For a two or so hour long experience I couldn’t recommend And Yet It Moves enough; it’s a beautifully presented game, full of great ideas and really quite unlike anything else.
So a lot of people like Tim Schafer. 19,689 people to be precise, at the time I’m writing this. Perhaps yesterday you heard about this? In case you didn’t I’ll summarize: the folks at Double Fine productions don’t believe it’s possible to receive publisher funding for a “classic adventure game”-type game in 2012. Not going to happen. So instead, they reached out to so called “people” to fund their adventure dreams. $400,000 worth of funding, to be specific. Kotaku figured it wouldn’t take a week. Turns out it didn’t take a day.
Check out Double Fine’s “Kickstarter” page for all the details. Tim’s amusing plea video follows the break.
Trust me, I really considered spelling “chronicles” with a ‘k’. I considered it hard.
We of Tap-Repeatedly like to, you know, support things sometimes. Like causes and movements and things like that. Sometimes, also, coffee tables. So in that tradition I’m pleased to introduce Kermdinger Studios, LLC, a shiny new indie game startup in Pittsburgh, PA. Kermdinger’s making a game (as indie game studios are wont to do if you don’t watch ‘em closely) and wants to tell you all about it every step of the way.
Why are we featuring Kermdinger, you ask? Could it be that this author has, in fact, become drunk with the power afforded him by posting privileges here and wantonly flaunts his responsibility to the world – nay, the Internet! – to help give his friends and classmates a leg up? Could it be that Kermdinger offered to do all the work so that he could just hit “Publish” and spend the rest of the day on Star Trek Online? Could it be that I really just want everyone to know that that’s my blasted magic 8-ball they’re playing with, dammit, and I better get a fricking producer credit or something for it?
Yes. Yes, it could be all those things.
Whatever the reason, I present to you the first two installments of Kermdinger’s weekly video blog. Watch ‘em.
I realized I’d better get cracking on these Diaries, because I’m really quite a bit farther in the game than this entry, and I’m beginning to forget things that have happened to me. Luckily I discovered a cool new technology called “A Pen” and “A Notepad” and have been writing things down so my brain doesn’t have to remember them unless it wants to.
When last we left our hero, he’d returned from the profound awfulness of Blighttown to discover a huge crowd waiting at Firelink Shrine, all in a frenzy about the campfires being out…
One of the reasons I was so excited about writing “My Idea of Fun” columns is because the way games are written about and viewed critically often seems to be in flux. As an example, when Wind Waker came out, gamers lambasted it. “Too cartoony, too kiddy.” What was cool and correct to like was Twilight Princess, when it came out. Now years later, Twilight Princess (which I rather liked) is “hopelessly derivative and forgettable,” and Wind Waker is the real winner. It’s also now okay to admit that Oblivion was really not worth all the hype, and people are finally coming out to sound a resounding “meh” about Grand Theft Auto IV.
Outside the circle of people who develop games, a game “Jam” event isn’t really a well-understood phenomenon. When I told friends I was going to be participating in a weekend-long game event, their assumption, perhaps a natural one, was that I was going to be spending an entire weekend playing games. These sort of marathons have become more common. Often they’re done for entertainment; other times, to raise money for charity. I think overall, a weekend of playing games is more easily comprehended than the strange animal that is a game jam: a one-weekend development event.
As you can see, we’re making some front- and back-end changes to Tap-Repeatedly, to better serve your repeated tapping needs. Visuals and functionality will be intermittent and weird on and off for the next few days. Customer satisfaction is very important to us, and we hope to continuously improve your Taperience. If you have any questions, please write them in English longhand on a standard 3×5″ card and place them in one of the many Tap-Repeatedly Suggestion Boxes our operatives have scattered liberally around all seven continents. Your business is important to us. If you have a history of impatience, do not use Tap-Repeatedly. Erections lasting longer than four hours can indicate a serious medical problem. A penny saved is a penny earned. Do not let the bed bugs bite.
Seriously, though, if you have any problems email steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.
Stupid. A waste of time. Evidence that Nintendo didn’t have a clue what it was doing. “Panic Mode”. Mental. Bonkers. Bloody ridiculous. Massively monstrous. Cheap looking. Ugly. Insane. An admission of failure. Useless. Baffling. What the fuck? Frankenstick!
These are just some of the words and phrases you might have heard mentioned last September in response to Nintendo’s unveiling of the Circle Pad Pro. Many of them by me, as it happens. So today I went out and bought one.
Right this very second, people are making games. The ripple started in New Zealand, then Australia, then began moving slowly west. By this evening my time, the indie-game development plague will hit the Americas.
Deeper and deeper I ventured, a brave warrior in search of… jeez, I don’t even remember at this point. At first I thought no place could be worse than The Depths, that it was the darkest point in the universe. I had defeated Gaping Dragon, its nightmare boss, and was rewarded with a key to Blighttown. That name does not sound promising, but as a brave warrior in search of <REDACTED>, it was on my list of places to visit. After all, if you’ve been keeping up with these Diaries then you know… it couldn’t be worse than The Depths, right?
