It’s been an interesting weekend. I fought against this strong, internal instinct to do more work work (catching up on some things, getting a head start on the following week). It really took some effort for me to unplug, and to prevent myself from hopping on VPN and attending to work over the weekend.
At some point, I had this sudden realization: by day, I was doing demo upstairs, and busting up the floor. And in the evenings, as a way to relax, I played a game where sometimes… your character runs around inside houses, breaking through the walls and floors.
As far as RPG’s go, I’m a sucker for archers. I always lean towards a ranger when playing games like this, and the few trailers I saw looked pretty amazing. The world/environment is one that is post-apocalyptic, but with a mixture of nature and machine. Trees and foliage have overrun buildings, but the world also seems inhabited by mechanical creatures – incredibly complex mechanical creatures.
It’s fun to spend so much time playing games again, though it does still leave me with a weird residual. During the actual game play, it feels relaxing and fun. But emerging from the fog, I feel like I’ve wasted several hours and regret not being in front of my computer, working on some project or other.
“I thought I’d fix this problem by creating a city in which only a single home could be built. Then I’d see who moved in and keep track of their lives. Here’s what happened.”
It’s a bit like the Sims, but much darker. I love the screenshot (above), as these two were just utterly miserable, yet trying to slow dance with one another and talking about their “future” together. I’m a terrible Overseer, but hey – my vault, my rules.
I got hooked on GridWars like people got hooked on Tetris. And I still seem to remember some kind of race I had with Chris, as to who could hit 9 or 10 million first. I remember screenshots being sent around, but I’m pretty sure I got there first. Though I’m guessing he is pretty sure he got there first.
In my opinion, there were a lot of ways this could have gone wrong. But having seen what TellTale Games has done with The Walking Dead, I felt a little more assured that the world of Fables was in capable hands.
When I should have been working on Saturday, I spent a lot of time playing video games. Quite frankly, I blew a lot of time playing the first season of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead. The game is based on the popular Walking Dead comics, taking place in the world focusing on a set of newer characters.
There are lots of other fun links in the original MeFi thread. And to mirror the thoughts of a few others: I really hope Valve makes a longer series (or movie). If this short video is any indication of the quality, I would love to see a full-fledged series or film.
A few days before our our big move, Chris told me about a game called Hearthstone (which he had heard about, via Matt M).
“Markus Persson, the game’s creator, planned for these worlds to be infinitely large: if a player kept walking in a single direction, the game would create more of the world in front of him, like an engineer forever laying track for an advancing train.”
An Illusionist in Skyrim is the attempt by Tom Francis to play the video game Skyrim using a character whose only skill is Illusion. He wears no armor, wields no weapons, and basically can’t directly attack anyone or anything in the game. All he’s got are illusion class spells.
What I love about this game is that it’s based in the browser, and time is a factor. At first, you have to wait for things to accrue (like candy, lollipops, and health). It’s a fun and weird mixture of silliness and text in an RPG format. The world looks a little larger than before, and so far seems just as addictive.
They’re billing it as a season premiere, which is an interesting approach promising connected games that play out like a television show – a total of five different episodes will comprise one “season.” Additionally, the game will have a lot of decision-based mechanics, where choices you make will (purportedly) influence elements in the game – promising that one person’s experience with the game will be different from another’s. I like the fact that they will be pressuring players to make these types of decisions quickly, “reflecting the pressures of real-world decision-making,” but I’m cautiously optimistic whenever someone touts decision-based games offering up truly different outcomes.