The second project might be called The Influence, and it’s a puzzle-horror game.  It’s a story about the biggest fucking conspiracy ever.  Like, take the sort of cheesy idea of a shadow organization, but extend it to Lovecraftian scales, where it doesn’t even really exist as a normal entity anymore.  The basic goal is to make you paranoid about every single thing in your day.  The enemy isn’t just everywhere.  It’s everything.

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.

Anyway, I’m back from Edmonton, now, which means I’m back to my own work.  I’m still in a state of never being actually satisfied with how Grief plays, so I’m gonna let the project rest for a bit and work on something else.  The script is mostly finished, and I like it a lot, so that’s all good.  The gameplay needs, once again, to be redesigned, though.  Best course of action that I can see is to let the ideas churn for the time being, and work on another game for my contract with Armor.

At the moment, I’m calling this new game “Chivalry is Dead.”  More details when things start to come together.

I’m spending the month in Edmonton, working for MaxGames on a sequel to Stick War (which in turn is a sequel to an old game of mine, called Champion).  You can read about what we’re working on at StickWar.com, but this site will be left alone for the time being.

Tally-ho!

Also, I hooked up the Jack animations from Company so that he wouldn’t be a green rectangle anymore.  Once I find a character artist, I’ll get the actual game art put in.

Everything is working better than before, and I’m satisfied.

“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

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.

It’s still missing some little things like a mute button and cookies to save your progress.  Other than that, it’s mostly just tweaking from here on out.

Let me know what you think of the game–I’ll be releasing it pretty soon!

(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.