Weekly Links #97

Hello, everyone. As I was saying last time, the IFComp results were announced on Monday, and this year I was intrigued by several of the games for a change. Actually playing them hasn't been so smooth. One is Windows-only, and I can't be bothered to install Wine. Another has illegible gray-on-black text that also overlaps in places. (Does it perhaps expect a maximized browser window?) Yet a third runs in real time and doesn't even pause after a screenful of text. Dear game developers: accessibility matters.

But there's a gem or two among them — see my review of Untold Riches. I also tried Scarlet Sails, but gave up when my only available option was unacceptably stupid. Thanks for reminding me that a historical pirate's life was short, squalid and painful.

Somewhat off-topic, right-wing military sci-fi has a tarnished reputation nowadays (which has made a lot of puppies sad, but that's another story). Still, I used to enjoy the early Honor Harrington books when I was younger, so it was nice to hear that a Honorverse tabletop RPG is coming next year. What roleplayer hasn't dreamed of commanding vast fleets in battle while dealing with political intrigue on the side, and even the occasional duel? Not to mention that from tabletop to videogames there's just one step. We can expect more goodies from the franchise in the coming years.

In actual game development news, the authors of a recently Kickstarted game have published their early brainstorming process, and it's an instructive read. Note the increasingly wacky and complicated ideas, none of which makes me want to even bother starting the game. That's what happens when you set out to make one for the sake of it. If you don't even care about your own driving idea as an author, how are you going to finish your creation, never mind getting your audience to give a damn?

In art, you must have something to say. Doesn't have to be profound. It just has to matter — to you, the author. And as it turns out, most ideas that matter can be readily expressed in a non-interactive format.

I'll end with a cool use of procedural generation, for once not to create game content, but the kind of fluff that makes the player believe they're having an impact on the virtual world. Which, as Undertale spectacularly demonstrated in recent months, is a thing players are hungry for.

Until next time, consider what you're giving your audience.