This year for our JayIsGames April Fool’s “prank”, we decided to do something a little different. Instead of reviewing tic-tac-toe or gushing on about a joke RPG, we created our very own Choose Your Own Adventure text game: JayIsPonies! It was a great experience for everyone involved, and we managed to pull it off on short notice without too many epic problems. Here’s a little behind the scenes look at how the game came together.

Our Plan

The initial plan was to create a game that took place in a world full of ponies. Somehow, that morphed into collecting pizza slices (something of a running in-joke with the JIG crew). More than half a dozen writers wanted to contribute, with myself organizing, coding, and writing miscellaneous scenes in-between.

Because we were pressed for time, we decided to structure the game very loosely. Each writer was tasked with writing a short, 3,000 word adventure, the only requirement being a slice of pizza had to be discovered somewhere at the end. This allowed each person to create whatever they wanted to without having to be concerned about consistency. This is an April Fool’s joke, it doesn’t have to have continuity or anything, right?

Platform

For JayIsPonies, I decided to use Inform 7 with the Adventure Book extension by Edward Griffiths. I was already familiar with Inform 7, and our in-house browser interpreter supported z5/z8 files, so it seemed a natural fit. I compiled a website-formatted version of the game using the I7 IDE and uploaded it to my own server to allow writers to play new versions as I updated it, both to check for typos and to hunt for bugs.

Preparation

Because not all of the writers knew what kind of game we would end up having with the I7 Adventure Book, I had to write my world first to serve as an example. I also had to write it quickly. Over the course of two or three hours, I wrote, coded, and tested the Zombie Pony world you see in the final game. It’s pretty straightforward with no real puzzles or mazes to navigate, but I was going for crazy writing instead of difficult gaming. Given the time constraint, I was happy with how it turned out.

Process

Because the coding for this I7 CYOA was so simple, I decided to get the writers to code their own sections, with me fixing errors and adding any additional bits later on. All this required people to do was set up a structure for each page, labeling it as such and outlining the choices players could make for each screen. It took some detailed explanations to make sure everyone did it correctly, but my hope was it would be faster than hand coding it myself. Time was a severely limiting factor. It didn’t work quite as smoothly as I had hoped, but it was more effective than I had thought, so it was a good gamble to make.

Not everyone who signed up to contribute chapters ended up doing so. Fortunately, the loose design of the game meant that didn’t cause any problems. I set a firm deadline for submissions, cutting off writer edits and additions so I could focus on stitching everything together. Most of the story details were up to me, as was the task of making five disparate miniature games feel like sections of a larger game, so I had to have time to write that and make sure it all worked together.

After the deadline, my only other task was to finish writing the hub scenes, the ending scenes, code the inventory items and password keys, and make sure everything connected seamlessly. That went quite well, and when April 1 rolled around, we hosted the game on Leaflet and unleashed it to the world.

The end!

The JIG writers did a great job with their portions of the game, and I think everyone who played it at least got a kick out of it. Could there be another game in the future? Most likely, yes! We’ll see what we can make given more time!

I’ll take my EarthBound doses however I can get them, thank you very much.

* MOTHER 2 novel translation official blog

The basic premise is this: choose one of four types of quests, climb into the dungeon, defeat enemies or search for loot, and when you complete the quest, get the heck outta there. Finish more quests and you get stronger. Repeat until forever. You have a limited inventory and just a few items to use, so no fair trying to hoard every little speck of dust you come across. Enemies are mindless and easy to avoid, but when you face off with them, they hit hard. It’s usually best to dash in, grab the loot, defeat an enemy or two if you can spare the HP, then make like a tree. It’s simple fun, and totally worth technically pirating it.

It was around this time I started writing the Weekend Download column at JayIsGames. It was the beginning of 2007, and even though we featured four or five games each week, there were so many to choose from it was an overwhelming task to narrow it down. Jump to 2012 and I have a very different story to tell: the small indie game, the small indie release, and maybe even the small indie developer, is almost extinct. With easy outlets to market games (XBLIG, PSN, iTunes Appstore, Android Marketplace, and even PC digital distribution sites), there’s money in the no-publisher route, and more and more game makers are stepping on this well-trodden path as a means to fund their hobby.

I love that the “little guy” has a way to stay alive in the corporate world, but it’s spelling the death of the creative basement programmer. Why toil away in obscurity when you can get a company to fund your project, start a marketing campaign, and release something on Steam, Desura, or Indievania? Money has become the motivating factor for many, and in my mind, this is the opposite of what makes an indie game “indie”.

Indie games are created for the love of the craft. That doesn’t preclude making bank, but it doesn’t mean this should be your goal. You don’t need to be on Steam to get people’s attention. You just need a good game. And a good game comes from hard work, new ideas, and a dedication to your passion. Just like everyone accused mainstream games of becoming heartless sell-outs, I am now accusing a massive chunk of the indie game development community of the same.

Just six years after we started the Weekend Download column, it’s becoming extraordinarily difficult to find a decent freeware indie game on the internet. There are some developers and websites who are still devoted to this, but indie has almost become another genre name by this point. A buzzword to throw into a press release so people think it’s hip and cutting-edge. Even my favorite indie gaming sites have sold out, doing little more than copying press releases and feeding each other news stories. Indie is now a business, which begs the question: where is the new indie?

The answer is right there, where it’s always been. Competitions like Ludum Dare are hotbeds of creativity (as are AGS game creators, Temple of the Roguelike people, interactive fiction developers, and others), but the only thing journalists (even the ones who work on indie gaming sites) report on is “LOOK AT THE NEW GAME NOTCH MADE FOR LUDUM DARE”, which is neither useful nor enlightening. We know who Persson is, we know he does things, we appreciate them, but it’s the undiscovered, unrecognized game creator we’re interested in. Please, do some actual digging and playing of games, then tell the world what’s out there. The people who used to sniff out secret gems now think they’re doing the same thing by following the “indie” scene. But since indies are no secret anymore, the sub-indie category has to emerge. Eventually, that cycle will repeat, just like it does with most mediums. But the time for it to begin is now, not later.

My message to anyone interested in creating a game: only do it you love the craft, if you love the art, and if you love the game. If you create something good, no one will fault you for seeking recompense, but if you lose passion, which I feel so many devs have done, your product will become a soul-less piece of… well, junk. If you wouldn’t release your game for free, you might be falling into this category.

My message to indie gaming websites: stop being just like every other website. Go out there and actually search for games, don’t just copy/paste press releases PR companies sent to your inbox. Don’t look to the other big gaming news sites for your stories. And stop being lazy writers. If you don’t love games, what the hell are you doing pretending to be an indie games journalist, anyway?

Games pictured, from top to bottom: One Final Trek (vandriver), Aeronuts (Abstauber), Farrokh (Doktor Ace).

Accompanying threads, with some nice commentary:
* Engineer for President
* Pyro for President
* Heavy for President
* Demoman for President
* Spy for President

When Markus Persson, creator of Minecraft, speaks, the internet also listens. And when he sends a very public tweet to Tim that simply states “Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen.”, there is a collective hush followed by an uproar of glee. Early in the morning on February 7 this did occur, and now, no doubt, hundreds of people are sitting on both men’s Twitter feeds, hoping for the best news since Beyond Good and Evil 2 was revealed.

This is an in-progress situation and it could go either way from this point. Maybe the lawyers will step in and shake their oily heads, or maybe something like aliens or semi-sentient scorpions will stand in the way. Who knows. But Persson said he was serious about the offer, and we know his studio’s got the cash to do it. Now, if you’ll all join me in a collective breath holding while we await more news. 3… 2… 1… stop breathing!

Nostalgia is the best answer I can come up with. Countless hours of my childhood were spent staring at images of the Neo Geo Pocket (and Neo Geo itself, for that matter) in print magazines. Color graphics! Amazing games! ZOMG look! So, having an attainable portable resource for Neo Geo games in my adult life is very neat. Plus, it’s a very handsome system with a 4.3 inch screen, 2 gigabytes of storage, and 20 classic Neo Geo games built in. What else can it do? Dunno. How much does it cost? Dunno. When/where will it be released? It’s a mystery! But… look! It’s shiny and it has Samurai Shodown!

The studio behind Miner Wars is Keen Software House, a company staffed by ex-2K Games folk along with the former producers of Descent and Red Faction: Guerrilla. Translation: they know what they’re doing. In addition to the usual battery of skill, ship, and equipment upgrades, Miner Wars features large scale battles and gameplay that isn’t focused on grinding. There’s also looting, labyrinths to explore floating freely in space, and incentives to go out and mine materials on your own instead of sticking with battles.

Currently, Miner Wars 2081 is still in production, but you can pre-order the game at a heavy discount and gain access to the pre-alpha download. There’s not an awful lot to experience at the moment, but I guarantee what you see here will excite you beyond imagination, especially if you’re a sci-fi fan. The release is slated for Q1 2012. The team is also planning a Miner Wars MMO, which is one game I’ll be there to play on day one.

* Go get Miner Wars 2081!

* High price tag – $10 on the iTunes App Store for a 15 year old game. No matter how awesome the game is, that’s a big price tag.
* Blurry visuals – Really? That’s the best you can do? Chrono Trigger is pixel art, and one would think it would be relatively simple to scale. Apparently not, as the entire game looks like someone ran the blur filter over it a few times.
* Awful controls – This one was the worst. The menu system was redesigned, which is fine, I suppose, I’ll deal with that change. But, wanna move Chrono? That’s fine, if you want to flail all over the place and have no control over where you’re going. Touch screen controls for old school games is usually awkward, but this is an elderly woman in a wheelchair trying to juggle live bears. It’s that futile, and that strange.
* Remade sound effects – What was wrong with the original SNES Chrono Trigger? Nothing. Why were the sounds changed for the Nintendo DS release as well as the iOS port? No idea. But it hurts my ears because I’m stuck in 1996.
* Re-tooled dialogue – The same as above. So much of the dialogue is different, and it reads like a cheesy pre-teen adventure novel in places. Ouch.
* Lack of iPad support – That one explains itself. Seriously, WTF?!

There you have it. I touched on the differences between the DS and SNES versions of the game before, and the iOS port is basically a gimped version of the pre-gimped DS game. A disappointing release that isn’t likely to get better. Back to my SNES, or, if you keep it at a whisper, a decent emulator. !

* Chrono Trigger on iPhone (if you dare)