I had contacted Anders Gustafsson, creator of Gateway II, and he gave me a preview of the first chapter of his latest game — The Dream Machine by Cockroach Inc.

I had played the demo before and while it was presented well, I didn’t know what to think of it. It was so short that it felt like it was over before it ever began. But after playing through the first chapter, I can now rest my worries. I can’t wait to play the rest!

First off the game is well written. While Gateway had some dialogue, its story was mostly told visually through the animation of the characters. In The Dream Machine, the characters have some great dialogue, which I find believable. The game start with your character, Victor, just moving into an apartment with his girlfriend. You get a good feel for their relationship through their talking. The game has dialogue branches which allow you to respond in a more serious or joking manner if you wish. It helped me to believe in the characters — okay, Game Creator, you’ve got my attention.

A Turnaround from their ‘Character Generation’ blog post

The game’s unique art style kept me guessing. Is this clay? Or 3d? Or photographs? The visuals in the game are great. From their blog posts, it seems they are a mixture of figure, 3d, and composite images. So I guess I was right with all guesses, haha. I dig that the art has a handmade feel to it, a good change from most things being super clean, super digital.

It hit me maybe about an hour in. The sound is friggin incredible. And I think that’s when you know when it’s good. When it creeps in on you, and before you know it, you’re under its grasp. You really just don’t get sound at this quality very often with web games. The sound adds to the eeriness of the experience, reminds me of a Resident Evil game. How you always have that feeling that something’s… not… quite… right…

Oh yeah, I forgot about the gameplay! The game seems to be along the lines of your standard adventure game. Chapter 1 is mostly finding items and finding where they go, scavenger hunt style, with a logic puzzle or two to break things up. It didn’t really have those environmental “move here then move there” puzzles of the Gateway games. I felt that Chapter 1 was mostly an introduction to the characters and their world.

I don’t think the gameplay is innovative, and that’s probably a good thing. I think there’s a lot of pressure to be innovative and break rules and conventions but often the result is something broken and not enjoyable. Or something that’s claiming to be innovative while just replicating features some game made 10 or 20 years ago. If innovation is something that drives you to play a game, I’d say innovation is something that comes from the heart. In games like these where you can feel the love put into it.

I’ve been inspired by what I’ve seen of the game. And look forward to seeing more of it. The guys at Cockroach Inc. are still hard at work at it so the results may vary, haha.

Links:

• Play The Dream Machine
• The Dream Machine development blog
• The Dream Machine Facebook group

I Wish I Were the Moon by Daniel Benmergui

I didn’t get the opportunity to see everything but the favorite thing that I played was Moon Stories by Daniel Benmergui of Argentina. This is a series a 3 games, which are more like interactive stories. I could spend a paragraph trying to explain it or you can just play the damn thing. I liked that I could just jump in an play around and that the game didn’t expect anything from me. I had fun messing around just to see what would happen. This is really how game stories need to be told more often.

Nanobots

I also got a chance to see Nanobots from Erin Robinson, which is a LucasArts style adventure game with pixelly visuals. I had no patience to sit down and play such a game but I’m glad Chris was interested, so I watched him play through it (with Erin over the shoulder giving hints). It’s a cleverly designed game with a good sense of humor. You can download it on her site Lively Ivy.

ClassicNight

I thought this game ClassicNight looked amazing. Apparently the soundtrack made it even more awesome. I didn’t see enough of the game to understand what it was completely about aside from collecting light, but the visuals are fantastic. From design to effects, I really dug the style.

Another game that I didn’t play but was very interesting to me is one that I have absolutely no idea what it’s called. Haha. I think it actually won the big award too! I’m not finding it in the Indiecade program book but it’s one that had 4 monitors, side to side like a box. I didn’t pay much attention to what it was about but I seeing a buncha kids run around from display to display made me smile. They were having a blast, and really that’s what it’s all about.

Inspiring show, to say the least. Me and Chris actually went to a nearby coffee shop and put some time into our projects. Imagine that! After that we went to the after-Indicade drinking event and I briefly chatted with Greg of Intuition Games. Good stuff. And by deduction I realized I met Tyler Glaiel, who’s all over the Flash biz these days. Inspiring to see him putting out so many games!

Time to make some more games!

Go play Scarygirl, sucka!

The game’s finally out, been playing it for the last few days. Awesome stuff! I got into making Flash games to create experiences like this game so it’s major inspiration for me. It’s 16 levels with a built in save system, so you can come back and finish it anytime.

Check it out at Scarygirl.com!

Game by Touch My Pixel.

Gamasutra reports that CrunchTime Games has released design documents for the newly published Xbox Live Arcade title, Shred Nebula. It’s a space adventure game played from an Asteroids-style perspective.

The two documents released are a pitch/design document and an overview of the first 60 seconds of gameplay, both written in 2006. I’ve taken a quick look at both of them and I admire how the gameplay is detailed. This is the level of depth I want to achieve for my design documents. This drives me to push myself further!

There’s an article on the Fangoria horror magazine’s site about a comic my homeboy Ramiro Roman Jr. is working on. It’s a project by writer/director Robert Parigi, which he describes as such…

It’s about a decadent high-school girl who finds a bizarre artifact in the exacavation for her new swimming pool. She uses the relic to enhance her sex-and-drug parties, triggering a plague of supernatural mutations.

This is the first info I’ve seen on it and I’m looking forward to feeling uncomfortable again. You can check out some of Ramiro’s solo comics at his site.

The Eco Zoo

This is the best executed 3d Flash site I’ve seen so far. Just check it out. Apparently this isn’t created with any open source 3d engine out there, it’s a custom engine by this guy.

3D on the web is sort of a gimmick right now, as Flash itself was seen as a gimmick in the past (i.e. your site wasn’t cool unless it had a Flash intro). All it really takes is some progressive individuals to define what’s possible with the advances of the medium — beyond spinning cubes and globes. Right now I see opportunities to tell stories in new and exciting ways. I’m hoping to take design elements from motion graphics and create interactive visual masterpieces. Couldn’t you imagine CartoonNetwork.com as a fully interactive playground? Kids would love that stuff. How come we aren’t seeing that yet??

May it be the first of many.
-Christopher J. Rock

This is a trailer for my thesis film at CSULB. Its my latest work and will be completed over this next summer. You can watch it in full screen and at a higher resolution at YouTube.

I’m taking a lot inspiration from Soviet propaganda filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein.

Shooting started at the end of last semester when we did all of the live action footage, then miniatures and effect shots were done in April. Now I have many hours to spend editing and scoring the whole thing. It’ll add up to a great lot of sweat, but definitely worth it.

From the start I aimed for a film along the lines of early Soviet propaganda films, though a variety of influences found their way in. The some of the effects remind me of a Melies kind of approach, though I hadn’t planned it.

It was shot with the Panasonic AG-HVX200, which I’ve loved using. The format is HD/24p with DVC Pro compression. Many of the shots had their color completely removed and were recolored in post. This, I believe, gives them a look like early painted films (when the only color in film was done by hand). It is being edited in Final Cut Pro and the visual effects I’m using most often are “Threshold” and “Color Balance.” They’re very simple effects, but very powerful.

The current soundtrack will be the basis for the final score which I played on my guitar to hurry out some sound for this trailer. I plan the final score to include a number of other instruments in addition to the guitar. Other songs have been drafted as well, but this is the most representative of the film’s overall feel.

Now I leave you with the recently discovered, final film of the great Ingmar Bergman:

-Christopher J. Rock

Books are the most rich source of information and inspiration that game players don’t use. If you’re looking for some new resources, you may be interested in a short list that I’ve compiled. Each one is worth its own review and maybe someday I’ll do just that.

These books are guaranteed to give players a greater appreciation of their games and help developers make better ones.

Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin: A look at animal behavior, psychology, and emotion. Taking apart the fundamentals of animals indirectly reveals the hardwired and conditioned qualities of humans. Games prey on the subconscious levels of the human mind which are in many ways identical to their equivalents in less intelligent animals. Grandin’s language and presentation is simple enough that anyone can understand it and in depth enough that she leaves few questions unanswered. Temple Grandin is widely known in the areas of animal psychology (especially cattle and other herd animals) and autism (as a diagnosed autistic herself).

_

_

_

_

_

The Art of War by Sun Tzu: A classic for warriors and wanna-be warriors alike, it presents warfare as a game of adaptation and design. It’s about understanding your resources, your environment, and your opponent and exploiting them to your end. This relationship exists between a game designer and a player. Each one attempts exactly that kind of exploitation. Don’t assume it to be a book about killing. In war, as in anything else, there is an unlimited variety to objectives, many of which cannot be satisfied with brute force. As a result, it is very pragmatic and generally adheres to peaceful means.

_

_

_

_

_

Film Form by Sergei Eisenstein: Eisenstein is among the most important film theorists of all time and a favorite of mine. He treats art and science as one in the same and eloquently draws relationships between artistic mediums that would otherwise appear extraordinarily distant. His teachings are still the best foundation for artistic theory in the 20th century, and if you tend toward formalism you’ll love him. His most famous work is in regards to the concept of “montage” (often translated as “editing”). Eisenstein defines montage as the colliding of ideas (via images, words, etc), their destruction and the subsequent generation of new ideas. He applies it to film, literature, music and pretty much everything else. It’s just too bad he couldn’t live to see games.

_

_

_

_

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card: A pivotal sci-fi novel centered around the military training of a boy named Ender. His story is a series of war games which serve as an excellent introduction to the kind of analytical mindset required for playing and designing (I hear it’s recommended reading for Naval officers for the same reason). Besides its relevance to game design, it’s just a good book too (and I’m sure the movie will be much worse).

_

_

_

_

_

_

_

_

The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship or The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating by Stephen Potter: Gamesmanship is a kind of meta-gaming. Gamesmen don’t bother to get good at the games they play, but they dedicate hours of practice and preparation to a psychological assault meant to undo the opponent’s advantages. This book is not nearly as meaningful as the others, but it still represents something to me. It was published in 1947 as a compilation of slimy gaming tactics developed by a clique of British aristocrats. What makes it special is its recognition of the powerful subtleties in a game; the impact of social forces, confidence, and rhythm. It also has what I consider to be a more “real” approach to games. Gamesmen exploit the “unspoken rules” of a game, separating themselves from sportsman which aim to follow those rules. In a remarkably ironic demonstration of British manners, Potter also introduces some of his own rules to discourage what is “bad gamesmanship” or simply not in good taste. Those tips defy the book’s apparent embrace of a game’s actual nature, but also reveal how difficult it is for a mind, no matter how unscrupulous to accept a world without rules and fair play. Gamesmanship very much reminded me of fighting player exploits in Battledawn.

_

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: This is widely recognized as one of the best American novels ever written and it is definitely one of my favorite books. Catch-22 may only relate to games in its philosophical content, in that it questions the rules of society, the military and human logic as a whole. In fact, it utterly humiliates them and does so hilariously. However, the recent argument over the importance of writing in games and the differing natures of the two mediums convinced me to suggest this book. It proves the power of writing and its versatility (most importantly, that it can be very non-linear) and with a humor and language that many can appreciate. By the way, the movie is good, but not half as good as the book.

_

_

_

_

_

You may have noticed that I didn’t include any books about games. You don’t need to read any.

-Christopher J. Rock