THIS IS NOT A BLOGPOST. DO NOT GRADE THIS PLEASE KTHNX.
I'm featuring this post for a bit just so it stands out against all the blog submissions that will be coming in. I'm also posting this right now since I know a lot of you will be visiting the blog today, I want to give you some games and interesting links because sharing is wonderful. A lot of what I'll be posting will be common knowledge I bet to most of you "gamers" (resist the hemegony!) but they have a lot of really good game design lessons, and as a result are incredibly fun to play/explore.
Well Designed Games
Cave Story - A labor of love by one Japanese man over 8 years, the darling of indie games and responsible for a lot of indie game love happening right now. If you don't know it, hurry up and play it! It's practically perfect! Its free too.
Iji - Another labor of love by Daniel Remar (7 years I think?) it was made entirely through gamemaker and has great graphics, amazing mechanics, wonderful level design, and is just great.
You Have to Burn The Rope - I didn't know whether to put this under art or well designed. There is nothing you can add to this game to make it better, btw.
Another World - By Eric Cahi. Called by some very pissed off but intelligent people as the best (video) game of all time, there are a lot of design lessons to be learned. Read the review at least, and play the game if you can spare the $5 or whatever. Oh, and this game was a huge influence on Shadow of the Colossus and ICO.
I Wanna Be the Guy - Good Luck.
Rescue the Beagles - Rescue them!
Knytt and Knytt Stories by Nifflas - Games about exploration, not killing, and beauty and reflection. Knytt Stories comes with a level editor and theres a great community that makes extra levels and does their own spin on the Knytt!
Art. Game. Art Game. Game Art. Game? Art.
The Path and The Graveyard by Tale of Tales - The Path has been thoroughly talked about, and if you haven't been playing it shame on you. The Graveyard is "free", and you'll basically get the full game in the trial version. The full version, for $10, adds one important feature though: death.
Art Games and Artists
Untitled Game - By JoDi.org. An "unplayable" artistic game mod that I'll probably be talking about in my blog post assignment. I think its fantastic...and unplayable. Alex Galloway wrote an essay comparing it (among other games) to Goddard's counter-cinema movement. It's in a book so...yeah, I can't put up a link. Also, when at the Jodi website hit "view page source" on the very first page to understand what's going on there.
Joseph Delappe is a digital artist who works with games and does "Velvet Strike" type interventions into America's Army and Quake III. He also did a neat piece on Ghandi in Second Life involving some nifty treadmill hacking and several days of workout.
Brody Condon and Eddo Stern are two great game artists I mix up constantly. They both worked on Waco Ressurection and I think they were both involved in Velvet Strike? Browse their work, I think Eddo did an awesome piece called Tekken Torture Tournament where each time you got hit you were treated to a physical electric shock. Brody Condon also ran a game of D&D in a gallery where everyone was a Lawful Evil character. <3
The Intruder - by Natalie Bookchin. Mentioned briefly in the reading, amazing does not begin to describe this.
Passage - by Jason Rohrer. A Memento Mori game that takes five minutes to play. Don't forget to try moving up and down along with side to side!
The Marriage - by Rod Humble.
Hazard - This is actually a small article by Rock Paper Shotgun about how the guy found this and hasn't played it yet. And neither have I. But it looks fantastic!
Bonus Round!
Once you are done writing your blogpost, help yourself to one of these games!
Just have to give a million upvotes to "The Marriage". Make sure you play the game a bit BEFORE you read Rod's explanation of its meaning.
Also, "You Have to Burn the Rope" is wonderful for your self-esteem after "I Wanna Be the Guy" kicks your ass into last week.
Posted by: David Poore | 09/29/2009 at 09:19 PM