For folks curious, a chunk of my concepting was for Field Maintenance in Dire Marsh and designing the big harvester vehicles. What @ninehydras.dev and the world art/palette team did is so so rad
From the publisher that brings you Sprigs & Kindling (that's me!), in collaboration with @jesseross.com and @pemetawe.bsky.social comes a new anthology of one shot incursions for Trophy! Sign up to be notified of launch 😄 www.kickstarter.com/projects/fir...
All in, it's a really confident work of design. Some rough edges and tuning to work on for sure, but it's shaping up to be quite a polished experience at launch. I'm excited to dig in to the full game.
Combat is fast, tense, and punchy. Everything sounds and feels really good. The core gameplay loop is tight, not overly complex, and rewarding with both useful items and story beats or lore in exchange for completing contracts. We were about 50/50 on successful exfils, which seemed fair overall.
We had some really interesting emergent encounters with multiple other squads and AI enemies. Flow through the big POIs is fluid for all involved (human and AI), which creates some fun confusion and chaos. There's lots of opportunities for surprise moving between different levels and buildings.
Played more of the Marathon Server Slam tonight, but this time with two friends, and I'm sold. Solo is extremely punishing, but the game really isn't balanced for solo (at least right now). As a squad, though, the game shines.
So I reserve my final judgment for now. Really strong first impression, but a subpar solo gameplay experience. Need to play with friends before I see where I ultimately land on it.
But the metaprogression... Trying to complete a simple contract solo, tried it four times and was taken out by invisible campers each time, because I needed to clear a bug nest to do so and gave myself away. Not good! I worry that the stuff I'm here for is going to be trapped behind the bad...
Factions, unlocks, all the metaprogression: it tickles my brain. Really like the integration of story bits, worldbuilding, character, etc. All works together really nicely. I even like the UI, if a little busy and hard to parse. Just so slick, completes the game, all of it of a piece design-wise.
Solo runs are not good. Will have to try with my Hunt Showdown group. Have a lot of hours in Hunt, so the format isn't entirely foreign, but wanting to learn the ropes and just play by myself was... not the best. Major balance issues to work out if solo is going to be a viable mode.
Played on PS5 and PC. Gunplay feels better on controller, classic Bungie, but everything else is worse. Using gamepad rather than keyboard and mouse feels impossible, an unnecessary added challenge.
Marathon is so stylish. Aesthetics are really working for me. Environments, lighting, sound... SOUND. Oh man. Just want to listen to this game, wander around and poke at things. Story surprisingly interesting, too. Vibes off the charts.
Wow. I have no idea if it will retain a playerbase, but Marathon is one of the most exciting visual and storytelling statements of intent I've ever played.
I'm considering buying an extraction shooter for the narrative; the actions of a madman
composite satellite image of Antarctica, the snow & ice appearing as different shades of blue and beige, the sea is black. following three images are variations of this theme.
GUYS have you seen this. antarctica on google maps. go look at it. this is tech struggling to process the Sublime
I've started a blog writing PbTA moves for games that don't exist. Here's today's entry.
https://onamiss.bearblog.dev/3/
the crowd is chanting "machine zone, machine zone, machine zone". there's a biplane flying overhead trailing a banner that says READ NATASHA DOW-SCHULL'S 'ADDICTION BY DESIGN'
free level design advice for creating an FPS arena that people will call the best multiplayer map ever made for generations.
Cool new book alert! With an open access digital edition, too.
extremely wild story from @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social (yes that one): aftermath.site/nicole-carpe...
if you think about it, a megadungeon is the ultimate walkable city
One easy fix would be to eliminate categories based on genre or whatever “indie” means and instead get granular about craft (best level design, best world, best combat, etc) which would probably pose other problems but at least make for more interesting conversations and honor specific people
"video game mechanics?" Actually, they're called developers.
I played Horses this weekend and I wrote down some messy thoughts not only on the game but especially on the specter of formalism that emerged to haunt us all for a moment.
transgamerthoughts.com/post/8023277...
I have written a new blog about what an OSR is. I am told there is a lot of discourse about this, but am confident that this should settle the matter once and for all.
thegardenbelow.blot.im/what-is-an-osr
Surprise, we're getting pretty close to the final version of REALIS!
ICYMI: I've been making a TTRPG about mystical moons and living spaceships and sentences that can kill you. A preview is available now (see my pinned post), but the full version draws near!
www.kickstarter.com/projects/cru...
Ohhh yeaah, narrative RPG + Zola, I'm here for it.
it's on miro. it's literally on figma. you have to log into okta. it's in jira. it's on zoom. it's on pureref. it's on flow. it's on perforce. it's on slack. you can find it on slack. you can go to slack and find it. log onto slack right now. you can slack it. slack has it for you. it's on slack.
The webpage for our upcoming book has the cover on it now which is enough of a milestone for me to write another post about the book we have coming out soon. www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...
Can confirm, this was nice and easy to complete!
Here We GO! Come along, my dearies!
www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...
