Notgames Forum

Occasionally, I participate in 4-hour game development contests. They serve as a nice motivation to get some smaller projects done and explore smaller idéas without the risk of them taking up too much time or becoming overwhelming. One of the results (http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?topic=368.0), some of you might already have seen. I decided to post the most worthwhile ones here. Some are products of those 4 hours; others have been expanded upon afterwards.

Lone Flower
(http://i.imgur.com/3nLvU.png)
Shake a flower, fly an insect, steer a bottle and make a tree bloom in this short, ambient piece.
Download (Windows) (http://catscratches.frih.net/loneflower/)

Remnants
(http://i.imgur.com/mQABG.png)
Inspired by Michael Gira’s I’m an Infant, I Worship Him. Contains material that might be considered offensive.
Play online (HTML5) (http://catscratches.frih.net/remnants/)

09801
(http://i.imgur.com/ZgQIa.png)
An experiment gone wrong during a power shortage results in communication errors between scientists and test subject.
Play online (HTML5) (http://catscratches.frih.net/09801/)

I must say, I played 09801 and was quite delighted when I figured out what was going on, and also with my "handicap". 

Wow. I just played 09801 too (can't resist that pixel art, heh) and it was a brilliant little experience. The small amount of interaction was very effective.

I'm impressed that you did these in just four hours! Now I'm inspired. :D We'll see how things go at the Global Game Jam this weekend... Any of you participating? :)

If all goes well, I'll be at Arabic Game Jam in Malmö. It being my first jam coupled with me knowing nothing of arabic culture ought to make it a fun, interesting and/or embarrassing experience.

09801's idea was pretty cool and worked really well. Remnants was interesting and a little disturbing. Lone Flower looked really nice, but I found the controls/(lack of control) a bit frustrating. All really good for four hours (or even with some expansion).

Could you please elaborate on the Lone Flower bit? The controls were something I had a lot of problems with. I guess I really wanted to make them more sensual and soft but couldn't think of any way to do this on keyboard + mouse. I wanted the player to have more of a minimalist approach, seeing beauty in the small (although I guess I blew that in the ending, considering it's just a bigger version of the beginning). I think what I really needed was a touch-interface.* But I'm getting ahead of myself. Do you mean that the control methods or the level of interactivity?

* Boy, does this statement make me look like I'm blaming all potential problems on the technology available to me and being blind to my own flaws, but I can assure you that's not the case.

I think the problem is partly to do with the level of interaction and partly to do with the control methods (I could definitely see a touch interface helping here). I tried to write down why I felt that way, though I'm not sure how helpful it is since describing the feel of interaction is quite hard so I'm not sure I did a good job of it.

Flower - I'm not entirely sure, I think it was sommething to do with the way that the button presses didn't really seem to correspond to what I was doing and also it seemed to be encouraging me to press the buttons as fast as possible which was fairly opposed to the mood.

For the bottle, it's movement felt artificially restricted - it didn't seem like it was moving slow because that was as fast as it could move, but because that's what the rules were. Maybe it would have been better if it excellerated to that speed to give the impression that it'd reached the maximum speed it was capable of rather than just moving at some arbitrary slow speed. Also, the movement is pretty binary (well, ternary) since you can move left, move right or do nothing, with no variance of speed, and each of these didn't really have any effect. I think that interactions tend to steal the focus a little since they require active cognition to perform and that simply by having them you draw focus to their effects, so these effects should be interesting or mentally engaging in some way (or perhaps even be drawing the eyes towards something interesting/engaging) which I don't think was the case here.

Thanks a lot! You've definitely helped; I feel that I can understand some of the problems much more clearly now. I'll be playing around a bit with the controls, but I'm not sure on whether I'll release any new version (probably not). At the very least, it's a learning experience I'll have in mind for future projects. Overcoming the binary nature of the keyboard is proving to be quite difficult. Perhaps I ought to focus more on the mouse, but the experiments I've done on that have turned out rather poorly as well.

Good to hear I helped. I've also found getting the controls to feel right can be difficult (people doing the traditional game genres with years of games to borrow from have it easy  ;)).

Lone Flower is great, this game I enjoyed the most of all.
I haven't had any problems with the controls.
I liked the mood of this short game. Sound design is excellent!

Ok, so I've now been to the Arabic Game Jam with both some positive experiences and some big disappointments. I thought it was going to be more about developing a game and less about pitching an unfinished game concept... (with questions from the jury like "so, can you win?", "what about multiplayer?" and "what's the business model?") and with talks about creating games for the arabic speaking market rather than the arabic speaking world.

The biggest surprise was Josef Fares, renowned Swedish film maker and currently game developer. He ranted against metacritic and all the preconceptions about what games have to be. He also talked about how much of the medium is still undiscovered, using an analogy about some kid in a candy store that now eludes me. I didn't get to talk to him about notgames, though, as I was stressed, hadn't slept much and was in the middle of developing a game. Still, it was very nice to hear that I'm not alone, with some people on the Internet I've never met, in this struggle. ;)

For anyone interested in our game, here it is (http://globalgamejam.org/2012/shura-democratic-battle).

Thank you for sharing,
nice invitation to make fearless quick prototypes of inspiring ideas :)

09801 was interesting. I just wish I had known it was so short beforehand because I got a bit impatient in the beginning. Lone Flower is very pretty. But feels a bit random and pointless. Remnants is not for me. I love the music of Swans but I don't like this kind of narrative.

I've been a bit behind with playing games that have piqued my interest online so I've only just played this most recent one, but it was really good. I'm not sure about the ending and to quit I had to use the task manager, but the atmosphere was excellent, I felt really relaxed while playing.

I had a bit of fun playing through =( )= and 09801, and like someone else said the visual style was nice in both.

=( )= took two tries for me to get anywhere, but just because I kept moving around looking for something to interact with, so at least I've learnt a lesson in patience as a result.

I liked the set up of 09801, but what I took away from it was serious uncertainty about whether there was a win state to be found. A choice of lose states, yes.

There is no win state in 09801, and I didn't intend for it to be the kind of game you replay to get different endings or story branches. The "story branches" are there to make the characters' reactions to your input (type/not type) feel more natural and believable. I suppose searching for victory conditions comes naturally, especially if you notice that the nature of the "story branches" which are rather traditional and similar to visual novels, etc. (A more advanced AI would be a massive undertaking and completely unfeasible given the time constraints.) Perhaps there would be a way to more clearly communicate this so players don't waste their time.

Whereas I also admire Swans, Remnants is more inspired by Gira's solo works and writings. By "this kind of narrative" I suppose you mean the content moreso than the presentation (or both)?


Thanks everyone for your thoughts and impressions.


I've also made two new short games, one in 3 hours and one in ~8 (although for a 72 hour jam). One turned out quite like I expected (although lacking in audio); the other, not so much.

Aftermath - Download (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/43861031/Aftermath.exe)

A collection of thoughts regarding her, or a final explanation and apology - Postmortem (http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=547094&view=findpost&p=4044675) - Download (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/43861031/A%20collection%20of%20thoughts%20regarding%20her_updated.zip) - Text (https://docs.google.com/document/d/19KhAVyfAjBR_59GKCqGXoXG0PdmfZzGCcaoE9uivxjk/edit?pli=1)
Postmortem recommended rather than the game (although I suppose it could be good to have played it when reading the postmortem).

Participated in the Ludum Dare a while ago. Judging from the comments, it was a success (although I'm quite dissatisfied with the graphics).

(http://i.imgur.com/70Ph2R2.png)
“What the hell I just played O_o_” - SirJson
“I feel...odd...after playing that._” - TehSkull
“Well that made me uncomfortable [...]_” - dalbinblue
“I am not sure what to think about that..._” - Cyboot

Ludum Dare page (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=19286)