Writing N' Video Games

Dead Cells, described by the developer as a "RogueVania," marries Roguelite and Metroidvania into a challenging, frustratingly addictive experience.  Metroidvania's are often praised for their super-tight execution that combines level design with gameplay and story in perfect harmony. Sounds like the formula for any good game right? They often feature upgrades to player abilities a little bit at a time and those upgrades have to balance feeling like progression without making earlier areas or weaker enemies obsolete. The same guys I took out with a pistol in the first act still need to pose some sort of a threat when I pass back through with an assault rifle and new armor. Enemy placement can handle that. For example, placing an enemy high up in a room, where it would have an advantage, while another enemy patrols the ground level in plain sight requires observing their attack patterns and good aim no matter the weapon. I'm very much harnessing Shadow Complex, a...

Beyond Eyes, an indie art game about a girl and a cat. She's also blind.  This game was released in 2015 by Tiger & Squid, and for me, it finally came up during quarantine for a certain global pandemic. The indie game backlog is as endless as any, so I picked a game that has really been installed on my hard drive for three years. What I found was a fun adventure that slowed me down for a few hours and even moved me a little, though I am pretty willing to let these small scale games move me emotionally. So is it a walking simulator? Sort of. The key difference is that the average walking sim involves puzzles and beautiful landscapes to gawk at while a story happens around you. In Beyond Eyes, Rae is blind, so as you control her, she has to physically get close to things for them to appear. Without her power to find things without sight, the screen would remain blank, endlessly white, unlike the average two-legs-simulator. I found the washed-out watercolor art pretty for ...