Category: Games

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A Mario Kart Milestone (Again)

I previously wrote about my excitement that Mario Kart 8 was receiving more courses. Two years later, all the courses are released and have been summarily conquered by my Gold Mario character. I have 3 star trophies across all 24 Grand Prix cups, in all available speed levels.

Though I fell off playing Mario Kart regularly in the last year—that change has been for the best—it remains a relaxing activity on a lazy weekend afternoon or a fun evening game to play with Erin. There are no more explicit accomplishments left for me in the game,1I’ve decided to not open up the can of worms that are Time Trials or Battles. so I can launch it when it strikes me as fun, and otherwise spend my extremely self-limited gaming time playing the several other Switch games I’ve purchased over the years. Among those I’ve started and hope to complete are Cuphead, Röki, Bastion, Firewatch, and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. It may take me years, but I’ll make progress!

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    I’ve decided to not open up the can of worms that are Time Trials or Battles.
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Last Question Update

Two months ago I revisited The Last Question, a basic RPG I wrote at the start of the pandemic. A group of friends has agreed to start an actual campaign with me later this year — we’ve had trouble finding a good time to get started — so I decided to retool the game itself. I wasn’t happy with the initial set of mechanics; it didn’t seem to mesh with the intent of the game.

After some research, I settled on the Motif system, which focuses on asking questions. A natural fit. I wrote a gameplay guide in Affinity Publisher1I learned InDesign at work, but am certainly not in a position to subscribe to the Adobe Suite, so Publisher was a great option. that I’m pretty proud of, and will provide below.

I’m excited to play this game with some friends. It’s a creative outlet just for us. There’s no spinning this into an actual-play podcast. There is a lot to be said for having fun in a way that isn’t performative for someone else.

The Last Question Gameplay GuideDownload
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    I learned InDesign at work, but am certainly not in a position to subscribe to the Adobe Suite, so Publisher was a great option.
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Text Adventure: Watchman

Last fall I wrote a new text adventure. Now that we finally played it on OHAC 36, I’m posting it here.

It was fun to write. The pun I had in mind to start things out spiraled into a lot of research about timekeeping devices of the past. Writing the little riddle hints was also a joy. I like adding language aspects like that, because it’s an excellent medium for a text adventure. I’m hoping to keep writing more in this vein.

WatchmanDownload
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Text Adventures Part 4: The Document

A text adventure would not be useful to me if it was not written down. Particularly when the goal is to have an unfeeling, strict parser doling out commands only when successfully prompted, it’s important to have a reference that is clear, contains maps and explanatory information, space for notes, and everything the “computer” needs to say throughout the game.

With the exception of Recurring Nightmare, I write every text adventure using LaTeX. Over time I’ve built up commands and formatting to make this process simpler. For Recurring Nightmare, I tried my hand at InDesign since I had received a license from work. That license no longer exists, and it’s easier for me to edit a .tex document than an InDesign document, so LaTeX continues to be the way forward.

In this post I’ll talk about some of the decisions I made for formatting my document, how I make maps, and other bits of trivia that come to mind.

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Text Adventures Part 3: The Mechanics

Text adventures are, almost by necessity, designed to railroad the player into doing something without it being obvious or annoying. Any mechanics introduced should be a natural extension to the world the player discovers, provide sufficient freedom so they don’t feel like a funnel, yet guide the player in the correct direction. In the text adventures I’ve listen to played on the Cortex/Upgrade crossover episodes, I’ve noticed that mechanics often act as hints. They are like bumpers on a wall (which may kill you, but you can make a different decision the next time.)

All these realizations have come after thinking carefully through the mechanics and puzzles I wrote which were clearly bad (and the few which were actually good), and trying to figure out what precisely caused them to have the effect on the players they did. It’s often me not paying attention to my good sense and the feedback of testers. More frequently it’s me trying to subdue the text adventure genre until it allows me to try and tell a story, rather than building a story that works within a framework.

Directly, most of my text adventure failures have come from a single mechanic undermining any positive decisions I made.

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Text Adventures Part 2: The Idea

I want each text adventure I write to have a unique flavor. Mechanics aside, the story behind it should be fresh, typically built from a single idea, and the more I write the more my mind recognizes these singular bits of inspiration. One thought or phrase is typically enough for me to build a world from: sitting down with a thought, then branching out from the initial point in whatever way my mind flows. I’m going to discuss how this process worked for each of the four text adventures I’ve written and released so far, and try to dissect what I learned in the process. In the next post, I’ll focus more on the thought process (or lack thereof) that went into developing some of the game mechanics around these ideas.

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