It's hard to get people to give you money for something you are willing to do for free. Enjoyable creative pursuits tend to be like that for those who are not superstars
The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer
151–160 of 184 posts
Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer
#152A great game developed by a lone programmer I seldom see mentioned is "Haven & Hearth". It's developed by a (faux) company called "Seatribe", which actually consists of two people, but only one of them (Fredrik Tolf AKA loftar) does the programming while Björn Johannessen is responsible for the game assets. It's pretty cool actually and they'll be releasing a 3D version of it at some point[1]. It's basically a surviv…
I'm pretty damn impressed. I clicked that link expecting to see some half assed runescape copy.
That game actually looks like fun, and the graphics are great... !
Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now. Not really. Its golden Age was in the late 80s, early 90s, where games were still made by educated people FOR educated people, before the whole thing went mainstream and any sign of complexity went progressively down the drain so that Everyone could start playing games. I miss Falcon's 300 pages manual, or even Colonization's fantastic booklet that went far…
Colonization 1994 manual (135 pages): http://replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.8194 Colonization 2008 manual (38 pages): http://replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.377 Edit: fixed duplicate link, thanks ekianjo.
I have played Colonization for countless hours and yet had never seen the manual, thank you very much for pointing it out!
Incidentally, for many years, everything I "knew" about the colonial & revolutionary times in the US, I had learned from Colonization and Day of the Tentacle :)
Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer
#154Personally, I'd like to think that the good games will still rise to the top. Monument Valley wasn't a fluke; it's a game based entirely about the art and the content, rather than stale one-off game mechanics that could be cloned in an afternoon. It got noticed because it was deep and unique. (Did they even do any marketing?) I've rarely found a game with that same level of quality that got no attention[1]. Most of t…
Monument Valley is visually gorgeous, and I like a lot about it. However it has zero depth as a game- you can easily move through it by tapping randomly on the screen. Also it's built by ustwo, and while they're lovely people, they're far from a small one man shop (they have hundreds of employees in several offices worldwide and know what they're doing when it comes to marketing). I don't think Monument Valley is a s…
"you can easily move through it by tapping randomly on the screen"
This is technically true, but if you want to finish the game, you'll need to solve some puzzles.
(And for the record, you can easily play a game like Super Smash Brothers by hitting random buttons, but that game has depth for miles. "Tapping randomly" isn't an indicator of a game's depth, merely its accessibility.)
Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now. Genres completely abandoned by AAA developers ages ago are seeing a resurgence thanks to crowdsourcing. Space sims have been all but dead since Freelancer in 2003 but now there are several to play and look forward to. Formerly obscure genres like roguelikes are seeing mainstream success thanks to high quality "roguelike-like" games like FTL. Hell, even the im…
> I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now. Not really. Its golden Age was in the late 80s, early 90s, where games were still made by educated people FOR educated people, before the whole thing went mainstream and any sign of complexity went progressively down the drain so that Everyone could start playing games. I miss Falcon's 300 pages manual, or even Colonization's fantastic booklet that went far…
I think you're looking at a pretty narrow genre (Complex Games) and extrapolating the entire platform's content/potential from it. There are fewer people making as complex games as back then, but saying people are uneducated is a bit silly.
Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deep and unique? It’s like a mashup of Naya’s Quest [1] and Fez [2] (or Crush or Super Paper Mario). [1]: http://terrycavanaghgames.com/nayasquest/ [2]: http://fezgame.com
If you're going to complain about originality, you really should be pointing at Echochrome. The Fez stuff doesn't really kick in until the MV DLC Forgotten Shores. That said, Monument Valley is a phenomenal improvement on Echochrome in style and art direction (though I really do appreciate the stark black and white style of Echochrome). But it's easy to forget just how unusual those games are. There's a dearth of wel…
I'm a huge fan of Fez, and picked up Monument Valley for Android. It was fun, but extremely easy and super short. I decided to pass on the DLC, figuring it'd be more of the same. Does Forgotten Shores step the game up to the next level? Worth buying?
Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No modding in Blizzard's new games. What about Starcraft Arcade, which makes use of Blizzard-provided tools to heavily mod the game? http://us.battle.net/arcade/en/ > No modding in Dota2. Valve announced workshop tools that would allow users "to create, play, and share custom maps and game modes for Dota 2." http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/-1/3522031560...
> What about Starcraft Arcade, which makes use of Blizzard-provided tools to heavily mod the game? Starcraft 2 is not recent anymore. Out of WoW, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch, it is the only one. > Valve announced workshop tools that would allow users "to create, play, and share custom maps and game modes for Dota 2." Announced about half a year ago with no apparent progress? And the game…
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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Colonization 1994 manual (135 pages): http://replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.8194 Colonization 2008 manual (38 pages): http://replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.377 Edit: fixed duplicate link, thanks ekianjo.
Np! Otherwise good find, which proves my above point. The first 1994 booklet had a whole essay on the History of the colonization of America, I used to read it several times after playing the game. But this was not just this game, so many others went ahead to provide tons of value besides the game itself (Ultima 7's map printed on a cloth! A classic!). This was just so much more than mere tutorials. They also help cr…
I still have the Ultima 7 map, apart from being beautiful it was fairly useful since it really helped you navigate the world.
The booklets also helped the immersion, things really have changed.
Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're going to complain about originality, you really should be pointing at Echochrome. The Fez stuff doesn't really kick in until the MV DLC Forgotten Shores. That said, Monument Valley is a phenomenal improvement on Echochrome in style and art direction (though I really do appreciate the stark black and white style of Echochrome). But it's easy to forget just how unusual those games are. There's a dearth of wel…
I'm a huge fan of Fez, and picked up Monument Valley for Android. It was fun, but extremely easy and super short. I decided to pass on the DLC, figuring it'd be more of the same. Does Forgotten Shores step the game up to the next level? Worth buying?
Unexpectedly, yes. I think it's better in just about every way, and it becomes excellent in a few. My only complaint is that it feels like a third installment would be the real game; I got the feeling at the end of FS that everything preceding was just training (like how a large portion of Portal is slowly and carefully acclimating the player to the mechanics before giving them a gun).
I consider $2 impulse-buy money, so I got the DLC. It starts off the similarly, but about half-way through ustwo seems to hit their stride. The last level has some flat-out brilliant Fez effects, and a few of the levels really play proper homage to the Escher design. My math says you get 2/3rds the game at about 50% more quality (integrated over the whole run) at half the price, so that's like twice the value. Compound levels are used more, so the game pleasantly drags on a bit. Just don't expect to be confused or stuck on any puzzles.
I won't lie: it's still short, and it's still easy. But it's also two bucks, which is slightly more than a candy bar and a bit less than a load of laundry. And I tend to enjoy the game art for its own sake.
So I think the game is still mostly an art project and it stands on its own in that respect. While FS doesn't expound on the plot much, I don't think anyone will mind too terribly. But there is some thread to follow, and for a game without much of a plot there are certainly twists.
Re: The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer
#160Since the article talks about hobby development, I want to plug Handmade Hero [1], which is a really cool series of youtube videos (still in progress) of a full, production quality game being built from scratch in C by one person. This was my first exposure to game programming and its really fun to watch along with the videos, plus the guy making them is fairly opinionated about best programming practices, so you pick up so more general skills as well.
It's been featured on HN before, so many people have probably seen it, but if you haven't, it is definitely worth checking out.