jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2748 Posts

Gamespot got a showcase of Terraria mobile shown by David Welch of Re-Logic Games. The video shows off how the mobile version is setup and a few changes they made to make it feel better on mobile.

Fairly certain this is a day one purchase for me because Terraria is one of my most beloved games of the last few years and I would enjoy just a "fairly decent" version on mobile. From the video it looks like this might be a fun game to play on your phone but we will see how well it translates.


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Unity is the game engine and set of tools that is widely becoming the game development platform of choice. If you have checked out many of our Cheerful Ghost interviews, Unity is quite popular in new Indie Game Development. Since Unity is becoming a cornerstone of how games are made I decided to contact Unity Technologies and ask them a few questions about what they were up to. I was put in contact with Aurore Dimopoulos the Unity Community Manager.

Since Unity is a engine used by game developers I asked a local game designer to help me with the interview. Clifton is the lead designer of Clobbr, an upcoming mobile puzzle game written in Unity.

jdodson: Unity is an awesome set of tools to help people build games that run everywhere and has been particularly embraced by the Indie community. I wonder how you look at this success and how it has impacted the next steps of Unity itself?

Aurore Dimopoulos: We are truly humbled by how warmly Unity has been embraced by the development community, Indies in particular. We have such a large and wonderful community of developers who report bugs and request a wide range of features, that we have a dedicated area of the community site just for feedback. As a result, we have been ramping up our capabilities by employing new staff across all departments, signing exciting deals with technology partners such as Nintendo, Sony and BlackBerry and adding features that are highly requested by our community. Our community’s passion for their craft is what drives and inspires us to create a better overall product.

Clifton: Nicholas Francis just announced that he’s stepping down from the CEO of Unity to become a game developer, and after helping make Unity one of the greatest game platforms, he’s going to start making games. Are others on the Unity team making their own games as well?

Aurore Dimopoulos: Generally, the people working at Unity are pretty excited about the technology and love games. There are more than a few that do play with Unity to make their own game projects.

Clifton: What would you say is the single greatest Unity tutorial out there, either for beginners or advanced users?

Aurore Dimopoulos: We’ve actually just opened up a new Learn area on the Unity website. For now, beginners will find a lot of awesome tutorials and example projects to help them understand the basics of developing with Unity. You can find the tutorial on our website with intermediate and advanced lessons on the way soon. http://unity3d.com/learn

Clifton: Unite, the annual Unity3D event, is happening August 28-30 in Vancouver. What would you say to people who are on the fence about attending this year? Is it geared mostly toward developers, or would gamers get much out of the event?

Aurore Dimopoulos:Unite is definitely an event geared towards developers that are already making or intend to make interactive experiences, games or otherwise, with Unity. It’s designed to be an incredible environment to learn more about Unity, not only from Unity employees but from developers who are currently in production or have released titles. It’s about seeing the practicality of development from all angles like engineering, design, art, marketing, and monetization.

Clifton: What would you say to someone who’s interested in getting into games? What other tools would you encourage them to look into alongside Unity?

Aurore Dimopoulos:It’s always good to find the tools best suited for a project or development need but we’re pretty proud of the fact that Unity is suitable for so many of them. We also think that Unity, while a very complex program with a deep set of development tools, is the most approachable thanks to it’s elegant design and friendly community.

jdodson: As you are looking forward I am wondering what the next steps for Unity is? Any though to support the current and next gen consoles?

Aurore Dimopoulos: As you probably have seen, we already have announced support for Nintendo Wii U and all of Sony’s current and next generation platforms. These are exciting platforms for developers to be sure and we’re happy to help make the path a little bit clearer to getting their games onto them. We also just announced that basic deployment tools for mobile devices are free starting with iOS and Android. This year’s going to be a big one for us so keep your eyes out for lots of news!


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Hotline Miami was the main reason I picked up the Humble Bundle 8. I heard good things about it, but for whatever reason didn't pick it up till it came with the recent Humble Bundle. I think I can describe Hotline Miami best as "The Drive move video game." I don't mean that in a negative way, Hotline Miami is excellent as is the Ryan Gosling film.

The story is really interesting and like some indie games, doesn't lay itself out in a way that is easily accessible. Since the games story isn't entirely straight forward you can interpret it in a number of ways. The Hotline Miami story is a kind of 80's movie where the main character appears to be schizophrenic. At least, that's how I looked at the masks you unlock and the story breaks where the Horse , Rooster and Owl Mask characters talk to you. They are just the main character talking to himself from a different part of his personality.

If you take this way of looking at the game to its end many things happen in strange ways that hinge on the character being insane. I am not entirely sure viewing the main character as schizophrenic works, its just made to me. That all said, the game is amazingly fun along side the unique story.

Hotline Miami is a 2D top-down GTA style kill-em-up where the goal is to kill everyone on a floor. The later levels have many floors and the games floor design is really great in that the challenge keeps ratcheting up as you progress. One other element of Hotline Miami is that __you will die a lot__. I can't stress that enough, you will die a ridiculous amount of times in this game and that's all part of the fun.

You need to evolve some strategy to win the game OR you will hit a brick wall with it. A few things I learned to stay alive:


  • Knives are amazing, learn to find and use them. They are fast attack and if the enemy doesn't have a gun and you use the knife right you will always kill them.

  • You can charge into a room with two gunmen and kill them quickly if they are close.

  • Running into a room and immediately running out cause guys to follow you, so you can hit them when they go through the door. Lie in wait and kill when they are close.

  • Typically speaking, get better at using hand to hand weapons because somehow I found them to be typically more useful than guns.



The game soundtrack is very well done. If you are interested in listening to the games unique score, check it out here:

https://soundcloud.com/devolverdigital/sets/hotline-miami-official

Over the last few days I have sunk a few hours into it and just beat it a few minutes ago. The game took me about 6 hours to beat start to finish. This is one of those games where beating it feels like an accomplishment because of its difficulty and unique flavor.

If you have it, I seriously recommend you play Hotline Miami. I do want to warn you though, the game is odd and filled with horrific violence and other disturbia. Which, you know, is part of the fun.


This Starcrafts video was released in tandem with the recent Starcraft II spawn support.

Also wanted to let you know that Tomorrow a few Cheerful Ghoster's and I are playing Starcraft II and if you want to join us feel free. You don't need to buy the game as you can download the Starter Edition and play with us that way.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/22


Explore, survive and discover are some of the only words that are featured on the new site for Below, the upcoming collaboration between Capybara Games and Jim Guthrie. The released video looks very cool and seems to evoke a rogue-like element featuring the Capy style fused with Jim Guthrie's amazing music.

One point of note is the site mentions XBox One as the only platform listed. I hope, as with Sword & Sworcery this game will make it to PC and Phones/Tablets. Whereas I would cringe somewhat if this were a XBox One exclusive hopefully it would be ported to PC and other stuff later. That said, the game looks great and I am looking forward to more information as it becomes available.


During Nintendo's E3 event today they dropped the news that Wind Waker is coming to the Wii U in HD. The visuals in the video looks incredible and the remastered version looks great. This is a nice addition to the Wii U and for people that love this game and have the console could see this as a must buy!


After reading caffo's post about Gunpoint a few weeks ago I waited for the final release and then noticed there was a demo available to try. Gunpoint is a 2D stealth based action game where you play a secret agent of sorts that goes on missions of increasing degrees of difficulty. A game I have played recently that it feels like is U R Not A Hero but Gunpoint doesn't feature a frenzy of gunplay.

The game has a interesting story that you experience through reading messages sent to your phone. When you first start the game you are seemingly thrown from a window and land on the ground and are immediately called by someone in a building. She is murdered while you are making your way to the top of the building to talk to her. As you flee the scene you are contacted by someone that wants to help you by having you wipe information from servers that link you to the crime.

I played through the demo and at no point did the character I play shoot anyone, which was refreshing. To accomplish missions you have a pretty wide jump, climb buildings and cling to walls to make your way through each building. Each building has security guards and you can use a few tactics to take them out so you can find computer terminals to hack. To take out a security guard you have to jump on them and punch them once to knock them out. The game features a fun sense of humor and after I repeatedly punched a security guard in the face over a hundred times it started mocking me and counting the number of times I had punched him. These bits of humor are sprinkled through the game and its story line and offer a really fun style to the game.

If you are interested in Gunpoint there is no reason not to check it out as the demo is available for download on Steam right now!

http://www.gunpointgame.com/


Typically I don't nab a console for one game but Destiny looks so good I might make an exception to that rule. Since I have never owned an XBox I haven't played any of the Halo games and Bungie's next game seems like a re-visioning of that universe.

With the Steam Console being on the unknown horizon and the PS4 seeming to support the Indie scene as well as it claims, I might get a next gen console much quicker than I thought.

What do you think, does Bungie's next game look interesting to you? If so how do you plan on playing it?


New trailer released for Wolfenstein New Order. More of the plot details come out loaded with shooter frenzy.

ConcernedApe the developer of Stardew Valley dropped more game updates about in game rings, boots and minerals. He also talks about other game mechanics and options for how you can play the game.

http://stardewvalley.net/mini-dev-update-6/

Plants VS Zombies 2 will drop on iOS before PC an odd choice considering it was the other way around for the first game. It will also launch as a free to play game as well so if you wanted to play it and keep a few bucks, now you can.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/06/03/plants-vs-zombies-2-blooms-on-ios-july-18-is-free-to-play/


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I have been eagerly awaiting Scrolls, the new Collectable Card Game by Mojang for quite some time after it was announced. I wanted to tuck a bit of time under my belt before writing about it and feel like now is a good time.

After buying Scrolls I needed to merge my Minecraft account into my new Mojang account. This makes sense as what Mojang is doing now is having an umbrella Mojang account be the set of credentials that gets you access to all your games. So now, I can access Scrolls and Minecraft with the same information. After you get that all sorted out you can start playing Scrolls.

Scrolls is a 1 on 1 card game where the goal is destroy 3 of the opposing players idols. The game is played on a hexagonal battlefield broken up into 5 lanes. Scrolls differs from other CCG's in that you don't start with energy, you must sacrifice cards to obtain it. Its a interesting mechanic and I like it quite a bit.

Each new player starts by selecting one of three pre-constructed decks and I selected the green deck. As you play matches you win gold and you can spend the gold in the game store for cards or packs. I seriously recommend saving up for the packs as you get more cards for the gold you spend. You can drop real money to buy shards and coupled with gold allows you to buy the other pre-constructed decks or specific cards. You don't need to spend real money to get all the cards as you can stick to buying packs with earned gold.

I have been playing practice matches on Easy and find that offers plenty of challenge for my current Scrolls skill. Even in easy, the game isn't trivial even if the computer isn't too smart. Sometimes the luck of the draw can really hinder your win, just like in any CCG.

The game features a pretty robust deck builder and you can build a seemingly infinite set of deck variants on the cards you own. After opening a few packs now, I have some interesting choices and plan on making a few variants on my pre-constructed green deck.

If you love collectable card games and want to try a well polished take on the genre, you should give Scrolls a look.