Ah great, I'm not the only one who have sinister behaviors! Investigating human behavior is something that I feel very enriching. You can tell alot more by looking at the human (how they actualy play and how they react)than at the result of their behavior (did they win, did they loose, how much rewards they got, time passed in the game world, etc). 

Quite frankly I have a philosophy that's quite similar to yours. I don't want to repeat the same thing over and over, I want to make things different. I look at alternate ways to dissect a game and try to take elements from different things and see how those elements, once isolated, affect the subject (player).

 If you ever get a hold on behaviorism theories, read them. It's quite interesting and intriguing. Behaviorism is used in the training of animals. You try to control a behavior in the subject without behing there. You "program" the subject to react like you want them to at given situations. It's not 100% precise, it sometimes feel like some sort of evil plot for dominating the world but its quite interesting and I feel like numerous elements could be used in video games (if not already).

 Still, I want to know as much as posisble about the content of current games. There is alot of knowledge enclosed in every game and extracting it is very important for myself. I always say that you need to know where you've been to know where you're going. If I don't know what makes current games good, I feel like I'll never know how to make them better or where to look for the road to the "new" game experiences.

 Thanks for replying and take care!
Guert

Hey there!

I'm happy that your opened to criticism! It,s always hard to tell how someone is going to react, specially when it's their first game.

The bullet pattern may not be so bad, but felt very random when I played. Perhaps it's because there were too much to digest at first.

Yeah, it's something I forgot to tell you. I loved how you use the music element. You kinda have to follow the beat or at least pay attention. The music is also very fitting. Nice job on that!

 Well, as long as you keep your goal nice and clear, it's gonna work. I'm reading what I wrote earlier and perhaps I should've said "my motivation to stay alive". The survivalism is quite obvious so that's okay, it's more of the mid and long term goal that you need to clarify.

 Post a new version when it's done!
Later!
Guert

Thanks for your reply.

Those links are quite interesting (including yours ).

 I answered to the question of economics by saying that "economics of a game" is the "system" that takes care of rewards of any sorts. Y'know, points, money, whatever, you get from doing something in the game. perhaps I should've added that it could also include penalties, since those are, well, bad or negative rewards.

 After the interview, I asked him what was the ecomics of a game and he told me it's everything that a player uses in the game world, like points, money, health, power, etc...

 I forgot to ask about mechanics afterward but I answered, during the interview, that the mechanics of a game was the "systems" that interpreted the acting of the player, may it be how the game world reacts or how the enemies will behavior. The mechanics we're not code based but concept based: we're talking about how the game will react to the player. 

 If I said something that doens,t make sense, please tell me, I don't want to look like a fool again!

 Thanks again!
Guert

Thanks alot for the suggestions!
I already read the "Rules of play". A very interesting book about all form of games and more. Very academic and massive tho.

Quite frankly, I,m looking for game theories, such has how to create efficent levels, how to balance your game, how do you create your game mechanics and economy...

I'm a big fan of Chris Crawford, I read most of his books and they were very inspiring, but I feel like I need something more theorical that emphasis on video game only.

It seems a bit weird, but I've been to an interview for a game designer job and the game designer asked me about those concepts (game economics and game mechanics) and I couldn't answer precisly. It kinda of made me mad at myself because it felt like I heard of this but couldn't recall anything explaining it very clearly. I read alot about game designs and I was frustrated that there were something that I missed that was so important.

 Thinking about it, where did you learn your game design theories?

Thanks!
Guert

Hello there!

Here's what I think of the game, bad aspects first...

 First of all, our avatar is not easy to spot on the game field. It looks like a buttlet from the enemy. The first thing we should spot is where we are and what we control. I suggest that you either make the avatar bigger or in a very different color, like black, since all enemies are white. I'd start off by spawning the vaatr, then after 2 or 3 seconds, the enmy could appear. This way, we know who we are and where we are.

 Second, I feel like there's too much things happening all at once. Theres hundreds of bullets every where shooting randomly. I suggest that you use fewer, targeted bullets. Instead of shooting everywhere, shoot at the player and at a location nearby it. This way, you force the player to move and to be precise on when to stop (since a bullet is heading to a possible evasion location).

 Destroying bullets could be interesting. Since you are shooting at the enemies, the bullets may be used as a secondary shield for the enemy. Bullets could only substain 3 or 4 of the player's shot so moving would still be the best strategy. 

 Dying and stopping the "snake mode" has the same animation, which leads to confusion. I thought numerous times that I was dead but wasn't.

 Now, I want to talk about my motivation as a player. What's my goal in all of this? Is there an upside to consuming the enemy in snake mode? Whatever the story you might have cookep up for the game, the player's motivation should be clear while playing it. You have to gives us some feedback, rewards of penalty, for everyting that we do. Doesn't have to be points or 1ups, just something that will motivate us to use a strategy or to play in a general way. Eating an enemy part could make us bigger. Shooting it might makes us fster or deal more damage. You may even want to give us something extra for dodging bullets. The key is to make sure that you know what is the heart of your game. Is it to shoot, to collect or to move/dodge? Is it to go fast or to be precise? Try to give about 3 ways of playing the same goal. If you decide to make it about being fast, put a time limit (either by adding a timer, add the guy's that ate the pill health status that's always decreasing, or a fixed life span) then give us 3 choice to alter this time, may it be by making us go faster, give time extensions or giving us more fire power. There's alot more options that could be created here so don't be scared to use your imagination. In all cases, that will motivate the player and will give the game more possibilities hence more experimental value.

 On the good side, I like the very simple presentation, Very sobre but interesting. The bright red, color of blood, topped by white elements, purety, gives it a red cross feel that fits the health care idea you're going for.

 I like how you have the snake mode on. Although very hard to use, mainly because of all the bullets shooting everywhere, it's nice that you need it to pick up possible "powerups", not just wait for it to come to you.

 The controls are also very simple and easy to understand. Shooting is easy and doesn't require button smashing. I hate when I have to press the same button 10 000 in 2 minutes. it's bad for my thumb, for my joystick/keyboard and get's reppetitive very fast. With your control, I can easily focus on what I'm doing rather than smashing the same button over and over

 I like how the enemy gradually comes in. This way you can start to damage the top rows. I also enjoy the fact that you can go everywhere on the map. This means that If I want to, I can circle around the enemy. It,s not a great posisbility since you can't shoot downward but it's there and that's what's important. Don't change it: shooting downward or the ability to rotate the avatar would ruin this completly.
 
 The game feels very arcade-ish. Do you plan to have different enemies, with different behaviours, numerous levels, etc?

 Well, good game, keep workin on it!
Take care!
Guert

Hello everyone!
I'm not sure if this has been covered somewhere else, if so, please eaxcuse this thread, but I'm looking for game theory ressources.

Is there a website or anything online that teaches the great lines of game deisgn theory? Like what is the game ecomics, the game mechanics, etc...

Or perhaps you know of these theory and you could explain me or guide me to a book that explains them?

Thanks alot!
Guert

Well, if you want to have that feel, perhaps you could add some gradual challenge. Start off with one block then add 2, then 3, maybe four. The diffculty curve would be softer at first but would ramp up quickly. Just my humble opinion...

Take care!
Guert

Hello there!
Thanks for the suggestions!
I've started browsing through the featured games on Tig source. Alot of interesting games there. It's also nice to know which hooked people the most and what are the favorites.

Thank you for your input! It's very helpfull!
Guert

Phew! For I moment there, I was afraid that the last game pictured was called: "Elmo's bouncing balls"...

Hello there HandCraftedRadio!

I played the game for a while and here are my thoughts.

 You cooked up quite an interesting, yet difficult to play, game there. The concpet is quite interesting. You cannot defend yourslef alone, you must rely on something under your control to do it for you. At the same time, you only control one aspect of your defense, making it very challenging.

 I feel like I'm I ahve to take care of too much things at once. First of all, I have to watch out for the bugs near me by moving around. Second of all, I have to check the all of the bugs positions in order to squish them. Thrid, I have to watch myslef form killing myself. All of this trying to synchronize my left hand occupied with dealing with three buttons and my right hand dealing with the movement of the avatar. Lot's of things at once.   

 The concept is great but maybe you should simplify by focusing on one of your 2 main aspect (dodging and squishing). This would add some challenge to the desired aspect and make the game less frustrating and more challenging.

 One alternate way could be to control all blocks with only one button. Each time you activate the block, they smash into each other one row after the other. This way you can control when an attck will occur but you still don't control every aspect of it. Also, you have to time yourslef even more efficiently since you don't control every row seperatly. 

 ANother one would be a bit different. Blocks smash into each other automaticaly every 5-10 seconds. 1 second before they go off, they turn red. Bug don't kill you but slows you down, other block your path, some push you. With one button, you can taunt the row of blocks your in to smash into each other. This way, you focus on timing and spacial movement around. The challenges comes from the fact that bugs interfere with your movement in various ways but you can get revenge by taunting two blocks and dodge them. This could also bring a learning curve to the game and add a difficulty curve and the possibility of different types of levels. You'd still get points if bugs are squished but you get triple the score for a taunt squish. If you want you could also attract bugs by taunting them too. This would add a new challenge to the palyer and the ability to risk more for a better score. It would also get rid of an exploitation: if you place your red bug under one block, on the far left or right, and you press all buttons at once, no bug can reach you if you have correct timing. Why? because if one bug is about to get you, it will be pushed away from you or it will be squished giving you good scores. I got something like 700 points in only 2 minutes of play with this "strategy".

 
    Anyway, the game is actually very nice. It needs more addictive spices to it, but its already promising a very unique and interesting falvour. I say, keep workin' on it and you might have a very special game.

 Take care!
Guert

Ah yes, that's what I thought too. Well, a least now we all know that this option won't work

And knowing is the first step... Go Joe! :D

Anyway, keep us informed when you finish the latest build.
Take care!
Guert

I had this idea while looking at your screen.
Here's a way to use the colors in your spell bar. When you click a spell, taking that all higher level spells take more time to cast than the lower one, you could have agradient filling the icons from top to bottom. When you select a spell, you ahve an indicator around the icon. Once the spell is behing casted, you can add your ring effect, saying visually that something is happening with the spell. After, all  icon effects are reseted to grey. This way we can know when we're idle, chaneling for a spell or catsing it, without adding more elements to your GUI.
Here's a quick animation to show what I mean...

Take care! 

Hello there!

I logged on to your site today and I've played for a little while. I see there's alot of members already playing your game. it,s great to see you have so much response to it.

I don't have much time but here are few things that popped in my head while playing the game...

First of all, I feel like the game might eed some clarification in the GUI department. You have alot of information to show and I feel like the overall interface is kinda cramped. Also, some information are given to us twice without properly displaying their names which confuses the player that their other information.

 Let me explain. Ok, so your characters have different health points (HP) and Action points (AP). Well, in the gui, you show us nice little icons of the selected character with two numbers seperated with a slash. the first one is the AP, the second is the Hp. Now, if we look further down the screen we find that your telling us that your current HP is "so much" and I have "that much" AP left. If you already told us the info? Why repeat it? 

 The icon with the AP/HP under it is a good idea. You have the selected character and its vital stats easily spotted. Problem is, I feel like the icons are not very accessible. I belive that bigger icons aligned horizontaly under the menu bar would help. Or perhaps align horizontaly on top of the stats section. Here'sa crude representation...

Example A:
 -------------------
|        Menu       |
|--------------------
|  icons            |
|--------------------
|game area        |
|                    |
|                    |
|--------------------
|stats              |
|-------------------

example B
 -------------------
|        Menu       |
|--------------------
|                   |
|game area        |
|                  |
--------------------
|  icons            |
|--------------------
|stats              |
|-------------------


(I hope you get the point, I'm not sure if the "drawings" are actualy helping )

Basicaly, it would leave more space for the actual game area and more accessible information. I would also make outline of the elected icon bigger.

 A thing that bothered me was the fact that I could not scroll the map. Sure I could go from one character to another but always felt like I couldn't see the whole picture. I felt kinda trapped: I couldn't see what I wanted to see when I wanted to.

 Speaking of camera, I also felt like it was moving too oftenly. At some point, theres was four enemies going for my avatars and the camera kept on switching back and forth. Kind of annoying. I think that the camera should tell me if something outside my current viewing of the game area happens but I don't need it to point it out when it,s happenning where I'm looking.

 You also have to make everything clear without the sound effects. I didn't always know when it was my turn or it wasn't very clear when I turned off the sound effects. Maybe flahsing a message or disabling my avatars icons when it's the realm's turn would help alot.   

 Controlling is a bit hard at first. It's hard to tell how much range of movement I had with my characters and what enemies I could or couldn't reach. Also, my first reaction when I saw the rotate buttons was to think that they we're cancel buttons. Y'know, Cancel and Redo. I feel like we're controlling everything with the mouse and these actions should be included. Right clicking a door could open it. Here's a thought: maybe you could add  a little arrow icon on the characters when selected it. Clicking and moving the arrow could rotate the character. I think it would be more accessible and more natural. 

 One thing: is it normal that we can walk on water? If you can, I would like to see the charcter at least knee deep in water. If not, it's a bug that happenned to me several times

 Picking up objects was not very intuitive at first but I got the hang of it rather quickly. Maybe making the icons for picking up object bigger and more representative would help. Doing so wold also make using object easier. Also, how can I pass one object to another one? Is it drag and drop style?

 I feel like the only 3 characters are a bit restricting. Maybe being able to customize their abilities or adding 2 more characters would help. I believe it would help to make more strategies possible. 

 Anyway, the game is interesting. I like the fact that it's turn-based but limited at the same time. I also like the fact that there are alot of possiblities, like being interupted or making more damage when attacking from behind.
 
 I also like that you can play alone or against someone else online. It's nice to be able to play against someone but it's also fun to be lonely once in a while :D

 It's nice to see that the rooms are random. No game is ver the same. Are their plans to create an editor or having some recurant game area? Like for some tournaments or anything like that?

 The game seems to ahve alot of material. I feel like I haven't seen much of the agme as we speak so I can't really talk about it in-depth. One thing is for sure, the game is heading somewhere good .

Keep it up!
Guert

Icons are 40x40? I knew I should've checked before saying anything
Anywho, keep us informed when a new version will be available!
Take care!

Hello there!
Thank you, I'm just trying to help out.

 One thing about gradiant-filled icons... I have not checked this in your game before posting but I feel like icons are way too small to show information like that correctly. Not that it's not impossible tho. If you use extremely contrasted color, it may work fine (black and white, blue and red, yellow and purple, etc) but still, it could be clearer. Your icons are kinda small. I'll have to take a closer look to really know for sure.

 Some game pull this out tho. But usually, the icons are at least 32x32 (48X48 is quite common too, sometimes 64X64) which makes them easier to see. They also send you a denial message saying that the spell/ability/weapon/option/whatever is not ready if you click on it.

 I guess it's something you'll have to experiment thoroughly.
Anyway, keep it up!
Guert

 

Hello there!
I've worked on numerous project at once. I'm dong it right now actualy.
I'm workin' as a pixel artist for a console game project, I'm taking care of coding/design/art for a personal game, I'm drawing a monthly comic and working on Warcraft 3 custom maps. If you would've asked the question last month I would've told you that I was also finishing another console project, working as artist and designer but the project was recenlty finished.

 It's not very difficult to do all things at once but you have to know your priorities. You can't do everything at once, even if you want to. You have to make sure you know what's more important to your eyes and schedule your time accordingly.

 Like mentionned in earlier posts, anything you're doing with someone else should be in your top priority because, and I'm talking out of experience here, when a member of a team doesn't care much about what he/she's doing, it demotivates the others and may lead to a crash of the project. Even if all members of the team are highly motivated, it's going to make the project fail or will result in the abolition of the unmotivated member.

 Another thing: personal projects tend to be easily thrown in a drawer. You probably work/go to school (which is as time consuming) and you probably have a family and friends. You probably have girlfriend/boyfriend you wanna hang out with sometimes too. Working on side projects means you have to schedule when your working and when you're socializing. The more projects you have, the more you're dividing the time you can spend on one project, leading to less palpable progress. And of course, less palpable progress leads to demotivation, leading to the ditching of one or all projects. And sometimes, it will affect you psychologivaly, making you think you can't achieve anything or that you're not goog enough (I'm not kidding: I've seen it happen).

 It's not about how good you are or how you are talented. It's all about maturity and discipline. You see, I mentionned everything I do at the same time at the beginning of my post but I don't do everything all at once. every week, I spend a couple hours working for the pixel art project. Every 2 weeks, instead of working on the project I work on my personal game. I take one week of the month off from all projects to write and illustrate my monthly comic. Once every 2 months or when I have some sudden inspiration, I work on my warcraft 3 map. And, whenever I get ideas for any projects, I write them down in a note pad. This way, when I start working back on a project, I have fresh stuff to work on and I'm not spending time thinking baout it but actually doing some stuff on it.

 I make sure I spend time with my girlfriend too. She supports me in what I do. If I did not have her, I would simply go insane (some say less insane but that's another story ). I make sure I spend all the time possible with her and my firends. I also try to entertain myslef accordingly. Too much work doesn't help imagination which is the key to game and graphic design.

 So anyway, good luck with your projects!
Have a good time doing them and remember, fun before labor and one finished project is worth a dozen half-finished.

 Take care!
Guert
 

Ok so I installed your game and I played it for a couple of hours.

Here’s what I think of it

First off, the negative points.

 The first thing that strikes me is that I feel like the tutorial of the game doesn’t give me the right information at the right time. When you first start off a new game, you are asked to fill up a form without being informed what are the actual details of the attribute. I feel like you should tell us exactly what we’re doing before doing it. You can access the details of the attributes when right-clicking them but I feel like this information is too crucial to be placed on a second stage.   I believe that you should give us the a quick explanation of every trait before we choose between them. Just one little pop-up going like “This trait means more damage. This one means more spells, this one mean less casting time, etc…”

Speaking of the tutorial, I felt like it was too laborious. At some point, I just didn’t want to read it anymore and just wanted to get on with the game. Your tutorial should focus on key elements. I want to be told, what’s my attributes and how they work, what’s the school, how to cast, what are the channels and how do I win/loose. Here’s a proposition of a tutorial. It’s not polished or anything, just quick ideas…

New character screen
1-“Welcome”: just like you have there
2 “Attribute explanation”: Quick explanation of what we are choosing
3-“School”: Just like you have there, perhaps explaining very quickly the schools.
4-“Proffesion”: Same thing

In game
1-“Welcome” Like you have there. I would drop the “I’m confused thing”. I can’t be confused at this point of the game because I just created a character with a very easy and accessible screen.
2-“Personal info” I’d start off by going with something very easy and very vital to the player: it’s status. The first thing I have to know is where to look to know if I’m winning or not. 
3-“Days left before I die”; This is also a very important info and I feel it fits very well with the health. Feels like the remaining health gauge of the game.

4-“Channels”: Before I can cast, I need to channel energy so the next step is obvious.

5-“Casting”: Now, I know my status in the game, where my avatar is, how to enable my actions. All that’s left is learning how to use those actions correctly.

6-“Let the player play”: last words before letting the player go, such as “Remember: right-click for help” or anything like that.

So, tutorial’s over and the player knows what to do but still has to experiment a bit, and most important, before any dangerous encounters. I’ve actually died during my first tutorial because A) I didn’t pay attention to the tutorial and B) I clicked everywhere. I didn’t know what to do and I died before the game had officially started.   

 With the proposition I have shown you, you also have something shorter. Between 12 and 18 pop-ups if you include text padding such as “Ok then let’s take a look around” (which is very important to make things flow). In the present demo, I’ve counted over 70 pop-ups in the tutorial. That’s quite a lot, especially since it stops the flow of the game every time.

 Anyway, I'm not saying my idea is better than what you got, only that I'm going for another way of looking at your tutorial. I believe that a simpler introduction would be better for your game because of all the details we can find playing the game. As long as the crucial information is passed to the player before the actual encounters and it's short and sweet, the tutorial will work.

 Let’s move on to the GUI. One of the worst flaw I find in the GUI is that one of the most important, if not the most important information in your game, is not well represented. Timing your spells and managing your casting time is crucial yet we don’t have a clear view of this information. Most of the time, our eyes focus on the top right corner of the screen and the pentagram representing the time passed casting is located at the opposite. Also, I feel like the pentagram is not precise enough for your game. We can’t tell exactly how much time is left before the spell is conjured.  Maybe trying to place the pentagram nearer to the spells would help a lot. Also, the open channels spheres are also far from the channel icons. Perhaps placing the sphere on each corner of the icon would be better?  I’m not sure because it might crowd the icons too much.

 I was thinking that maybe if the pentagram was closer and that it would fill up completely every time you cast/channeled (the rate at which the pentagram fills up would depend on the spell), it would be more obvious to the player when the spell/channeling is going to be completed. It would be a very minor change in the game and it would give more precise information vital to the timing of the spell casting.

 Another factor that may fix your GUI trouble is the ever present ring of fire. When you start channeling or casting spells, the ring of fire places itself on the chosen icon but after the action is finished (for example here, casting a shield, the ring remains on the icon. At first I thought it was because he didn’t finish casting it. Its quite useful for attack spells like “Magic missile” but I feel this is pointless for shields, summoning (since you can only have one) and curses. If the ring disappeared, the player would have a visible cue that the spell has been casted and it’s time you do something else.

 A thought occurred. Perhaps you could have the traits information hidden during battle and put a bigger pentagram and the channel sphere there. When the battle is over, you simply put back the trait info, hide the pentagram and the channel sphere. It would leave more room to breathe in your health and power section and put all the battle information in the same region.

 Now, about the game in itself. Since this is the demo, some of my comments might be pointless but here we go nonetheless…
 
 First, it would be nice to be able to select the spells we would like to have. It seems to me that all characters have exactly the same spells, except the ultimate one, and the main difference between them is their ability to cast them quickly or not. It would be nice to have different spells from one class to another, even at the very beginning, and to be able to choose from different types of the same spell. For example, one class could have a poison curse. You could decide to build you poison curse over time but you could also decide to specialize your poison curse into a sub category. This poison curse could have two sub categories: cripple or damage. If you choose one category, you cannot go back to any other. This will make the game more adaptive to the player. It would also mean more spells but they won’t be accessible by all. This could enhance the player’s experimentation and elevate the replay value.

 If possible, a good thing would be able to show the possible ranking within a profession. An interesting thing to do would be to be able to decide what kind of ranking or title you would like to have. For instance, for two different titles you would need the same amount of XP but one would require a str stat of over 16 (let’s call it berserker to be old fashioned) while the other (let’s called it wise man since we’re in the clichés)  would require a int stat of at least 16. You can’t be both, you have to choose between either one of them or simply not choose either one. This would also help to make the game more adaptive and more “re-playable”.

 I would add more specialized spells, like anti-shields, anti-curse etc… But there might already be there, just not in the demo so I can’t tell. If there are no such spells, it may be a good idea to consider them. Right now, the strategies become a bit repetitive: summon shield, summon creature, shoot shield of other, re-summon shield when it’s gone, re-summon creature when it’s dead, and so forth until you win. Sure there are other things around this but it’s pretty much the same basics.

Technically speaking, I would add a “back” button in the “grimoire” or something to tell us that we need to click to exit. It’s not much but it helps to make the game clearer. It would also fit with the main menu.

  Well, that’s all I can think for the moment… On to the good part!

 The game looks good and plays very well once you understand where to look at. The game also seems to offer a lot of strategy. I didn’t play much but every time I made a new character, I tried new traits and balance. No game has been the same. Too bad I couldn’t save

 I like the overall representation of the game. Simple but effective. Sober yet a touch of fantastic. It makes the game more realistic than if there were too much stuff going on. The music is also very interesting and fits the game like a glove.
 
 I love the concept of the fixed life span. This is something I feel we should see more often. I like the philosophy behind it: you can do what you want but you will come to an end no matter what. It’s quite interesting. It gives a good long-term motivation to the player: survive past those 90 years.

 All in all, a bit repetitive but interesting game. I hope to hear more about it.  This has a lot of potential!

Well, I hope I’m not to harsh with you! You did some nice job and I wish to see you doing some more!
Take care!
Guert

Thanks! I'm checking them out right now!

 Oh hey, I didn't notice that post before so I better introduce myself on the spot!

 First, my real name is Daniel-David Guertin. I'm 25, in the region of Montreal, Canada and I've started playing games since... Well, I don't remember.

 I started drawing stuff around when I was about 16. My friends and I found that if we had good grades, we could, in the last year of high school, have two art classes which meant alot of free time to do homework and hang out. Well, I manage to get those two classes and I found a real passion about art.

 I got into college and got a diploma in computer science at the age of 20. I never really liked coding, or fixing up computers even though I spent four years of my life studying them I spent of my classes drawing and dreaming up games.

 I draw alot, but I don't concider myself very good. At least not to what I would like to be! I've been doing pixel art for almost 3 years and I' trying to come up with a camic/cartoon page every month.

 I started to get involved in video game projects around 4 years ago. While workin' on these I was laboring in a grocery store. I quit last december after my latest project went gold and on it's way to being published. It got cancelled so I'm currently looking for a job.

 I'm currently workin on several indie game projects, including mine. I'll try to show what I'm workin' once it's at a decent stage.

 A quick list of my favorite games: Street Fighter 2, super mario, katamari damacy, dragon warrior, doom, starcraft... There are alot of titles that have influenced me so it's hard to say exactly. I'm sure I'm skipping so much title that when think of them I'll go "Damn! how could I had forgotten this one?"

 Beside video game, I'm a big movie fan. I enjoy the works of Kubrik, Tarentino, Copolla, Chaplin, Monthy python, and also so much more...
 
 I guess this is what I can say about myself right now.
Take care!
Guert! 

It was a pleasure to help you.
I understand what you mean by exploring the game. I believe it's a great idea and is very crucial to make the game entertaining, as long as the primary goals and basic fundamental reasons for the game are loud and clear while playing.

Well, I hope to see further iterations!
Take care!
Guert