Taylor

I've found a friend, not even an internet friend but a real person in like real life and stuff, who plays Unthinkable Natural Law (soku). So I've been grinding that a little bit. I keep thinking the dash button is going to work like Arcana Heart, though. It's not as good as IaMP but it's nice to play around with quirky fighting games and not play goddamn USF4. I completed Momodora 1-3 and did a shitty speedrun of the latter for achievements. It looks a lot like Cave Story, although a lot of people say it's more linear, which is weird because Cave Story is pretty linear when you boil it right down. They're all pretty short, fun and have nice presentation. 1st is a lot more action focused, 2nd is a lot more exploration focused, and the third is kind of the structure of the first with melee attacks and a lot more polish. I think I like the 2nd the best. My biggest problem with third is it's too easy to exploit a few items that trivialize the game.

I want to make games, I want to be in the games industry, but if you're passionate there is always this burn out you're not working on the thing you really want to. And most people who stick around in the games industry are dangerous levels of passionate. I spent a lot of time while out of work making my own games. I've made about 12 in the last two years, and made a tidy profit of minus two hundred pounds, but none of them are really the games I want to make either. They're mostly released with a "that'll do" attitude for some game jam, and they're not aimed at me but some kind of imagined demographics that like particle-overloaded area shooters, quirkly puzzle games, or artsy puzzle platformers. At my current place the games themselves are pretty cool and there's always something for you explore within them even if you're not completely the target audience, but I think it's fair to say I'm sitting outside our demographic (albeit with a gigantic amount of information about our actual demographic). I do have enough free time that I can still make games outside of work without crashing horribly - this is one reason I would never go back into overtime obsessed AAA companies. The dream would be to sit around in my pants all day making the obscure Japanese-inspired shmups, hardcore-focused fighting games, and strategy focused RPGs I dream about. But fact is that just isn't going to happen, and what I've got is certainly more fun than going back into accounting. Better make sure I don't wear my mapcore shirt for a couple of weeks.

What arcade games have released without a location test? I'm not following the argument here. Especially since Japanese top players, presumably those in the location test, think it's badly balanced and the new mechanics are pointless. Surely this would have been in the feedback somewhere? I hold that simplified versions of games 25 years old, aimed at people who cannot enter dragon punches correctly and need to be rewarded for losing the round, are not made for the top percentile of players. MK9 was at Evo last year and that game is so competitive it evaluates player 1 first so he automatically wins all trades. UMvC3 is an anime game parody nobody would play if Wolverine wasn't in it. I can't even remember what else was at Evo... BlazBlue the straight-up watered down version of GG? Even SFxT was played at Evo and that had auto-block DLC.

Yeah, it wasn't really rat dota. It was early game comps that came online and did some one-sided fights. And who was picking Brewmaster outside of China a few months ago? It's not exactly League of Legends and it's one strategy for three years that all design conforms to. People just mad Dendi wasn't in the finals. Modern fighting games made for professional players? The ones whose new mechanics only activate when you're losing?

We're connected on LinkedIn so we're basically best friends.

Peter left Lionhead the day after I interviewed. I think he it's fair to say he was heavily involved in some of the most substantial decisions on Fable 3 and most of The Journey. Edit: I misspoke above. I don't mean to imply Peter is just a marketing guy, but it grinds my gears when games made by studios are attributed to a single person. I shouldn't Internet before coffee.

Peter is more of a PR guy. AFAIK his only big design input was on Populous.

This is super late but you should say hi to Anish from me.

The game that raised almost $4m on Kickstarter is allowing you to rediscover the excitement of pledging money. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyno9/mighty-no-9/posts/901232

It's like mega man only with long featureless corridors, no level design and downwards of two enemies.

Fingers crossed for P1 advantage.

The only thing worse than people being disappointed because not every surface in a city has a real-time reflection, is journalists and gamers asking to cut it some slack for being "the first in the series."

so, in other words, the same thing. How much do all these samey dota-like games make, anyway? So far, it seems that all this has going for it is "we have historical figures mixed with fairy tales". Who is this for? There are two, maybe three, successful DotA games and one of them is DotA. They both seem to host a trillion dollar tournament every year so that would suggest they're doing okay. This looks very by the numbers and the characters are so random. Even if you accept the premise that it's fantasy and historical figured plucked to fight, why does Red Riding Hood have a huge cleaver? Why is Robin Hood evil? Why is Fenrir related to fire? I'm confused.

Yeah, it's not the same as simply buying power, but you need to unlock all your options and if you don't have all your options it's not a level playing field. Most F2P games operate via time = money. I think I worked it out that if you won three games a day it would take about 5 years to unlock everything. Although this also includes runes (and most of those are pointless) and doesn't account for the continued stream of more content to unlock.

Fairly sure I've read this article fifty times already by different authors, although this one at least gets credit for length. As usual it pretends mobile and traditional gamers are the exact same demographic, but the former have just been mislead by the evil people in suits. It also has some pretty suspect examples: Mobile games don't care about UX design? Please. Like all other opinion articles in Polygon, it's link-bait to advertise something, although at least it isn't quite as factually inaccurate as Bennet Foddy's "my game collection won't have net-play because I don't understand net-code" piece. The F2P model is already ingrained in PC gaming and Steam, and accepted and beloved by gamers who will defend it as being fine because you're never "paying to win." Go tell a League of Legends player LoL's model is exploitative and they'll bite your head off. Valve are pretty much leading the F2P charge with Team Fortress and Defence of the Ancients being a constant test-bed for different monetisation models.

Yeah, I entered this time as well. In fact I just submitted my entry: Sword and Shovelry, which is based around the Zelda shovel mechanic where you dig up every single tile in the Overworld looking for about two items. “Hidden” in each level are three seashells, although their locations are hinted at with arrows at the sides of the screen, and until you uncover them you cannot damage enemies. It’s short and hopefully sweet. Game entry page Web Player Windows Source Code

I'm not sure I agree with that. Or at least not to this level. I mean, the Light Pillar is comparable to the World of Ruin in Final Fantasy VI. Except the WoR strips your party down to one, completely changes the world map, changes every single location, changes all the enemies, adds a whole bunch of extra content, and then gives you an open path to recruit your old party members and enter the final dungeon whenever you're ready. It's basically an entirely new world. BD just respawns everything and adds flat statistics to them with very flimsy reasoning. It really is another level of lazy.

I've been playing Bravely Default which recently got some news because it was selling unexpectedly well and could even create a shake up within Square-Enix. Perhaps 75 million dollar corridors where you don’t do anything but select auto-battle for one character are not the best formula for an RPG? But while Bravely Default is decidedly old-school when it comes to making sure you’re actually looking at the screen while playing, I cannot help but think a lot of the hype is from people who missed the SNES – PS1 era. The job system is really broad but there are a lot of optimal strategies like Sleep + Twilight or just using four ninjas that breeze through everything. And a lot of the bosses force skills like Rampart or Spirit Ward with Speed passives so it’s not like you have the freedom to do what you want. But my main problem with the game is your motivations for doing things are poor and you often feel like you’re on a wild goose chase rather than a mission to save the world. Take this sequence from the first temple you visit. And this is pretty much how it goes for the whole game, with your party kind of ambling along aimlessly and occasionally stopping like they can’t remember if they left the oven on and forcing you to backtrack. But the ultimate slap in the face comes with Chapter 5. No thanks.

Just landed a permanent position at Space Ape as a Gameplay and Content Designer (just Game Designer will do I imagine!).

Only if I can do the vehicle sections and have creative license to make the game have no vehicle sections. But I'm less Mapcore Elite and more Mapcore Still Here.

Puyo Puyo predates Puzzle Fighter by at least half a decade and the chain and junk tile rules are significantly different. From a mechanics point of view I think the bigger grid, at least in the single player mode, is kind of a negative so long as drop speed is tied into cancels. Puyo Puyo is ridiculously easy to chain (in competitive matches there are usually only 1-3 in the whole thing!) and I find putting junk blocks where you want can actually increase chain potential... But maybe this is cool, start the game and construct the world’s largest chain with no pressure, then die as it’s maximum speed.

I love the new animated logo. Will probably get some gear too.