around modern casual game design–Upgrades are very prominent, because they give you a very direct sense of progress.  It’s also very un-punishing:  When you successfully complete a round, you get a bonus.  When you fail, you aren’t penalized, but you just don’t get the bonus.  Even though it’s still obviously better to complete a round, losing doesn’t seem to be a bad thing.  Instead, it’s just not as good. The bonus is extra, so failing to get it isn’t bad.  It’s just not as good as it could have been.  It’s a euphemism for failure.

Also, something that I enjoy way more than I should:  When you complete a round or visit the upgrade shop, the titles of the screens are randomized.  You get a different “you win” or “you lose” message each time, and the upgrade shop has various titles.  It doesn’t add anything in the utilitarian sense, but it’s just some extra flavor.  We did this a bit in Spewer, too–When you completed a level, you were given a few statistics (steps taken, jumps, etc).  The last statistic was always a random statistic with a random value (for instance, “Laws broken: 6″).  I got a shitload of chuckle-worthy emails asking about some of those.

Oh, and one of the titles for the upgrade shop is “Happy Item Room.”  If you understand this reference, then you are a superhero and I’m sending the president to your house to give you a handshake and a beer.

So, Grief was originally supposed to be a game that featured pretty big levels that contained lots of little challenges that you could approach in any order.  I like the idea, but I don’t think it’d quite work out in the end–It doesn’t have enough focus.  I think I’m going to instead aim for an approach more similar to Company–Small levels that feature one main challenge per level.  It’s much easier for me to control, design-wise, so I think I can create a tighter overall product like this.  As a side effect, smaller levels means less stress on the physics engine, which means better performance on slower machines.  Box2D is incredibly fast, but even so, better performance is better performance.

There are still more design problems to solve, but I’m getting much closer to having a full view of things.  The story is reaching some awesome places as well.  This is going to be good.

So, a few updates.

First off, I don’t know whether or not the text game will get finished–I’ve got more important things to work on, since that was just a “for fun” sort of project.  I still have no intention of actually competing in JayIsGames’ casual game design competition, because as I said before, if I submitted my game, it’d get disqualified.  We’ll see what kind of time I have to work on it.  It’s still a possibility.

Second, and more importantly, I finally started writing code for the next “big” project, which is a semi-sequel to Company.  The theme of the game is grief, but I don’t want to give too much info on how it factors in quite yet.  I can handle talking about more vague stuff, though, so here’s a few quickies:

It’s a story based platformer that is heavy on exploration and discovery.  You play as a character from Company, but not Jack, the original protagonist.  That only leaves two other options, since Company doesn’t have a whole of characters.  The game is set in the same universe, but it stands alone, so you wouldn’t need to have played the original to understand what’s going on.  I’m using Box2D to give the game some physics, but I don’t really want to call it a “physics based platformer,” since the focus isn’t on the physics.  There’s a strong trend right now, especially in Flash games, to base an entire game on physics (usually with Box2D because it’s so damn fast).  It works, and these games can definitely be fun, but I’m starting to get a little sick of it.  Maybe that’s just me.

I’ve got pretty big plans for it, so I’m gonna have to be getting help from more people than I’ve ever had before–The game needs lots of music, at least three voice actors, and probably two artists (one for static things like the level art, and one for characters and animations).  I’m pretty set on music and one of the artists, but the rest is up in the air for now.

This game is going to require an absurdly powerful level editor, and like Company, I probably won’t be able to release it with the game.  It’d just be too hard to make it userfriendly.  I might put it up on my site though, once it matures a bit, just so you guys can check it out and fiddle with it.

Alright, so here’s the most ridiculous thing that’s happened lately.  This is Corey, and he’s got balls of steel.

An actual god damn Spewer tattoo.

There’s gotta be someone who can top this.  Any takers?

JayIsGames has occasional game design competitions, and I’m going to enter the current one.

And I’m going to get disqualified.

The idea is that everyone makes a text-based game where you have to escape from a room, and it’s all jolly and fun.  You’re supposed to use Z-Code to write it, because it’s basically the standard for making these kinds of games.  My first fault will be not using Z-Code.  I’m just gonna make my own text engine.  They’re simple enough to crank out anyway, and Z-Code doesn’t do everything that I want it to.

That’s a pretty minor rule to break, though–The other rule that I’m breaking is the real problem.  They say that the games have to be an equivalent to “rated Teen” or lighter.  Fuck that.  This game is going to be pissed off and proud of it.  This game will be the drunken uncle of text-based games.  This game will hate you as a player and a person, and will tell you so at any opportunity it gets.

It’s going to be called “You Find Yourself In A Room.”  And it’s going to be awesome.