Take it like a man or perhaps ...?

With recent reactions over an article over at Rock Paper Shotgun concerning Moebius, I've fallen into my thoughts again, wondering where does criticism and personal views on the matter stop being useful and instead form or affect a general view that's inaccurate, subjective and hurtful to a product and the people affiliated in any way with it?

There's more to videogames than just playing

Sometimes we find ourselves enjoying the way we construct a sentence or reference our personal interests in subtle ways, and we convert people's reactions to our particular way of writing to a graphical/comical idea of it. Slowly, gradually moving towards that direction, hoping subconsciously to re-trigger the same reactions, we've grown addicted to. At the same time, we fail to grasp the concept of a joke being overused, and we see the newcomers reaction as acceptance. In the end, a failure to realize the importance of providing your opinion/thoughts in such ways that it's helpful to others is ever-present.

Of course someone should not butcher his thoughts censoring them in such way that they reflect political correctness, but he should definitely understand the importance of his work. And let's take what I did into account as an example.



Some days ago I stated that I found PISS lacking a hook, and that very issue, had been troubling me from finishing the game. The fact that I was deemed unable to run a complete playthrough of that game, also made me decide to avoid writing a review about it - I just felt the need to explain the reasons behind my slacking. Haven't we all tried something and found it hard to get into, then actually do a proper effort to grasp the concept, ultimately wondering how we felt unable to see the genius at first?Personally I strive to give everything a proper chance to win me, and my thoughts on PISS are ONLY focusing on what was troubling me to get there.

Videogames as a form of entertainment, also occasionally attributed artistic values, is haunted by the subjective rule. What is that you ask? Well, simply put, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's imperative therefore to allow everyone to appreciate what we cannot, overcoming the obstacles that we faced - obstacles that rendered the product unpleasant for us, and ideal for those who appreciate differently.

What do you do after BJ?

Grundislav has announced his first commercial game On Golden Pond A Golden Wake.

Meanwhile in AdventureGamers land, Steve Brown presents the usual roundup of January 's freeware adventures. As is frequently the case, a bunch of AGS games are included.

Primordial Super?

Wadjet Eye have released Primordia (don't forget to put it in the games DB, Dave) and its got some reviews:

• Richard Cobbett @ Gamespy (lukewarm)
• We The Gamerz (good)

More on the Wadjet Eye preview page...

Releases, Reviews and something else beginning with R

• Adventuregamers review Anna's Quest
• Ben and Grundi release Spaceman in Space
• Cosmos Quest 4 is out
• Radiant (Crystal Shard, ATOTK, etc) releases Errand
• Ghostlady releases her latest, Haunting of Cliff Richard

Wow, busy times!

New Adventure Lanterns

September and October adventure lanterns are out, and they cover:

Sep: Summerbatch, Al Emmo+, Da New Guys: Day of the Jackass, and the August releases
Oct: AdventureX, September releases

October issue also covers Anna, but not the awesome AGS + Vince XII one :'(

The Blackwell Conception

Dave and Janet are having a baby! Congratulations to you both! Perhaps the first baby from two people who've both written AGS code?

In other Waaaah-djet Eye news, The Slowdown are a bit down on Blackwell Deception.

200k

The AGS blog has passed 200000 pageviews, woo.

In other news, Adventure Classic Gaming review Blackwell Unbound.

Review: Fragment

Content:

Fragment happens to be one of the fourteen games of the AGS Bake Sale. Initially drawn and designed entirely by Ben Chandler (Ben304), finally saw the light of the day, thanks to Sebastian Pfaller (kapputnikk) taking over the design and of course, composing the music. This of course is a team-effort between the two.

The story takes place in a future, where the player takes control of Timothy Jenkins, a scientist conducting experiments in the field of phychology. His latest experiment appears to be around the exploration of human memory and unevitably human emotions. The experiment is called "Plateaus of Oblivion" and is conducted with the help of a female AI by the name of Arkady.

Lately Timothy has been spending too much time with the experiment inside the plateaus, mostly because he broke up with his girlfriend, Marylee. Arkady (the AI) has been struggling coming up with different setups in such a limited time, and resolves into drawing memories from Timothy's memories.


Depending on your choices, the game offers two endings.

The writing style of the game is decent, and the options provided to the player fit in most situations every personality/behavior. Despite the bulkiness of the dialogs in general, the writing doesn't seem to tire at all.

The puzzle design is most likely the best thing to be offered by this game. Fragment is a standard point and click adventure game, where left click walks/interacts and right click examines. It's worth saying that the interface is self-explanatory, but there's a readme included just in case.

The purpose of the player is to solve a puzzle in each setup/plateau to proceed to the next one (continue the experiment).

With each plateau the challenge increases, I believe in certain plateaus a hint (nothing major just a subtle one would do) would be nice for people with no adventure game skills. But a little clicking here and there, should provide adequate understanding of what needs to be done.

The pacing of the game appears to slowly gain a great momentum, as in my playthrough. I literally stormed out on each plateau.
The plateaus are all unique and there's no repetition between them. However, it must be said that due to the lack of hints/reactions on certain plateaus players may or may not be stuck helpless. Perhaps more hinting would simplify the game way too much, and remove any sort of challenge, so that move from the developers is understandable.

Before every plateau, you'll be asked to complete a circular design by dragging the pieces or clicking on the dots. Even when the game is at its end, those puzzles pose no threat/challenge to the player, and there's a high repetition rate of the patterns. So it becomes slowly a tedious process taking away time from the most interesting parts of the game.

Graphically-wise, the game appears to be quite pretty and imaginative. The backgrounds are neatly and abstractly drawn with wild colors. The characters are colorfully drawn, and decently animated, besides timothy's walkcycle; though possibly I'm the only person to be bothered by it. Also in certain occasions, Arkady will smile, which is a small, but regardless a nice detail. Besides the plateaus, the player's will mostly be on the terminal room, where Timothy hooks up.

Fragment has been dressed around with lots of different and fancy tunes and amazingly old-style sound effects. The music has even been integrated as a meta-joke, inside the game, supposedly some random music that Arkady chooses to play on each plateau. Regardless, the music never happens to be boring and with the lack of it outside the plateaus, you'll find yourself enjoying it. Sebastian Pfaller, has composed a unique tune per plateau, and the diversity and uniqueness of the plateaus happens to be portrayed in the music as well.


SUMMING UP:

Fragment takes abour 1 hour and a half to complete give or take 20 minutes, but it's a time well spent, replayability value though quite low, perhaps only worth seeing the ending you didn't get on a let's play on Youtube.

Besides the difficulty being possibly, and that's an estimation, a bit hard for beginners, Fragment has been adequately balanced with an ever increasing challenge as the game progresses, and the story arc is quite interesting and well written, accompanied with a really cosy and dreamy sound-design.

I'd rate this around 8/10.

AG's Freeware roundup

AdventureGamers present again their excellent monthly freeware roundup. As usual, it includes a bunch of AGS stuff!

Concurrence joins the 31I7|57

Elitist. Yeah, you probably can't read leet (1337) at all. Well, I pity you, but you probably grew up in the 80s. When things were a bit more sexier, cooler and less weird. On something far more important about your background is that the Indie Elitist, a fantastic blog about Indie Games, reviews Concurrence only praising it for being such a fantastic tribute to Another World, and so much more.

Get the game here.
See the mini-review here.

Clock Towered.

Domithan puts up another of his video reviews, this time Deity.
Article by HardyDev.

Saturday Night Fever

It appears Francisco Gonzalez, aka Grundislav, will be playing all his games LIVE, and commenting various stuff and answering questions as well.

He's already done Ben Jordan 1, 2 and the Deluxes.
You may watch the first one here, uploaded by ShiverMeSideways, recorded by Nihilyst.

Lights on the marionette

Adventure Lantern have a new issue out, including a Marionette review, amongst other things.

Adventure Gamers: King's Quest III

Well, the title summarizes the whole deal. Anyhow, here's the review to the 3rd installment to the remakes by AGDI.

And here's a pretty picture. Perhaps the review will change your mind, and you'll finally get your hands on KQ III. Or perhaps you're not that hardcore.

3 posts left

AG May review

AdventureGamers give a round-up of freeware games from May, including screen7's scrotal masterpiece, 9 hours to dawn and 15 minutes.

On numerous occasions

The Occasional Player has reviewed By The Numbers.

Return, we will to old...

I wrote an amazing spoiler review of a film called Brazil at Hardy Dev, so go ahead and get a wonderful read [/shameless plug]

I apologize for unrelated post, but this movie is really in my heart.

King's Quest and Technobabylon are the Roaring Night

It appears that the Indiegames WEBLOG did a very spoiled review of Technobabylon, whereas spoiled means that I'm warning you, they spoil everything from the first paragraph.

They seem to share my opinion though, which is something you all should consider. That my opinion is a rule and a standard. Anyhow, enough self-worship. Read all about it, here.

And we also seem to have a review that took me a while to spot, so it's probably old news for some of you that frequent Adventure Gamers more than I do, but oh well.

If the title doesn't make any sense at all, please let me know. And I'll inform SSH to use his leather whips on me.

Read some about it, by not clicking here.

Gutter Comfort: How Snakes of Avalon became the flawed hero of indie games

Dear reader,
I won't presume your reaction to these accusations, but I remain presumptuous in making them. You're an indie game fan, of course - but it's even more likely that you're one of a few hundred folks who considers yourself an indie developer. You make games, right? That's my best guess. Here's why that's worth remarking on, before we even talk about Snakes of Avalon: we have to agree on our shared context. INDIE GAMING's most salient grounding points are rooted in the notion that compromises in quality are necessary, because hey - You're on a budget (if you even have a budget) and you can't afford to rent a warehouse, let alone stock and staff it with expert light riggers, composite engineers, or a legal team. But, still, you somehow persist. The potential contribution of your Indie Game is greater than that of those so-called “AAA” games, which are inseparably bound to test audience consensus, board meeting red tape, and aggressive, ROI-minded streamlining. Your game would get watered down pretty fast in that world, and the bracing impact would be lost.

To them, your game wouldn't be worth making. To them, "indie games" are just a double-standard that grants freedoms and permits poor craftsmanship. But, still, you somehow persist. Because your story couldn't be told any other way. Because the greatest symphonies and poetry and novels and paintings weren't accomplished through market research and endured no sub-committees worth remembering - our great cultural inheritance is studded with masterpieces typically made by single individuals barfing their smelly guts out in either high-tone bravura or gritty greyscale, shown to anyone who will look. Now, to be worthy of this artistic inheritance and to make your contribution, you must persist without compromise. Indie Games are small, defiant stories told to anyone who will listen.

Snakes of Avalon is, in fact, a small defiant story told to anyone who will listen. We watch the storyteller barf his smelly guts out in the lowest of slapstick pathetia, but we're compelled by him. He's eager to glimpse the true, silently rumbling pulse of all meaning, but is interceded by his bouncing full bladder while respectable strangers look away with shame. Our protagonist is a failed man, once capable of greatness, who drowns his guilty blinking sorrow in a dive bar full of strangers. The more he drinks, the more he forgets, and it becomes easier for him to smile and for us to laugh along. Not a space marine or sexy gun-toting hero, but a drunken citizen, tearfully trying to remember a once shining truth and finding only watery beer - what can we do but laugh along as he stumbles. He's talking to a mounted fish, now! But still, he somehow persists.

If you've never been drunk and if you've never been a failure, Snakes probably isn't for you, indie developer. (Of course, that's no compliment to either this game or drinking. Or failing. Although I do recommend all three.) Because if you're going to create art, there are stern lessons to be found in this game - and though the vibrant punchlines are told boldly, they reveal the embarrassingly common thread of our ultimate ineptitude in the face of that true, silently rumbling pulse of all meaning. So, unless you've been a drunken failure at least once, you won't get the inside jokes. Also, get off the internet and work on your game, you unsoiled teetotaler. You've got a failure to finish.

Regarding the indie game double-standard I mentioned before, the game's creators Igor Hardy & Alex van der Wijst are getting by on charm. The main reason to play this game, the main reason to play any game, is for the story - which, in the case of Snakes, is as finely conceived and well-told as any other game I've played in years. The screenplay accomplishes its goals with warbling flourish - to further elaborate would necessitate the dissection of dialogue from character. Is that what video game reviews do? Or is it only done when the reviewer doesn't enjoy the game? Either way, if the writing IS the character who IS the art, then our gameplay experience is derived wholly from the blurry sensations of our melodramatic drunk; his ability to witness his immediate surroundings, his inability to do so, his desire to escape them, and his urgency to remember the greater truth of How did I get here, after all?

That being said, and as a small footnote to all of this, I should admit to being kind of curious about what these authors could make with a team of artists and animators? The "talking" animations were charming and, visually, Snakes is cohesive and self-reliant, but here's the deal. Double standard or no, developers (like yourself) are always at risk of losing the respect of their audience. Even though Hardy & van der Wijst have waltzed a wavy and deliberate line into risky stylistic territory, I can't help but feel that it's the finer production aspects that might prevent a wider audience from appreciating their great story. Voice acting is limited only to the cutscenes, and the recording quality of the spoken dialogue introduces those same old questions about developer resources and indie games and blah blah blah. The beneficial double-standard begins to deteriorate.

But, what if they had money to hire voice actors and a sound engineer... Or a team of animators? Or a 3D modeling engine? Who knows to what great heights this game might climb? Or yours! Just imagine how great your contribution could be, if only we lived in a world where profoundly written indie games have the staffs and budgets of those laser-sharp FPS cinemagasms that cost seventy five bucks to play. But it's only a dream, and one not worth sharing. I think we all know that it's better this way, and the joy of playing a game like Snakes of Avalon (or others like it) is that we're privileged to witness the creative process on its own terms. To play an independent game is to watch artists persist. In rare cases like this one, we get the chance to witness art being made. (I'd advise you to play worse games if you don't understand the difference.)

So, I propose we all drink a toast to Igor, Alex, and their man, Jack. Here's to cutting your own ragged path toward the truth. A toast to our shared circumstance - a huge, world-wide dive bar where indie developers like you and me can whisper our small, defiant stories and people will listen, all persisting into a night full of puns and sorrow, free drinks and infinite continues.

Richard Hofmeier is closest to glimpsing the unspeakable truth when speaking puns to empty streets at night. You can contact him through his website: richardhofmeier.com

The downfall of classic games

Adventure Classic gaming review Downfall