Utah Indie Night, July 2013

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 31, 2013

We had our bi-monthly indie game developer meet-up last night at the University of Utah, courtesy of the Entertainment Arts & Engineering (EAE) program. The formal presentation for the evening was by Lyle Cox, who spoke about increasing intrinsic motivation in games. Boiling the talk down to what I think was its essence, intrinsic motivation […]

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Matt Chat 203 – Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 30, 2013

For this week’s Matt Chat, professor and video game historian Matt Barton gives Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon a solid play-through and some opinions on the game, and also makes an announcement: He is working with me on some dungeon designs for Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath! Based on his getting bitten […]

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The Trolls Devour Fish

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 29, 2013

Crab mentality. It’s a thing. Individually, crabs could escape an open-top bucket. But if you add other crabs, and they’ll keep pulling each other down as soon as one rises, so that none can escape. Now, it drives me crazy when people brush off criticism by saying, “Oh, they’re just jealous.” Nine times out of […]

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Shadowrun Returns – Impressions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 26, 2013

Yesterday, Shadowrun Returns became available – the first, I think, of the “major” Kickstarter games to do so (ones over, what, a half-mil in funding?). I did not participate in the Kickstarter, but I did pre-order the game.  With the news of the delays in Wasteland 2 and Broken Age, it’s nice to have had […]

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The Xbox One Promises to Allow Indie Self-Publishing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 25, 2013

This really shouldn’t be news. It’s kinda sad that it is, and represents a reversal of Microsoft’s previous position (along with many other changes to the Xbox One since their E3 unveiling). Really, it just takes us back to where we’ve been with the 360. But that is, and was, a pretty good thing… Xbox […]

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The Final Brick (and Mortar) Wall Begins to Crumble…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 24, 2013

After decades of brick & mortar sales leading the way, of where fealty to game stores and Wal*Mart were paramount, I guess you can say that things have finally, officially reversed… EA Reports Digital Revenues Outpace Brick-and-Mortar Sales An online friend noted that a big chunk of that is probably due to DLC sales. I […]

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How to Design Puzzles for Role-Playing Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 23, 2013

I love puzzles in my RPGs – except when I hate them. I have a low threshold of tolerance for the kind of frustration they can yield, but I enjoy great satisfaction in solving them. It’s like having a sweet tooth and an allergy to sugar. When Legend of Grimrock was released, I was ecstatic.  […]

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Frayed Knights: Dungeon Design Principles, Part 2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 22, 2013

This is a multi-part series describing my level-design guidelines for Frayed Knights.  You can read part 1 here. Many of these guidelines have been with me for a long time. They evolved even when I was designing dungeons on paper for friends to play through. They were certainly inspired by the early dice-and-paper RPG books […]

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The Ouya Needs Exclusives – And How They Might Succeed in Getting Them

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 19, 2013

I love my Ouya. I’m the eternal optimist about it, and I definitely intend to release Frayed Knights 2 on the little cube.  Assuming I can get it to run well on the box, I don’t expect it to make much money, but I’m doing it because it’s cool. And because I’m building my game […]

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Checklists for Making Awesome Video Games, and for Making Game Development Awesome

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 18, 2013

Making video games has always been as much art as science. At times, chained to the oars of a ship chasing the bleeding-edge horizon of technology or constrained by massive budgets to make obsessively risk-averse design decisions, the industry has drifted further out on the “science” side. Perhaps now, with the rise of indie games, […]

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What Sets Off Your “Just One More Turn / Level / Match” Reflex?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 17, 2013

I’ve decided it’s not the same for everybody. Maybe it doesn’t exist for some people. But for the rest of us (maybe just those of us with low willpower – like the ones who keep buying games from the Steam Sale even though we have more games than we could play in a year of […]

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life, Strategy Games - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Indie Marketing / PR Tips

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 16, 2013

Leigh Alexander has posted a set of five PR tips indies really need. On the flip side, here are five  indie PR tips you really SHOULDN’T read. Or rather, five things you should not do, yet many indies do it anyway. Sadly, I’ve seen these very things thrown around certain forums as actual advice… And […]

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Frayed Knights: Dungeon Design Principles, Part 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 15, 2013

During the development of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, I evolved a set of informal philosophies or guidelines towards making adventuring areas (which I’ll just call “dungeons”, though some were outdoors). For the sequel, I actually wrote many of these guidelines down. At the risk of revealing a developing “secret formula” (hah!), but in […]

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The Steam Sale

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 12, 2013

If you didn’t know already… Steam’s Summer Sale Started Yesterday I have more games than I can possibly play at this point, so naturally, I haven’t purchased anything. Oh, wait, that’s wrong… I did. I really did. I regret nothing. Actually, seeing how the prices of semi-recent games have come down, I guess I kinda […]

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Sharks… Tornado… Sharknado…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 11, 2013

It sounds like some filmmaker for SyFy has the soul (and budget) of an indie game dev. “Here’s $50 grand and the phone number to my nephew, who has a fledgling CGI studio. Make us a horror movie!” I guess when you get into that situation you can either make the best movie possible under […]

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Dungeon’s Got Depth!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 10, 2013

I like big dungeons, and I cannot lie. You adventurers can’t deny When the party walks in through those elf-runed doors And find out its got ten floors… You’re no longer bored. You want to pull out your sword. You know that dungeon is deep and mean With lots of treasure for you to glean. […]

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