Bonoboblogs

I released a new game! Well sort of. Well actually an old game but re-made from scratch. It's basically a better version of our disturbingly sucessfull game Excit. You might remember that I blogged about the hours I've invested in that project or how it made me re-consider the value of animations.

So now it is finally on-line. We did it for the German newspaper Handelsblatt and they insisted calling it "Handelsblatt Office-Pause". You can play it here:
http://www.handelsblatt.com/homepage/office-pause/

In other, very related news, I just posted something I've been holding back for this special moment: the Excit Post-Mortem. I wanted to share with you some of my experience I gained during that project. It accumulated quite the history. Plus, I posted some cool behind-the-scenes developments steps for the visual design. Check it out on my other Blog:
http://gamedesignreviews.blogspot.com/2009/01/excit-post-mortem.html

Der angegebene Schwierigkeitsgrad ist natürlich hochgradig subjektiv.

Lösungsvorschläge bitte per Kommentar einreichen. Der Gewinner (oder die Gewinnerin, haha) erhält Ruhm, Ehre, Karmapunkte und darf die Screenshots behalten.

1 (easy)

2 (medium)

3 (somewhere between medium and hard)

BONUS-LEVEL! (hard)

Recently Corvus from Man Bytes Blog gave an intriguing task for his newest Round Table: take a book and imagine how a game would look like if that book was based on the game. That's a mind twister and quite the challenge.



I immediately thought of my favorite and Sci-Fi writer: Stanislaw Lem. I think Lem was one of the brightest minds of our times. Basically, he used the Sci-Fi genre to construct scenarios for analyzing some mind-boggling philosophical paradoxes. The way he was able to bridge the gap between Science and Humanities should be an example for ... well everybody. Especially in today's times, there seem to be a growing separation between the scientific community with their skeptical and analytic way of work and the humanities with an interpretive, relativistic approach. Lem is an excellent example that those two aren't exclusive and can (and should) be combined to create a better understanding of our world...

Compared to Lem's books, other Sci-Fi seems like childish, pointless razzle-dazzle with technology. Actually, at some point Lem himself chose not to distance himself from the Sci-Fi community, rejecting an honorary membership offered to him by the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was not only smart but also had some major balls.

One of his best-known works is Solaris. I'm not sure if I would call it his best work but I would rank it pretty high. Many tried to adapt his works into other media and Solaris was made into two movies. As all Lem adaptations, they both failed. They weren't exactly bad movies. The Tarkovsky one was very artistic and at that time technically impressive. I do like the Soderbergh movie. It has some great production design, great music and is quite bold for a Hollywood flick. It's just that none of them nails what the book is about.

So as a self-imposed challenge, I tried for some time to come up with an idea for a game based on Solaris. I wanted to finally give Lem's work the credit it deserves. The recent round table task seems like a good context to share my thoughts with other people.

However, I the movies failed for a good reason. For exactly the same reason, a game might be doomed even more. You see, the book is ultimately all about failure and the limits of human understanding. Lem speculated that if we leave our planet, we might not be able to understand everything we would meet out there. We dream of other worlds and alien life-forms but what we expect are always things very similar to what we already have seen on earth. As he himself put it:

I must tell you, that we have no wish to conquer space at all. We want to extent earth to its utmost limits. We don't know what to do with other worlds, we don't need other worlds. We need a mirror.

Lem actually spoiled me EVERY other Sci-Fi right there. Each time I see yet another humanoid alien in Star Trek or Star Wars, I can't forget those words.

In Solaris, Humanity meets a REAL alien life-form (or "something") and just completely fails to communicate or learn anything from it. The whole books shows the struggles of the crew to solve one of the peculiar riddles of the anomaly. In-between, we get glimpses into the scientific discussion and development by thousands who already tried to understand the phenomenon many years before. Even though the crew manages to "resolve" the acute situation in the end, they are no more smarter than they were at the beginning. The final scene could be interpreted that the protagonist basically gives up and accepts that the alien will forever be no closer to him than now.

Both Solaris movies avoided that difficult topic. Failure is not really something that goes well in a movie, especially not a Hollywood production. Or rather - failure can work but only as a tragedy; A meaningful failure. Simply giving up is quite unsatisfying. That's why both movies always added something in the end. The Tarkovsky one is a nice, crazy (but pointless) plot twist in the very last second. Soderbergh took upon that and even added a happy end, showing a first contact scene which Lem denied us.

So how would I make it RIGHT this time?





I thought about an MMOG where players can freely explore Solaris. New content would be added manually or procedurally. Players could take pictures, add tags and post then on a Wiki/Social Network Site. They could then discuss theories on what Solaris is. There could be some simple puzzle players could solve together in order to get to more hidden places but ultimately, they should deliver more new questions than answer old ones. In the end, players would indefinitely continue this game of pretend-science until they succumb to the churn rate.

There is one problem with that game: nobody would play such a game if the KNEW there would never be able to solve the game. Sure, you can't "win" World of Warcraft either but you get a clear sense of progress. Solving puzzles is different from the experience of a MMORPG. Action games are already fun and engaging even before the score is settled. Even if you fail, you often get a sense of how far you got. Puzzles (or rather riddles - Tetris is also a puzzle after all) are very result-centered. The reward comes from figuring things out, not necessary from struggling to get them. A puzzle game where there is no answer will be quite frustrating with no hope of redemption. Players won't even try if they know the task is futile.

So releasing such game now, after Solaris is already availible as book makes little sense. You would have to refrain from making any reference to the book to keep up the illusion that there is an explanation.

But the idea actually works in the context the round table: imagine if Solaris hasn't been written yet. There would be this new mysterious MMOG and players would struggle to find out its secret. On after another, they would fail and give up. Some players could get so depressed by the experience that they might actually write something not unlike Solaris.

But that's not entirely satisfying. In Solaris, the characters face a natural phenomenon. They don't solve a riddle created by another human. That's the whole point of the book. The experience of failure to understand a natural phenomenon is very different from failure against the wit of a human game designer. In a way, we have an approximate Solaris MMOG - the TV Series LOST. Many people complain that the producers will never be able to solve the show's mysteries. The critics don't blame themselves, they blame the producers.

Genuine failure seems to be in fundamental conflict with what a game is. So seems like what I'm trying to do is impossible. In a double-sense, the Solaris Game is an impossible game and just like the protagonist of Solaris, I have to give up. Do you see any possibility I missed?

Crayon Physics Deluxe trailer 2 from Petri Purho on Vimeo.

Das preisgekrönte Physik-Puzzle-Nachdenk-Meditations-Buntstift-Indiegame Crayon Physics Deluxe von Petri Purho ist nach zweijähriger Entwicklungszeit endlich fertig und kann für 19,99$ über PayPal geordert werden.

Im Gegensatz zum kostenlosen Prototypen Crayon Physics könnnen nun beliebige geometrische Formen und Phantasieobjekte in die Level gezeichnet werden — vorher waren nur einfache Rechtecke und Striche möglich. Die Vollversion des Spiels bietet acht Abschnitte (Inseln) mit mehr als 70 verschiedenen Leveln. Der integrierte Leveleditor macht Spaß und ist einfach zu bedienen; leider können nur Besitzer der Vollversion die von anderen Nutzern generierte Level spielen.

Die Demo zu Crayon Physics Deluxe ist knapp 25 MB groß. Spielbar sind hier die ersten beiden (sehr leichten) Inseln.

Ebenfalls bereits erschienen ist eine 4,99$-Version für’s iPhone und für den iPod Touch, bei der man — Touchscreen sei Dank — Objekte mit den Fingern statt mit der Maus zeichnet:

(Direktlink)

Crayon Physics Deluxe — PC-Vollversion + Demo
Crayon Physics Deluxe — iPhone + iPod Touch

I managed to start again to work on a game. The name will be X or scnclr-X, I am not sure about that yet. Graphics should be clean and minimal, while at the same time I think of small sprites, to enhance the cute and fun-factor.

It will be a little arcade game. The goal is to "clear the screen" (what a surprise!) of each level. I hope to finish that small game soon, but who knows... time will tell.

I'm finally continuing work on my game Illucinated! As you might remember the last post about it was on the 4th of Septemer, but it's not that I didn't do anything since then. I finished another level and fixed a lot of technical problems. However, at some point my progress was hampered by a stressful move to a different flat. This caused me missing the IGF deadline completly. I picked up the pace because I was nominated for the Kölner Design Preis but even though I got some great feedback from the Judges, I failed to win anything there. To add insult to injury, the guys organizing the exhibition of the nominations weren't competent enough to get a PC for me so I could at least exhibit my work. So as you can imagine, my motivation was at a low. I did two money projects and some work for the Cologe Game Lab to get a fresh start. Right now I seem to be unemployed but have enough money to pay bills for the next two months. During the two months I will push the game to completion.



I'm in the working on the last level now. This is actually how I construct levels in Illucinated. I take a bunch of photos and arrange them in a 3D software to 3D collages. It's basically like Panography but in 3D. Takes a lot of time, especially if a certain feature has to line up in various photos.

In this picture you can see that already aligned and grouped a bunch of photos in the upper left corner while there are still some more waiting in the lower right.

This holiday season went well for me. As you might have seen, I was able to finish some long-overdue Articles on Secret Files: Tunguska and The Moment of Silence. I also got hooked on GTA4 and was able to finish it recently. I even wrote an article on it and I will publish it soon. I got some work done for Cologne Game Lab and I am at the beginning of my remaining work for Illucinated.

Also, I made pierogi. They were a lot of work but very tasty.



So 2009 is off to a good start. How did your holidays go?

Böse Zungen (z.B. ich) behaupten ja, dass der Stern der Karaoke-Derivate auf Spielkonsolen und Heimcomputern im Jahr 2009 sinken wird. Soll heißen: In 12 Monaten kräht kein Hahn mehr nach “Rock Star”, “Sing Star”, “Guitar Hero” und Konsorten. Sollte jedoch der unwahrscheinliche Fall eintreten, dass ich mich irre, hat der Webdienst JamLegend eine vor Goldglitzerstaub funkelnde Zukunft vor sich.

In Kurzform: Der Bespaßungswillige greift sich die Tastatur und drückt zu vorgegebenen Zeitpunkten, welche dem Takt der abgespielten Musik entsprechen, die richtigen Tasten. Je besser er das macht, desto mehr Punkte gibts. Fingerfertigkeit is the Key, ich mit meinen Wurstfingern habe natürlich keine Chance. Es gibt High Score-Listen, simultane und asynchrone Multiplayermodi, Herausforderungen per Blog/Facebook-Widget, Spiele gegen den Computergegner, Turniere, zum einfachen Testen ist nicht mal eine Anmeldung erforderlich. Eine nette Idee: Bands können eigenes Tonmaterial hochladen und der Welt als “Spielmaterial” zur Verfügung stellen. Über den Weiterverkauf dieser Tracks will sich Jam Legend finanzieren. Klingt nach einem gar nicht so schlechten Geschäftsmodell. Ob’s was taugt, wissen wir spätestens, wenn deutsche Klonseiten Jam Legend kopieren.

Viel Spaß beim Ausprobieren.

• Jam Legend

Der Schwede Jonas Tunander ist Musiker und Liebhaber von Videospielen. Diese Vorlieben mögen für sich nichts Ungewöhnliches sein, aber Jonas entschied sich, sie zu verbinden.

Er veröffentlichte unter dem Schlagwort “Bitpop?” zwischen 2004 und 2007 zwei Alben und einige Einzeltracks, in denen er mit seiner Band bekannte Videospielmelodien interpretierte. Die meisten der Stücke entstammen Spielen der NES-Ära, beispielsweise sind Melodien aus den Megaman-Spielen überproportional vorhanden. Aber auch Musik aus Spielen jüngeren Datums wie Silent Hill 2 oder Super Mario 64 gewandet Jonas in die geschmeidige Zwirn aus Pop und Easy Listening.

Es ist etwas schade, dass das Bitpop?-Projekt eingeschlafen zu sein scheint, immerhin kann man die alten Tracks auch heute noch herunterladen.

• Bitpop? Vol. 1 (Ein Klick auf “Bitpop? - Tanka hem skivan” und der Download des Albums als ZIP-Datei startet)
• Bitpop? Vol. 2 (same here)
• Single Tracks

Als Anspieler hier die Bitpop?-Version der “The Moon”-Stage aus Duck Tales (NES, GB).