They Are Like Text Adventures Without a Command Prompt, See..?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 31, 2011

So I’m going for a slight deviation of usual topics here. One of the regrets of my lifestyle is that I don’t have much time to read fiction. I don’t have time for a lot of things, like TV, but I generally don’t regret much missed TV, as I have no real interest in remaining […]

Filed Under: Books - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Sword & Sorcery Underworld Gets New Paint

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 30, 2011

I meant to post this over the weekend: Do you remember “Sword and Sorcery: Underworld” by Classic Games Remade? It’s an indie RPG inspired heavily by the early Might & Magic titles. The mechanics are pretty decent, overall, but when even *I* can tell that the visuals were jarringly poor, something’s wrong. If you can […]

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Why the RPG Genre is Losing its Distinctiveness

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 29, 2011

The top names in the mainstream games biz – many of whom have a history of producing computer and console RPGs, have now come to question the relevance of the genre. A former Interplay producer claims that RPGs always wanted to be action games at heart, but just lacked the technology to do so.  Even […]

Filed Under: Biz, Design - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Indie RPGs: One Goodbye, One Hello

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 26, 2011

Jason Compton recently made it official and announced that he has canceled The Broken Hourglass as a commercial product. I’d heard this off-the-record about a year ago, and by this point most people following the game expected as much. It’s been a long time with little to no updates. While sometimes big delays in updates […]

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights Update: A Whole Lotta Maps

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 25, 2011

I’m currently sick with a rather fast-acting cold. As I was still working a bit on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon through a haze induced by both illness and medication (counteracted – or exacerbated – by a dose of Red Bull), I got decidedly un-productive and decided to make a collage of the maps […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Why Game Industry Talent is Going Indie

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 24, 2011

Yet another article about the migration of veteran mainstream game developers going indie: Feral Developers: Why Game Industry Talent is Going Indie I remember the first IGF. I was a mainstream game developer with three hit games under my belt. These poor IGF guys were standing next to their creations as we walked by. I […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Twenty Years…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Okay, not really a game-related post this time. I just wanted to note that twenty years ago today I married my dream-girl and best friend. I wasn’t even out of school yet when we decided to continue our journeys together. It’s been an awesome trip so far.

Filed Under: General - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Subtlety. Or Not.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 23, 2011

A few years ago, at a Utah Indie Night we got into a discussion of subtlety in video games. Herb Flower (of LinkRealms) half-jokingly said, “Subtlety in games is a sledgehammer against a baby’s skull.” In other words, video games don’t do subtle. Or rather, they don’t do subtle for anything that the player is […]

Filed Under: General - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Are Games Too Long?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 22, 2011

According to CNN, fewer players are “finishing” long games now: Why Most People Don’t Finish Video Games When I first saw this article last week, my first thought was, “Crap! Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon is taking testers 30+ hours now. Is it too long?” Maybe. The article cites several key reasons why – […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

Gentlemen (and Ladies) … Start Your Game Engines!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 19, 2011

Ludum Dare #21 kicks off in just a few hours, where game devs around the world will take the next 48 hours to create a game “from scratch.” I won’t be participating, as all the game development I’m doing in the next 48 will be to get the next beta of Frayed Knights out the […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: Comments are off for this article

On the Ungainliness of CRPG Development

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 18, 2011

Maybe we indie RPG developers will get it right, eventually. As much as I do enjoy the little RPG Maker – created jRPG-style indie RPGs out there, the ones that really thrill me are the big-concept RPGs that hearken back not to the old 16-bit console RPGs of yore, but rather the classics of the […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 17 Comments to Read

With Great Power Comes Greater Demands

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 17, 2011

Long before anybody was talking about the “Uncanny Valley,” I was informed about the issue at my first post-college job, at the then new start-up Singletrac. I was one of the few “fresh” faces hired, as many of the employees were from the simulation industry. (It’s amusing that they went from simulation to games, and […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

A Brief History of Wing Commander

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 16, 2011

Okay, you may not think two full articles to be all that brief, but considering the scope and significance of the series, this seems pretty well abridged to me. G4TV has a two-part history of the series: The History of Wing Commander, Part 1 The History of Wing Commander, Part 2 As a young gamer, […]

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: Initiative and Haste

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 15, 2011

We’re in the final stretch of development for Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, and today I wanted to talk about some more of the nuts-and-bolts of the game system. Some of it is discussing features that even the beta testers haven’t seen yet (though many have requested them). Much of this is post is […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Google+ Opens Social Gaming

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 12, 2011

Like this was ever in doubt… Google+ Launches First Set of Social Games There are some curious differences between this and Facebook. First off – it’s not an “open platform.” At least not yet. They are starting with only a few partners for now and gradually letting more onboard to effectively beta-test their system. Will […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Telepath RPG: Servants of God… AIR release

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 11, 2011

I wanted to pass along this tidbit from Craig Stern of Sinister Design: I’ve released a major update to Telepath RPG: Servants of God. The newest version of the game is in AIR, which means that it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux alike using a single installer. There are also a ton of improvements […]

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: Comments are off for this article



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