One of the casual hidden object/adventure games I wrote and did design work on has just come out: Special Enquiry Detail: The Hand that Feeds. The link will take you to the Big Fish site where it can be downloaded. You can play free for an hour to check it out or buy the full …
For those of you who subscribe to the magazine Develop, I have an article in the latest edition, which has just come out. I talk about the structure of interactive dialogue and how to approach it. For those who don’t subscribe, the Develop webiste is here, but the PDF version latest magazine is not yet …
Gemma Noon, who seems to be out for some kind of interviewing record with the number of people she’s interviewing, asked me to be one of her interviewees a few weeks ago. The result has just been posted on Gemma’s blog, The Literary Project. Thanks for making sense of my ramblings, Gemma.
Yesterday I attended the State of Independence conference at the York Racecourse and thought I’d post something about my thoughts.
I’m attending the State of Independence conference on Thursday this week and was just looking over the programme schedule. There are some great looking sessions taking place during the day with the only downside being a poor 20 minutes at 12 noon. Perhaps I can use it as a way to get into the lunch …
I was just reading the Jane Jensen interview over at Gameboomers when I spotted the following: “I think it’s possible for everyone to finish with a couple of caveats – first, that you have access to the internet and know how to search for walkthroughs!” I think this is a dreadful way to approach the …
Read more “Jane Jensen – an odd approach to completing a game”
When I spoke at the Games Forum Germany conference in January, the talk I gave was recorded. I’m not sure when it went online, but you can now view the talk in full. You have to scroll down the list of videos a little to get to mine. The talk is about aspects of character …
I read this yesterday: Gameplay is King: Story is Distant Second. It’s an interesting read and one which I almost completely agree with. For games, gameplay is the most important aspect and should always be so. If it’s not then it likely stops being a game and becomes something else with gameplay elements. That isn’t to say those other things aren’t valid or equally enjoyable for what they are.
The previous post about this “lost game” with the scene between Emily and Crawford was lifted directly from the original scripts. Because the development was cut short, I never had the chance to do a final editing and polishing pass over the whole game. Here is the same scene given the editing treatment. It’s a lot tighter and makes use of the visuals much more.
Considering the game first came out three and a half years ago, I thought that the days of new reviews were over. Then earlier this evening I was sent a link to a great review over at Alternative Magazine Online.
Here is another scene from the never-to-be-released game. This is about two-thirds of the way into the game.
Some photos have been posted of the Games Forum Germany conference on Facebook and show most, of not all, of my fellow speakers. I’d like to say, once more, how much I enjoyed attending and speaking. A big thank you to the organisers for inviting me.