A bit of preamble: in the nineties, there was a gaming magazine called "Великий дракон" (Great Dragon). It was very "journalism 2.0" in the sense that many materials were provided by the readers. One of the columns, "Fountain of Fantasy" was dedicated to readers' game ideas. Some people even sent illustrations. So, my game is based on such a pitch: http://www.greatdragon.ru/online/21/888-214445-dva-brata-2-igrayte-i-umneyte.html Since it doesn't follow the original idea very closely, I named it as if it was a sequel: "Возвращение в замок злого колдуна" (Return to Evil Warlock's Castle). You can find it here: https://chentzilla.itch.io/bb33k
Played through to one of the endings (decided to follow white voice, but then ascend the tower). I second the note that first pushable block is hard to distinguish as such, even if I knew that it is there from the comments above.
Most choices were clearly defined, I don't remember being surprised by trying to follow or go against the voice's will and doing the opposite instead. There was one moment though when the text appeared too fast for me to react. Also, didn't quite understand the moment where I get the gun but am ordered not to shoot anybody - haven't noticed where the weapon did come from. If it was given by the white voice, that actually breaks the theme of him giving only non-violent help (despite sometimes urging me to destroy myself or others).
As for other things, I like that the moral decisions lead to gameplay consequences that can't be clearly defined as good or bad. I'm ambivalent about the portrayal of other androids: you may call it elegantly simple, but when you think about it, the "free-minded" are different only by their sprites (the difference is quite pronounced though) - both are just standing there. Wouldn't hurt to see other "slaves" diving into the acid on white voice's whim, or free-minded ones doing... something. The shooters and spiders are okay. The "bosses" could be more detailed for such big sprites... but are also okay. The rebirth at checkpoint looks cool.
And the main character's walk somehow looks stunted.
The story of this game began 16 years ago, when Russian mathematician Alexander Iglitsky published his article on tetris theory, which you can read here: http://sites.google.com/site/polyfiguregames/
In 2011, I re-read the magazine I've first seen the article in, and thought that I still haven't seen some of those modifications. So, I searched for Iglitsky's presence on the web, and found first his article, then himself.
I've learned that he did just a couple of prototypes back then, but when I told him that there still may be market for the game in our digital era, he started working and in the following months delivered not less than a dozen variations - enough for a decent-sized compilation. You can watch the trailer here:
It's been almost 4 years since I made Zaya Blade - a small "match-3-with-an-action-twist" game about a rabbit girl defending her melons from cow girls. The game looks like this:
Now, the character was reimagined by my wife and put on (small) variety of items you can get at our web store, like this T-shirt:
The store interface is in Russian, but they actually deliver worldwide.
Recently I rediscovered for myself the works of Polgames, which, (as far as I understand - the site and games are in Italian), is actually a single man, Paolo Congiu. Most of his works are hard-as-nails platformers, but more striking is the subject matter - the heroes are Sardinian peasants, and the backdrops are local towns and villages. So, what I propose is that we make games about the places where we live, be those good or bad. You may think that your neighborhood is nothing special, and can't compete with a medieval dungeon or a distant planet, but for a guy on the other side of the planet, this may look like quite an unusual - but still real - setting. The devil is in the details - even different cities of the same country are, well, different. Maybe there's some activity that takes place in your town; maybe there's some famous product; maybe you just hate this place and want to show why. I believe such a competition cound really be something special. Remember, even "big" developers like Infocom and Bullfrog used their cities and universities for inspiration.
A-and we may also cover it in our magazine and make you famous!
As you may or may not know, I am, among other things, a senior editor in a magazine called Strana Igr (Game Land). So, today we received a letter from a reader where he proposed Rockstar to make an "anti-GTA" game called Imagine: Heaven on Earth. His proposal was actually quite detailed, and I thought that if not Rockstar, then maybe some of you can be up to the task. Sorry to break another competition, but, on the other hand, I think they can complement each other.
So, what the game should be like: You play as John Lennon, one of the great pacifists, and Beatles' songs are the soundtrack. In the first levels you do good deeds like "help an old lady cross the street", "retrieve a cat from a tree", "help a drug addict to lose his addiction" and "to talk a man out of suicide". In the middle the game turns into a strategy where we control the crowd, like singing Give Peace a Chance at anti-Vietnam war demonstration in New York, collecting people under your banner. Later you get the divine blessing and gain the powers to control the forces of nature, so you make tornadoes to put the nuclear missiles from Iraq off-course; collecting giant rain clouds, put out forest fires in California. At the end we got a musical Gutar hero-like duel with the Devil represented by Marilyn Manson, using the most peaceful of Beatles' songs. Bu then Manson uses his secret weapons and brings us into an alternate 8th December of 1980, where we have to dodge Mark Chapman's bullets trying to call the police. At the end there's a battle in Heaven between angels and devils, Lord of the Rings style where the fate of humanity is at stake. And the style of the game should be realistic, not your cartoonish Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Brutal Legend or Beyond Good and Evil.
So, how that sounds? If anyone succeeds making this game, I promise instant karma, coverage in our mag and fame.
Oh, and the guy's name is O. A. Koltsov (О. А. Кольцов), you probably should put it in the credits.
However, I was kind of frustrated by having to guess the verb for sleeping. List of things that did not work: go bed enter bed sleep sleep in bed sleep in your bed get into bed
I know, isn't it just horrible?
But in all seriousness, though, if you type "?" or "help", it will show a list of all the verbs you'll ever need to use.
I guess I could make "go bed" work, that one feels like it should work.
Is this still happening? It seemed incredibly ambitious, with a lot of potential for awesome!
Nah, the company went out of business in approximately 2001-2002. Partially joined In-Fusio. I had a nice interview with David Yang about it. You can find it (unfortunately, in Russian), here.
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