More on IGF
September 24th, 2006
Just days after I write my IGF predictions, Derek Yu posts screenshots of his new game Aquaria on tigsource and blows me away. Unfortuanately, like many other cool looking or sounding games, this one is hard to judge. It could have great art and a good premise, but suck as a game. Hopefully this isn’t the case, I can’t wait to play the demo!
I also played Tune and it is squarely in the category of “good idea, not so good implementation.” The biggest flaw is the core game isn’t very fun, its yet another physics platformer with kind of dodgy control. I know the point of the game is to tweak it to something you can control, but you can’t change the nature of the character, a weird spinning pogo stick that is pretty difficult to control no matter what the physics values are. I personally would have preferred something more like a traditional platformer in terms of control, but with the same idea of tweaking speed, jump timings, etc.
While outside the scope of the game, it would be interesting if you could change the relationships between game objects as well. Changing the effect enemies have on you for example. The tweaking UI could also be better. The idea of a game that you have to edit to overcome challenges and fit your play style is an interesting one and I would like to see Tune further explored. Maybe one day we will get the gaming equivalent of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.
With all the free online games you can find nowadays playing some video games is easier than ever. Whether you’re interested in party games or you’re looking to get into a serious computer gaming scene, many people find that video gaming can provide what they need.
1 Comment Add your own
1. Steve Swink | October 13th, 2006 at 12:31 am
I updated the UI to be more in line with what I want the game to be about, which is the tweaking of parameters: http://www.steveswink.com/posts/tune-8/
There’s still some fixing to be done there, implementing the ability to minimize properly and what not, but that’s a lot closer.
My eventual plan is to have three mechanics to tune. Here’s the Mario-ish one: http://www.steveswink.com/Tune/Tune_D_01.htm
The plunger guy was the first one I tried building a progression around because it has the most straightforward parameters to tune. When you start playing with Mario style controls, you start getting state shifts and have to look at things like aftertouch timings and things like that, which are a lot harder to wrap your brain around. The above test is a sandbox with a bunch of parameters exposed.
That said, I’m going to move away from the whole progression structure and do something more freeform and platformy. Thanks for the feedback!
Steve
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