Let's Lander

i have this really cool game called Lander and I used to play it when i was like 7 years old or something. actually i couldn't play it myself because it was really tricky to control, so I would watch my dad play it. Otherwise if my dad wasn't playing it I'd watch the screen-idle auto gameplay video that comes up when you don't press any buttons. if you left the game still on the menu screen and didn't press any buttons, it would show a random gameplay of a level played by some anonymous person. probably one of the game developers or something. But once I was older, I could play the game myself... and it was so good!!!!!!! It's got this industrial electronic music and dark atmosphere, and it's difficult to manoeuvre this lander craft without crashing into everything. At the time it was an achievement to get to the 3rd level or so, it seemed like the big mega impossible level, but now I realize it was only the 3rd level out of about 30. and buying new lander craft seemed impossible because they were so expensive. They were like some kind of distant unreachable technologies. We didn't know about the save function, and we had been playing from the beginning every time. But it didn't seem to matter, because the ship was so difficult to fly, you could play the same level and not really mind.

the game was released in 1999 so it had quite low poly graphics. These low polygon graphics is one thing that seems to work well with the game in my opinion, because it's futuristic and spacey, and everything is angular and sharp and just looks really good like that I reckon. The game has this kind of e-mail system in it where you check your inbox for new missions, and there'd be other messages like something about some LOTTO RESULTS. these kind of random e-mails created the sense of things going on somewhere else. You never see people in the game, there are no human models or faces anywhere. there's evidence of people because vehicles have windows, you get these e-mails, and you get the impression humans are behind these things. But that's something I find interesting, how you don't ever see people. there is a rescue mission, you have to rescue DOCTOR MISHIMA, but he's unseen in this small capsule that get's bashed around when you try to escape with it. I would imagine how this Dr. Mishima would be feeling in that capsule as it get's swung about under my lander craft, knocking into every wall. But it didn't seem to matter because you would win the level once the doctor was lifted up to 3000 feet in the air.

Lander gameplay by someone who knows their Lander

I think Lander was my first 3D game to play. I didn't know how games worked then, and wasn't able to recognize similarities this had to other games. I would interpret the game differently from how I do now because of age and because of more gaming experience.

i think something I try to capture in the games that I make now has something to do with this. I feel like a lot of my games are based on this not knowing of how a game works, and the misinterpretation of things happening in the game that you get when you aren't familiar with other games. At the moment I like my games to have a childish feeling, very crude and naive in their workings or/and presentation. I feel this is partly to do with me playing Lander when I was 7, and the way I saw the game, or from how I remember the experience.

that's also something I miss from playing games now, is that I feel I 'get' them too well, which is really my own problem not the game's. there isn't much point playing them for more than a few minutes. well, other than as entertainment with a friend or something. Not that I particularly want to play games for longer actually, I think it's good to play them really briefly and try and remain enthusiastic about them instead of getting sick of them/or just losing interest after hours of playing. I don't think it's a problem with the games, but I think it's just for me to remember to only look at the game really briefly and then come back to it later, and have another brief go. so it remains exciting. and so I feel good. and it's probably a better idea to only look at the game a few minutes a time...... and so I am able to misinterpret the game because I played it for a short second and then exited, and it's just a kind of abstract blur of something happening a moment which is more interesting to think about. And then I make a game based on that blurry abstract blur

wilbler park

i've been inspired to write about my game listening to clyde's podcast where he and chrissy talk about wilbler park and a few other games: https://twitter.com/cafefiction/status/565721140036128771

excuse my english

Wilbler Park is a game where one can look at the spaces they are chucked in with a pair of binoculars. I wanted the game to be about the sounds you hear around you, and observing distant things with the binoculars, and to create the feeling that the game isn't really about the player. there's usually quite little amount of objects in the box scenes you are contained in, and often there is more that appears to be going on outside these areas. I was interested in the idea that while you may feel alone in the game, there is constant suggestion of activity beyond the player. the player isn't really apart of anything going on, but can observe these things happening.

I was also interested in creating a hunting game without the hunting. I enjoy the idea of being able to zoom in and look at things closely with a sniper rifle or binoculars in games like Carnivores. for me the zooming in to get a closer look seems like enough interactivity with the world. this was also an idea in Hernhand, but without the zooming in. The animals you saw in the background of the first area were part of this idea. Wilbler Park features birds and smaller scale life (still cubes with images) to observe.

The starry skies were an exciting part of the game to make. at first I felt like this was going to be the big part of the game, where the binoculars could be used the most. I guess it is, but the busy sky doesn't continue on so much into the second half of the game. I was partly getting sick of having a black sky and not many colours, so I ended up making the desert and thought of  having the time of day progress to some kind of morning and mid-day. so this stopped me feeling swamped in a lonely midnight walk home feeling the whole time while making the game. I also liked the opportunity I had with this to change the style of sounds for the desert area to slightly more quick and zippy bright and sunny blue sky associated sounds. I do enjoy the contrast i think I managed with the day and night.

a lot of the areas in the game went through a number of changes. after I decided to put in a kind of overcast sky into the city area, I thought it looked good and went through adding stormy clouds in other areas which completely changed the vibe of each area which were originally all clear black with stars. the traffic/city scape area after the candle room used to be much bigger and had very tall buildings, a lot more traffic which was more distant and star warsy, but I thought about it and realised I wanted it to look less dramatic and have it smaller and more obviously diorama scale. I also went around and changed a number of wall textures, which used to be images of landscape drawings, to images I had intended to be for an eyeball you would find behind a building. the eyeball walls are now the common white walls you see in the first few areas. this made a number of the spaces feel more solid and cardboardy + cleaner which I enjoyed looking at. So making the game feel like a diorama was intentional, which was also inspired by backgrounds in other 3D games, like flat tree barriers to stop the player from getting out of the level.

some games have noticeable background activity going on beyond where the player can reach, I really liked this idea and the idea of trying to escape the game and get out into the background diorama. People seem to like doing this a lot and filming their attempts at escaping into game backgrounds on youtube, and they seem to be really satisfied by doing it which is interesting considering the games don't function properly where you aren't supposed to be, and textures go all glitchy and ugly. it's interesting how this becomes an exciting achievement for players, but then downloading an indie game specifically based on the horrible background areas of games will probably be dismissed and ignored by the same people because, maybe because there is no underlying conventional game with fun gameplay? there was no challenge to escape into and reach this horrible place? it's been an influence to Wilbler PARk and many of my other games.

I think Wilbler Park is somehow danker and more eerie than Hernhand, it has a more realistic feeling to me and is more lonely. hernhand seems more playful or something, more like a quick scribble and I like how a lot of Hernhand is partly hidden/not easy to reach unless you spend some time there. I thought I should make something more accessible and easy to get through, give the player a path to follow like in Bernband. but I also feel like it's a bit dry and bare, reminds me of sawdust or something, even though there is a lot more detail with amount of objects and drawings than Hernhand, the style of Hernandez is brighter and more enjoyable for me I think. Wilbler park feels a bit depressing or too lonely, possibly too much gray.