Haha, this is great. I've never played God of War, and this game explains why.

You folks are putting a lot of pressure on me right now. I still have no concrete evidence of anyone, I'm merely going by my best guess. I hope you can live with that.

Thank you for your confidence, Dacke. I have, in fact, been told some things, but not enough to find a new suspect, so I'll stick to my vote for now. This may change once everyone contacts me.

Ah, why'd you go and waste it on me? I don't think I have raised many suspicions.

It's good to know more about those mirrors, indeed. Some of my doubts were lifted by this investigation.

Cheater, sir; you claim to have the Woman's Mirror, which you took from Valter, but... then what is that cyan mirror found in Lucaz's house? Could it really be another mirror, its function and name unknown to us all?

Speaking of which: You gave us the option to use the Woman's Mirror, but... why? Why not a much more useful device, such as the Black Man's Mirror? Let's ask it a question! Let's ask for the innocence of one person still alive. Let's ask it if that person, which we would all agree upon, means well with their actions.

Who should we choose?

[Kao]

Alright, fellows. Now that we all know about the items (thank you, Cyber95), we can see through Kao's lies. I'm pretty certain that he used the Windstalker's Boots. Why? The following reasons.

- If he had the item, it was the perfect time to use it to protect himself from Deep Ones. In fact...
- ...There was a trail left by a Deep One that night, so it proved useful. His report only mentioned Cyber95, so maybe he didn't pay attention to the trail once he returned, creating this inaccuracy.
- Cyber95 was inside of town! How could he have gone out by himself? Granted, he could be the owner of the Horn of the Gate, but if he did, he would have withheld that information for his own sake.

Cheater also gives me reason to suspect him, though. He owns way too many items, and he claims that he got them from GeneralValter's. I don't believe anyone saw him go in there and 'clean up', though, so it is entirely possible that he accumulated those from the victims of his nightly kills.

It was Kao the one fabricating lies, though, so I place my vote on him.

Did I just see the deceased Neon suddenly appear and shout 'Gainsworthy'? And where did all these chickens come from...?

Anyway...

This is getting tiresome. I don't know whether Gainsworthy or GeneralValter are evil; one thing I know is that they both have so far been able to keep a rather straight record. What to make of all this? And what about Lucaz?

I'm not a big fan of the PSP, but yes; it'd be great on the PSP. Fantastic, even.

I understand the principles behind this game, but could someone explain light cones succintly to me?

The general idea is that because light has a finite speed when you 'see' far away  objects, you actually are seeing those objects as they were some time in the past.  The further away things are, the more out-of-sync they are.

For analogy, the speed of sound is finite (much slower than the speed of light), so when there's lightning you hear it after you see it; the further away it is, the greater the delay before you hear it.

Oh, sorry, yeah, that's the part that I understand. What I didn't understand was how this is graphable into two cones and all that. I don't get the relation.


Maybe the best way of making your game intuitive is setting it over galaxies light years apart, so that relativity makes sense by the scale?

If you guys are OK with things as they are already, then evidently this thread is not for you. Personally, I don't think that every game needs to have 'fun' as its main goal; I think that games as entertainment has run its course, and its time for alternatives. I also believe that innovation is a desirable quality in any medium or art form.

The whole point of this little manifesto is to subvert the current paradigm, to force developers to think outside the box, instead of staying in their comfy little bed of sameness. Games are evolving linearly, and it's time for some divergence.

Increpare already said most of this, but I typed it before I read all of the replies. :/

Fear not, Mr. Valter; there is a saying whence I came: 'By its mouth, the fish dies.'

I have to support what Dacke has said before me, as well.

Of course, GeneralValter, sir. You're quite welcome inside.

The events of this night have been even stranger than those of past nights. Who could have done that to Inane? I have to wonder if it was an evil force or if they were just terribly misled. It wasn't the cultists, I presume, but then, would that mean that no cultists are left? Or do they just want us to think that?

Mr. Lucaz, are you around? What is your opinion on this situation?

Ah well, fellows. On the brighter side, I found this from that other video:





Infinite bubblewrap!

But seriously. For those who want an actually programmable super low-res 'dot matrix', I remember this small wooden box covered by square buttons, each of which was pressable and could lit up. I can't remember the name of this thing, though...

Will it use speech recognition? It sounds kind of incredibly ambitious, and really unique.

That was fantastic. And then I watched 'The Children of the Clone'. The new one cannot compare.

May I revive this thread? Found it by chance. I wasn't here when it took place, and I'd like to add a few ideas. I'd also love it if it were to really become a manifesto of some sort.

there should be no manual.  The game is the only place for explaining the game.

I'd be tempted to argue the exact opposite of both previous opposites - there should be no explanation at all, either within or without the game. 

games learned through experimentation are often the most memorable.

Considering all this, I think that it'd be great for a rule to simply be 'There should be no explanation, anywhere, of how to play the game.' This forces the mechanics to be as intuitive as possible, and the level design to actually help the player play the game.

Other ideas:

- Abandon any attempt at aesthetic realism. Especially when it's meant to create a 'dark, gritty atmosphere'.

- No scenes in your game can take control away from the player's avatar, unless it's a menu or inter-screen of some sort that is not part of the experience itself.

- The game must be made by a team consisting of fewer than 10? people. Any more than that means that you're just wasting resources embellishing.

I also really liked the points in Dogma 2001 about discarding trite fantasy stereotypes and overused genres, so I'd keep that.

1920x1080 on my 62" HDTV

Luckily Firefox has full page zoom or I'd have a constant migraine.

Heh.

I use 1280x800, but I have my browser window permanently sized at about 1024 pixels wide.

an entirely audio, casual MMO you played through your phone.

Fantastic idea. What kind of MMO, though?

By the way, welcome! That goes to everyone.

Games dabble more in surreal imagery than perhaps any other entertainment medium *insert tired joke about the absurdity of Super Mario Bros. here*, so the only thing that's missing is making those images mean something.

I love what you just said here, because you're so incredibly right.

Talking about infusing meaning or themes, I think it should be done afterward rather than starting your game with that focus.  I think if there is a unique setting or mechanic you want to make a game out of, do it!  Then, take a look at it and see what sort of themes you had been dealing with all along (if you make your work personal at all, themes you are interested are bound to be in your own work, whether you are aware of it or not).  The next step is working to take those themes out of the muck they are in and illuminating them and expanding on them.

This approach is one that the surrealists would back, for sure. You just reminded me of Kenichi Nishi and Newtonica, by the way. It's not the only way of going about it, of course.

Regarding atmosphere: The more appropriate word is aesthetic. Everything has an aesthetic quality to it, and when you manipulate it for a specific purpose, you're creating a particular atmosphere. This not only includes visuals and sounds, but gameplay and narrative as well.

Whoa, this is mind-bending! Sadly, I have no one to play it with for now.

I understand the principles behind this game, but could someone explain light cones succintly to me? I read the Wikipedia page and didn't fully get it.

Increpare, your idea of adding a narrative sounds intriguing. It could be something detectivesque, perhaps? You know, different points of view of what really happened, and maybe the player has to identify the correct order of events based on several reports.