I can't imagine Tom Fulp would try to keep you from using a castle crasher. He let BomToons make Castle Crashing the Beard, after all. I mean, he even did voice work on it.

That's setting the bar pretty low, though, don't you think? I don't know of a single game designer who tries to make games that aren't enjoyable.

Why don't we debate whether to debate another topic?

Hopefully they didn't throw out the role-playing elements in favor of constant, pointless violence.

Yeah, all the gameplay videos I've seen have pretty much been "huur look at how cool the Bloody Mess perk is."  That shit gets tiresome.  Bloody Mess is fun for like, five minutes.  It's much more satisfying when you get the gory kills by chance.

I agree. And even more fun than that was finding out ways of getting through missions without having to blow everyone's head off. (I always gave my Fallout characters high diplomacy. )

I think that's an important quality of art, and if art is too specific to a particular time, place, or audience, it could be just as effective for those people, but it won't stand "the test of time" as they say.

I don't think there's anything particularly radical about this. Some creative works age better than others. Some are positively incomprehensible if you don't happen to know the context in which they were created, while others can be appreciated by just about anybody with the chops to uncover the metaphors and underlying theme.

I'm skeptical but hopeful. So far, the gameplay demonstrations make it look like more of an FPS than anything else, which kind of sucks, but I'm reserving judgment until I actually play the thing. Hopefully they didn't throw out the role-playing elements in favor of constant, pointless violence.

This thread would get ALOT more attention if you'd post some screenshots.

Done.

also, i just got disgaea 3. endless games, those.

It's a shame they're only releasing it for the PS3! How is it so far?

Well done! Here's a bug I saw several times: if the ball is about to get past the paddle and the back end of the paddle hits it, it will transport the ball to the front of the paddle and have it bounce back toward the other player.

The controls are really cumbersome for me, since I'm using a laptop with a touchpad (not a mouse). But otherwise this is awesome!

Next up it's Bum Tycoon. End up on the streets, make your own cardboard pity signs, and battle other bums for the best handout spots. Gather gossip or sabotage their chances in the soup kitchen. Become a part of the underground that exists under your nose.

Is it wrong that this sounds like a fun game to me?

Was there an earlier Telepath game that wasn't an RPG? If not, then why does it have 'RPG' on the end?

The original Telepath games are RPGs, though the latest one (Telepath Psy Arena) is more of a straight tactics game. I named it Telepath RPG to make it immediately obvious to anyone who saw the name on a website that it was an RPG, since most Flash portals lump RPGs in with non-RPGs under the category "Adventure."

Thanks for the suggestions! Did you try clicking the "?" button?

• Fallout gave me my first taste of freedom in videogames. Therefore, must be played every now and then.
• Morrowind I used to go back to. Now I don't. I go back to Oblivion. Doesn't give the same feeling tho.

I think the problem with Oblivion is that too much of it is procedurally generated. What makes freedom in Fallout so satisfying is that many of the locations are designed by hand, with a broad variety of characters and hand-crafted situations that can be played through in many different ways with vastly different results. So you care whether you can get a different result in, say, dealing with slavers, or dealing with the mob in Reno because you know your choices will lead to different consequences. But really, who gives a crap whether you raid a slightly different dungeon somewhere on the Oblivion map versus somewhere else?

Interesting. I deliberately released Psy Arena as a "strategy" game (i.e. not an RPG) to avoid the need for elaborate story/character trappings, which take up by far most of the development time in a Telepath RPG game. But I guess people are already used to the Telepath RPG approach, so it's a less satisfying experience? Kind of like how nobody liked Fallout Tactics because it removed fun of freedom and character interaction in playing the Fallout games? I hadn't really thought it through that carefully, honestly.

Do you find that being able to move and minimize the HUD isn't enough? Or is it just not sufficiently obvious that you can do that from the get-go? Is there anything with the HUD design itself that you find unintuitive?

I think there's a difference, though, between making a game where the player commits horrible acts that will make a decent person want to stop playing, and deliberately making a choice between playing the game and doing something else an integral part of the game experience. If there's a moral choice in the first game, it's a happy coincidence. In the second game, it's an artistic decision.

In the Flash world, a developer can take Match 3, drop a new tileset on it, and that's all it takes to make easy cash at the local Flash portal.  In fact, that's probably the most lucrative strategy a Flash developer can follow.

Or put differently:  the most effective way to succeed financially with Flash-based casual games is the same as the way to succeed financially with huge mainstream commercial games:  make the same game over and over again, with different or improved graphics in each iteration.

Yeah--and the way to make an "indie" game with game maker that everyone adores is to make yet another side-scrolling platformer with slightly different pixel graphics, right? I'm not convinced that Flash is somehow the bigger offender here.

I think it's too late to change it, given that it's already a recognized series, but I'd be curious to know what you think of Telepath RPG.

Good to know. How would you suggest simplifying the HUD?

Games where your choices have permanent consequences are inevitably going to have a greater impact on the player and make them consider what they're doing more carefully. The Fallout games did a good job of this. So does the Fire Emblem series, even if it's only limited to the tactical decisions that can permanently lose you characters.