MetaFilter posts tagged with design and gaming

The Board Games Women Make

ocherdraco — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:32:02 -0800

Ever played Monopoly? Then you've played a board game that was designed by a woman (it was, under its original title, "The Landlord's Game," the creation of Elizabeth Magie). Want to play more board games designed by women? Let's go! Hat tip to subject_verb_remainder's post on video games made by women for making me think to compile this list. Like that post, this is not a comprehensive list. I am relying heavily on Board Game Geek for my information (I drew from several GeekLists there, though as I wasn't able to come up with more information for every designer on those lists, not all are included here). For each designer, games are listed according to rank on Board Game Geek (a rough indicator of popularity). (The one exception is Maureen Hiron. I wanted to give a sense of how long she's been designing games, so some of her early games are included although they're not her highest ranked games.) A B Lisa Bowman-Steenson and Lori Dieda together comprise Gut Bustin' Games, which grew out of their game Redneck Life, which drew on Bowman-Steenson's childhood, as she puts it, as "the redheaded stepchild of an auto body guy (yes, the body shop had a keg-er-ator)." Video interview at Origins 2007 with both designers about their games Redneck Life and Trailer Park Wars. Joint games: Trailer Park Wars (2007): You must place quality Tenants in your trailers, create a fun and friendly atmosphere by adding some sweet Amenities, and go about destroying the other trailer parks…no matter what it takes. Surface to Trailer Missile? Molotov Beer Can? A Tornado? You Bet. Redneck Life (2003): A variation on The Game of Life. A roll of 2 dice determines the grade you complete in school, which sets you up for one of 11 fabulous careers such as Mullet Salon Operator or Monster Truck Announcer. Journey through Blue Collar Americana by going into debt to purchase a vehicle, get married, divorced, re-married, purchase a home, and raise a passel of young'ens. Bowman-Steenson's solo game: Oh Gnome You Don't! (2011): A racing game in which gnomes try to reach the finish with the most gems and without having lost gems in brawls with other gnomes. C D Monika "Dilli" Dillingerová: A professor of Mathematics at Bratislava's Comenius University. Crash by Crash with Ivan Dostál (2008): Under the supervision of a grumpy operator, these bumper cars are only for the courageous. With your band of young punks, prove that you can drive better than your opponents and claim the best part of the floor for yourself. But be careful; the operator can change the floor, and you might get bumped off. Brigitte Ditt is a game designer from Rheda-Wiedenbrück, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. In 1987, she married fellow game designer Wolfgang Ditt. They have written for the Spielbox, Germany's biggest game magazine, and maintain their own board game website, Die Poeppelkiste ("The Meeple Box" or "The Pawn Box" in English). Essay: the Ditts discuss German board games. Nautilus (2002): players are building a research station at the bottom of the sea, trying to find Atlantis, recover sunken treasures, and extract raw materials. The board shows the sea floor as a grid with shades indicating the levels of depth. The three game phases include: (1) expanding the station, (2) deploying scientists, and (3) exploration (via miniature submarine). Big Points (2008): A short game with simple rules but a lot of depth. 5 differently colored playing pieces, that may be used by all players, race along a path of colored wooden disks towards their goal, racing to achieve good placement on the "scoring podium" which will enhance the points earned by collecting the disks. E Ellen Maria Ernst. Photo of Ernst and co-designer Kira Verena Samol in costume while playing Liebe & Intrige at Essen Spiel 2007. Her games: Liebe & Intrige with Kira Verena Samol (2007): You get the idea from the title of this review of the game: "Pimp My Daughters." Each player represents a family trying to marry off their three daughters. The daughters have varying levels of three characteristics: reputation, beauty, and education, all of which may increase and decrease in value during the course of the game, and which help or hinder them in their pursuit of the 14 "gentlemen" who are their potential husbands. This is basically Jane Austen: The Board Game, which means, of course, restrained courtliness in public and major backstabbing behind the scenes as you try to advance your daughters and keep the girls from other families from making a match. Spuk im Schloss (2008, "Spooky Castle" in English): The game is played in darkness using glow-in-the-dark cards. Every round, each player passes a card to his or her left, aiming to collect a set of identical glowing cards. Once someone has a set of four, the round ends and the ghosts are revealed, along with the points they confer: did you have good ghosts? Or just some ghastly ghouls? Miranda Evarts is probably the youngest entrant to this list: she was only 6 when she came up with the idea for Sleeping Queens. Though no other games have yet appeared under her name, in a 2005 article, she mentions an idea in development: '"I'm working on another card game," she said. "It's about a time portal. You have to go back in history and collect things."' Sleeping Queens (2005): The Pancake Queen, the Ladybug Queen and ten of their closest friends have fallen under a sleeping spell and it's your job to wake them up. Use strategy, quick thinking and a little luck to rouse these napping nobles from their royal slumbers. Play a knight to steal a queen or take a chance on a juggling jester. But watch out for wicked potions and dastardly dragons! The player who wakes the most queens wins. F Marsha Jean Falco of Fountain Hills, Arizona, is primarily known for inventing the game Set in 1974 while working as a population geneticist studying German Shepherd epilepsy genetic patterns. Her games: Set (1988): Each card contains 1-3 matching objects, in one of three colors, shapes, and shadings. Twelve cards are laid out, and the first person to spot a set of three collects those cards. The cards are replaced from the deck and play continues. Quiddler (1998): Obtain the highest number of points by combining two or more cards from your hand into words. The game consists of a 118 card deck containing letters from A to Z and special double-letter cards: QU, IN, ER, TH and CL. Five Crowns (1996): Rummy, with a twist. The set collection aspect of rummy is basically the same; with groups of 3 cards in either runs or denominations making a valid meld. The difference is that in each hand the number of cards increases, from 3 cards in the first hand to 13 in the last. Xactica (2002): A trick-taking card game, which challenges players' ability to estimate the outcome of playing 8 cards. You must predict the chances of being able to take the other players' cards that are laid down during each round. There is no drawing or discarding. You must predict exactly (hence the name Xactika) the number of rounds in which you will be able to take the cards played. Triology (1994): A melding of Set and rummy. Each turn players look for sets in their hand of nine cards, drawing if they cannot lay down a set. Players may also poach off of other players sets if they contribute at least two new cards. Play ends when one player runs out of cards, and the player who has the most sets at that point wins the game. Angelika Fassauer: Flowerpower with Peter Haluszka (2001): A beautiful tile-laying game where players strive to build large plots of single variety flowers. The larger the plot, the higher the score. Players plant their own gardens but also compete in a central connecting strip. Players also get the chance to plant weeds into the opponent's garden, spoiling their best laid plans. Part of the Kosmos two-player series. Trick Track Troll with Peter Haluszka (2002): A simple dice-rolling game. Roll dice to race against other trolls as you rush through an ever changing forest to collect a crystal and return home. G H Claudia Hely is a German mathematician and game designer. Interview with Hely and her co-designer Roman Pelek (in German). Their game: Santiago (2003): This game is about cultivating and watering fields. Plantation tiles are auctioned off each round, and the tiles are then placed onto the game board along with a marker that indicating how plentiful the tile’s yield will be. At game’s end, naturally only the cultivated land counts. Each plantation is counted according to type – the bigger the better. But since the ownership markers play a role as well, the same plantation can give drastically different points for different players. Maureen Hiron, "the world's foremost female games inventor" according to the Independent, and inarguably one of the most prolific, has been designing games since her 1982 abstract, Continuo. Video interview by Board Game Geek at Essen Spiel 2009. Article from The Independent about that same convention, with a brief profile of Hiron, who is herself the former bridge correspondent for that paper. A few of Hiron's many, many games: Duo (1986): card game in the Crazy Eights vein. Continuo (1982): After the initial setup of four tiles, players take turns adding tiles onto the edges of previously laid tiles, scoring points for creating aligned paths of colors. Quadwrangle (1983): a dice game played with a board with 9 columns. Each column has a counter that starts in the middle and which you attempt to move by rolling certain dice combinations. (It is a bit like playing 9 games of tug of war simultaneously.) The winner is the first to get 3 counters in their scoring area. (Reconfigured in 2001 as Cosmic Cows). 7 Ate 9 (2009): A card is laid to start the central pile, then the rest of the cards are dealt out. Players race to add the next card to the center pile; cards can only be added if they are a number with the correct difference from the most recently played card. MixUp (2006): In this two-player abstract, players try to place tiles in an arrangement of 4-in-a-row or a 2x2 square — one player goes for shapes, the other is using colors. I J K Christiane Knepel, a German game designer is, among other things, a naturopath. Her games: Muscat (2001, reimplemented as Message to the Czar in 2003): Can quickly be described as "advanced rock-paper-scissors," but is much better than this may make it sound. There are 4 different types of items in this version, which are the different kinds of street performers in the marketplaces of Muscat, trying to make their way to the Sultan's Palace. Polonaise (2001): Every player places pawns on the board. Try to get as many pawns of your opponent in between your own pawns. When a row is completed points are taken. Player with most points wins. L Victoria Lamb has designed sets and costumes for theatre, opera, musicals and film. But in gaming, she's known for her glorious, gorgeous miniatures: she paints and modifies existing miniatures, and designs her own. So it's no surprise that the game she has designed is miniature-based: Labyrintus (2008): A miniature game that combines the spectacle and craft of a miniature game with the fun and ease of play of a board game. Each player takes control of a team of 4 creatures and attempts to be the first to get through the Labyrinth. But beware, things may not always be what they seem; your progress can be thwarted by other creatures, the shifting Labyrinth and even your own tactical choices. The gorgeous prototype is still just that—a one-off prototype—but there is a 2D print and play version available. Julianne Lepp's primary career isn't designing board games: she's a Unitarian Universalist minister. She and her husband Karl designed their game together: Plunder (2004): Combines many elements of "euro-style" games: cards are laid out to form a different map-board each game. There are multiple paths to victory: you can plunder ships, explore strange coast lands, and trade goods between ports. The game combines history (actual nationalities, ports, and ships) with fantastical elements (from the dreaded kraken to the lure of mermaids). Kristin Looney is the Business Czar (Owner, CEO, President) of Looney Labs. (If you're playing Scrabble, which she never does, Kristin is worth 11 points.). A former Electronics Engineer at NASA and an IT Manager in the aerospace industry, her earliest claim to fame was winning a Rubik's Cube solving contest on the TV show "That's Incredible!" in 1981. Many of her games involve Looney Pyramids (often called "Icehouse Pyramids" after the first game in which they appeared). Her games include: Volcano (2000): A puzzle-style game in which players move "caps" around on top of a group of volcanoes, triggering eruptions which cause colored streams of lava to flow out across the playing field. The object of the game is to capture as many pieces as possible, with bonus points awarded for special combinations. Fluxx with Andrew Looney (1997): A card game in which the cards themselves determine the current rules of the game. Blockade (2001): Blockade is a roll-and-move race game played in two dimensions. Each player is assigned 2 colors in a 5x5 board, and are trying to arrange their pieces in formation first. However, as pieces arrive at their destinations, future piece movement by friend or foe is restricted. Caldera (2011): Using the same erupt-and-capture mechanism as Volcano, Caldera changes just about everything else. The players move caps to cause eruptions to capture pieces, but also have the option each turn to execute a Power Play: return a previously captured piece to the board. M Doris Matthäus: Primarily known for her illustration of smash hit euro board games like Carcassonne (2000), El Grande (1995), Tigris and Euphrates (1995), Saint Petersburg (2004), and Bohnanza (1997), she is also a designer in her own right, often working with her husband, designer Frank Nestel. Her titles include: Primordial Soup (1997): Players take charge of a tribe of amoeba as they struggle to survive. In order to help their quest, tribes will take various genetic advantages, which allow them to 'break' the rules of life. Mü & More (1995): While the headline trick-taking game, Mü, is the main attraction, this deck of custom cards comes with rules for five other games. Frank's Zoo (1999): A climbing game like Tichu. Players' scores are based on how early in the hand they get rid of all their cards. Urland (2001): With a theme of biological evolution, Urland challenges its players to compete to see whose primordial creatures will make the jump from the seas to land. Anye Mercy is both a designer and a publisher. Her company, Dancing Eggplant Games, started out as Diet Evil Games, and intended to make witty games for adults—games which turned out to be popular with children. The name changed so shop owners wouldn't have to explain why they were recommending "Evil" games to kids. Interview with Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower. Her game: Fraud Squad (2002): You're an SEC investigator searching out criminal fraud amongst a handful of possibly corrupt companies. Evidence is gathered by asking other players for information in a go fish style of play. Once you've collected your evidence, state your case, then look at the case file to see if you've correctly deduced the fraud. If correct, reveal the cards from the case file and win. If you're wrong, you're fired! Andrea Meyer: Not only a designer but also a publisher, Meyer owns and operates BeWitched Spiele and is active in the international board game designer community, having co-chaired the Spiele-Autoren-Zunft (international Game Designers Guild). Videos and text interview of Meyer talking about games: at the 2008 Essen board game convention, Keynote speech for the First Annual Gayme Jam! on May, 12, 2012, and interview by Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower. Her games include: Linq with Erik Nielsen (2004): Linq combines bluffing with associative gaming. Players try to find their ever changing partners by associating freely to their linq-words. An intuitive scoring mechanism shows who was best able to linq with the others in the end. Monstermaler ("Split Personality" in the US and Canada) with Friedemann Friese and Marcel-André Casasola Merkle (2006): Each player tries to draw the left half of a famous person. The first to finish yells "stop!" All players must now fold their papers down the middle and hand them to the left, leaving the right side to be drawn by another. Will your drawing be recognizable? Ad Acta (2002): A day as a civil servant: city hall tries to keep everyone working, the tax office avoids giving money to anybody and the environmental protection office just can't accept the jobs bureau's plans for new factories. Players work as fast as possible, sending messengers running for their lives—and down unofficial back-channels when necessary. Will your dossiers be put to file ("ad acta") at the right time? Be cautious: delayed files might get the shredder... Freeze with Hans-Peter Stoll (2010): four players enter the stage together and improvise a scene in a situation only they know. Each of them knows their personal rank among the actors (1-4), but no actor knows the rank of another. The actors must act out their rank within the scene so obviously that spectators can guess it. Hossa! (2000): What is a song title containing the word "Love"? Simple, isn't it? Sing it out loud. Well, okay ... A song about a relative? Well ... what about "Papa Don't Preach"? But do you know the lyrics? And what was the melody again? Perhaps the other players will help you ... Get one point for naming the song, earn more for actually being able to sing it. N O P Q R Susan McKinley Ross of IdeaDuck is a game and toy designer best known for designing the award-winning popular game Qwirkle. "I hardly play abstracts ... but my brain thinks in abstracts, and my brain thinks in color ... when game ideas come to me they almost always come abstract." Video: Ross explains her game Cirplexed! in a video from Board Game Geek. Interview: "The Art of Making and Playing Games." Qwirkle (2006): Score the most points by building lines of tiles that share a common attribute – either color or shape. Its simple rules can spawn complicated strategy. Skippity (2010): If Qwirkle can be described as a simplified Scrabble – with colors and shapes replacing letters – then Skippity might be dubbed "checkers for the Timothy Leary set". Cirplexed! (2012): Each tile features quarter circles of different colors. Each player creates her own game board by drawing and placing tiles, trying to create the most single-color circles. Color Stix (2011): a new take on pick-up sticks, one that might be called "pick up the sticks, then put them down again in a pleasing arrangement" but is thankfully better titled. S Karen Seyfarth: Thurn and Taxis, with Andreas Seyfarth (2006): build post office routes across Bavaria and surrounding regions. Plan carefully; you must add to your route on every turn. Max and Moritz, with Andreas Seyfarth (1991): "It was a (very) little card game, but it was the first box we had been the most proud of." Jennifer Schlickbernd got into designing because she's a dedicated strategy gamer: "I find more innovation in the heavier, multi-faceted strategy games that have come out lately.... they seem to hold up a lot better for me over time than the lighter family oriented games. Yes they take more time to play but I'd rather spend that time with a game that I really enjoy versus spending the same amount of time with several games where I've seen the mechanics a hundred times before (or at least it feels that way)." She is one of the ten designers of Advanced Civilization (2010): a reworking of the original Civilization. Some rules simplify and make thegame easier, while other rules like the expanded technology tree are more complex. Jodi Soares. Яussian Яails (2004): Part of Mayfair Games' series of crayon rail system games. Using erasable crayons, players design their own rail-networks across a geographically accurate map. Russian Rails' time line is orchestrated by event cards and a distance warp to accommodate the vast distances of the Soviet Union. The game begins post WWII, and players try to expand their railways before the USSR collapses. Rotundo (2005): From a review: "[T]his game could be retitled Balls! rather than the pseudo-Latin Rotundo. Indeed, I thought the game was about marble collecting, but it is about round objects of all kinds, even the most improbable: leather, cloth, fur, and platinum wire." A rummy-type game with challenging hurdles to set collection. T U V Susan Van Camp: A prolific illustrator known for her iconic red suits, Van Camp's work will be familiar to players of Magic the Gathering. Audio interview by All Games Considered at BashCon 2007 (interview starts at 8m45s). Her game is Dragon Storm (1996, revised 2011), a tabletop card based role-playing game based on Van Camp's fantasy world of Grandilar. There are two types of cards: Gamemaster cards for adventure generation and Player cards for character generation. W Joan Lerner Wendland is a game designer with a wicked sense of humor, and a game publisher through her company Blood and Cardstock Games. Interview by Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower. Her games: X-Machina (2003): a party game where youmake impossible inventions out of improbable components for unreasonable customers. Showbiz Shuffle (2002): Players collect cards for actors, directors, stunts and special effects to create movies for points. Action cards (like "drug problems" and "the big break") allow players to boost their own movies or ruin the other players'. Counting Zzzzs (2003): Who knows what dreams may come? Try to assemble a pleasant dream while your opponents try to give you nightmares or wake you up. Dim Sum Derby (2010): each player is hungry for a particular combination of dim sum. As dim sum becomes available, players try to eat the dim sum they crave. Players can rotate the dim sum spread before them, add more dim sum to the table, and perform other manipulations to achieve their culinary goals. Evil Vendetta Pie Fight (2008): In EVPF you're all evil magic-wielding nightmares from the human psyche and you hate each other's guts. Your union won't let you actually hurt each other, so the only way to settle this is to have an…Evil Vendetta Pie Fight. X Y Z

The Video Games Women Make

subject_verb_remainder — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 12:55:48 -0800

"The experiences of women may not be easy to portray in the aggressive world of videogames. If such a game is made - and I hope it is - it will be because its creators demanded to be heard. It will be created because women made it." (Source)

While the vast majority of video game titles are designed primarily by men, women have been a part of video game development since the earliest arcades. Here are some of their games: This is not a comprehensive list, but rather a cross section of video games primarily designed by women - classic, modern, AAA-studios, independent, full-featured, and experimental. Centipede (1980), Dona Bailey, developer, with Ed Logg. Coin-op arcade/action game where you defend yourself from a long winding centipede as it makes its way to your location. Interview. [Play online] GORF (1981). Jamie Fenton, developer. Coin-op arcade game similar to Space Invaders, notable for being the first game with multiple scenes/levels and speech synthesis. [Play Online] River Raid (1982), Carol Shaw, developer. Early Atari action game where you control a plane in a top-down shooter/bomber. Interview. [Download] M.U.L.E. (1983), Danielle Bunten Berry, developer. Four players cooperate and compete in this iconic economic strategy game. [Play Online] Shamus (1983, Catheryn Mataga, developer. A detective searches for an evil robot while clearing rooms of enemies and avoiding certain death. [Play Online] King’s Quest (1984), Roberta Williams, designer and co-founder of Sierra On-Line. Tongue-in-cheek graphic adventure game where a prince goes on a quest to save the kingdom. Interview. [Download Remake][Play Online] Plundered Hearts (1987), Amy Briggs, designer. Published by Infocom. Text adventure/interactive fiction and one of the first romance games. [Download - requires emulator] Quest for Glory (1989), Lori Ann Cole, designer, with Corey Cole. "So you want to be a hero?" Point and click adventure game with light RPG-elements and multiple solutions. Interview. [Buy at GOG.com] [Download Q4G 2 remake] Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail (1989), Christy Marx, designer, writer, and director. An adventure game from Sierra with some arcade elements, the player controls King Arthur in his classic tale. [Download] Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father (1993), Jane Jensen, designer and now co-founder of Pinkerton Road Studios. Noted departure from family-friendly Sierra games as a dark, horror-mystery series in the adventure game genre. Interview. [Buy at GOG.com] Suikoden (1995), Junko Kawano, designer, with Yoshitaka Murayama. Series of role-playing games centered around the political struggles in overthrowing an empire, with a large array of playable characters. Available on Playstation 1. [Watch gameplay] Phantasmagoria (1996), Roberta Williams, designer and co-founder of Sierra On-Line. Interactive psychological horror adventure game using FMV (Full-Motion Video) with live actors, and controversial for highly graphic depictions of gore and rape. [Buy at GOG.com] Nancy Drew, series (1998), Megan Gaiser, CEO and founder of Her Interactive. Mystery adventure series made by women, for women and girls, based on the popular books. Interview. [Direct Link: Download Demo] Worlds Apart (1999), Suzanne Britton, independent designer and writer. Sci-fi interactive fiction focusing on discovery, not puzzles. [Download] Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (1999), Amy Hennig, game director and writer. A vampire-turned-wraith shifts between the material and spiritual realm in this hack and slash game with puzzle elements. Interview. [Buy at GOG.com] Galatea (2000), Emily Short, independent developer. An interactive fiction (text adventure) where the player talks to an AI, notable for extensive dialogue and multilinear storytelling. Interview with Emily Short. [Play Online] Masquerade (2000), Kathleen Fischer, independent developer. Interactive fiction romance story. [Download] Shadow of Destiny (2001), Junko Kawano, designer, writer, and game director. Adventure game in which the the protagonist travels through time to prevent his own murder. Available on PS2, PSP, and PC. [Trailer] Aveyond series [2004], Amanda Fitch, game designer and founder of Amaranth Games. Award-winning retro-styled role-playing games with many hours of gameplay. Interview. [Download Part I] N: Way of the Ninja (2005), Mare Sheppard, programmer and designer, with Raigen Burns. Award-winning freeware game that became a successful XBLA/PSP/DS game (N+) about a ninja in a minimalist platforming world inspired by Lode Runner. Interview. [Download]. Cloud (2006), Kellee Santiago, co-founder and president of thatgamecompany, with Jenova Chen. Student game where a sick child in the hospital imagines himself flying, gathering clouds. Similar to the later Flower. TEDx talk. [Download] Battle Fantasia (2007), Emiko Iwasaki, designer and director. Japanese fighting game with a fantastical, storybook style and text-heavy story. Originally designed for arcades, it was ported to 360 and PS3. [Trailer] Portal (2007), Kim Swift, project lead and level designer. Award-winning first-person puzzle game. Originally the student game Narbacular Drop at Digipen. [Buy on Steam] [Download Narbacular Drop] Miss Management (2007), Naomi Clark, freelance designer. Time management game juggling stressed workers in an office environment. Interview. [Download trial] Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (2007), Amy Hennig, game director and writer. Third-person shooter with an Indiana Jones-style plot. Available on PS3. [Watch Trailer] Mighty Jill Off (2008), Anna Antropy, independent developer. Lesbian BDSM-themed tribute to old arcade game Mighty Bomb Jack. Interview. [Download] Little Girl in Underland (2008), Erin Robinson, independent developer. Adventure game demake where American McGee's Alice falls into the hands of the Soviets. [Download] The Path (2009), Auriea Harvey, co-founder of Tale of Tales with Michael Samyn. A horror game inspired by Little Red Riding Hood - will you stay on the path or be tempted by the forest? Developer Postmortem. [Download Demo] Glitch (2009), Robin Hunicke, producer and designer. Popular social MMO that recently closed its doors. Previously. Marionette (2009), auriond, independent developer. Point-and-click gothic horror adventure game about a captured sculptor and his host's strange rules. [Download] Air Pressure (2010). Bento Smile, independent developer and artist. Short visual novel and subtle, depressing metaphor for addiction. [Download] One Eye Open (2010), Caroline VanEseltine, independent developer, with Colin Sandel. Horror interactive fiction in which you are the test subject. [Play Online] Gray Matter (2010), Jane Jensen, designer. The veteran designer returns to the classic point-and-click adventure genre with a supernatural mystery. [Download Demo] Digital: A Love Story (2010), Christine Love, independent developer. A tale of love in the days of Apple II, dial-up, and BBS’s with a sci-fi twist, focusing on narrative. [Download] Life Flashes By (2010), Deirdra Kiai, independent developer. Adventure game where the protagonist experiences her life in flashbacks, and coming to terms with what could have been. Successful kickstarter. [Download] The Linear RPG (2010), Sophie Houlden, independent developer. Humorous game in which the Japanese RPG formula gets reduced to its simplest components. [Play Online] Hey Baby (2010), Anonymous. First-person shooter commentary on street harassment. [Play Online] Choice of Romance (2010), Heather Albano, co-writer. Choose your own (romantic) adventure. [Play Online] Also on Kindle, Android, and iOS. Transformice (2010), Melanie Christin, lead designer, with Jean-Baptiste Le Marchand, programmer. You are a mouse and must get the cheese - a multiplayer competitive action-platformer with physics. [Play Online] Calories (2010). Emma Fearon, independent developer. Short but powerful choose your own adventure. [Play Online (trigger warning)] Ute (2010), Lea Shönfelder, independent developer. An experimental cartoon 2D action game about casual sex - and not getting caught. [Play Online - NSFW] Don't Take It Personal, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story (2011), Christina Love, independent developer. "A full length visual novel about the erosion of privacy, gay drama, young sexuality, and the perils of modern online life for a high school literature class." [Download] The End of Us (2011), Chelsea Howe, designer and indie developer, with Michael Molinari. Short art game about comets and friendship. [Play Online] Journey (2012), Kellee Santiago, co-founder and president of thatgamecompany, and Jenova Chen. About a character on a journey, the game is notable for its anonymous multiplayer design. Interview. Available on PSN. Quantum Conundrum (2012), Kim Swift, director. First-person puzzle-platformer where you play a boy trapped his uncle's multi-dimensional mansion after an unfortunate accident. [Download Demo] dys4ia (2012), Anna Antropy, designer and developer. Experimental game and autobiographical exploration of gender dysphoria. [Play Online] Personal Trip to the Moon (2012), VoEC, anonymous developer. A short, personal game "about dysphoria and astronauts". [Play Online] Ristorante Amor (2012), Auto-Cyanide and Camille, independent developers. A recent graduate joins her uncle's Italian restaurant staff and romance develops in this visual novel. [Download] Samsara (2012), Meg Jayanth, independent writer and developer. Interactive fiction about a dream-walker in 18th century India.[Play Online - requires sign-up] TRACK+FEEL II (2012), Rachel Weil, independent developer. A unique homebrew NES game where players encounter glitches and chaos in an attempt to discover the rules. [Download] Howling Dogs (2012), Porpentine, independent developer. Short piece of interactive fiction about virtual reality and isolation. Interview.[Play Online] Long Live the Queen (2012), Georgina Bensley, independent developer and founder of Hanako Games. Your mother, the queen, has died and left you the throne - and a power struggle - in this visual novel. [Download demo] BONUS GAME: Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure (2012), Cassandra Creighton, designer. TED talk. [Play Online]

EXTRA: Video games are not your style? Check out some of the women who make tabletop roleplaying games.

The guide to implementing 2d platformers

Artw — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:20:19 -0800

Having previously been disappointed by the information available on the topic, this is my attempt at categorizing different ways to implement 2D platform games, list their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss some implementation details.

Breastplates and Boobplates

Artw — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:09:16 -0800

Fantasy armor and lady bits, from the perspective of an armorer

What Games Are...

victors — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 14:40:28 -0800

What Games Are is the name of a blog and book by game designer and deep thinker Tadhg Kelly (G+ profile). While the book is planned for release next year, Kelly has been posting in his blog and getting feedback from notables such as MeFi fav Raph Koster. In the last few weeks Kelly has covered areas, focusing in the realm of how to execute games as art with trenchant insight and good writing. Don't miss Cars & Dolls, Interactivity Means Doing Stuff and earlier posts such as Forget the Money.

Here comes a Lion... oh yes, it's a Lion...

Rhaomi — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:28:53 -0800

Nants ingonyama bagithi baba! It's been nearly two decades since that glorious savanna sunrise, and once again The Lion King is at the top of the box office. It's a good chance to revisit what made the original the capstone of the Disney Renaissance, starting with the music. Not the gaudy show tunes or the Elton John ballads, but the soaring, elegiac score by Hans Zimmer which, despite winning an Oscar, never saw a full release outside of an unofficial bootleg. Luckily, it's unabridged and high-quality, allowing one to lay Zimmer's haunting, pulse-pounding, joyful tracks alongside the original video (part 2, 3, 4), revealing the subtle leitmotifs and careful matching of music and action. In addition, South African collaborator Lebo M wove traditional Zulu chorals into the score, providing veiled commentary on scenes like this; his work was later expanded into a full album, the Broadway stage show, and projects closer to his heart. Speaking of expanded works, there were inevitable sequels -- all of which you can experience with The Lion King: Full Circle (download guide), a fan-made, three-hour supercut of the original film and its two follow-ups. Want more? Look... harder... Music: Excellent orchestral covers of the score by the SAMOHI Orchestra (synced with the film) and the Bulldogs on Broadway, along with the Broadway cast recording. Also: Lebo M stages an impromptu show while accepting a 2004 award. Scripts: The original working script with production notes [PDF], a full annotated transcript, and original promotional notes. Concept art: Never-before-seen concept art from Disney, a slideshow of original art from the first film, and test sketches and video from a former animator's blog. See also the line test of the three-minute stampede scene, which involved 800 cel-shaded CGI wildebeests following cutting-edge flocking algorithms that took three years to animate (discussed here under "Building the Perfect Wildebeests"). Fansite lionking.org also has a large gallery of surprisingly moody production and concept art in several galleries:

Concept Paintings - Composite and Matte Backgrounds - Layout Drawings - Flora - Storyboard Art - Character Cross-references

More: The maddening Sega Genesis game - Multilanguage mixes, including the first Zulu dub (previously) - The MAD parody - Was The Lion King stolen from Kimba the White Lion? (or Hamlet?) - TVTropes!

Angry Birds

AceRock — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:13:17 -0800

How Rovio made Angry Birds a winner. Also, a "cognitive teardown" of the Angry Birds user experience.

Ya—er, ahem

Rory Marinich — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:30:25 -0800

The developers of erotic game maker Cross Days use DRM to humiliate would-be pirates

What's in a game?

ersatz — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:38:32 -0800

What can one learn from the design choices of past games? John Harris discusses different game aspects, 20 games at a time, at Game Design Essentials. You can read on 20 Open World Games (where generally the player is left to his own devices to explore a large world), see your destroyed controllers in a new light with 20 Difficult Games or check out 20 Mysterious Games (that rely on algorithmically-generated content or emphasize secret-hunting), 20 Unusual Control Schemes and 20 Atari Games. What about roguelikes, you say? Harris also maintains a column called @Play at GameSetWatch, discussing old and new roguelikes. And if that wets your appetite for some Nethack, but you prefer having graphics and mouse control in your games, the most recent post might help. On the other hand, if you don't care about such novelties, an interview with the developer of Dwarf Fortress (previously) may be of interest. The games are chosen for their instructive qualities and general interest, not to compare them using a meaningless yardstick. They're here because I could illustrate something important using them as examples. Older games tend to have more elemental designs, presenting their mechanics strongly rather than submersing them between a sea of what a game is "supposed to be." This is particularly useful for explaining and highlighting design conventions.

Trigger Happier

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 01:36:59 -0800

Trigger Happier "Trigger Happy is a book about the aesthetics of videogames — what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics. It’s offered under a CC license, for a limited time only. I’m not sure how limited that time will be, so grab it while it’s hot." [drm-free pdf]

Super Mario World level editor

Tlogmer — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 15:51:21 -0800

Level editor for Super Mario World.
You'll need a SNES emu lator and a Super Mario World ROM.
(Ctrl+right-click to insert objects.)

Game design essays

Tlogmer — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 07:26:20 -0800

A whole bunch of great game design essays.

MmmmMm .. . I wants me one o' them robot corpse thingies. . ..

Tlogmer — Sat, 12 Jun 2004 18:52:05 -0800

Videogames are falling into the uncanny valley. (Previous mefi discussion: 1 2 -- aw, hell).

Building a community website

WolfDaddy — Thu, 25 Jul 2002 18:05:54 -0800

Building a community website One of my favorite strategy gaming sites, HeavenGames, gives us a peek under their hood with in-depth reportage on the design process they're undertaking for their new area devoted to the game Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne. I'm no web designer, but the ideas and procedures presented here certainly sure do make it sound easy (well, not really, but it's still an interesting read).