A Butter, a Clam and an insane Man

There isn't much left to it after smithis name was mentioned and I don't particularly see a problem with returning it to the rock pool but at the same time, clams are known to be tasty. I decided to return it to the pool anyway. After a moment of walking along the sand I turn around for no particular reason and see that idiot Gradient Obide running toward me. He's screaming 'no! my shoes are wet! Help! heeeeeeelp!.' Pathetic, I think to myself, what a insane man!

A Pretty of Domestics, Is That A Family Portrait

Well, they've got it sorted in the archive. The archive? Did you contact Gregory? He has a hand on them things. Yes he has two on his dinner plate with gravy. He is with his family is North Wilberler
appraently mary doesn't like it. She thinks archives are not suitable for children under age of 5. Well I'd be surprised if there were more than 3 people in the house. Yes it is a tricky puzzle only so many know how to solve, getting dancing jug of a fizzy watery something usually cheers up the children though but can't be sure, these ones are unpredictable. I know what satisifes the unpredictable, get Gregory on the line this will break the ice. Just chuck a couple of them round the house. Tell him to calm down. Okay these things patty up the air big time, you want to sift that aroma of the archives? Here I've got a double, just sniff it in, no, here put it on the line. Okay now that it's tied by a shoe string. Is it in the shoe? What in gods name are you doing Bill! Take it out of the shoe! I'd recommend maneuvering around the shoe. No, I just tied it to the string incase it falls down, I think before that our listeners might not get at what we're going on about, so there's also a HD mic on it. Carson give us a hand here would you. Just hit the bottom, we need this archive to come out. Yeah that's it. Didn't you know they can incense families? It only takes a matter of years Carson. Well I don't think we'd to take too many steps without Burnundrum, although he hasn't even got back to me on that calculations.

Dirt Stooge writing

Dirt Stooge is essentially a slow and atmospheric platform shooter. The shooting is interrupted by game maker text boxes which usually have few words, saying things about characters you encounter or describing the shotgun firing. I added this at first because I wasn't sure if I wanted enjoyable combat in the game. I also just like seeing text boxes. I like how the text boxes jar the shooting and make things appear a bit more narrative based; the combat seems to disappear slightly and I think text boxes (hopefully) give impression of something going on. I also decided to try and abstract the combat more by making sounds more chirpy and old gamey, rather than having loud banging guns and explosions; I ended up wanting to turn the action into being less satisfactory I suppose, and also be less relevant to fighting.

The game is based a lot on my old game maker games when I started using game maker, and also the early clunky scrappy game maker work by other young developers found on yoyogames. I wanted dirt stooge to feel half jarring in it's graphics, animations, text boxes, and movement but also have it run smoothly amongst that so it doesn't give too much of a headache to player. The player moves smoothly but also teleports, so it's sort of dodgy looking but hopefully doesn't give headache to person looking at screen too much.

The game is slow and boring because I find that really appealing for some reason, so I tried to have that while trying to make it detailed at the same time. Although I don't really want people to spend much time in the game, so I sped up the walking speed a bit. I think I slowed it down a bit again. I supposed fast movement is good because you then have the option to spend time in the game or just run through quickly. I did try this, but it made the text boxes more jarring and annoying and didn't suit my intention. It's not really supposed to be fun in the end, I was more interested in getting the right feeling and atmosphere.

Still, there are a few long levels to walk through but unless you're getting something out of it just stick with first and first half of second level.

The music I have used is originally by http://sixshadowsix.newgrounds.com/audio/

I have altered it and messed around with it and other sounds in audacity

beach game

I made this beach game. I don't know if it is a beach though. It has sand and some kind of black ocean surrounding the sand. I think that means it is a beach.

I wanted it to feel dry and really sunny. Very sunny weather. Really hot and sunny and windy, a very unattractive beach experience. Really windy and horrible, no lying on this beach, this beach is a nightmare come reality.

like usual with my games i wanted to have lots of sounds, so when you walk passed things you hear some weird hum, or maybe some music playing. I like how this is able to fill in for the simple graphics and is able to create a bigger picture beyond what you see on the screen.

They are waiting for the water to rise so they can drink it up

There seems to be no one around and yet streams of cars are crossing the bridge.

there's something I really like about MS Paint drawings stretching around 3D models. it's so dry and dull looking it's just fantastic

Oh, and there's something I like about the repeating clouds. i think i like the sound changing while the imagery is repetitive or something

Some sounds in the game are by:

http://arnas.newgrounds.com/audio/

http://surealkiller.newgrounds.com/

http://anjovi.newgrounds.com/

The game can be downloaded: http://gamejolt.com/games/other/the-beach/57313/

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.

Norgwang Games

This is about some of the games in my norgwang collection found here: http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/norgwang-games/36471/

City 4:

This game was partly based on my desire to escape into the background of a section in Mass Effect, and to wander around a sci fi city. I was also influenced to make another Tandoor game, Tandoor was inspired by Borderlands and my want to escape into the open, like in Mass Effect, but into the surrounding desert. This game doesn't really depict a city more than a wasteland though, buildings are small rectangles scattered around randomly and there aren't any streets or alleys like you would expect with the word 'city'. It's a desert wasteland game like Tandoor, but a bit more shiny future looking. You can walk around, go into buildings, or take a hover car and speed around the desert. I also think the pseudo 3D half sky/half ground/top down style is coming about in my work because I actually want to make a 3D free-roam game, but I haven't learnt to. Otherwise, Hernhand is the closest I've come to doing that.

I really like Grand Theft Auto. I remember being really excited to play GTA III when I was a lot younger, and only having little access to the game made it really fun to play when I got the chance. It felt really big, I hadn't gotten to explore much, I really appreciated being in the world when I could be. I still find the thought of having a game where you can just go and steal a car and drive around anywhere with the radio on, very exciting. But now I have played GTA a lot, I know it too well, and I get a lot more out of thinking of these early memories than playing the game. But I still spend time in GTA 5, even just walking down a street is satisfying, it's a very well done game, full of sounds and atmosphere. City 4 is probably more based on my interest of wanting a sci fi GTA with flying cars and tall buildings. My Taxi game in my 'Some games' collection was also based on the same idea.

Gregory:

Gregory was mostly inspired by Paul Moose in Space World by the catamites and Beeswing by Jack King-Spooner. I was interested in making a game that was just about everyday, casual life, being at someone else's house that appears different and kind of strange at first. I began enjoying drawing small household objects like cups, chairs, candle holder things and weird collectable action figures. I had read on the online internet that Earth spins more than 1,000 miles per hour, and I began looking at objects on the table with this in mind and thinking "great heavens, would you look at that". So that has partly lead to me appreciating seemingly boring waiting moments, because it isn't actually boring at all, and that also inspired making objects that sit on the table like coffee pots and things for a game called Gregory. Oh, Gregory was also inspired by first person walking parts in the Neverhood, like with the motion picture parts when you walk out the door with the low quality wind sounds playing.

Horse Pastry 2:

I was playing a game called Lander, and I was dropped onto a planet in my Lander space-craft and it was raining and stormy, and I had to find an entrance to a mining facility or something to collect some kind of alien amulet and then climb to 1000 feet to win the level. Lander was based on another game called Thrust, but it was 3D and newer. and a good game. So I wanted to make a game inspired by Lander, being dropped into a level and having to get something. But I was less interested in the gameplay aspect and more into finding/editing music for the games soundtrack, and creating an atmosphere based on the one I liked in Lander. I wanted it to sort of feel like you weren't very important playing as this Horse Pastry (called Lanore France Woodhorn in-fact), or that there was a story going on else where. I wanted there to be small narrative elements, such as characters who were imprisoned by others, characters neither good or bad, neutral characters, I sort of wanted the 'enemies' to be a blur of not really bad or good, who knows who's who. This idea was inspired by Sandard Bits (stdbits) by Mark Johns, I really like that game and how other characters are either helpful, neutral or enemies. And I like the abstraction created by the presentation in general, how it feels like a different world and that you are left to find out what things do. I was also interested in first levels of games. For example I enjoy the first level of Hotline Miami a bit more than the more complicated difficult ones, I like how there are less enemies in the beginning and the focus is drawn more to the set pieces and narrative. Hose Pastry also reminds me a bit of kid's TV shows in some levels, which I like a lot.

Space1:

Ok this was based on what I like about a yoyogames game I downloaded once which had space-ships which, instead of turning slowly, they would flip around instantly like they aren't made of any substantial material. They just flip 90 degrees to turn. I find that interesting though, what is this magical technology? How are these spaceships capable of such incredible manoeuvres? I can really appreciate this very simplistic technical design. I sort of couldn't be bothered making more to Space1 as I had achieved what I wanted; making ships flip by 90 degree angles.

Plains:

Another game similar to City 4 and Tandoor. I like deserts. Inspired by camping and looking at stars.

Planet 2:

A slow mission to another planet with lots of crackly radio transmissions. At first I added lots of free sound effects, one was a man saying 'oh yeah' another was 'hello dare'. But I decided to remove these sounds because I thought it was too silly. You originally got to fight a monster inspired by the Neverhood monster chase, and there was a very graphic death scene, but I decided to remove this for the final product.

Thanks for reading!

borderlands

I like borderlands. I think I already wrote about it before, but I've played it again now. I really like the atmosphere of Borderlands. I like how it's set in the desert. It's dusty and warm, feels warn down and still. Bandits are everywhere, I'm a hero of sorts going in and killing them all, but then they always come back. Maybe my character is fantasising? All the areas in the game are very still, you kill an enemy, it will be back after you leave and return to that area. It feels like nothing is changing. I'm not very familiar with Role Playing Games apart from this game, maybe they all feel like this. I'm this hero doing things yet nothing is changing, I'm a character constantly doing the same thing over and over. Maybe when I get to the next area and kill the bandit leader, all the bandits will disappear? No, not even the ones in the first area. They're all still there. When I was first playing this, I found it frustrating that nothing changed. I felt like something might happen just after I kill the next boss, but it was always the same. I find that interesting now, it feels realistic, although I seem to enjoy thinking of Borderlands more than playing it. not a bad thing? What you're doing in the game is basically a distraction from just being in the world, because you can't change anything. something did imply to me that activity was going on beyond the levels I inhabited in the game. it was to do with the different weapon manufacturer names, which I like a lot. It feels like there's competition between the manufacturers, creating the illusion that there are people doing things elsewhere. I think this feeling is what motivated me to keep going through the game, hopefully to find some kind of climax where all the bandits would finally disappear. But you always have to face the same problems, every enemy is always back, and they do get easier to get through as you level up. It's a still, repetitive world, the same problems are always present but get easier to deal with. so it isn't that much fun to play, but I somehow find it comforting to remember the game.

Anyway, that's what I like about the game. The sequel looks a lot flashier and seems to have lost what I appreciate about the first game. Looks like it's more fun to play though.