The IGF article I posted at the beginning of March had a somewhat lengthy preamble which I cut just before publishing. After reading it over again it seems a shame to leave it on the cutting room floor so — after a spot of editing and because I’ve just been given a cup of tea without asking, putting me in a splendid mood, I’ll just quietly post this here and you can make of it what you will.
It was over a few quiet weekends a couple of years ago that I made my first forays into the unpredictable world of independent gaming. My girlfriend had moved from the south of England to live in the grim (but much more affordable) north of England so that there wasn’t such a distance between us. She was renting a suspiciously cheap room in a horrible part of Sheffield which happened to be close to her new job at a cinema. The idea was that if she made the most of her position there she could get a transfer to another cinema closer to where I worked and we’d get a place together.
I frequently visited her at weekends, even if she was going to be at work. Her room was massive but modest, with a certain warm charm about it. It had a humming fridge in one corner with a TV, DVD player and tea making facilities perched on top. Her computer was on a desk that conformed to the shape of the bright bay window adjacent to her double bed and next to that was a tall lamp and a cheap wardrobe. The wallpaper was decidedly old and garish.
While she was at work I had a lot of time on my hands. There was no internet connection and her computer was also an ex-library Research Machine; an untamed beast, ravaging my senses with its faulty speakers and particularly naff screen. In other words, it wasn’t going to be running Bioshock. My DS game list had all but dried up and in truth I’d too many things going on in my head to settle into a good book. Films were out of the question because we’d usually watch them together and I’d no real interest in TV either, never mind daytime TV. After a few visits I started loading my memory stick with games featured on the annual best-of lists hosted by the Indie Games site. Most of these curiosities were relatively small in size and were pretty much guaranteed to run on her abacus computer.
So there I was one evening, girlfriend at work, sat under lamplight in front of an ex-library Research Machine, lazily sifting through the contents of my memory stick. Other than the buzzing fridge beside me, the room was quiet, and the rest of the house still and distant. One by one I went through the games, slowly and unexpectedly discovering ones that surprised and fascinated me. Here were games that had been developed by a few individuals (if that) self-funded and no doubt labours of love –most of which were available for free– and they were captivating me more than their bigger brothers.
There was Dwarf Fortress which actually gave me a few restless nights because of its unbridled vision and rich sandbox gameplay. My imagination conjured up grand designs hewn into mountain sides, swelling with industry, craft, commerce and traps. Lots of traps. And while the primitive and crude ASCII graphics are a necessity due to the games mind boggling complexity, they act as a sort of expressionistic representation much like early computer game graphics did. What seemed like a screen of green commas and full stops was a luscious green meadow whereas a cutting of blue double tildes was a stream that provided my dwarves with water and fresh fish. Everything visual was symbolic and that allowed my imagination to fill in the blanks and paint a more vivid picture. Unbelievably Dwarf Fortress is still in its alpha stages and it already stands as one of the most expansive and complex sandbox games ever made. No explanation here could do the breadth and depth of the game justice; for that you’d have to check out Tarn Adams’s development log which is quite frankly incredible. A quick quote from yesterday: “Fixed a crash related to vermin getting caught in cobwebs”.
If you’re curious about the experience of Dwarf Fortress then I highly recommend the infamous story of Boatmurdered. It’s quite old now, but it’s a classic and hilarious.
…where was I? ah –
Then there was Cave Story, a charming love letter to the platforming greats of the 8-bit era. There was the surgical brutality of turn based beat ’em up Toribash. A game where you relax, hold, extend or contract each joint in a bid to ultimately take down or bloodily dismember your opponent. There was Death Worm, an arcade munch-’em up that satiated the part of me that wanted to destroy tanks and eat everything. There was the free-form high wire experiment, Facade, which casts you as the unwitting friend of a couple who’s relationship appears to be deteriorating before your very eyes. Using the game’s highly advanced text parser it is possible to help, or conversely break up, their relationship in different ways whilst discovering various aspects of the couple’s lives along the way. It was absolutely fascinating and perhaps a rare glimpse into the future of gaming. There was also Tumiki Fighters, a horizontal shooter that introduces a novel twist by requiring the player to ‘catch’ downed foes to clip on to their fighter, incrementally increasing their size, fire power and protection. There was the ambient, minimalistic beauty of Knytt and the incredible existential tower defense game Immortal Defence that reassuringly confirmed that games could still haunt me.
Since then there have been many, many others but I’m still amazed at the ideas and innovations gleaned from seemingly tired genres. Independent game developers are truly free to explore the medium; to pioneer and flee from convention, to meld together and push existing genres and ideas to their limit. Where mass market games typically shuffle cautiously and uneasily forward, skirting well trodden paths, independent games can take bold leaps in any direction they choose unburdened by the pressure of failure. That gets me excited.
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I’d not heard of these Research Machines, Gregg, but I can only imagine how much time it must have taken to build the world in Dwarf Fortress on one.
I tried DF when it was recommended by Bill over at Dubious Quality. The depth and complexity of that game is beyond words. So much to learn, so many possibilities. As a great lover of the Dungeon Keeper games, I thing DF would go down in history as one of my all-time favorites… one day, when there’s no new games on the horizon and my time is my own, I pledge to learn it and give it the time it deserves.
Great article!
Bloody hell, look at all those links. I must have gone mad last night before posting.
@Steerpike: I only ever managed a couple of winters before succumbing to starvation or accidental genocide so my grand designs were for naught. It’s funny you mention DK because that was my great childhood addiction and I lost many hours scheming and thrashing my many overworked minions. While an entirely different beast, Dwarf Fortress sparked the same sorted of unabashed glee.
My advice to those interested in playing DF: if you’re one tough bastard, go ahead, give it a try, losing is fun right? If you’re weaker like me and want a more streamlined interface, go and donate some coin to Bay 12 Games and wait in line like the rest of us. It’ll be worth it.
Ok, I can totally see how you wouldn’t want to leave that out! Holy Links!!! But really well written. I should know, I think I re-read your article like 5 times losing my place as I clicked links. Im a knucklehead, you, totally insightful.
Hehe, good times to be had!
Even if gaming on the PC continues to die out with the big publishers only investing in xbox and playstation, all of the independent developers out there will still be putting out some very creative work on the PC. I haven’t tried Dwarf Fortress yet but have read nothing but positive feedback from various game forums. That might be a fun game to load up on my laptop during my next extended business trip. There’s certainly enough downtime on those trips to learn the intricate rules and game play.
lakerz1 if you have some downtime and a laptop on your journeys I heartily recommend that you check out the annual best-of lists (linked above) over at Indie Games.com. There are some little byte-sized wonders on there that will no doubt entertain or provoke.
Yay fer Gregg, a fellow indie-lover 😀
My recommendations: Solium Infernum will keep you bury a lot, cortex command is an awesome sandbox game, gratuitous space battles is a fantastic ai-driven strategy game, AI wars is a gigantuous sci-fi RTS.
I’m currently reading the instructions for Solium Infernum because I won’t be messing about in single player, that is, I’ll be jumping straight into PBeM so I need to know my stuff. Gratuitous Space Battles looks great but I’ve got enough strategy on my plate as it is with Solium and AI War (when I get round to it)! Cortex Command I will have to check out again, because it’s been a looong time since I last played it.
My lack of time at the moment though means my gaming list is getting ridiculously long!
My gaming list is also absurdly long because I have to undertake various tests in university, plus I just read the 2 quick guides for solium infernum and started a couple single player games, that game is effin complex without a mentor that teaches you the basics :s
Oh well’ I’m still going to buy MHTri and Sin&Punishment 2, and yesterday I bought a used limited ed. copy of ICO in a little shop for 8€ ;D
Yeah believe it or not, I started the tutorial on Cryptic Comet’s site last night and it looks epic. I only played a single turn but it introduced a lot of the game’s interface which at first seems quite intimidating. I can’t wait to get my teeth sunk into PBeM though – the meta game gets me really excited; trying to work out the other players and being a step ahead of them sounds like a lot of fun. I can’t stomach the pace (and micro-management) of most RTSs so TBS is right up my street. AI War seems a real joy to me because most units are pretty autonomous and don’t need constantly babysitting meaning I can focus on the strategy side of things.
Bill Harris over at Dubious Quality has posted a multi-part intro tutorial that looks pretty beginner-friendly, in case you’re looking for more info on Solium, Gregg.
I just typed Dubious Quality into my Firefox address bar and Bill Harris’s Dwarf Fortress article came up, which is really weird because I don’t recall viewing that page, but I’ve obviously been to it at some point.
I’ve just got a little hooked on his blog; there’s some really cool stuff on there. I didn’t know Zooey Deschanel was a singer and composer, ‘She & Him’ sound really good too. 8-bit Dark Side of the Moon? Yes please. And I really must watch How to Train Your Dragon as well.
Thanks Steerpike, another website to frequent. *grumble grumble*
Oh and thanks for the heads up on the tutorial, I’ll be sure to check it out.
Great article brother, finally got around to reading it. 🙂 Dwarf Fortress is one of the few indie games i’ve seen you play and it really did capture my imagination, terrible graphics aside the possibilities I am sure are highly addictive. I’m going to trudge through your many links over the next few days to see what spurred on your passion for indie games. 🙂
I’ve been reading the “boatmurdered” stuff and have been having a blast. Maybe I’ll download this game after all.
Has anyone tried the various tile-replacement mods out there for the game? They look to make the graphics much more digestible, but I was wondering if the game looses anything as a result..
http://dffd.wimbli.com/
There’s usually a divide between the ASCII disciples who’ve been raised on cryptic Rogue-likes and the new comers who find the graphic tilesets far more palatable.
Me personally, I reckon the ASCII characters become quite symbolic and lend themselves to interpretation more than pixel art tiles. Another problem I find with some of the pixel art tilesets is that they are very detailed and can in some cases take a fair amount of squinting to make out what they’re supposed to be. Having said this there are some great tilesets out there and you should definitely check them out if you’re likely to find them more digestible. Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that the tilesets are divided into ‘character sets’ and ‘graphic sets’. Explanation here because it’s a bit confusing!
Have a look here and here for the biggest and probably most up-to-date collection. If you intend on having a go on Dwarf Fortress I highly recommend checking the Wiki out and the beginner’s tutorials. There’s loads of help out there but unfortunately it’s not in the game!! A lot of people favour Mike Mayday’s graphics pack as it includes a lot of the better artwork out there.
Also of note is Stonesense which runs parallel to Dwarf Fortress and renders it in isometric pixel art next to the standard game window. Check it out here – it really is amazing.
Boatmurdered is a blast though. I love the StarkRavingMad guy who begins operation ‘Fuck The World’ and quite literally nearly does. Oh man, it’s awesome. So much lava, so much steam, so much death.
I’ve been using Mayday’s tileset so far to get a feel for it, though I should check out Stonesense as it looks mighty cool! Think what you will, but I’m just not cool enough for ASCII. The game feels complicated enough without having to look at what (too me) looks like a corrupted word doc.
Man, talk about a steep learning curve though. I’ve thus far made it through 4/30 ten minute tutorials on Youtube (thank you Captnduck), and already feel like there is so much to remember.
I’ll mess with it for a while, eventually develop a headache, and then go play a comparatively easy game (mount & blade at the moment), but find myself thinking about it so much that I end up back at the tutorial.
Just starting a game seems almost overwhelming though, and I’ve restarted 4-5 times so far. Having very little work today, maybe I can make it through a few more tutorials.
Thanks for finally pushing me over the edge into trying the game though Gregg. It’s been something I’ve wondered about for a couple years now. Makes me wish I had a shitty little laptop to play it with for some reason…
As for boatmurdered, I think my fave was the “art-school kid” Cross Quantum:
“Apparently this place is a town called Boatmurdered. God, I hate how all these suburban developers give their stupid little towns such boring, faux-pastoral names.”
Man, I was laughing through the whole thing!
Hahah, I can totally relate to the ‘thinking about it so much’, that’s the reason why I stopped playing it. I binged on it for two solid days and lost two nights sleep because my mind was reeling from it so I decided to put it on hold and pick it up again when the interface has been streamlined a bit. Aside from the steep learning curve it was the inconsistent controls that gave me the biggest headache – thank Armok that the game can be paused while you issue orders and work out what to do! I still keep track of Dwarf Fortress though and one day I will strike the earth again. 😉
Regarding your perception of ASCII, I read this a while ago and thought it was hilarious: