it's a lil demon dude from a tabletop RPG I'm running. it's a marble statue with a dead person inside and it gives wonderful hugs.
I've been noodling about with a surprisingly powerful pixel art browser app.
Check out the advanced tool on Piq.codeus.net, it's awesome!
The Monster Summer Game, Valve’s gamification of this year’s Steam Summer Sale is a self-proclaimed homage to the “56 trillion” gamers hooked on the newest genre of non-game to numb the skulls of players everywhere: Clicker games.
Look, it's on a pixelated CRT machine! Charmed, I'm sure!
Non-games are similar to games; they involve some kind of activity, and usually some accumulation of points or currency in exchange for the activity, which can then be spent to enhance the completion of that activity. Non-games are linear, yet without end, and frequently invite you spend money to play more frequently, for longer bouts, or more efficiently. The chronology of non-games doesn’t go very far back; it has not been until recently that the leisure to game has become so widespread, that our leisure now also needs leisure. Non-games strike me as a syndrome of the iPad generation: minimum-input, take-anywhere, play-anywhere monetization shells. They are the pinnacle of casual diversion, designed not to stimulate the mind, but to stuff it up with cotton. Farmville. Proteus and Mountain. Clicker Heroes. These games would not be popular unless there were a significant group of people out there who either:
Game often enough that they seek much lower-impact gaming experiences between bouts of “proper” gaming;
Don’t play “normal” games at all but seek lower-impact fun / diversion.
I will admit, I prejudged clicker games based on mechanics alone. I mean, come on: nearly every PC game in the past 20 years has been a “clicking” game to some degree, insofar as clicking is a gameplay mechanic. Gaming intensity in RTS game is commonly measured in terms of Actions Per Minute - on PC the vast majority of those actions tend to be clicks. Having played Valve’s tribute to the genre today, I can testify that the clicker genre might more accurately be called “nothing-but-clicking” games. Aside from the 10-15 minutes I spent gradually lowering my mouse-arm off of my desk into a completely relaxed position in the crotchal area, and figuring out the optimal clicking rhythm, the game immediately became an exercise, and not a game. There’s no interaction or development whatsoever. Just an infinite highway of...more clicking.
Clicker Games turn their mechanic into a kind of engine. Not a game engine; rather, your clicks become the fuel powering an engine that propels you forward through the diverse audiovisual landscape of the clicker game. Much like browsing for porn in this era of recommended video sidebars, what you’re really clicking for is to see what you’ll be clicking next. In the Steam mini-game, you’re clicking on weird android-zombies named Greg and Lola until you reach a boss-level with a giant crab-arm pirate-tank who takes 10-20 times the clicks the previous goons did. The music changes. The target is larger. Then you click him to death, and it’s onto further, minor variations on the Greg & Lola concepts. Each day at 10am, the game resets, and the enemies & backdrops take on a new visual theme. There is added value, in that you're on a team with at least 1000 other players, amassing clicks to whittle down the enemies. But it sure feels like you're sitting there alone, pawing at your button, speeding down a road that turns in downward spirals. This is the Clicker Highway and I’m pretty sure it leads straight to hell.
To the man with the battered mouse, six hundred MILLION BILLION CLICKER POINTS !!
I suppose it’s decent amusement, but as a passionate gamer, I acknowledge ethical design issues with regard to game like this. The Skinner Box - a Psychological experiment apparatus, containing a rat, a button, and a feeder-bottle of heroin-laced water - tends to produce fairly predictable results. Give it time to get hooked on the reward, and that rat will literally click that button till it starves to death (addiction studies in the modern day prove that what goes on in the Skinner Box is much more nuanced than that; but that’s for another article). Literally defined, this is learning. But nobody will argue that a rat’s experience of life is enriched by the Skinner Box. I direct this point back towards Clicker games. Any good game will consume your attention span. Battle arenas, epic quests, & sandboxes suck you in with their unique gravity; but at least they leave you with something to talk about and reflect on. Many games are games because the decisions made by players significantly affect the game-state, which motivate further decisions from the player. In a clicker game, nothing matters. Clicking barely even regards space-time as a thing that exists, for it traps the mind in the first dimension, teetering on a single pinhead-point of homogenous repetition. Much like Warhol-era pop art, Clicker Games insult the audience’s intelligence and the value of their time.
Step into the wild world of unethical game design, and this could be YOU !!
However, their popularity cannot be argued with, and this is a wave I intend to ride all the way to the bank. Keep an eye out Autumn 2015 for my first original Clicker Game, called Hammer & Nails Simulator, where players smash increasingly large and extravagantly decorated nails into surfaces of varying density and thickness. Hmm. Maybe I’ll just call it Smashy!
Ya know how great tracks are made? It's an exact science and fairly straight forward. You use an analog synthesizer from 1985 or earlier. Record some badass dreamy shit. Put that shit onto a used cassette tape, then put that tape through a washing machine for at least 3 cycles. Then you send it through a time portal in space where it spends centuries and eventually warps to the year 2015, melts onto a hard drive and is then deposited into your ear holes for your listening pleasure. Your welcome.
Comebacks in this game are chest beaters!
I'm down to my last few bullets, i've taken refuge behind some dumpsters behind an abandoned restaurant near the corner of the map. Its myself and 2 teammates left against 10. I'm jacked! My heart is hammering in my chest as i wrack my brain for a good strategy for getting out of this alive. I can see the red bogies on the mini-map heading for me from 3 different directions.I check my backpack and yup, i got no parts to spend, cant even afford armor. I can see one coming around the corner...he passes me, i have the 'covert' perk and he cant see me! I lean out and brain him with my last few revolver bullets. Now they all know where i am....fuck!! Where the hell is my team??
Just as i'm about to get rushed and go down swinging my team shows up and shivs the guy from behind, he heals me (i had nothing left at all) and gifts me a molly (moltov). At this point i can't believe i survived that. Myself and the remaining survivors regroup at a cache box and we end up winning the game.
This game is the BALLS!!! and I think i've figured out what's kept me coming back to this game on the regular for years, across two systems, since it came out.
A lot of multiplayer games i just can't get into, maybe its my reaction speed, im 32 now and my fingers aren't as wizardly quick as they use to be. My cat like speed and reflexes are waning. MP games generally move waaaay too fast for me to care about anything that's happening or the learning curve is so steep that i mid-as well be stranded and starving somewhere on K2 frozen and alone. So now i just don't even bother. Spawning and being instantly murdered no longer appeals to me. Hyping up a game with your friends by saying "Oh man, its a fucking amazing game....but the learning curve is pretty steep though" isn't an encouraging review.
What 'TLOU' has taught me is that pacing in a videogame is everything. One of the features of this game in particular that keeps me coming back is it's perfectly paced for me. I can breathe and think and work with my team. I can duck out of situations that look dangerous and regroup someplace else. Crafting is intense, especially if you don't have the 'crafter' perk. You have to stop, press a button to take your pack off and physically make a Molotov with the supplies you've gathered during the round. All this is happening, usually, while you can see some asshole creeping up on you. The gameplay corners your brain into strategy mode by way of suspense.
The timing and spacing of this game allows for those tense moments. Naughty Dog has made a multiplayergame with consistent tension and they did it by simply slowing the game down and providing very few resources so as to cause the player to stop and thing about what to do next. Its simple, genius, and absolutely a pleasure to play.
Another reason i come back is the online community of players. Ive rarely me a group of people who genuinely care about playing as a team. Sure there's the stoned idiot every once in a while but he/she means well!? A great example of a strong online community is when a new player happens to be on your team. Instead of 'noobing' him to death or leaving him to get dead most players will walk them through the basics or have them tail them to show them the maps. Its really cool i continuously see new, low level players online, its great to see the community still growing after all these years.
Ill leave you with a video from youtuber 'EatMyDiction1' of his games as an example of how gentleman play MP games and actually enjoy themselves. Pay attention kids this is how you have fun and work together.
"Well, that's just like....your opinion man."
Opinions, you got'em! Whether anyone really wants to hear them or not, so where do they go? Usually we deposit them into our own personal filing systems, where they are discerned, scrutinized and stored somewhere deep deep down in all that slimy electrically conductive grey stuff we call a Brain. Often they're donated and received unwillingly, like dumping a bag of soiled underpants onto good wills door step, other times we might find ourselves surprised to have our opinions actually received and recognized. One thing's certain though, were never gonna stop having them so we mid-as well donate them, to pretty much anyone with working ears who's willing to listen.
Our intention with reviewing is to simply let you know what we think, that's it. Were not interested in giving you an arbitrary number out of 10, we find that annoying and inaccurate. Where do those numbers come from exactly? Sure its a simple and easy way to measure an experience but do you talk to your friends like that? We don't.
Years ago 'Kotaku' came up with a wonderful way to review- 'should i play this game?' Yes or No? Simple, and so very easy, that's pretty much how its done in the real world..."Hey Kevin is Witcher 3 good? should i waste my time?" and the answer would be " YES, definitely do lock yourself in a room and waste all the time you can on it!"
We've come up with a review idea we wanna to try out, were going to begin with reviewing a game before it's even released. Stupid? maybe, the idea being that we will compare the before review with the final review and analyze our initial assumptions - what did the trailers show us, did they lie and what are people saying about it?
For the second and final review were going to try out a court room style concept. All games will be considered innocent until proven to be guilty of being a shitty game.Prosecution and Defense will make Points and counterpoints for the accused. So the final verdict will be either 'Guilty' of being an abortion of a video game or 'Not Guilty' - otherwise a lovely and innocent piece of entertainment. Appeals will be considered if necessary. Will it work? we cant really say, but were going to damn well try.
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