Adam the Artist

Silent Hill Downpour is finally out, and the reviews I’ve seen are split pretty evenly between love and loathing. I’m about 5 hours in, and though it definitely has its share of blemishes (read: haunted police cars), I’d say Vatra gets it. It’s an interesting character-driven journey in the tradition of SH2 (though it feels less mature so far), and it does some clever things to evolve the series gameplay-wise. Opening the town up into more of a sandbox experience was inspired (but all the choke points and dead ends are pretty discouraging for me).  I think I’ll always have a soft spot for this series, because these are horror games that at least try to approach things seriously.

On iOS I keep coming back to Beat Sneak Bandit, a stealth/rhythm/puzzle game from Simogo. It’s beautiful, clever, and it won Best Mobile Game at the 2012 Independent Games Festival. I don’t have the best sense of rhythm, but this kind of one-more-try gameplay does a pretty good job of sucking me in.

Alex the Codesmith

I managed to find time to play and ‘finish’ (although I don’t think that’s the right word as I think it encourages multiple replays) Journey. The newest game from thatgamecompany (makers of flOw and Flower). The game is an amazing piece of work. And my experience with it was quite fascinating.  They definitely took lessons learned from their previous games and have applied them masterfully here in regards to flow, control, and feel of the game. I recall starting the game out and going through the first few segments by myself. Other than the gorgeous graphics, there wasn’t much else that was keeping me interested and my patience was wearing thin. Then another journeymen’s head popped up over a hillside and then within a few short minutes I understood what TGC was aiming for with this game. They’ve done something really special in terms of making a single player game feel relevant outside the bounds of the game. It’s hard to explain, but once I experienced the feelings and emotions that Journey had me go through with fellow travelers it made me giddy for the future of this platform and the single player ‘experience’. Although, Journey felt much more closely to a work of art than a game to me. In terms of mechanics and story the game is pretty shallow, but what they accomplished with their laser focused premise of Journey I think will stick with me for a while, and I think will serve as an excellent reference for designers who wish to raise the bar in the ‘experience/interaction’ category of game design.

I, sadly, haven’t been doing much exploring on iOS. I’ve been coming back to the usual staple of Disc Drivin’ and Scramble with Friends. I flirted with Draw Something for a bit before letting it go. I appreciate what it’s done and was able to prove. In a marketplace where conventional wisdom tells you that you have to have traditional game mechanics and victory conditions to be successful, Draw Something turned that convention on it’s head and showed us how many people there really are outside our insular ‘gamer circle’ waiting to be entertained.

Adam the Artist

I’ve been dusting off some old games in my library while I wait for Mass Effect 3 and Silent Hill: Downpour (both next month!). Lots of people will watch a movie more than once; I like to play really good games more than once. So I’ve been messing with Bioshock and Devil May Cry 3 & 4, which are old and I don’t think anyone wants to hear about them.

Saw these guys do their Mega Man 2 show recently, and I am in love. Their Castlebandia album is incredible. Stream it. Buy it. Love it.

Alex the Non-Artist

I’ve actually played some games other than Starcraft 2 (hurray!). On a sad note, I tried playing Starcraft 2 a couple days ago after a couple week hiatus and it wasn’t pretty. That game is brutal. I played Spiral Knights with a friend over the past weekend and had a really fun time with it. It has some fun MMO aspects with the auctioning, and persistent overworld, but drops most MMO tropes when you enter a ‘dungeon’ and it becomes a 4-player co-op action hack-n-slash game. It has a fair share of clever puzzles and really challenging boss battles. Coming off my disappoint from Star Wars: The Old Republic, I was really pleased to see a game that didn’t sacrifice playability for the sake of being able to call itself a “true MMO”. I don’t know if it’s sad or awesome that the combat in Spiral Knights was way more fun and engaging than in SWTOR, given that one has the stigma of being called a ‘free-2-play’ game (from an iOS app store perspective) and another a ‘premium high-budget MMO’.

I actually got to play the Diablo 3 beta for a little bit as well. But without any buddies that are also in the beta I have little to no desire to go back. I think I’ve played more Outwitters than any other game over the past several weeks really. With each iteration I’m enjoying it more and more. Some of our testers are getting hundreds of games under their belts, and I’m starting to see play-styles evolve between different players, and with a lot of them being viable I’m extremely excited to see that happen. It’s like the game is coming into it’s own! Still more work to be done on balance though…

Adam the Artist

I just finished Mass Effect 2, and was scratching my head over what I played before that. Then it hit me: Skyward Sword. It’s not often I forget a 20 hour game, but this one never really grabbed me. It had a lot of clever ideas, but I thought it was just okay for a Zelda game. I never knew flying could get so boring.

Mass Effect 2, which I’m incredibly late getting around to, has the best final battle I can ever remember playing in a game. You have all these choices, and if you choose wrong your friends die. It builds a real tension as you make your way through the mission, one that isn’t usually there. No one’s afraid of dying in a game; you just restart at a checkpoint and try again. But I was afraid of choosing wrong and screwing up the story. Story consequences. I like that. I’ll be picking up the third one in March fa sho.

All I’m playing on iOS is the Outwitters beta. I’ve been playing this thing forever, and I still get excited to check my turns. I’m proud we made this.

Alex the Codesmith

It’s around the holidays I tend to get involved in more games than my usual starcraft 2 and battlefield 3 affairs. I think a large portion of my childhood was dedicated to Tribes. So when I heard Tribes:Ascend was coming out I was all over it. There’s currently a beta going on that I’m playing with a few friends.

The game is shaping up to be a really solid tribes game. Despite their design choices for more diverse classes and loadouts the game still feels like a more robust version of Tribes: LT. LT was a mod of previous tribes where loadouts were restricted to light classes only, and as a result the CTF game had a very team-deathmatchy feel to it with a flag thrown in. It had the positive effect of allowing a shrinking community to still have intense close matches, but the game felt more shallow because the pool of players that specialized in certain niche roles were harder to find. I haven’t played in any high level scrims or anything in Tribes Ascend, but from the pubs I have played in, the game does seem to share a certain feel with LT. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I do kind of miss the whole ‘heavy offense’ aspect of the game. It was a secondary objective to keep the enemy base down, and it ultimately led to more flag captures. It was crippling when you lost your generators, and probably a bit too harsh in this mainstream game design climate. But now looking at their design choices, they really are advocating fun pub play on both sides (destroying the enemy base is less crippling, turret placements are easy to destroy with tactical strikes, etc). Although the result is your actions have less of a lasting impact on the game at hand. There were certainly games in the Tribes of old where you spent 15 minutes screaming and crying because the enemy has your base so thoroughly owned you could literally not do anything constructive, so maybe it was for the better. It certainly made competitive play extremely enjoyable though.

Another game on my radar is Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. I’ve only played a few hours in, but I’m liking it so far. Although, having played every Assassin’s Creed game before it, I’m starting to sense my interest is waning. And it’s certainly not waning because the game isn’t as good as the previous ones. It’s again, simply a matter of having more engaging games to play in the time I do have to play them. Maybe after Outwitters is done I’ll marathon this one through.

The last ‘new’ game I’m checking out is the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. This thing is massive in every sense of the word. It excels in giving the sense of atmosphere one expects in an epic Star Wars game. But the finer points are lost. Each class has an extensive single player campaign you play through, fully-voice acted Mass Effect 2 style, but the fidelity of it is pretty low compared to a focused, dedicated single player game. It’s not often I play a game to ‘escape’ or immerse myself in a world, but SWTOR can certainly fit the bill when I do have those cravings, despite it’s lackluster gameplay mechanics.

Thanks to Mike Berg of We Heart Games for helping us get this new site design online! It’s the same great taste, just with a nifty new wrapper. If you notice anything’s broken, let us know and we’ll patch it up.

December is over, and so is 12 Indie Apps for Christmas. We kind of pigeon holed ourselves by dragging Christmas into it. Can’t really keep that kind of thing going past December. Anyway, we’re thrilled to report that over $10,000 was raised for Child’s Play and Doctors Without Borders! (Our portion is headed to Child’s Play.) Big thanks to anyone that supported the effort, or who felt bad for not participating and donated a dollar here.

This Year at OML

The doctors say 2011 likely won’t make it past the new year, so with a heavy heart we bid it farewell. We may not have anything to show for it yet, but 2011 was hard work. Outwitters has required a lot of learning. New tech, new work flow, new genre, universal device support… It’s no wonder our release estimate was so far off. But we’re both really proud of the work in progress, and we can’t wait to see the rest of the bells and whistles fall into place.

Our New Years Resolution

The App Store hasn’t heard from us in a while, and we aim to change that in 2012. Outwitters should hit the store sometime before the end of March, after which we have a few content updates planned.  Hopefully by year’s end we’ll be neck-deep in some kind of Game III, maybe even releasing it.

Thanks for keeping tabs on us this year. Don’t drink and drive, and we’ll see you guys in 2012 WITH ACTUAL GAME CONTENT FOR YOU TO PLAY.

The following is an actual excerpt from a textbook called Game Development Essentials: Mobile Game Development. I was asked about my vision for the future of mobile gaming, a topic I think about pretty much every day.

We’ve joined forces this month with eleven of our colleagues in a little charitable venture called 12 Indie Apps for Christmas. We’re donating 25% of our December earnings from the original Tilt to Live to Child’s Play, a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in a network of over 70 hospitals worldwide. And if you already have Tilt to Live, which is pretty likely, check out the roster of 11 other apps you could buy to support the cause. Or just go to the Child’s Play website and give them some money directly. These are all good things to do for sick kids on Christmas.

Of course if you are a sick kid reading this from a hospital, this post is not for you.

Recently we were invited to not just one, but TWO interviews. We were all like, you remember who we are?

I sat down with Rondal of Startfrag.com and did my damnedest to recollect things about developing Tilt to Live. Then I was asked to analyze trends and make predictions about the industry. Y’know, things I’m thoroughly unqualified to do. Watch as I squirm and answer a question about indies with Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, for some reason.

Alex and I were also recently grilled by author Ryan Rigney for his upcoming book “Buttonless: Incredible iPhone and iPad Games and the Stories Behind Them” (available for pre-order on Amazon.com). We were incredible enough to make the cut, and now it’s in writing, and he can never take it back.

Adam the Artist

I love Batman. My last 3 hours playing it haven’t even been on the main story, but the side missions all feel really important. As a result, I do constantly feel un-Batman, because I’m letting people down left and right. But it’s not my fault. I can’t fly three feet without someone screaming, “HELP ME BATMAN, MY PROBLEM IS TIME SENSITIVE.” I can only Batman one of you guys at a time.

On iOS, I really enjoyed Nyx Quest (<- lite version) recently. It’s a platformer with touch interactions; probably the most relaxing platformer I’ve ever played. The music is very zen, and the environments are these bright, beautiful desert ruins. Even the enemies are relaxing, especially after you get the “zap anything you touch” power. It’s not challenging at all, but it’s a pleasant way to spend a few hours. Made me want to make a platformer.

Alex the Codesmith

I recently picked up Frozen Synapse from the Humble Frozen Bundle. I’ve been halfheartedly following it since beta, but never took the time to play it. I’ve apparently been missing out. The game is awesome! Admittedly, I’m not fanatical about turn-based strategy games (and yet here I am making one, hah), but what Mode 7 did with Frozen Synapse is mix turn-based strategy with some interesting tactical action elements reminiscent of an over-head view of a Counter-Strike match. That’s about the best I can explain it on a high level. The multiplayer games are short, satisfying, and intense. I haven’t given single player a try yet, but you should know by now that’s not what draws me in. And the great thing about it is there’s very little time commitment. You start a few games, do a few turns, then leave and come back the next day. It’s got the feel of a well-designed asynchronous mobile game, but on the PC, yet it feels very right. The graphics are clean, but very spartan. The design of Frozen Synapse is the kind of thing that gets me excited about designing games. It’s a very raw “game”, with almost no fluff or padding. Strip away all audio and graphics and you lose almost nothing to the core ‘experience’ of playing this game. Just game rules, 2 players, and a fun game “system” to explore the nuances of.

Editor’s note: Adam has chosen to disregard Alex’s blatant disrespect for his vocation.