Thursday, January 28, 2016

Review Of The Best Game of 2015: Undertale



Website (Demo and $9.99 Full Game)

"The RPG Where Nobody Has To Die" -Undertale trailer

Modified post from No Game Plays: The Unheard-Of Indie Games.

Undertale is an unheard-of indie video game. Well, kind of. Those that are internet savvy will eventually come across an Undertale meme or video. But it hasn't caught on, like, say Minecraft. Not yet.

To those that don't know, Undertale is an extremely popular PC video game that came out of nowhere and captured and broke many hearts.

I bought the game when it reached the highest score on Metacritic. It has been my first video game purchase since months. My first impression before I bought it was, it looks like a bad RPG Maker game. (So it was a surprise to learn later it was made in Game Maker: Studio, my go-to tool for making games)

I can't say much about Undertale without spoiling it, and the internet has done that already, but I can say that Undertale is best played without much prior knowledge of it. The innovative shoot-em-up system for RPGs, the Fourth Wall breaks... these aren't what makes Undertale great. Good, yes, but not great. What makes it great is how it ties things together.

The fandom can be toxic. Better avoid them until after playing Undertale to its fullest.

Undertale has made me cry and I still listen to the music. The game gives me Determination.

As a Game Maker: Studio user and fellow game designer, hats off to, Toby Fox. Undertale is the type of game I aspire making. Not in terms of popularity, but in the terms of its visceral experience.

Go, play it. This is the best game of 2015, hands down.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

All Realistic Space Games Pretty Much Look The Same

I'll be focusing on mostly strategy space games: 4X, RTS, etc. But really, all realistic space games fall into a sort of sameness.

I know there are exceptions, but there are so many that just seem more of the same. Especially on the detailed side. It seems there are hardly any space conventions than realistic, gritty ships in space with flashy shields.

For example, can you guess which game this is from?



Beautiful, yes, but all the same.

Solutions? There are other design aesthetics I know that probably can't be pulled off well in space. A cartoony style seems campy. Maybe a monotone aesthetic would be new. Or more abstract sometimes, but not as exciting.