2022 in Review

 A bit late to the party, as usual, but here's some nerdier stuff from 2022 that I still remember now that the year is over:

TV Series

The Good:

I didn't watch that many shows this year, besides the many obligatory stream-reruns of Ninjago that our household lives on. What remains memorable is Giri/Haji, a show about a Japanese cop going to London undercover in order to catch his long-lost brother, who is a yakuza killer. I rather enjoyed the humor and the clash of cultures as well as genres. Also: Roy - best character ever, portrayed by the subtly great Tony Way.

Also just about as good ad the hype was (which, as usual, kept me away from it for a while): League of Legends. The only thing I would criticize on this one is the stark tonal shift from the beginning to the end of the show – a friend asked me, after I had seen the thing, if the show would be alright for her daughter to watch. The first episode might give that impression, I said, but after that it gets a bit hefty. Awesome thing as a whole though.

The Bad:

Boy did that Cyberpunk-anime show on Netflix suck. Yeah, it looks cool, but that's about it.

Books

I did get a nice amount of reading done this year – both for my book club and for myself. I re-read a few books, going through our library in order to fill a few evenings in bed. But I also have a new book strongly contending as my favourite book of all time – and it isn't even genre (unless you count the extremely unlikely string of happenstances as fantasy): Grand Tour oder die Nacht der großen Complication by Steffen Kopetzky is an awesome mix of Bildungsroman, comedy, farce, road movie and heist-story. I loved every bit of it – the adventure, the mishaps, the villains, the sex, the weirdo-characters that pepper the road when you're travelling Europe by night-train only, the moments where I feld quite directly singled out with all my personal flaws... I don't think the book was ever translated into any other language, but if you read German, read that book.

I also reread a lot of Dan Simmons because I have his books in my library and he is an awesome writer. The Terror is one of my favourite books of all time and it did hold up on a second read. Of course, since you know most of the end from the very start (it is a book about a doomed arctic expedition that failed in real life after all), the amount of possible spoilers is not that large. Everyone's gonna end up dead/missing. Just how we get there and how nautical the descriptions get is very well executed.

I did read quite a few more books but none stood out like those two. I'm not gonna do a good and bad here as I don't think I read any books that are objectively bad - just ones that didn't fit my taste.

Video Games

There were games I played when I had larger amounts of time and those that had to fill in gaps, comfort-food-style. Sometimes, as the members of my favourite podcast once said, you gotta eat a 20-box of chicken mcnuggets. So: Comfort-Food-Games were Streets of Rogue (once again), FTL and (new in the mix) the awesome and hypermasculine BroForce. Since we got those out of the way, let's get to games I took more seriously as, you know, Games as an Art Form:

Style as well as substance and quite a lot of room for interpretation of the story (sorry I don't agree with the interpretations I found online and I'm going with my own head-canon here: We're playing in the mind of a heavily traumatized woman) is Othercide (please read that with a whisper!). The art style, the music, the general feeling and the brutality of the action makes this my personal favourite when it comes to squad-based tactical games. I can only play it when I'm feeling good because when I'm down this game will drag me even lower but it's quite the piece of art.

The other game that really got me into its atmosphere was Far: Lone Sails. The genre of Sad Boy Walking was never that much my cup of tea but I like sailing and the locomotive that you're sailing in that game is very nicely realized. I feld really distressed and dismayed when it broke towards the end. A nice gaming experience with a clear beginning and ending and lots of lonely adventuring in between. Loved it.

Once again: No "bad" section here. I don't have time or money for bad games.

Board Games

As often, I mostly played stuff I made myself with my older son (and also, towards the end of the year, involving the younger one who is slowly getting old enough to join us at the table/on the carpet). But when it comes to commercial releases, the older 75% of our family has been playing The Adventures of Robin Hood this year. I really enjoy the design of the thing: Its use of a book to bring multiple different adventures on the same map to life, the flipping of bits of said map and the versatility of its tile-less movement system – all great bits that form a very nice whole. Also: Two difficulty settings are very good for a cooperative game like this. We just want to have a good time with the family so usually take the easy way, as this leaves more room for roleplaying and less temptation for one player (me) to try and take command over everyone else.

Crafting

I did do some crafting this year, like started working on a new Labyrinthmaschine and did a lot of smallish projects for the kids. The coolest thing I made was an adapter to connect my smartphone to a 1960s vintage collapsible camera tripod for making YouTube-videos with my son. I've been working with more wood this year and am considering getting a laser cutter in order to make plywood-machines instead of cardboard machines as those would be a lot more long-lasting and could possibly even be repicated/sold.

Podcasts

Two things come to mind regarding podcasts this year: First of all I still listen to The Crate and Crowbar, which by this point is like having old friends in your ear, even though none of the guys (and one gal) are ever going to know I exist, which makes internet-fandom so weird. Deep talk about games by mature people is a genre that I enjoy a lot, I guess.

The other thing that I totally binged was the Archive 81 podcast. It took a sharp turn from season 1 to season 2 but I enjoyed it and stayed aboard for that shift in story-mode. What I don't like is that the makers went dark about their new project which was supposed to hit early 2022 but didn't materialize. No idea what happened behind the scenes but an update would be welcome.

Music

What a year it was as I discovered Mind.In.A.Box for myself. You gotta admire the dedication to make a retro-synthrock band and then, over the course of two decades, keep telling the same long-running story in the form of concept albums. The Broken Legacies album is my personal favourite as it evokes the end of the world, Bladerunner-style, while being musically on point.

Film

The Good

We finally got to watch Parasite and it was at least thought-provoking. As I've watched about half of the rest of Bong Joon-ho's oevre I must say I like the man's style. Also a good movie and old-school murder-mystery was Knives Out, which shows how funny James Bond can be. Bladerunner 2049 was amazing, even though I feared for our walls when the base really kicked in on the soundtrack. Also amazing was Dune – which means that Denis Villeneuve amazed me twice this year.

The Bad

Netflix seems to be unable to make decent mid-tier action movies. The Old Guard was a few years ago, this year we watched Grey Man, Yaksha: Ruthless Operations and Lou. They are all plagued by the same issues: First of all there is the invincible main character (in The Old Guard quite literally), which makes the stakes pathetic. Then there is the very dubious morality: There is usually a character who initially feels that wanton muder isn't cool but by the end these doubts are forgotten and hey, shooting people is fun! And then there is the ending (every. single. time.): The shows love their mains too much and don't dare to let them die a heroe's death. Each of these four movies would have benefited by a heroic sacrifice at the end but pussied out and pulled back at the last second, preventing the films from becoming a well-rounded story. Hated them all, still waiting for Netflix to make a decent one.

Making things

I released Dungeon Urchins (as a game jam entry) and The Swine Pit this year. The latter is the most complex video game I ever made (and I "coded" it myself!), the former one is the first game I ever made that someone paid money for (two dollars - whoever you are: Thank You!). I'll go even more into print-and-play this year, I feel. That's where the money is. Even if it's just a few bucks. I'm currently working on something in that regard. My playtesters (aged 3 to 42) liked it. Just wait for it.

And that's it for 2022. Let 2023 be a better year for mankind.

Working on: A Rogulike. Made in Twine.

 So for the past year or so I've been (on and off, of course) working on a new roguelike. It's not my first foray into designing one: I've attempted to make them in the form of books (semi-successful: It's a good adventure-riddle but not roguelike beyond having a randomized labyrinth layout), board games (close. But better as a traditional board game co-op experience), text-adventure video games (that's more like it - but alas, I didn't do the coding) and low-resolution retro-games (not the roguest of roguelikes but also close - also a collaborative effort with my friend Niels). Now this time I've done everything myself, using the only platform I can do some coding in - Twine. Twine 1, that is.

Can one make a roguelike in Twine? With some limitations: Yes. I did it. It's pretty much finished, all I need to do is publish it on my Itch-site, which I plan on doing this weekend. Let's do a little post-mortem on the project.

Making a roguelike in Twine

Twine wasn't made for creating roguelikes, obviously. The main strength of the platform is that a layman such as myself, more interested in writing than in coding, can make a functioning piece of interactive fiction without much foreknowledge. Starting from relatively humble beginnings I learned to use more and more of the coding language features until I was able to make first a text-based survival-horror-game and then an hommage to Resident Evil. But creating my roguelike was a totall different beast. It started with a random maze, then I added parts of the combat- and inventory-system from Zombie Mansion, then I made a system for placing random monsters, loot and room features.

Technically, you do the same floor over and over again: There are only 25 'rooms', wich get different walls/passages, features, treasure-items and monsters every time you descend to the next floor. The rules for filling the rooms change when you go deeper though - as do the stats of your character when you level up. The whole thing has a high level of complexity. Here are some stats of the Twine project:

• 160 Passages
• 424 Variables
• 21 Types of Monster
• 7 Character Classes
• 50+ Types of Item
• 12 Spells
• 6 Potions
• 25 Floors total
• 5 Curated floors with boss fights
• 4 Floors where there is a trader to do trade with

In the editor, the whole thing looks like this:

The character classes (on the left) all actually play very differently: You have fighty characters like the Squire, who just stabs enemys with his spear. You have casters like the Apprentice, who can learn spells from scrolls to use them many times. You have utility-classes like the Scholar who will fill her journal with lore about the dungeon when you go deeper - and can later scrounge for scrolls (which kind of makes her a caster class as well). Many items have multiple uses: You can use a thighbone you find for combat or sacrifice it at a firepit for a health-boon. Potions can be drank, hurled at enemies or poured onto things. The seven classes each have a specialty:

• Squire: Offense in combat
• Tribal: Defense in combat
• Apprentice: Magical spells
• Alchaemist: Potions
• Scholar: Lore and nerdery and some spells
• Sacrifice: None, this is the difficult class
• Huntsman: Crafting and cooking

The project started out as a generic dungeon in a medieval world. When I made more characters and enemies, the world started taking a more unique shape. The Swine Pit, the dungeon of the game, became a hellish hole in the ground filled with demon-posessed swine-creatures and their retainers. My fandom of Darkest Dungeon definetly shows in a lot of the descriptions.

I'm also quite proud that the majority of monsters have special moves that go beyond direct attacks: Some may beat your weapon out of your hands, some can destroy armour, some displace themselves, steal your mana or HP or regenerate or steal food from your pack. Same goes for bosses: At the very least they have special attacks and two of the boss fights can be outright avoided if you have the right tactics or items. Speaking of items: Some of them are incredibly powerful and once you master the game these are the ones you want to keep for specific situations such as boss fights. Even the final boss can be two-shotted with the right spell.

What doesn't work?

Twine is, as I said, not made for making a game like this. Besides the total lack of a visualized map (draw your own - the game does provide grid-coordinates in every room), monsters are mostly immobile. There are some exceptions: 

• The second boss enemy moves about in a specific area, a trick that I learned making Zombie Mansion. The process is too complex and unreliable to be used at scale with regular enemies though - especially when considering that the boss level is curated and walls and passages are always the same, unlike on regular floors that are totally randomized.
• The enemy types of Madman and Infected Madman sometimes just "run off into the darkness". I stayed vague on purpose: The game doesn't know how to respect walls in this instance and just places the creature and its HP in a random different room. Works for a creature that is insane and incoherent, but not for other enemies. It can also lower the total number of enemies on the floor because it will overwrite the monster in its target room - so I had to use this ability sparingly.
• There are some mobile monsters on the floor of the third boss but they are rather buggy and sometimes do not move at all.

Twine is also not the best for testing your software. I did make a test-character who can jump to the next level at will and has all possible items in his inventory but even then it's a chore to test, say the final boss fight on floor 25 multiple times. That means that the later stages tend to have more issues with them. As I wanted the boss fights to be special, it was difficult to do QA there.

You can't go back up to a floor you've finished. This is because the floors are randomized during transition. Story-wise I made it so that you actually jump down into the darkness every time and there is no way to climb back up. That takes away some of the tactical options a roguelike might have, such as going back to a trader. But it can't be helped.

There is no way to save the game. I am aware that other versions of Twine have features for that but to be honest, I can't be bothered to learn another programming language after putting all that work into regular vanilla Twine 1. I'm still angry with the makers of Twine 2 going "well, we made it and most of the codes work like programming language X so whatever go figure it out" when the target audience for Twinery is people who specifically cannot code. I got my start with a blog post by Anna Enthropy and learned from there but please, people, don't assume that you make this tool for other coders.

I have another Twine game in the works - a sequel to Zombie Mansion. As the platform is what I've become proficient with, I will likely keep using it as a creative outlet. Also, I'll keep making (more professionally coded) games with Niels. We do totally need an artist though - our pixel art doesn't cut it in the long run.

In the pipeline

The year had ended. I have been busy with new responsibilities at work and two kids at home. But yet there is the spark of creativity that creates needs that must be fulfilled. I have crafted some things for my older son but those are of no consequence for this blog. What is however is, what I have in the pipeline: A new video game and the third piece for my cardboard arcade.

What is going on here?

So, this blog ain't dead and neither am I. Being a father can really muck with your game-time so I have some thoughts regardin that which I shall reveal here over the next few posts. That isn't all though: I'm still working on some projects.

First and foremost the board game that the last post was about. It's coming along at a slow and steady pace, I have an artist doing illustrations and we hope to have an illustrated prototype ready by Christmas. That is good because while my play-prototype is feature-complete, it's also in ASCII-graphics, which can confuse non-roguelike-players.

I've been writing articles on DMing pen & paper RPGs over at this site (in German). Besides that and now churning out articles for a living, I seldom get to visit this old haunting-ground of mine. I do not intend to let it die off though, as it will continue to serve as my game-design-blog where I will keep the world updated on what I'm doing and put writing that is too niche for my editor at the other website.

The other project I'm currently working on is directly related to me being a father now: I'm trying to write a pen & paper RPG for kids. Like, really little kids. 4 and up. My son still has some ways to go until he's mature enough (if you can call it that) for that but I want to be ready to welcome him in the world of role-playing as soon as he is. I dislike simply scaling down classical pen & paper as I think that ethics are important and I'd like to keep my kid in a somewhat safe environment when it comes to playing. Think of the game I'm working on as something like a kid's book-version of an RPG. There'll be no murdering things, players won't need to be literate and there are activities such as solving labyrinths, drawing with crayons and making simple rhymes in order to cast spells.

I'll go into more depth in a future post. Stay tuned as I have some stuff to talk about here in the near future. Next up: My opinion on the cesspool that is #GamerGate. More on that later this week.

This blog ain't dead!

Just to make it clear: This blog is not dead. True, I have let it go for a while, being in a new job and having less free time and all... That's about to change again. Not the job. The letting the blog rot. Here's what's going to come up over the next days and weeks:

-I have entered my One Page Dungeon in the contest of the same name. I'll explain my thoughts and design-decisions on it here soon.

-I shall finish the Duna-flight of my KSP-diary. Then, if I decide to keep writing about KSP, I'll start over from scratch as I have downloaded a newer version of the game (with electric rover-wheels! Multi-part Munbase, I am coming!)

-I'll give a review of a new RPG we're currently playing with a group of co-workers.

-I'll talk about the roguelike a friend and I are making.

cheers!

Marten

Things to come 4

This blog has been going for three months now and I think I have found my rhythm in posting. That said, this month will probably see the following:

-Pen and paper thoughts. As I had said last month, this time I will actually get around to doing some world-building. We'll see if I do actually do it...

-Again, continuing the Oblivion diary. I have enough material for another two months and I don't think I'm even half-way through the main questline...

-I might go on about some more board-game experiences. Just in theory.

-Several possible Thoughts on Pixels are in the making. I have to organize my thoughts on these though.

-I intend to translate my forum-optimized tactical dungeon-crawl RPG MadSlay Online into English. If it gets done within this month, I'll release it here.

So yeah, I've managed to post more posts in March than I did in February and I'll try to keep up the pace with about three posts per week on average. See how it goes in the near future on this very blog!

Things to come 3

Another month has passed. So what's going to go on here in March 2012?

-The conclusion of the Schmidtennistan-Files. This time we're going to get around reviewing the army that was apparently defending my grandfather's bedroom in the late 1930s.

-More pen and paper thoughts! I'll give you some hints on world-creation for a low-fantasy setting. We'll see where it goes.

-More Oblivion. This month we'll conclude day 2, which means that I'll actually have to play the game again in the near future...

-Another Board Game Review: Pandemic. See if you are going to get infected or not (I just had to make that joke. Sorry!).

I have to admit that three posts per week seem realistic in my current life-situation. Also it's quite possible that I'm going to release some small-scale video games soon, as part of the Rock-Paper-Shotgun Gamepunk-Movement. Stay tuned on that one, though I'm not going to promise too much. Also, and this is all hypothetical right now, it's possible that a buddy and I are going to make a mobile app in the foreseeable future. Maybe.

I'm outta here!

Things to come 2

What's coming up next around here? As usual, in no particular order, posted when I feel like it throughout February:

-Continuation and conclusion of the Schmidtennistan-files. My grandfather as a nerdy kid playing wargames will probably be material for two more posts.

-Day 2 of the Oblivion play-diary. It gets a serious twist towards the end of that day...

-Some more Minecraft-musings in connection with some other examples of emotional impact in games. Why are these cubes so scary?

-Reviews of some board-games I've been playing recently. Not the most up-to-date ones, mind you but the twist is that I often play them with just two people (my girlfriend and me) and most games don't hold up to well with only two players. Some do though, so if you want to play the occasional game with your significant other, these could be interesting for you.

I'll also probably slow down the publishing rate to four times per week, roughly. Maybe every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Yeah, that sounds about right. So, thanks for your interest, all five of you who are reading this!

Things to come 1

So, here is what's going to come to this blog in the not-too-distant future in no particular order:

-Introduction and download link to Sudongeon, a solo-dungeon-crawl pen & paper RPG I made using Sudoku for procedural generation.

-An in-game diary for Rogue Survivor, a roguelike game about surviving as long as possible in a city overrun by zombies. Spoiler: The character dies at the end. There may be more than one of these as they are reasonably short.

-Introduction and download link to Office Fleets, a small and simple tabletop-strategy game I made that uses only office-supplies and some simple but clever movement-mechanics.

-My gaming-diary of playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Yeah, years after everyone else did, I am doing it too!

-Thoughts about working on my own board-game. From creating graphics as someone who can't draw for crap to how to get components this series will have it all. In the end we'll hopefully have a board-game out...

And this is it for the next couple of weeks, I guess. See you there!