Turn-Based Combat – Tactics Versus Execution

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 6, 2010

As she was cleaning up our storage closet this week (making room for Christmas presents, I guess), my wife pulled out an old wargame of mine that has been preserved over the decades – the TSR release of the hard-core air combat game Air War. I’ve never been much of a wargamer, but Air War […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Sintel

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 5, 2010

If you haven’t yet seen the short film Sintel on YouTube,  here it is: The coolest part? It was made by independent funding from donations, and was created using Blender – the free open-source 3D modeling package. In fact, the goal of the project was “to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation […]

Filed Under: Art, Movies - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

A Commercial Game in One Month? It’s ON Like Donkey Kong!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 23, 2010

Well, maybe not for me personally since I’m frantically working on another commercial title that’s way overdue… but I’m oh-so-tempted. With an idea… heh… I had back in the 90s. In fact, it got me my job in the mainstream biz. Could be cool to dust it off. See, it’s this cyberpunk action RPG… No. […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: Read the First Comment

Is the “Old School Goodness” Now Poison?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Ouch. ‘ … the vast majority was utterly flummoxed by the game. As one of them put it, “I’d say for gamers of our generation, an RPG like Ultima IV is boring and pretty much unplayable.” After removing the arrow from my chest, I asked them to explain why.‘ I’ve been chewing on this and […]

Filed Under: Design, Retro - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

Derek Yu on How to Finish a Game

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 22, 2010

I think I need to permanently bookmark this piece and re-read it weekly. Derek Yu offers fifteen solid tips for actually finishing a game. It’s called, mysteriously enough: Finishing a Game I have been known to actually finish games from time to time. So I do have some perspective on this, though probably not as […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Production - Comments: Read the First Comment

Frayed Knights: Tool Time

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 17, 2010

Time for another update on Frayed Knights, the “quick” and “easy” indie RPG that was somehow going to magically take only a few months of my spare time to complete. This update is going to be super-ultra-sexy. Which in this case means, “Totally boring unless you are a programming or design geek.” My apologies. Abraham […]

Filed Under: Design, Frayed Knights - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Best Game Cover Art?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 16, 2010

One annoying tendency I’ve discovered with some  indie digital download games is that there’s a depressing lack of cover art sometimes. It seems this is more often an issue with newer indies on their first release, as they tend to be far more willing to invest in an impressive cover piece on their second or […]

Filed Under: Art, General - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Behind the Mask

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 15, 2010

While I may lose a few geek points by this admission, I was never a huge comic book fan. There were a couple of titles I collected (particularly those written by Chris Claremont), and a few others I followed as I could afford them or read friends’ copies. I’ve gotten into passionate arguments over Marvel […]

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Freaky Discovery of the Weekend – and Using Urban Mythology as Game Plots

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 12, 2010

Okay, I thought I was having my leg pulled actually following up on what sounded like a freaky-deaky conspiracy theory, but after being told that the signature line on all my checks wasn’t actually a line at all here in the U.S., I decided to play the sucker and go ahead and inspect the line […]

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Room Escape Games and Micro-RPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 10, 2010

Classic graphic adventure gaming has had a bit of a casual resurgence lately with the appearance of “Room Escape” games. If you haven’t played any yet (and I’ve only played a couple), they are basically tiny adventure games, usually written in Flash, that have gained quite a bit of popularity. They take place in a […]

Filed Under: Adventure Games, Casual Games, Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

The Episode Problem

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 2, 2010

When Robert Jordan was still alive and his Wheel of Time series was The Hot Thing in fantasy (I guess that was a while ago, huh?), I deliberately avoided it. My wife finally coerced me into listening to the first book on tape when I had a long commute a few years ago, but I […]

Filed Under: Production - Comments: 16 Comments to Read

Making a Game – On Fast Forward

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 30, 2010

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could make a game this fast? But no – this is a time-lapse look at Markus “Minecraft” Persson’s Ludum Dare 18 entry – a “game in a weekend” competition. As with many of the competitors, it’s dang impressive what was accomplished in only 48 hours of development time. The […]

Filed Under: Free Games, Game Development - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Are JRPGs “True” RPGs?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 25, 2010

Kombo.com makes the assertion, “An RPG is not an RPG when it’s a JRPG.” I wanted to get all up in their grill with that and whip out Persona as the counterpoint, but they already made that exception themselves.  D’oh. So instead, as a fan of (some) jRPGs, I still feel a desire to defend […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

A Quick Revisit to Serpent Isle

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 10, 2010

I  try to devote a certain amount of time each week to playing RPGs. Yeah, it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it *g*. I do it to keep myself grounded in what’s out there, what the classics have done, what’s new, what the indies are doing, and to keep my mind working on […]

Filed Under: Design, Retro - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights – Is the Light at the End of the Tunnel an Oncoming Dragon?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 6, 2010

While the saga of Frayed Knights’ development isn’t even close to an end, we’re staring down the throat of a milestone. That counts for something, right? If Frayed Knights was a house, this would be the point where the foundation is long complete, the house is framed, the exterior walls are up, the wiring and […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Game Development - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Game PR: Indie Versus Mainstream

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 4, 2010

Brian Mitsoda recently penned a design update for Doublebear’s upcoming “Zombie RPG” entitled, “To Here Knows When.” I think the title is completely lost on me, but the subject is terribly familiar (especially as my “quickie” game is going into its fourth year of development – ouch, that hurts…) Now, people have a very good […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Production - Comments: 3 Comments to Read



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