[because Star Guard is FU CK I N G AWWEOSOMEMEEEE!!!!!11]

because Star Guard is FU CK I N G  AWWEOSOMEMEEEE!!!!!11

and I mean it

I have to agree with this, Star Guard was not just awesome, but awesome filtered 9x. Really, really refined. Completely deserved it's nomination.

I still can't believe that people are so quick to forget the lack of a fez on top of Gomez' head. Gomez is always, always with his fez on. Which leads me to believe this impostor is not Gomez.

Imagine the implications. Gomez has an evil twin that wrecks havoc and steals precious over-saturated bonsai in other to give his good half a bad name.

Listen to me people, this is important.

Yeah but somehow, I kind of thing the thing where he just took his hat off because he is home is so much more FEZ, you know. Like somehow I can imagine there are 600 frames of animation of Gomez coming into his house removing his hat, and putting it into a box. 600 frames of animation used ONLY FOR THAT, which happens ONLY ONCE. For one person. Or something. Anywayyyy....

I guess I also like evil impostor Gomez, but it's been done... =)

I'm almost done; I just need to add sfx, hiscore and a graphical scanliney effect. Is there some way I could get a rough version tested out though to see how it works? It's really really hard to playtest because the whole thing has been designed as a 2P game.

It's a SWF, I haven't made a projector before but maybe right now I could just send the SWF? I'm kind of imagining you guys are all together playing each other's games and that, it would be great to get some feedback if it was possible.

Reviving this topic because... I dreamed about Phil Fish last night.

I have no idea why, I have never met him but think Fez looks great. Well anyways, Mr. Fish was some kind of ex-special ops guy who liked to freedive, and he would tweet while underwater.

Anyhow he was freediving and was attacked by a shark, somehow one of his friends tweeted that he was fighting the shark and then people were tweeting to him to like, "Don't give up! Break the surface!!" He did make it up to the surface and he had killed the shark and had his arms up to the elbows in it's gills (which according to my sources is the proper way to kill a shark with your bare hands)

Soooo weird...

Economy maybe? I guess it's one way of preventing people from buying comparatively cheap asian versions of games.

This is basically why. The marginal cost of games is low (as with movies, music) but the market will bear a lot higher price in some markets than others. So for instance a movie that costs $30 in North America might sell well enough but would be too expensive in other countries. So you introduce region locking to avoid North Americans just importing to get it cheaper. In either case your cost per-copy is very low, you just want to maximize profits my charging an optimally high amount.

I'm Winnitronning! Who else is doing this remotely, like, without being in Winnipeg?

I put together a solid start to a simple game a few weeks back, then had to abandon it temporarily to finish up IGF submission, but I'm back at it tonite. Maybe there is some chatroom we can hang out in or something, I find that to be fun when I do LD48...?

There kind of is one already on RPGDX--it's just that almost no one posts there for some reason.

I lurk at RPGDX but have started a dedicated support group thread over there.

@Paul I'm really glad you entered, and it was nice of Notch to help you out that way.

I entered The Real Texas, my deadline was last Thursday so last weekend was really the crunch for me. The game isn't totally complete but it's allllmost there, and I think it will have some of the same problems as SD does. Even with those clues and such that I think are obvious enough, only more playtesting will really show where thing hiccup in terms of flow.

But... it's really fun to be part of it, and I'm really looking forward to getting feedback if nothing else. It's cool to browse the FTP, though I agree it feels a little insecure. However I did notice you can't actually download or delete anything, so they have the perms set up correctly at least. It was a bit daunting to see like, that you are up against a BIT.TRIP game, for instance... But also cool!

That was really a worthwhile read, thanks. I think that he realizes that what powers the iPhone/iPad is the same thing that has powered console development in the past, namely consistent hardware. Developing for PC has always been rather a chore because of this reason.

I considered submitting Nexus City or Myosotis, but I don't think either are really far enough along yet, so I probably won't bother. Maybe next year!

Hey Terry what about the obvious, though? (in case it's not obvious, I mean VVVVVV)

I haven't really used steam and don't actually play many games so... temper this with a large battleaxe of two-cents worth of salt, ok? =) But I do sort of agree with Paul that a race-to-the-bottom in terms of price hurts.

One of the things with the games market that I think has not been well-recognized is that player time and attention is maybe the most valuable commodity. Why buy any game, ever, when you are already sinking 20+hrs/wk into WoW? In these cases DLC is kind of a no-brainer, because if you are only playing one game, what does $20 for a pegasus or whatever matter? $20 is chump change compared to your weekly time commitment.

The best thing that online services can do, for the market overall, is encourage players to try new things out. Kind of like breaking up a clotted artery, mix it up a bit. Games, because they don't *have* to end, are unique in that they can become very monopolistic of player time.

I remember hearing once that there was a lawsuit in the 80's against an arcade game maker, I don't know who, because their game was really just an endless-mode but didn't warn the player. Maybe it's an urban myth but whatever, the idea is that the player was spending huge money trying to beat the game but hadn't been warned that it was impossible.

So yeah! I don't really have an answer or an informed opinion but I do think that encouraging players to move onto something new, rather than buy a $10 DLC hat or whatever is kind of sad. OTOH add-ons that give some meaningful extension to the game, new levels or missions or whatever seem reasonable since they will end! Okay done!

I was also going to say that we need an Indie RPG Maker support group that can consist of Paul, you, Craig Stern, and anybody else that I'm unaware of who is tackling huge RPG-like projects. I'm sure there are many others but they are maybe all partly in their caves! =)

@shigi I read that interview yesterday, really cool. I really liked the Melolune demo not because of one specific strength but more like how it has this super consistent, lovely feel to it. Like a whole-greater-than-the-sum kind of thing. So stick to your best judgement, though Paul is likely right about playtesting for difficulty, too.

The problem isn't really "skill", I think it's really is that nobody has as much practice as you do at your own game. Worse, you know all the internal rules that might not be obvious to other players. Anyhow My rule is basically, it should be at least as easy for me to beat as say Zelda 3 is, which is a game I have played quite a bit less than Texas. BUT! Again I didn't find the demo was anything other than really-nicely-balanced so, probably best to just ignore all this advice!!

If I ever am able to just do game dev full time, I think I will go by my real name. I am kind of jealous of people that can do that, maybe I can myself I don't know! I definitely don't like to be called PsySal in real life, haa! It's just something I picked in grade 7 or something...

But I use this nick for at least partial anonymity. I just don't love the idea of some future employer googling for me and going over all my forum posts before deciding to or not to hire me. However I think "don't be a jerk" should apply equally online as it does in real life. For that matter, I think real names might make the internet a bit friendlier, too!

Yeah, the Ultima Worlds of Adventure games were really cool too. It was good to see them use the engine for more than just Ultima VI, too. I played Martian Dreams semi-recently but couldn't figure out what to do! But the intro in that game is just amazing...

Hmn, I didn't notice the climbing was slow. Really guys! How can you know if the climbing is annoying or not without actually playing. Man, I'm really glad sometimes that people don't pick apart my work so excrutiatingly =) (tho I wouldn't mind the attention now and then...)

Is anyone at 2K sitting at a computer with his head in his hands over this?  They'd have to understand that this move will seem like a betrayal to some of their fans.  

Ask Farbs-- he worked on it. From what he has said, he was quite proud of how the game turned out. The analogy in question is needlessly cruel, but in fact in a way it's worse than that-- at core it's mainly sensationalist. That is a pretty low rung on the ladder of journalistic quality or whatever. Anyhow, I don't know the review of XCOM in question so I shouldn't comment too much. But I wanted to jump in on this!

This article makes me wonder: do designers receive feedback beyond the it-only-takes-half-a-second comments? I feel like I should be able to call up/write a letter to a designer I support, but at the same time that sounds crazy and weird.

I'd rather have more thoughtful comments than this impulsive vomit we have currently.

Feedback is surprisingly hard to get beyond "meh" or "cool". I find I usually get the most feedback in quantity from other designers, I think because we can all relate. Feedback from players is rare for me, at least. It is all treasured.

Negative comments are soul-destroying but you can get past it. It's not "sensitive" to feel hurt when somebody calls the project you've poured yourself into for X months or years the worst thing they've ever seen (or just outright mocks it), but at the same time you CAN learn to shrug it off, mostly.

Great style on this!

I think the naive MS Paint style is fascinating (personally I liked the scrambled look best - like in the first dev video). What people seem to suggest is just the normal pixel fare wich is nothing new.

The most interesting visuals usually comes from those who are not locked in their own prison of perfection. 

I agree with this, actually. Or maybe not "the most interesting" but simply that, the visuals of this game are part of what interests me about it. I'm not sure I'd be *less* interested if the visuals were different but I do find them appealing somehow. Maybe it's nostalgia for older PC games that had 16 color palette and ended up with similarly bright colors? I dunno!! I don't care either =) I'm interested in this game...