Tools for Game Design

I just started reading a really cool interview on Gamasutra where Brandon Sheffield talked to Hirokazu Yasuhara, one of the original game designers behind Sonic the Hedgehog. It started out quite ordinary and then as he revealed more and more of his design process I started to feel a kind of revelation. A lot of the things he says make complete sense in hindsight, but it is putting those things into words that is just amazing.

Really good interview and something to add to the game design toolkit.

Electric Ghost

I just realised that I hadn't written anything recently about my IF project. Well, production slowed down a bit on it due to real life issues, but I have continued fleshing out the plot and some of the script. I think I have a much clearer idea of what I want to accomplish with the game though, and I realised that it slots quite neatly into some other stuff I have been working on. In line with that, I have decided to change the name of the game and unveil the hastily produced logo and banner for the entire story universe, of which this IF project will hopefully be the first release:


I am also working on a comic book script that will occur in the same universe. I don't really know whether it will be linked in any way to the game yet. I will see where the story takes me.

The universe is basically based in the present with some occassional jaunts to the past and the near future. It focuses on two major parties known as The Shades and The Hues for now, and their secret wars for power, and the running of the world. Of course this is nothing original really, but I am hoping to add some unique elements to the way they function and what kind of stories I am telling. My aim is to hopefully make people think a little bit more.

Once I get the game up to the end of at least the first chapter, I will upload it for all to see.

Mighty Jill Off

Mighty Jill Off banner made from artwork by
Harvey James and Auntie Pixelante.

Mighty Jill Off is a masocore platform game featuring a chubby submissive lesbian gimp named Jill ascending a tower in order to please her dominant mistress known simply as the queen. You can get it here. Go and play it then come back once you have died, no continues allowed okay?

Okay, welcome back. How did you enjoy the fall/burn/bite/impaling on a phallic spike? You had better have enjoyed it. The queen gave it to you to like and there's more where that came from.

As you can tell, I really enjoyed the game. It is actually quite tough, and even though it is short, you will probably die a hell of a lot more in the time it takes you to finish it, than you will probably die in the same space of time in most other games you will play this year. The game itself is simple to explain and even to play. You must guide Jill up a tower via an increasingly tortuous set of vertically-inclined platforming levels, sometimes dodging enemies, and other times floating over flames or spikes. There are no moving/invisible/crumbling platforms to navigate, and the only enemies to speak off are spiders that look like pixel versions of the skulltulas from Ocarina of Time. Jill herself can jump, run left and right and float, making the entire game playable with just three buttons. This type of spare and focused design is always really nice to see and it means you can introduce anyone to the game and be confident that they will be jumping and dying in no time.



Like Rescue The Beagles which I wrote about before, it is fun and does have nuances of control and strategy. The first time I played through the game, I finished it in about 31 minutes. The author says she can finish it in about 9 minutes (if I remember correctly) so obviously there is a whole lot of improvement to be had.

I cannot really get across in words how much fun it is to be jumping and floating up a tower at the whim of a hot, dyke queen in order to receive more punishment. I encourage you to experience it for yourself.
For some more of the awesome concept and ingame art you can check out the artist's livejournal page here, and for more games by the author, including a really cool western called Calamity Annie you can check out her blog here.

The Lagos Gaming Scene

I realise that I haven't really gone into what the gaming scene is like in Nigeria at all. Beyond a bit of a rant regarding prices of software over here, nothing else has been highlighted. I am going to attempt to address that in a series of posts.

Most of the gamers I know can be split up into two groups. The current-gen gamers and the last-gen gamers.

The current-gen gamers I interact with regularly own Xbox 360s. If anything, I would say that it is their console of choice for all things game related. Very few of them have ps3s and even fewer have Wiis.

Oddly enough, most of the media/general stores here stock PS3 and Wii games and very few Xbox 360 games. The playstation and Nintendo brand names are really stuck in the heads of most of the buyers for these stores, and they do not really consider the 360 relevant as such. Most of them do not even realise that the 360 can also play dvds and act as a media center. It is just in some limbo space as far as they are concerned. A strictly gaming machine with games they do not understand. The playstation has grand theft auto and pro evolution. Even though these games are also available on the 360 they do not really register this as far as being a reason to buy more 360 games. Why would anyone want to buy a 360 anyway? The PS3 is obviously better.

This makes gamers resort to a place called Alaba Market, an area in Lagos that is known as the center of Igbo traders in the state and also the HQ of anything to do with electronics.


These guys get everything, and if they haven't gotten it yet, they can get it for you. Plasma/LCD High Definition TVs at the cheapest price you are likely to get in the country as well as all sorts of gadgets, music etc. They are also the center of the pirating scene for videogames, music and movies. But, anyway, even though Alaba Market has a lot more choice for the 360 and any other system owner, it is still quite limited.

I just recently got on the current-gen train so I am still wading through all the options available to me in Lagos, but from what I gather from them, it is essentially a sort of pot luck for games, and most people simply wait until a friend of theirs, or they are travelling abroad and get their games that way.

Apart from the current-gen gamers, there are the last-gen gamers who mainly play on the ps2 and xbox. Most of their games are pirated. A pirated game for either of these consoles goes for as little as N1500 (roughly $12) if you are in the right place, and I have never heard of them passing N3000 (roughly $25). This is well within the budget of most people who are still in university or secondary school. It also makes them focus on a few games at a time in order to eke out as much as possible from it. Most of the people that are in this group almost never buy original games. In the stores here, an original Playstation 2 game goes for about N9,000 (about $75) a pop, and the choice is still quite limited. Mainly football and AAA titles like GTA, Pro Evolution, FIFA and Tomb Raider. You occasionally find non-big name titles like Rez or Panzer Dragoon Orta for relatively cheaper (N6000 which is about $50), but these are very few and far between.

Personally, I have never bought a pirated game before, and I don't think I ever will, but it is not hard to understand why most gamers in this country do buy them. There is no official distribution network for our country and no support for any of our consoles or games, so we are very easy prey for the sharks that travel to the states or the uk, pick up games at retail price (most likely bargain bins) and bring them back with their profit, flight ticket, and other expenses tacked on to them. They buy a brand new PS2 game for at worst $40 and sell it to us for $75. What can one do about that? If there was a way for them to buy the games at the dealer prices, we would have a much better deal and it would hopefully give people more of an incentive to pick up original titles. I am not going to hold my breath for that to happen though.

Another thing that struck me when I came back was how much stuff you have to get in order to support your console lifestyle. A stabiliser is a must as is a UPS if you don't want our beloved PHCN (Power Holding Company Nigeria Limited) to mess you up in the middle of a dungeon or mission. I still haven't gotten a UPS for my consoles and I feel the pinch every time I have to replay an entire section because the the 'light went'. It's made me hate games with poorly placed save- and checkpoints even more now, and I really do appreciate my DS.

Actually, this brings me to another topic, that of portable gaming. You would think that in a country with an unstable power supply, over-priced games and not much disposable income that portable gaming would have taken off dramatically. Unfortunately, this doesn;t seem to be the case, admittedly this is based purely on my own limited experience, but I rarely meet people outside the current-gen set that own portable consoles, and even when they do, it is a PSP and it is being used as a very big iPod and storage device. Odd that. I think this has to do with the perception that portable gaming isn't as good as home console/PC gaming simply because the graphics they are capable of are not that great compared to the home consoles, and they are mainly filled with 'kiddy' games like pokemon and patapon. Then again, it could also be because getting pirated games onto a PSP is a lot easier than doing the same with a DS. Hell, I once went into a game store in the complex where my office is and saw a friend of mine downloading games from the store's laptop onto his memory stick for his PSP. I do not know whether they were charging for this service or they were just giving him free games though.

I am hoping to help try and change the perception of portable gaming being limited by organising some gaming get-togethers focused around more than just home console gaming. Will update on the site once I see how that goes.

This brings me neatly to the end of this topic. Hopefully, I will be able to write about our Halo gaming days. I will also try and take some pictures of the next one (if it happens) and if we play some Halo 3, maybe even some videos!

EDIT: Made some grammatical changes and tweaks here and there.

Red Alert 3

This is just looking really awesome. It might actually be the first Real-time strategy game that I pick up in almost 10 years. Even though I am sure I will probably still suck at it, having Tim Curry hamming it up is just so tempting. :-)

Yes, Today is post day.

I am trying my hardest to resist getting a PSP once I have some disposable income for this game. Well, not this particular game, but its PSP incarnation - Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G, or Monster Hunter Freedom 2. The need for a co-op hack n slash, gear hunt game has been getting stronger and stronger in me for a while now, and I guess it is keying into my increasing disinterest in games that are too long and have stories (well, dull, generic stories anyways).

Of course there is the problem of getting other people with PSPs to agree to buy Monster Hunter, and even then I would have to see them regularly in order to play it with them...but the temptation is still there. I mean, just look at it!


Huge monsters, big weapons, loot...everything a man could want out of a game distilled into a handheld. I wish Etrian Odyssey was multiplayer at times. I don't know how they would have done it, but it would have been cool to go exploring through the labyrinth with my party knowing that my girlfriend's party was somewhere else in it and then we could hook up and exchange maps in order to get the full picture of the level. And then if someone was in trouble with a FOE, then the other party could wait for them to get killed and sneak in with a warp wire to get them home.

Dammit, its getting harder to resist the lure of Monster Hunter now...shame that Phantasy Star Online has a HORRIBLE camera for offline multiplayer play, that would have been awesome, then I could have used that as a stop-gap until I could legitly afford to get a PSP...preferably the Monster Hunter limited edition one here.

TRON!!!

Ok, I know that this is not really videogames related (TRON has videogame inspired visuals and there was a game called TRON 2.0 which was about ok. There are also a huge amount of games based on the light cycle segment of the film...), but I just have to share this.

If you were/are a fan of TRON, you must have been excited. Who cares that it is just some crummy bootleg video?!