June 2010
1 post
5 tags
Press X to JSON
Things have been pretty quiet here at Warp Skip! lately, but it’s not for lack of trying; we’ve been busy in the lab cooking up the next generation of video games.
On this night before the launch of E3 2010, we’d like to introduce our first tool: the Press X to JSON API. This will please you with a depth that might surprise you.
The Press X to JSON API
All you have to do...
April 2010
5 posts
5 tags
End the game saying "Grue win"
The voting deadline approaches for TWIFcomp, “a competition for tweet-sized interactive fiction.” You can view all of the entries here, and most of them can be played online. It’s amazing what the entrants have managed to do inside the constraints of the competition. I’m especially a big fan of the entries that work both as clever games and as expressive source code...
4 tags
Retronauts: A Tengen Family Reunion →
On the most recent episode of the excellent classic gaming podcast Retronauts, Frank Cifaldi hosted a round table of 3 programmers who worked at Atari during the Tengen days. There’s some interesting stuff in this, and you get a real sense for how things were making games in the 80s, when you could have the license to “port” a game to a new platform but not have any source code...
8 tags
Shaun Inman's Notes on New Super Mario Bros →
Shaun Inman is working on a game for the iPhone/iPad called Mimeoverse: Mimeo and the Kleptopus King. As an avid iPhone (and future iPad) user, I’m generally skeptical of sidescrolling games on the platform (and games that make use of virtual “buttons” in general), but this game actually looks quite promising.
In order to start thinking about level design for his own game, Inman...
7 tags
“Confusion” by Michael Nyman
While...
7 tags
"DIGITAL SADNESS" MULTIMEDIA
Below is what scrolls by when you start up “Disc 0” of the 4-disc Sega Saturn game “Enemy Zero” by insane man Kenji Eno. Of course, then it turns out that Disc 0 is just a trailer for the game, a promotional video for Eno’s studio WARP, Inc (in which Eno comes off like John Romero, which is hilarious), and a Metal Gear Solid VR Missions-style training stage that...
March 2010
8 posts
7 tags
Cognition, randomness, and deception
Frank Lantz, responding in the comment thread of a blog post he made today:
I would like to encourage game designers to stop thinking of players as subjects of psychological experiments and think of them as collaborators, fellow researchers in the experiments games allow us to do on ourselves.
The original post concerns talks by Sid Meier and Rob Pardo at the most recent GDC concerning randomness...
Press The Buttons: Exploring The Capcom Turnaround →
Matthew Green:
If you pay close enough attention while playing Capcom’s 2D action platformer sidescrollers, eventually you’ll begin to notice a pattern emerge when it comes to level design. Eventually the protagonist will come to a point on his journey where the path will force him to drop into a room from above, make a quick jog to the right, drop down to the ground, and continue...
4 tags
Everyone Loves a Period Piece 2
Stealth games are here to stay for the foreseeable future, and with good reason: they can inject buckets of tension into their gameplay. Part of the tension is intended, but unfortunately a lot of the times part of it comes from the fact that, perhaps unintentionally, getting caught can just be no fun at all. I finished Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed 2 (AC2) the other day, and came away...
2 tags
Another Castle podcast
Hear me talk about Mass Effect, Animal Crossing, interactive fiction and Wittgenstein in the latest episode of Another Castle. It’s always a blast to sit down and have a conversation about games with Charles J. Pratt (illustrious game designer and host of Another Castle), and I hope it’s fun to listen to as well.
I have an unshakably high opinion of myself, so it’s a big deal...
4 tags
Of secret sauces
Dennis Crowley, Foursquare founder, in a recent interview with O’Reilly Radar:
The game mechanics [in Foursquare] are the secret sauce. They keep people engaged long enough to see the interesting things that happen when they participate frequently. It’s kind of like with Twitter. If you drop someone in Twitter and don’t give them a reason to participate, they get bored of it...
5 tags
Cry Havok
“Cry Havok” is a fun game you can play if you have friends, roommates, etc. who play video games while you are in the room or who are often around when you are playing games. The only prerequisite is having played enough games to recognize the presence of the Havok Physics Engine, the most frequently licensed physics middleware in modern video gaming.
If you haven’t trained...
6 tags
All Wark AND All Play
I recently finished the main quest of Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon, coincidentally right around the time that Shiren the Wanderer for Wii was coming out and Jeremy Parish started talking about roguelikes a lot. This got me into sort of a roguelike kick, so you may be seeing a few posts from me on the subject over the next week or so.
First I want to talk about about...
4 tags
Trajectile: Aiming
Trajectile is a new DSiWare game developed by Q-Games and published by Nintendo that every Warp Skip! writer who owns a DSi has been raving over for the past week or two. It presents an interesting puzzle game that reminds me a little of Breakout mixed with Bust-a-Move. Its aiming mechanic requires the use of the stylus to pick an angle at which to aim your shot, which comes from the bottom screen...
February 2010
9 posts
7 tags
Low-fi Lowdown
Platformers with blocky, pixelated graphics have been on a big comeback recently, especially in the form of downloadable indie titles. We’ll leave an analysis of how the low pixel count makes it easier for individual developers to draw each frame of animation themselves and simplifies collision detection to the Gamasutra member blogs, though, and instead just link those of you who want to...
3 tags
It's dangerous to go alone take Church-Rosser...
I was at work the other night, getting my feet wet for the first time with a tool that’s known an automated proof assistant. Now there’s no need to go into all of the details of an automated proof assistant (or of Coq, the specific tool I was using. Incidentally, none of this is really specific to Coq. I just wanted a reason to include a picture of a French rooster in a white...
6 tags
Pantene Paragon
I can’t be the first person to notice this. The “Paragon” icon from Mass Effect looks suspiciously similar to the Pantene logo:
Maybe this is subtle symbolism. The concept of hair here is clearly being equated with the concept of virtue. It’s telling that in the Mass Effect universe, humans seem to be the only sentient race with hair of any kind:
Turians, asaris,...
2 tags
About Warp Skip! →
In case you were wondering who we are, there is now an “About” page accessible via the sidebar of the blog. Not that it contains any actual useful information. But hey, faux Game Boy Camera pictures! Retro-chic!
7 tags
Achievements, Foursquare, and Donald Norman
In a recent article at Gamasutra, Ian Bogost declares his distaste for Foursquare. In the article he groups Foursquare badges and mayorships with Xbox Live gamerscore and achievements, saying that both are essentially customer loyalty programs—along the lines of frequent flyer miles. The main argument in the article is that Foursquare, in particular, is a lousy customer loyalty program, as it...
9 tags
Shut Up And Play This Game: "Record Tripping"
“Shut Up And Play This Game” is a recurring feature here at Warp Skip! The deal: you read the blog post, then you play the game that we link you to. No questions asked. See the first “Shut Up” post for a full description, or view all of the “Shut Up and Play This Game” games!
If you asked me how you could create a video game that was relevant to my interests, I’d...
6 tags
Double Buffered: A Timeline of Western MMO... →
Longtime friend of the Warp Skip! staff and game developer Ben Zeigler put together a really awesome diagram showing the often-convoluted development process of MMORPGs in the Western game design world. There’s a lot of information there and it’s pretty cool to see how much migration there is of high-profile talent from company to company while staying within the MMORPG genre. Go check...
5 tags
Side-Quest Side Effects
Welcome. We’re here today to compare the way side-quests work in two popular role-playing games: Mass Effect and Persona 3. (A warning: there may be mild, mild spoilers for both games.)
This is a screenshot of Mass Effect’s “Assignments” menu, which amounts to a list of side-quests. As the game progresses, the list gets longer: it seems like every character you talk to...
6 tags
Anonymous asked: I'm getting awful tired of Counter-Strike remakes (CoD, AA and the rest). Are there any fun-based FPS games coming out soon, or should I just stick to TF2? I'd love for solid multiplayer over a singleplayer only game, but both is obviously better
January 2010
7 posts
12 tags
You have received bears
I’ve spent all month enjoying Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes on the DS. It’s the most fun I’ve had with a video game in a long time. They’ve managed to find a way to integrate RPG elements with a puzzle game like Puzzle Quest did a few years ago, but their core mechanic doesn’t end up introducing a feeling of unfair competition from the AI— the introduction of new...
Questions →
Looking for some gamer’s advisory— know what games you like, but don’t know what to play next?
Hoping to see opinions or information about a particular game on our site?
Want to hire Scott as your digital choreographer?
Want to know more about Chris Kohler’s sordid past as an unlicensed Yoshi-based game designer?
Ask the Warp Skip staff your questions now!
5 tags
Shut Up And Play This Game: "Choice of a Dragon"
“Shut Up And Play This Game” is a recurring feature here at Warp Skip! The deal: you read the blog post, then you play the game that we link you to. No questions asked. See Casey’s post about “Small Worlds” for a full description.
“Choice of a Dragon” is a short, text-based, choose-your-own-adventure-style hypertext game. You are a dragon. You make...
7 tags
Underground ludonomastics
Read now noted scholar and game designer Nick Montfort’s epic post on the etymology of “Zork.” Nick gives a number of possible origins for the word; here’s my favorite:
The letters [on a Belgian keyboard] are laid out just as they are on a French typewriter, in the AZERTY scheme. As you can see, if you’ve learned to type the word “WORK” on a typewriter like this, and someone then...
5 tags
Steam News →
From the latest Team Fortress 2 update notes:
Added a “virtual mousepad” concept to rework how bots track enemy players
They now periodically estimate the position and velocity of the enemy they are tracking, instead of “locking on”
After rotating beyond a maximum angle, they will pause for a fraction of a second to re-center their “virtual...
5 tags
Memories: SHATTERED!
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is an unusual game for me in several ways. For one thing, it’s the only game I’ve played in recent memory that I ended up more enthusiastic about after I’d finished it than I was before I started playing. I’d always had a vague interest in the series, but never actually played anything more than the beginning of Silent Hill 2, and as far...
5 tags
Back of the Cereal Box: Mario's Lost Bytes →
Drew Mackie rounds up some great Mario-related stuff from the fantastic Unseen64. There are some mind-blowing “what if” type scenarios going on for the Mario franchise and its various spinoffs in this blog post. If you like this sort of stuff, I recommend check out Unseen64’s blog for all kinds of leaked information from canceled projects and posts detailing the differences...
December 2009
8 posts
5 tags
COLD FEAR: BEST GAME OF 2005
Each year around this time I start hearing people (including myself) discussing what was the “best game of the year”. But those of us who are “in the know” understand that there will only ever be one best game of 2005. That game is Cold Fear. Below the jump, Mega64’s commercials for Cold Fear from the midway point of this illustrious decade in video games.
...
4 tags
Ëvën Mörë Brütäl
Here are the three button diagrams from Brütal Legend, superimposed. If you’ve played Brütal Legend, this image is somewhere burned into your cerebellum:
I think there’s an agreement here at Warp Skip! that while the world, audio, and art of Brütal Legend are perfect, the controls and mechanics seem… unpolished. I offer the image above as evidence. They’re not the most...
4 tags
Ghoul Patrol →
Apparently there was a sequel to Zombies Ate My Neighbors! A terrible sequel. Which has been rated by the Australian rating board as a Virtual Console title, meaning we may someday be able to play this on the Wii. This interesting article tells you a bit about it (and does a pretty good job of convincing you to never play it).
There’s more info on GameCola, too, although I find the ending...
4 tags
Gaming the System →
rands:
There’s a socially frightening act inside of optimization that normal humans don’t get and it’s the calming inanity of intense repetition. In a game like World of Warcraft, many of the tasks involve an exceptional amount of repetition. Repetition like, “Hey, go kill 1,000 of these guys and come back and I’ll give you something cool.” Yeah, 1,000. If each kill take a minute, you’re talking...
6 tags
The Perils of "Joining the Conversation"
Over the last year I’ve purchased a number of Xbox 360 games, but very few of them within the month they come out. Why bother? The price curve on 360 games is much more evenly declining than most console’s releases, so it’s easy to choose to buy in anywhere from 60-20 USD (new) within the first year of most games’ release. My friends don’t generally play online...
7 tags
Brütal Sändwich
I just finished playing Brütal Legend. I’m trying to decide whether or not I liked it.
Okay, that’s not true. I definitely liked it. But I didn’t love it. That’s not strictly true either.
I did love some of the game: I loved the writing, the voice acting, and the art. Double Fine hit these elements out of the park with Psychonauts, and it’s even better in BL. If...
4 tags
Shut Up And Play This Game: "Small Worlds"
I’d like to introduce a new feature at Warp Skip called “Shut Up and Play This Game,” or “Shut Up” for short. I know how it is in this day and age— someone tells you in 2002 to check out this band called The Mountain Goats, you kind of shrug it off, whatever, you forget about the band, then in 2006 you pick up Get Lonely and you say OH GOD WHY DIDN’T I LISTEN TO...
5 tags
Postmortem: Twisted Pixel's Splosion Man →
Splosion Man is one of my favorite games of the year and Gamasutra has a great postmortem on the project, in which two of the co-founders of the development studio look at the development process with a critical eye, speaking honestly about what went right and what went wrong.
If you haven’t played Splosion Man yet and you have an Xbox 360, you really need to download and play it....
November 2009
4 posts
6 tags
Hooray For You
I finished Mario & Luigi 3: Bowser’s Inside Story a few weeks ago and I wrote this while thinking about what I like about these games. Each game in the series ends with a final dungeon that feels tedious and less inventive than any of the previous environments, although I’d say that the most recent game comes closer to feeling like that throughout the entire thing than either of...
8 tags
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed,...
Maybe it’s just because they were some of the first games I played on a console (and certainly the ones I played most extensively), but to me, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World represent almost the Platonic Form of video games. I never owned an NES, but I would walk around the corner to my friend’s house to play his copy of Mario 3 for hours until my mom dragged me back home...
4 tags
Here’s Kakkoi, from the excellent soundtrack...
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Living on the Edge
Earlier this year I became temporarily obsessed with an iPhone game. I played it to the end, then went back and collected all of the extra objects, then played through it again just for kicks to see how much faster I could beat some of the levels. I had “write a blog post” about it on my list of things to do, but before I could get around to that, the game disappeared from the App...