Interactions in adventure games has gone from written input (aka “text adventures”) to todays mouse controlled (and often single-button-driven) games. There still exist text adventures though, although now called “Interactive Fiction”, and here the complexity of interaction has increased instead of becoming simpler. It seems like the way of interacting has on one end gotten more and more complex over the years, while on the other end it has gotten more and more simplified. What I want to explore in this post is if this great polarization has made us miss out on other ways to interact in adventure games and in what other ways interaction might be possible.
On Versioning (or how the simplest thing can save you from the hardest pain)
Long titles aside, this is no flashy post. Some will even find it a bit boring, but if at least one can learn anything from it, I will be happy. The motivation for it comes from an often overlooked issue.
The art of Timelapse
To speed up the development of our next horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent we have started to timelapse ourselves. This way it only takes 5 minutes to do the same amount of work as you would normally need 30 minutes to accomplish!
Level Editor Video – The Inside Scoop
Continuing the topic of my last post, here comes a post about the creation of our latest video…
Horror Tip: Beacon
The core of the game is simple: You are trapped in a cave and need to escape. To do so one must go through gloomy caves avoiding darkness at all cost. Helping the player accomplish this are crystals that spread light and a mysterious beacon that moves around, illuminating the surroundings where it goes. The game starts out slow and then progressively get more challenging.
Video Editing Hell – Linux to the Rescue!
I’m the proud owner of the oldest and crappiest computers here at Frictional Games. This is very unfortunate, to say the least, considering I’m the one usually recording videos of our work, editing and then publishing it.
Why Horror Games Suck!
Inspired by Ron Gilbert’s article “Why adventure games suck” I decided to do my own list. To be fair I do not think that all horror games suck (in fact some are really good!), but there are some common problems that pretty much all the games have. These issues hold horror games back from using the medium’s full potential and I am convinced that games can be a lot more scary and engaging than what we have seen so far.
Horror Tip: Korsakovia
Masterminded by the same guy that made Dear Esther is a highly experimental horror game about a man with Korsakov’s syndrome.
Fractional Fun
This blog post will not be totally game related, but more about the engine and a recent obsession of mine. Do not fear though! It should hopefully still be interested and I will also provide some nice images! Hopefully it will also be able to evoke a sense of wonder too. Read on to find out!
Amnesia: The Dark Descent – Getting Cosy
A short ingame video from our upcoming horror game, make sure you have someone to hold your hand while watching!
