Adventure

Your Attention, Please

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Half-Life 2 BreenboardSome video games we lambaste for holding our hands, others we chastise for letting us wander. For developers, then, balancing the flow of progression means… a walking of the tightrope. On this topic, then, I would like to share with you two interesting articles that I have recently read.

In “Guiding the Player’s Eye”, Matthew “Gangles” Gallant directs our attention to the complexities of orienting the player in a three-dimensional world by illustrating, via a generous amount of example screencaps, Valve’s use of various visual cues:

The best approach is to guide the player organically, catching their eye with elements that fit seamlessly into the game world. In this school of thought, Valve is peerless. 1)http://gangles.ca/2009/05/26/guiding-the-eye/

(more…)

References   [ + ]

Read More

Small Worlds

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

Thanks to @SorenJohnson for the heads-up on this lovely little game. Small Worlds is a pixely exploration game with the most rudimentary graphics and controls, created by David Shute for the Casual Gameplay Design competition. You play as a three-pixel-high sprite that could pass as a human if you squint hard enough, moving him around an environment that slowly reveals itself as you progress.

Small Worlds Small Worlds Small Worlds Small Worlds

At first there is nothing remarkable about finding the way forward, with indistinct backgrounds and no clear goal. But as you play the black fog of war clears away, and view pulls out, making the pixels smaller and more defined. At a certain distance you realise that the three pixels are enough to describe your protagonist and the low-def world has a charm all of its own.

The way the game leads you along a path that winds back and forth and up and around and over things, makes the deliberate revelation of the background more evident. Stepping into a flashing object sends you to a new place, and completing that area brings you back, now with a goal in mind. The haunting and thematic music complements the quiet and atmospheric environments, and you feel there is a story being told even if it’s not quite so straightforward.

Read More

Quote of the Day: Martin Mystère

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

M: I was resting a bit, mmh I don’t get much sleep at night….
You interrupted one of my nightmares
T: Sleep depravation [sic]
You should go see a doctor!
M: I know

In other non-news, we’ve just introduced our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/slowdownvg – we’re not at all certain as to what we’ll be publishing over there, but this is as good a starting point as any, right? All new videos should be published over to our Twitter, too.

Read More

ScummVM/GOG.com Freebies

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

We’ve done lots of adventure-related coverage for the past few months, including reviews on Downfall and the Blackwell series. This time around, I would like to bring to your attention some older commercial adventure games that you can access for no price tag at all!200px-ScummVM_logo

Firstly. Yahtzee’s Chzo Mythos special edition versions are still free. Also available, for no dineros, on the ScummVM website, are Beneath a Steel Sky, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Lure of the Temptress and Drascula: The Vampire Strikes Back. There is some variation from game to game, but most do have downloads available for different language distributions and talkie/floppy versions accordingly.

(more…)

Read More

Resonance Cascade

Martyn Zachary 8 Comments

XII Games’ Vince Twelve has just announced a pledge-based donation drive for his forthcoming indie adventure game, Resonance, which according to Twelve, is a game of “Speculative Near-Future Hard-ish Science Fiction!” The developer has even promised to put this astonishing, genre-bending tag-line on the game’s retail box if certain requirements are met. Here’s the bottom line on the deal, straight from the source:

I’ve set up a Kickstarter project for the game. Kickstarter collects pledges from kind individuals like yourself and, if the project meets it’s fundraising goals by the deadline, delivers your pledges to the creative endeavor that you’ve pledged your support to (in this case, Resonance!) In return, supporters get gifts or rewards for their pledge amounts! If the goal is not met, then no money or gifts change hands.

Twitter-toting tomfoolery aside, players of Resonance will get to control four unique characters, each of whom are searching for the secret vault of a spectacularly murdered particle physicist, and must work together to keep the scientist’s horrifying discovery from reaching the clutches of a dangerous organization looming in the background.

My two plus two cents, a trailer, more images and the various types of pledge after the jump!

(more…)

Read More