SCIENCE TUESDAYS: FIREWATCH vs PRINCE OF DARKNESS
There’s always something under the earth. In Camp Santo’s Firewatch, it’s a body in a cave. In John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, it’s the devil in a church. WHICH IS BETTER?
SCIENCE TUESDAYS
Six years ago, Roger Ebert wrote: “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.”
Steam: I was wrong, although right
Last week, I talked about Steam’s recent changes – (not including reviews in the review % if the copies were bought outside Steam) in my GamesIndustry.biz column. In the rest of this post, I’m going to call these changes ‘the Purge Update’ to make it clear what I’m talking about elsewhere. and speculated about some changes Valve might make in the future.
Appreciating Open Sorcery
[I don’t write reviews, but I do like to point out things that worked well in games I’ve enjoyed.]
A Good Thing: The Fall
You play the onboard intelligence of a power armour suit with an unconscious passenger, exploring a derelict installation populated by deranged machine intelligences.
Why you should back the AdventureX Kickstarter
Oh, man, I love starting blog posts with a bit of arrant poncery. Buckle up. This is the opening to an Isaiah Berlin essay. (I originally wrote ‘an Irving Berling essay’, but fortunately corrected it before I exposed myself to lasting Internet ridicule.)
Get a Cat, or, Why More Content Won’t Save Your Game
[Note: I was creative director and lead writer on Sunless Sea, but I’ve left Failbetter and I can’t speak to my old muckers’ future plans.]
Seven Things About Writing For Stellaris
That Iain Banks quote – ‘the unlimited special effects budget [that] written SF hands a writer’. Man, I’ve never felt that so keenly. I keep being, like, is it okay if I blow that up? and the Paradox guys are all, sure, put a black hole in while you’re at it.
What I’ve been up to, Friday 12th August: STARSHIPS
Earlier this week, I launched a Javascript prototype of Cultist Simulator. I hesitate to describe it as a ‘game’ – it’s really only a proof-of-concept of one, temporarily living on the web
Cultist Simulator: recipes and bumping brains
This is a post about the Cultist Simulator systems, and also why you shouldn’t stay too deep in a bunker when you’re working enthusiastically on an idea.
Putting the Open in Open Production: what I’ve been doing, 29th July
Someone asked me on Twitter if I could share the task list for Cultist Simulator.