Since I recently posted the original Dr. P as implemented in City of Heroes, I realized it was time to make the new Dr. P in a similar way. City of Heroes is tragically dead, but Champions Online is still going, so here’s Docprof’s modern look as implemented there!
0 CommentsKirby’s Adventure is coming to the Switch NES thingy! I have been waiting for this since the Switch NES thingy was announced. So this also seems like a good time to muse briefly on why it’s still my favorite Kirby game: the Copy Abilities.
Back in Kirby’s Adventure, each enemy would literally give Kirby one ability. This meant that they were situational, easy to remember, activated with a dedicated button, and you’d learn to use them well. It was exciting to run into new enemies doing things you hadn’t seen before, because it meant you’d get a brand-new ability to experiment with.
In modern Kirby titles, it’s more like each enemy gives Kirby a form with several abilities activated various ways, making them harder to learn and remember (even the pause screen explanations now take up multiple pages). They’re also less distinctive, as there’s a ton of mechanical overlap between ability sets. It never really feels like it matters which ability set you have, so finding new enemy types isn’t exciting.
It’s less about playing with different tools, learning which are good for which situations, and learning to use them well - it’s more about just grabbing any old enemy to power up, and at best picking your favorite flavor of ability set. And I find I get bored with that pretty quickly.
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The best game trailers cut to the heart of what makes a game unique, yet so many trailers still treat games like a product which is merely the sum of its parts. Thinking of games this way does a disservice to the game, the trailer, and the audience.
Derek Lieu, who made trailers for Firewatch, Spelunky 2, and Subnautica, discusses why game trailers should focus on what makes games unique rather than how they tick the boxes on standard features. He’s got more essays on good trailers on his website.
In the opening movie of Justice League: Heroes, Batman gets called to deal with a robot attack. Superman shows up too, and Batman curtly informs him that he didn’t ask for help. Superman gallantly says, “Well, since I’m here anyway,” and joins in the fight.
When gameplay started, I chose to play as Batman, leaving Superman to the partner AI. As I tried to experiment with attacks and learn the controls as well as the enemy behavior patterns, Superman just waltzed up to the robots and destroyed them.
Never has a game so rapidly, thoroughly, and unintentionally created empathy for the player character.
0 CommentsThere are basically three things I get out of video games: chill, story, and action.
For better or worse, much of the games market is moving to games-as-a-service. Once upon a time, this was known as the MMO business model, because all MMOs were games-as-a-service, and virtually no…
Raph Koster catalogs the major ways to drive player retention with their associated pros and cons. As Raph notes, retention is key to any games-as-a-service model regardless of how (or indeed whether) it monetizes - it just means a game that players want to keep playing.
A Pixel Poppers dress in Style Savvy: Styling Star. I hope this franchise makes it to Switch too!
0 CommentsGames with self-insert developer avatar characters who make jokes about how since they’re the developers they are much more powerful than you are like someone inviting you to their house and in the middle of you having a good time they suddenly make a joke about how it’s their house so they could totally throw you out if they wanted and could call the police if you didn’t like it.
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I’ve released my very first game, Detectivania! You play as a master detective who keeps forgetting how to investigate mysteries!
It’s a Twine game, playable in your browser, and it’s about half an hour long. You can play it on Pixel Poppers or on Itch.io.
Making it was a great learning opportunity, and I also published a… postmortem? Making of? A dev blog post about it, discussing the goals, challenges, and lessons learned along the way.
I’m really excited. Planning on doing a bunch of these in 2019. This is just the first. :)
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By shutting down the Wii Store Channel and not letting users download old games, Nintendo is once again showing that in the modern digital era, you don't actually own the things you buy.
This isn’t a new problem, but the Wii Shop closure shines perhaps the brightest light yet on how anti-preservation many digital storefronts are.