Design Ruts Vrs Existentialism

I’ve been in a rut. I’ve accomplished only a few things over the past couple days:
1. Played the Immortal Defense demo. It’s quite compelling, insofar as pretty geometry meets tower defense, sprinkled with a story about being forced into eternal disembodied servitude, can be.

2. Wrote up the Spellborn Character [...]

Chronicles Of Spellborn Character Selection Guide

It turns out it would be sooner, rather than later, that I approached the delicate matter of just how these weird but cool classes work in Chronicles of Spellborn.  After all, I have some altaholicism to settle, and so close after release this is an ideal time to figure out this little enigma.
Quick Summary

Warriors: Blood [...]

Standard Procedure: April 2009

The weekend has come and gone, and I’m getting back to work.   Both trying to find somebody willing to pay me now, while hedging my bets for the future.

Chronicles of Spellborn Impressions

I took much of Friday and Saturday off to give Chronicles of Spellborn a spin.  Though released November 27th in the United Kingdoms, in the United States this is quite a new game, released April 23rd, just a few days ago.

It might look like just another MMORPG, but after a thorough [...]

Peggle: The Non-Gamer Identifier

Whether it’s in PC Gamer or on today’s GU Comics, it seems Peggle has picked up a lot of attention.  It scores very highly – I figured that must mean it’s a good game.  So, when it went on sale on Steam a couple weeks back, I picked up Peggle and Peggle Nights for $10 [...]

Game Designers Block

Into the pit of private-flagged messages goes my weekend insanity.  I should probably keep my political beliefs to myself, lest it run off potential blog readers of differing opinion.  [Revised to be less caustic:] This single comic caused me to write it off the whole artistic endeavor, even as I respected the quality of the [...]

Seeking Harmony In Virtual Interplanetary Conflict

The later half of Wednesday was consumed by winning the upper hand in a game of Space Empires V that, surprisingly, took the entirety of Thursday to finish.
For time to fly so quickly indicates that there was definitely some gaming bliss here. However, I picked up many reminders of things I should avoid in developing [...]

Admiration For A Malfador Mechanist

When I noticed that Steam had dropped the price of Space Empires V in half, I pounced on the opportunity to snag the game.
I had become ensnared in the demo about a couple years ago, but noticed that the game had a problem in that the AI was easily thrashed using fighter carriers.  Consequently, Space [...]

Familiar Dissatisfaction

Issue 14 of City of Heroes may well breathe new life into the game for many established players… but it seems I’m already locked in altaholicism before a week after it’s rolled to live servers.  What happened, exactly?
First, performing Issue 14 player-made content changed the environment by providing essentially unlimited scenarios.  Second, in terms of [...]

City Of Heroes: Issue 14, Live Impressions

Having worked fairly hard on my game Monday and Tuesday, I felt it justified enough to take a day off Wednesday to see Issue 14 as it rolled onto live servers.  After all, it’s not every day you get to witness the spectacle of a major patch, and what are MMORPGs if not spectacles?