[The SysAdmin]

Cool test.  I agree with the result pretty much.

The SysAdmin
6 Culture, 5 Feeling, 7 Story, 5 World, 10 Rules and 6 Tutor!

The SysAdmin is obsessed with rules and their interesting interactions.  Mixing a set of intriguing objects and properties, they get inspiration from sciences to build deep challenging Rules in which the player can explore the rules and make the best out of them.

Your gameplays are likely to follow the rules : easy to learn hard to master, and this strategy lets you come up with some of the most original gameplay elements, and some of the hardest to balance. You risk being so busy making a fun design that you forget to make a fun game. Try to keep thing from getting too abstract.

Although I would say a large part of me is also:

The Skill Trainer

The skill trainer mostly focuses on the player. From a basic set of actions, he will make an interesting gameplay, by testing all possibilities that those three abilities, combined in different ways, simply by testing it in an enclosed space.

You can discover an interesting gameplay at a rather low cost, however, it is harder to include those mechanics in a nice context, and you can end up creating rather surreal game designs in the end. Be careful though, a set of nice ideas could easily develop into a group of disconnected minigames, try to keep things connected in a way that makes more sense than typical video game tricks, such as ammo crates.

I really disliked this question:

How much do you value a story in your game?
A. It is very important, complex and detailed
B. It is not an important factor for my game

I would answer:
C. It is very important but simple and largely left to the player's imagination

Your point is moot. The game is still asking you to jump to your death in order to progress. You cannot argue that one puzzle rewards you and the other does not, when they're both giving you the same thing.

As well, you do not have to jump up into a goomba in order to make him bounce. All that he needs to do is fall onto your head.

The goomba only needs to fall on your head?  I'm certain I tried that and got no result... (that's one of the reasons I disliked the puzzle so much, I tried letting the goomba fall on me to no avail so gave up on that line of thought).

Either way, the puzzle still seemed out of place and solution way less elegant than for the puzzles in the rest of the game.  I would argue that my point is still hardly moot even if the rewarding death argument is removed.  Note that I loved all the other puzzles in the game to varying degrees and would still recommend it highly to anyone.  I just think that specific puzzle is one of the game's flaws.

Actually in one of the first puzzles you can only get through it by dying. It was the one with the green key in the pit or something.

Your death isn't what solves the puzzle though, so I wouldn't say it was rewarding you for dying.  In fact, you can do that puzzle without dying if you're quick enough with the rewind key.

I'm listening to episode 5 and liking it.  I like how it's more of a discussion/debate thing rather than just "here's what happened this week."

[rewards]

I'm also a little skeptical of the claim of never getting bounced on, because there are a lot of head-height cannons around, but whatever 

I think what might happen is people hit rewind as soon as they see they're dying, and in the midst of that rehearsed process they're not really watching what's happening to the goomba, they're thinking about how far to rewind and how to avoid it.  So it's not like it never happens, but they never really see it happen.

My experience was definitely not *knowing* it would work that way, but trying it anyway because I thought 'it would be cool if it works this way' ...  It did strike me as a pretty cool puzzle

Yeah, I did die very little, but inevitably I was killed by a goomba landing on my head.  The things is, as said above, I would hit rewind the instant I saw the death as unavoidable and correct it. 

Also, the goomba only bounces if you jump into him, something I don't think would've happened to me even if I couldn't rewind - jumping upward into a falling enemy isn't nearly as common as an enemy simply landing on you.  It's something that pretty much has to be intentional (at least for me).  Despite all Braid's awesome ways of not penalizing death, it never rewards death either... until that single puzzle halfway through the game... and then never again.

I bought it and beat it in one night.  Great game.

I loved all the puzzles as they're definitely my style.  He used the game world rules to form tough problems rather than using the arbitrary "bring X to Y" most games call "puzzles".

There was just one puzzle I didn't like (spoilers):
The one in the alternate reality place where you had to jump into the bottom of the enemy to make him bounce up.  I had no idea the enemy would bounce when killing me and I felt like it was unfair to expect me to know that because:
1. In "standard" platformers (which Braid takes a lot of its game rules from), enemies usually don't even flinch when hurting the player, they just go right through you.  It seems odd that Braid borrows so many concepts from classic platformers, to allow the player to learn how the world works very quickly, but then throws an un-explained curveball at you halfway through.
2. I'm really good at platformers, so I didn't die much, and when I did I saw it coming and rewound before it actually happened.  Because of this, I'd never seen an enemy bounce off my head before that puzzle and assumed that it would behave the same way as in the platformers Braid borrows all its other core rules from (see 1).

...and they all lived happily ever after.

Reading this thread was like watching a train wreck in slow-mo.  I just couldn't look away.

We just have to learn to respond maturely to others, even when they aren't paying us the same respect.

Apparently, this is a lesson a lot of us could stand to learn.

Yeah, no kidding.  Even though Cas came storming in here in a fit of douchebaggery, a lot of trouble could've been averted if there wasn't so much trolling (although that doesn't give Cas any excuse for how he acted either).

Real men use Prolog.

For everything.

I love how epic the electric guitar makes some of these tunes.  Great work.

Oh Jazzuo, you're such a card.

I found that in the preview mode (using Flash CS4), the sound latency was WAY worse than in the regular Flash Player.

The latency still exists, though, and it drives me insane.

But I hate smilies. heh heh

NO QUESTIONS.

Also, I like vague stories.  I agree that you shouldn't put storyline you want the player to see in the manual, because not every player will read it, but I think SMB1 has a great story  if you don't have the manual.

One thing I love about the NES era and that I try to emulate with my games is the vagueness of the story, and how it invites the player to fill in the blanks.  The player's imagination will always construct something more relevant to them than the developers ever could.

Edit: Also, as a developer you have to remember that a great "story" in most senses of the word will probably not be a good "game story".  The way I see it, most of the story of a game is the player's experience of playing it, the text and cutscenes are just supplements.

Yoshi is a dinosaur.

NO QUESTIONS.

Sucks man.  I'm sure she's okay, but I understand how you're feeling and know it sucks waiting for confirmation that someone you care about is alright.  Wish her the best.

I loved the idea when you told me the concept, and it was well executed.
 

(Although playing it can cause depressing self-reflection due to irony)

I agree that the 'amount of exposure' thing should factor into it.  I feel like IGF should be about giving struggling indies who make great games a fighting chance, not a bunch of successful "indies" patting each other on the back.

(Not that I'm an expert or anything, having never physically been to the ceremony).

Aside from that snowstorm (which wasn't actually all that bad), the weather has been awesome here lately.  And by awesome I mean sunny and hovering around 0 celsius.

Also, just re-posting the sign-up link in case anyone is in this topic searching for it: http://doodle.com/cggpde5p7qyyy3h5

A couple notes about the Jam:

1. It will have to be BYOPC.

2. There will have to be some sort of cover charge.  This depends on the amount of people who are confirmed to be coming and the price of setting stuff up.  This will cover room rental + misc supplies + lunch for both days (probably just pizza).

I haven't decided on a space yet, and am definitely open to advice/suggestions!