GameCity 5 and Jonathan Blow's commentary on Braid

So like I said I was in Nottingham last week for a couple of things, as well as the ITAG conference there was the GameCity 5. I went along last year too, so had a better idea what to expect this time. The festival had the usual marquee in Market Square though one half of the arena was devoted to EA and the Nottingham Primary Care Trust who partnered up to "bring you the Best Health club in the WORLD" (according to the GameCity website anyway). That was a bit weird to be honest - games promoting fitness... still not sure I've got my head around all that though that doesn't mean I think it's a bad thing, just different. The other side was much closer to home though, as it was full of couches and TVs so people could comfortably try out different games:

Like the new Lego Universe - a massively multiplayer experience that has just been launched. It looked cute and funny, though I got the impression it's being aimed at younger players.

And Confetti Carnival, developed by Spiky Snail which was a lot of fun. The designers were kind enough to answer my questions about the platform and release date - apparently while they would like it to be multi-platform, that really depends on what deal they get, and it should be ready for release by the second half of 2011. 

The main highlight of the festival for me though was hearing Jonathan Blow do a sort of directors commentary on Braid:

It was seriously interesting, not just because it made me want to give Braid another go but because of what he said about game design. He first demoed the original prototype which he threw together in about 8 days to show his friends. The final game took about three years and looks a lot better, but it was quite interesting to see a lot of the main concepts (including the time reversal mechanic) in what was essentially a retro Marioesque platformer with crude graphics. Jonathan pretty much played through most of the game, explaining each world, though it was clear he wasn't going to say very much about the story. I think in some ways what the story means came across as something he didn't know how to verbalise, rather than something he was just refusing to talk about.  And like most things, you can't control how people respond to what you've created.

But anyway, what really struck me about his talk was what he said about designing the puzzles and wanting to make them intrinsically motivating (a phrase he actually used, though he did admit only coming across it after the game was finished). The idea was to try and create an intriguing universe of simple rules that players could figure out one step and a time. He would often try and achieve this by giving the player the clues they needed within the single screen they were occupying. He even talked about trying to encourage "incubation" (though that's not what he called it - it's another psychological mechanism, which occurs when you get stuck on a problem and only seem to be able to solve it by leaving it alone for a while and doing something else). So he would try and get players to store a symbolic representation of the salient puzzle pieces, by keeping the levels as simple as possible. He also talked about wanting the game to be non-linear, I think in the sense that you were meant to come back to different puzzles, but after a play-test he ended up changing it so people could play it all the way through if they wanted (though he didn't seem sure that was the best decision). During the Q&A session, he also mentioned Skinner in the sense that variable rewards are always a better design mechanic than a consistent one. This linked to the pattern-breaking concept he'd mentioned too - while he made a lot about introducing the rules to the player of each world in a scaffolded way, he also pointed out that it was good to break those rules as it gives the game greater depth. As the game progresses, there are even more pattern breaking incidents, signaling to the player that the end is drawing near.

All of what I've just said is about the puzzle solving elements of the game. Braid also has a narrative which is ostensibly about a boy called Tim who wants to find the Princess, but it seems to really be about being about relationships and making mistakes and whether you can ever take those back. Again, this is is a reference there to the early Mario platformers, except with Braid you actually start to consider why the hero is looking for the Princess in the first place. There is a lot of text in the game, but Jonathan made a choice to make it irrelevant to the game-play since you can go through the whole thing without paying attention to any of it. I'd argue that doing so means you would lose out on a richer game-play experience but I think the decision was based on an awareness that not all game-players like sitting through lots of text. I think the reason I enjoyed his talk so much was that he made me appreciate all the time, energy and love that was put into this game. I'm not a designer, and I've never really tried to make my own game, but hearing him made me think that this is what people who want to design educational games should listen too. There is a very particular kind of learning going on here - mostly in the form of cognitive problem solving - and I'm not sure how well that maps on to different curricula objectives but there is no way you could deny that players aren't learning as they progress through the game. Even Jonathan admitted that he found out new ways to solve certain puzzles, after he had finished it! Maybe the key is to think about how to create a universe  who's rules you want the student to learn, rather than to consider how to lots of educational content into a game? The thing is, I also think you could get a lot of out studying how something like Braid was put together, not so much in terms of the coding underneath but mainly in terms of the ideas behind it and how they are reflected in the game-play mechanisms and design rhetoric. I think I'm starting to see a place for the study of games alongside the study of films or books - something that involves a lot more than chocolate covered broccoli and a bit more imagination than trying to simulate real world activity as closely as you possibly can. Something which Michael Abbott, is trying to do at Wabash College with Portal. Which reminds me, Portal actually has a developer's commentary you can access after you finish the game - it might be quite useful to see more of this sort of thing.

I'll admit though, when I first tried Braid, I didn't quite get the time mechanic and while I had been meaning to get back to it, it wasn't until after hearing Jonathan speak and seeing the game in action that I decided to give it another go. And if I'm really honest, though I did complete it, I did resort to using YouTube walkthroughs. As with playing Portal, sometimes it was more about confirming I had the right solution - and needing to know whether I should keep trying what I was doing until I got it right - than having absolutely no idea what to do. I had also real trouble with the shadow mechanic so needed to see it action. I know I get impatient sometimes, but I really do think it's better that I get a little help than get put off the game entirely and stop playing. So I still  got to enjoy exploring and learning about the Braid universe, while figuring out (most of) the puzzles on my own. I'm not saying the game was perfect but it did a lot more right for me than it did wrong, though I know there are other opinions out there. Also, I have to admit that hearing Jonathan talk made me go back to it and appreciate the game differently - if I hadn't, I wonder whether I would have bothered?

Machinarium (PC)

Go and play Machinarium.

It not only looks good - it's set in a sort of rusty cute looking robot world - but manages to engage without a single word of dialogue being spoken (at least not as far I've played it). It's an independent point-and-click puzzle solving adventure without the tedious dialogue. Don't get me wrong, I love the narrative and humour of the Monkey Island games and I've even been playing the new episodic ones but it's the pretty much the same formula,though it is done well. But you can also get that wrong - like with A Vampyre Story. Czech designers Amanita Design have done something different here and have managed to communicate a storyline through the use of thought bubbles and (pretty cool) drawings alone.


Not only that but they've included a really clever little mechanism for getting help within the game. I think I've mentioned this before, but I do use walkthroughs when I get stuck. There are just points where I don't have the patience to keep trying something, and if the information is out there I don't see it being massively different to asking a friend for some help. But, in order to access these walkthroughs (or tips or whatever) I have to leave the game and go online to find out what I need. And once I've caved and started looking at the walkthrough I then run the risk of ruining the gameplay by reading ahead so I don't have to come back for the next puzzle... However, in Machinarium, I have two other options. The first is to click on the light bulb on the far right to give you a hint for how to solve the puzzle. If that's not enough then you click on what looks like a locked journal of some kind. Now this will give the solution but (and here's the bit I really like) you have to play a somewhat boring mini-game to get to that solution. The reason I love this so much is because it means it stops me from ruining the game by easily accessing the walkthrough whenever I want - I have to decide whether it's worth playing the game first. So while the mini-game isn't very interesting (or very long for that matter) it makes me think twice about looking up the solution. But if I really am stuck, then I have a way to fix it without ever having to leave the game! Genius :-)

So I finally posted something about a games again (and not conference related!). I've been playing a few different things lately so I'm hoping there will be more to follow soon.

Low budget games

This is going to be a quick post, so I can bring your attention to the Professional Gamer's (or Costas from LostInGames) post on some smaller budget games he has been playing. I can thoroughly recommend "Today I die" which is free and essentially some form of interactive poetry, while Braid has been on my list of games to play for quite a while now and I'm almost embarrassed by how long it's taking me to get round to play it.

I do want to add a game to the list though - The Path from Tale of Tales. It's a horror game inspired by Little Red Riding Hood but instead of following the path to Grandma's house as instructed, you're encouraged to wander off into the woods - where all the interesting stuff is... It only costs $9.99 and can be downloaded from here. It's already been reviewed e.g. Leigh Alexander's review on Kotaku and for a much better description of it than I could give check out Fullbirght's take on it here. I think the main reason the game appeals to me because it's making people think about what games are and what they could be. Yes it challenges our normal game play assumptions but you can also see how something it could be used to prompt discussions about all sorts of issues, such as is it warning young girls to stay away from dangerous situations? Or do we all have our own "wolfs"? And even to what extent does it echo traditional fairy tales, including of course, Little Red Riding Hood? I also like the way the designers have worked around the game so you can find out a bit more about the girls as individuals e.g. Carmen has a blog here, while the rest can be found from the Path's own blog.

ThePath------StoryTrailer from Tale of Tales on Vimeo.

That said, and as much as I appreciate the different approach to designing a game-play experience, I haven't actually finished the game yet. Ok, so yes I'm a little busy at the moment, but when I have played it, I often get a little frustrated by how long it takes me to explore the woods. There is no map I can call up to see where I've been and where I haven't, expect for this weird unreliable dotted path that occasionally flashes up on the screen but disappears before I can get my bearings. There are some cryptic clues for your location in terms of finding the "wolf" but these aren't very helpful when I only want to do that after I've explored everything else. I know the game is supposed to be accessible to non-games players but how about people with poor spatial awareness? I think I am just a little bit impatient when it comes to games, even when I know I should be appreciating the fact that I do actually feel lost in the woods when I play, and all the stunning graphics and music that make up the Path. But I have certain expectations and I guess I get frustrated when I'm not sure how to get from A to B, and at the thought that I could be missing out on something by not exploring everything. Is that enough to question The Path's status as a game? I'm going to go with Leigh Alexander and Fullbright on this one - did I play it? Yes. Then it's a game. Just maybe not the sort I'm used to....

Spore (PC)

It's time to talk about Spore. Designed by Will Wright (who gave us Sim City and The Sims) and produced by Maxis there has been a lot of hype surrounding this game, partly because it took so long to develop. In Spore, the player gets to follow and make choices about the evolution of their species through a series of phases: Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization and Space. Now I got the game back when it was released in September and got through the first four stages relatively quickly, but then I hit Space. I'm not even sure you can compare the Space phase to the previous ones because it is ridiculously huge. In the earlier phases, it is fun to watch your creation evolve, but it also feels like there is a lot of repetition going on e.g. in terms of how you interact with other creatures, plus I don't get why things like the camera controls seem to differ at each stage. But anyway, once you get through all that and unify your civilization, you discover space travel and the game is suddenly huge. Honestly, I've only had time to seriously play it over the holidays but it's only since reaching space that I really began to enjoy it. Maybe I'm just not that excited by creature creation (see pic below), or designing my own buildings and vehicles, and perhaps I just prefer being able to explore space and communicate with other races. But I think I can also blame the massive scope of the game for how long it's taken me to get into it - there is so much to learn and get a handle on, especially within the Space stage, I guess I felt like I didn't have the time to give it the attention it seemed to require.

The experience has also made me wonder about what my longer term motivators are for playing too. I mean, the game obviously requires quite an investment from players in terms of both time and energy, which doesn't pay off straight away, so why did I bother? It's reminding me a little of why I kept up with Portal - I think part of it in my case was because the hype, and later conversations with friends, made me want to know what all the fuss was about. I guess knowing about the various stages in advance also meant I kept wondering what would be next. I think the Space stage might be the game I wanted to play all along - but I do think it really is quite overwhelming when you're not convinced you have enough time to get the hang of it.

As much as I've enjoyed playing the Space stage though, I've not been entirely satisfied with my experience of playing Spore. There were a few little things - like having trouble keeping track of missions that were in different parts of the galaxy, getting confused by the wormhole numbers and having no way of noting within the game which wormhole would take me where etc. But what really annoyed were the Grox. SPOILERS AHEAD! (in case you wanted a warning...). After a playing while you encounter the alien race known as the Grox. As far as I can figure out, they're just not very nice. They attack your planets randomly for no apparent reason, and they have colonised hundreds if not thousands of planets in a belt around the seemingly mysterious centre of the universe (see pic below), so their space ships just shoot at you when you try and get through. I assume they've done this just to be annoying and to stop you from getting to centre. I realised pretty quick it would take forever to try and defeat the entire Grox race, and since my Dodos are quite a peaceful race anyway, war didn't seem like the best idea. But they are also ridiculously hard to make friends with and anytime you enter their space to even have a conversation they just don't stop shooting at you!! Frustrated, I turned to Spore Wiki for some advice. I decide I would just make a break for it - stock up with loads of energy and health packs and keep going till I reached the centre. Which I did, and it didn't take that long (though your ship moves a lot slower the closer it gets to the galactic core).


And what happened next? A strange yet amusing encounter with someone called Steve, 42 (in a nod to Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's guide), enlightenment (nothing specific, you are just told you have achieved this) and a gift - the Staff of Life. The staff sounded kinda cool but I didn't know what it was supposed to do, so I went back the wiki and was told it could terraform a planet to level 3 in just one go - but only up to 42 times (and so now I'm annoyed by the limitations imposed by the Hitchiker's refernce) . Meanwhile, I'm in the centre of the galaxy and the goddamn Grox are still shooting at me! So I used my get home in one jump ticket and quit the game. The way I see it, reaching the galactic core wasn't enough and there are now only two ways I feel I can achieve a sense of completition with this game - ally with the Grox (at the expense of making every other race hate me) or wipe the Grox out (which is going to take forever). So paradoxically, wanting to make friends with aliens everywhere has led me to think that I'm going have to resort to ethnic cleansing...

But my holidays are pretty much over, and it's back to the UK tomorrow so I'm just not sure I'm going to have the time and energy to keep playing. I'm just not sure the feeling I get from eradicting the galaxy of the Grox is going to be worth it. I'm not sure I ever expected an "ending", I knew Spore wasn't that kind of game, but I think I wanted something more like Civilization where you get a score or something. I mean, have I done well or not? I'm trying to remember if I felt a similar way when I used to play Sim City games? Have I just got less patient with games that demand more from me? And does it matter when I have deBlob, Sam and Max: Episode 1,World of Goo and Braid to play? I'm either more easily distracted these days or just have too many other games to play...

Overdue games update

I'm on a break for the holidays so thought it was about time I wrote something about what I've been playing over the last couple of months. I've left Spore off this list as I've only recently gotten in to playing it again and want to post about it in more depth later on.

Since September, I've managed to complete two games. The first is episode two of the Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (PC version) developed by Hothead Games. You join Gabe and Tycho again on their quest to find the giant robot destroying New Arcadia (and which destroyed your house in the first episode). Basically, it was more of the same as the first episode but I'm not convinced it was quite as fun. At least in terms of the turn-based combat, I got more out of the mimed attacks and colourful clown blood spatter, than I did of beating up rich snobs and mental patients (cue ethical discussion here...). I did enjoy it though, because of the humour that comes with it and I think I quite like the episodic format - it doesn't take more than a few hours to complete. I also think I'm driven more to complete games like this by a desire to get to the end of the story than by a sense of challenge, as I'm not sure I want to go back and do it all over again in "insane mode". I mean, you'd have to promise something a lot more than the same thing again but a hell of a lot harder.

The second game I completed was Lost Winds, developed by Frontier Developments for the Wii. Available on WiiWare (as opposed to in shops) where you play Toku, a young boy who has to save his homeland from the elemental spirit Balasaar with the help of the Wind spirit Enril. You control his movements with the nun-chuck but also use the Wiimote to control the wind in order to help Toku jump higher and further. Apparently a second player can use an additional Wiimote to help Toku jump further but not higher (similar to the co-op mode in Super Mario Galaxy) but I haven't tried it. I really enjoyed Lost Winds, again because I could complete it in a few hours (as opposed to weeks) and also because it is one of the few games I've come across that actually integrates how you use the Wiimote into the story and gameplay. It's also easy to pick up and very pretty. It might be a little too short (I think it might be best to think of it as an episodic game, as a sequel seems to be in the works) and it could definitely have benefited from a map, or some sort of spatial representation of where you were and where you could go, since I seemed to spend a fair bit of time retracing my steps. If you have a Wii though, I would definitely recommend downloading it and it is only 1000 points (only £7).

I've also been playing a point-and-click adventure game called A Vampyre Story about an opera singing vampire named Mona who was kidnapped and turned into a vampire by the rather pathetic Shrowdy von Kieffer and is now trying to escape back to Paris. Developed by Crimson Cow I had high hopes for this as I'm a big fan of the genre and while it looks pretty, I'm finding the characters a little annoying, especially Mona's sidekick Froderick the bat, and the dialogue you have to sit through can be a little tedious (and just isn't that funny). I'm not sure the interface works that well either and in general I'm just not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. I think it might go on the back burner for a bit while I play Spore...

Lastly, there is World of Goo developed by independent games studio 2D-Boy. I played the PC demo a while back but have been waiting for it to be released on WiiWare in Europe - which should be soon - to see what it's like on the Wii. I absolutely loved this game. Described as a puzzle/construction game by it's developers, the player controls balls of goo which you can attach in different ways to form bridges and structures so the remaining goo can exit the pipe (a bit like Lemmings). It's not only easy to learn, but also clever and engaging. But if I have to wait too much longer I think I'll end up with the PC version.

Ok, think that's it for now at least!

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One (PC)

Ok so I'm not sure if this counts as a seventh generation game as such, but it has only just been released and I did really enjoy playing it so I'm going to write about it.

Created by Mike 'Gabe' Krahulik and Jerry 'Tycho' Holkins from Penny Arcade, in conjunction with Hothead Games, On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness allows you to enter the 1920s world of New Arcadia. After a bit of a random intro sequence where your house is crushed by a giant robot, you get to join Tycho and Gabe as part of their Startling Detective agency in order to figure out just what is going on. Then you're off of on an adventure involving Tycho's niece Anne Claire (who has been recast from the comics as some sort of scientific/engineering genius), battling various hobos, robotic 'Fruit Fuckers', clowns, mime's and barber shop quartets with your trusty rake, exploring Desperation St, Hobo Alley and Pelican Bay on a quest that will ultimately involve destroying a god.

It's all a bit random and thoroughly enjoyable because of it. It reminded me of when I used to play Lucas Arts games like the Monkey Island series, and Grim Fandango, which is not surprising given Ron Gilbert's involvement in the project (he helped create the first two Monkey Island games). Partly this was due to the look and feel of it, but also because the game has a sense of humour. It's funny in that 'it makes you smile' kind of way because it treats you as someone who gets the joke. Maybe it helps to be familiar with the characters from the web-comic, or the tongue in cheek humour of Monkey Island but I'd like to think most people would appreciate this is not a serious adventure game. It seems that some of this will depend on whether you do get the in-jokes or not, which in turn depends on what knowledge you bring into the game in the first place. I wonder whether the role of humour has been examined with respect to games and learning? Is it really just another way of making things fun or does it have a more fundamental role to play?

Another familiar aspect of the game was it's player friendly design. It's very hard to die, but if you do the consequences are pretty much negligible. Plus, you can save whenever you like. The combat scenes may seem a little confusing at first, especially getting the hang of each character's special moves, but you quickly get used to the turn based combat and rolling of the 12 sided dice, and start to enjoy the amusing fight sequences that often ensue. Oh, and you can pick up various exploding items, power ups and downs during your travels that can aid you during a fight. Then there is the Detective Agency screen where you can examine case logs, check your inventory and look at the files which contain info on pretty much everyone in the game.

The language in the game - fighting Fruit Fucker robots and looking for somewhere to live in the Shithole - and it's M rating makes it clear has not been aimed at a young audience. There are also pools of blood in certain areas, and a subplot involving the selling of hobo meat to a charity worker (which sounds a lot darker than it is and the hobos attacked us first - honest!). However, it's not supposed to be a disturbing game, so you also get mime's fight moves like 'pretending to throw a grenade' and clown's blood that looks like paint, which means you get fight scenes that end up looking like an over enthusiastic round of paintball. The humour might be a little dark in places, but I guess I quite like that.

Most of the time you do feel like you are running around inside a 1920s comic book world of robots, the occult, while meeting some very odd individuals in the process. The look and feel of the Penny Arcade comics are especially preserved by the polished cut scenes. But there were a few glitches that need addressing. There were silly things, like the fact one of my eyebrows always appeared in front of my hair in the cut scenes. There were also more annoying things like needing to click on an object three times before my character would actually go to it. Then there was the most annoying thing ever - during the final battle, if you called the cat (T. Kemper from the comic) to perform a supporting character attack, the game crashes and you have to start the battle again. So I hope they figure this sort of stuff out by the next installment.

See the other thing about the On the Rain Slick, is that it is an episodic game. That means it's short. Short enough, and entertaining enough, for me to finish within a few days. There is something about this that appeals to me as it means the game is broken down into distinct yet manageable chunks which I stand a chance of completing. However, it will probably end up costing me more as I will have to buy and download the rest of the episodes from Greenhouse Studios. Worst of all though, I now have to wait four months for episode two.