Would you consider giving Criminal Lunacy a go? It's probably something like 5-10 minutes long, although I've only limited feedback on the difficulty level.

Shadowzone, by Static-X. Reminds me of being 16 (in a good way).

--Sociopath AI just can't seem to keep control of her children.

Galerians?

Mine still unsolved:

Indecisive gunslinger shoots flaming monsters in a magical room.

Your mother has eight guardians. Get rid of them, then dispose of her.
(hopefully this isn't too obvious or too vague)

La Mulana?

Here's one:
Indecisive gunslinger fights burning zombies in magical rooms.

You have a spiked leather fetish and eat bugs to restore your health, your goal is to commit assault and battery on an S&M queen.

Battletoads?

Here's one:
7 in 1 man shoots up invisible suicide bombers.

I just took the whole product placement thing as an element of humour, and as Will Smith is often in humurous as well as active roles, this sat well with me. Really it was more funny than anything to me, because it was so damn blatant.

Just to chime in on what some other people have said.

FFX-2 is in my mind mechanically brilliant, but ruined by the setting. The battle system is flexible and fast, the customisation extensive and the side games such as treasure hunting are excellent. However the fact that it is set in the FFX world totally spoils it for me. I was happy to be done with Spira at the end of FFX, there was a complete resolution and all the characters kind of worked out. To revisit it and add only a flimsy plot about some ultimate weapon, a man who looks like Tidus, and conflicting factions kind of spoils it for me, and the complete stupification of what were acceptable characters before is kind of embarrasing. Plus I'd already seen all the interesting bits of Spira, and the locations added were mostly blocky corridors. If they'd have taken the game mechanics and themes and put them into a new game with a different setting I would have loved it.

I enjoyed I-Robot. It was fun.

From what I've seen I dislike a lot of anime. But I do really enjoy Trigun, Dragonall Z and Gundam Wing (or at least I did a few years ago, not watched it for a good while).

The first FF I played was 7. I loved it but then I played 8 which was also good and mechanically more interesting, and 9, which I hated the first time I played it but on revisiting it realised it was my favourite of all.

And something different-

Extreme Disappointment by Swimfail is one of the best albums ever made.

I really liked the most recent Alone in the Dark. It introduced a lot of genuinely fun and interesting gameplay mechanics, and had one of the best freeform exploration/puzzle solving action sections I've ever played.

Also Deadly Premonition is the shit.

I've never tried to play anything online on the Wii, so I don't actually know my code, but for Xbox Live my GamerTag is manofdoom64192.

I agree that the loss of local multiplayer is a shame. It's one of my favourite aspects of some games, sometimes you just don't want to associate with the awful horde that occupies much of Xbox Live.

A man's pockets are his own private kingdom. I'll protect them with my life!

This looks really cool, I particularly like the arcade rpg thing you've got planned. Also it's quite pretty. Would look forward to playing this.

So like Miner Dig Deep? Sounds like basically the same concept.
Nothing wrong with that, it's a fun concept. Would be cool if you could put your own spin on it though, perhaps with more complex subterranean features such as underground lakes, ore seams, structural integrity, etc.

DREAD

Docking out of desperation with an unsecured ship, our protagonist finds himself trapped on a ship infested with a ghostly presence set on devouring all biological matter on board. He must explore and fight his way out and in doing so free the ship from this bizzarre creature.


Dread is an exploration platformer/metroidvania with themes of horror and suspense. There are no regular enemies, only boss battles. There are puzzles to solve and a narrative to uncover. I've been working on this on and off since March 2010.  It shall be my first big game.

Screenies:


By manofdoom


By manofdoom

I'm drunk, but managed to remember this thread, so I'm apparently not toooooo drunk. Just too drunk to be safe to walk around safely. Must drink lots of water. Had family over for christmas eve eve. Was fun. Irishish they are. Drinking is much appreciated.

Never got around to playing Phenomenon 32, but I do like your article. Interesting look at issues of scale in developing worlds and systems, amongst other things.

Drew a picture of a moster with my foot.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2545-Narrative-Mechanics

Extra Credits this week was about the narrative behind the Missile Command, including the fact that no matter how hard you try or how good you are at the game, you ultimately will lose. Of course this is true of most arcade games but the implication of missile command is that millions of people die in the losing situation of the game, so essentially they were all doomed anyway and it was your job to defend them just for the sake of maintaining hope.

I wouldn't say combos were the most important part of a fighting game - balanced and varied character roster is. Combos are simply a mechanic that can help add depth to a fighter, like special attacks, super moves, throws, reversals etc. None of these things are necessary but when used well can be a lot of fun.

On the topic of Smash Bros, I found Melee much easier to control and more balanced, a lot of the characters in Brawl seemed unwieldy and superflous.

I'm visualising this, and I think in certain games the transition is important to differentiate the game areas and progress through the game. Imagining Sonic 3 for example (though it has smooth transitions between Acts), it has transition animations such as falling down a hole or being shot out of a cannon but still has blackouts between zones. I think these are important because it gives the player the feeling they are really moving onto the next segment of the game, and making significant progress, whereas without these tiny intermissions I feel things could start to feel as though they have been just going on and on. Also adding in extended transitions between Zones would reduce the immediacy of the gameplay.

However this is just imagining it with a 2d Sonic game. I think perhaps it could work in a shorter game as long it was possible to handle changes in scenery smoothly and without excessive downtime or travel time. For instance a lot of platformers use quite strongly varied scenarios, connecting all of these together in a logical way so as to maintain continuity could be quite difficult.

 From a technical perspective in GameMaker, I'd like to add that seeing as Room Transitions only take 1 frame, if you were to have the player do some specific animation at the end of each 'level' where control is momentarily removed then you could probably transition immediately following that and with correct alignment move from room to room without any apparent interruption.

Yeah I'd totally be into this. I love in depth analysis of game structure and design.

I think it's important that there be NPCs who serve no game-related purpose, to flesh out the world.  I think it's important these NPCs be more than doe-eyed bits of scenery.

This is difficult though... sometimes you'll want to write in an NPC which serves no game-related purpose.. and you'll give them a back story, or whatever... but if you give them any problems ("oh, i've not got any bread left") or whatever, the player will naturally assume it's part of their objective to solve this NPC's problem! it's just something about the mentality of playing a game - you seem to assume all these characters problems are your own...

I suppose in terms of problems the NPC's could discuss you could have them refer to an objective the player should already be tasked with, or something as a whole that is going on at the time. It could give more depth to an issue the player is already engaged in.
 Or if your game is the kind where Objectives tend to pop up when there is any sort of progress or awareness regarding them, the fact this doesn't happen could clarify whether this is nice flavour text or something the player should be actively involved in.

 In all honesty I can't really think of any particularly notable NPCs I thought were very effective at the moment (literally all I can think of in terms of NPCs is Fallout 3, not the best example). I do think, as has been mentioned, that in order to provide more depth there needs to be some redundancy to their situations/opinions/general ramblings.