Frayed Knights, New Price

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 28, 2014

The time has come, ladies and gentlemen. Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon has a new price, both direct and through Desura. Cheaper is good, right? While the sequel is still a little further off than I expected at this point, this really is all part of my cunning plan to spread this game around […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Now on Kickstarter: Saga Heroes

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 27, 2014

King.com has dropped their trademark claim on the word “Candy,” at least in the U.S.  No word yet on the word, “Saga.” This could be pretty interesting for Eric Wiggins of Wasatch Games, as the Kickstarter he is launching today is for a game in a series of titles – both game and movie – […]

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Game Design Lessons from Ken Rolston

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 26, 2014

Ken Rolston has quite a list of game design credentials, from working on two of the Elder Scrolls games, to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (which I hear is a good game, in spite of being tainted by its history), to experience working in the dice-and-paper RPG industry. His office-mate Alexander Horn from the 38 Studios […]

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Roguelikes (PDLs) Vs RPGs?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 25, 2014

I’d like to enumerate what – to ME – amounts to the fundamental differences between roguelikes and RPGs: … Some folks may argue with me  – please do! I think it’s mainly certain roguelike fans who see a major distinction, or maybe some other folks who can’t squint hard enough to see the similarities between […]

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Irrational and the “Death of AAA Games”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 24, 2014

By now, most of you have heard about the closing of Irrational Games (makers of the Bioshock series and… well, perhaps more importantly for me, their less-well-remembered but awesome Freedom Force series…). Now, the official reason is that founder Ken Levine wanted to switch gears and work on smaller games with a smaller team. That’s […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

The Must-Play Classics of PC Gaming

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 21, 2014

Okay, Kotaku has a fun list – a relatively complete list of the greatest classics of PC gaming. There are some that leave me scratching my head (TRESPASSER? Seriously? Just to see how bad things can get?), and an embarrassingly high number of them that I have never played. The one rule was that it […]

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 17 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: Starting In the Middle

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 20, 2014

Here’s a cool thing about RPGs in general, which has been true since the first “white box” D&D books were released to the public:  They are designed with built-in character progression that matches the player’s learning curve. At first level, or the early stages of the game, your character isn’t very powerful, and doesn’t have […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Eschalon Book III Released, Website Launch Pains Resolved

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 19, 2014

Thomas Riegsecker of Basilisk Games has been living through one of my own personal nightmares, it seems. The long-anticipated Eschalon: Book III, the final chapter of the series that began with the first game’s release in 2007, launched on Valentine’s Day. This is a Good Thing. I’ve not played it yet, but I mean to […]

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Legally Rewriting History to Screw the Little Guy

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 18, 2014

This is a few days old, but I thought I’d share this little open letter from Albert Ransom. Just in case we’d forgotten who the real nasty douchebags of the games industry were… Open letter to King.com who wants to cancel the registration of the CandySwipe trademark. So if you didn’t get the complete picture […]

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Meson Pie Review of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 17, 2014

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook may have seen this one over the weekend. Meson Pie is doing a series called “Greenlighters” which highlights games which have been stuck in Steam Greenlight for a while. Guess who was featured? The one thing that this video tells me, along with a few […]

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

Game Dev Quote of the Week: Gratitude for Crappy Games Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 14, 2014

The following comes from the extremely awesome and talented (and quotable) Jeff Minter, creator of many, many games including Gridrunner, Tempest 2000, and Space Giraffe (shown below). It was printed in “Halcyon Days” (a source which I just discovered and will no doubt be drawing several quotes from in the future): “Basically I was motivated […]

Filed Under: Quote of the Week - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Indies: We Eat Cannibals

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 13, 2014

I really haven’t weighed in very much about the whole “Flappy Bird” flap. I never played it. My familiarity with the game came entirely from reading news about it over the last two weeks. Here’s what I learned, in the order that I’d obtained the kowledge, plus my thoughts, at the time, in parenthesis: 1. […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Game Development: Tool Add-Ons and Keeping Up-To-Date

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 12, 2014

This isn’t really an update on Frayed Knights 2 status. I’m overdue to give you one, I know.  This is more of a general-purpose post about game development, but of course my point of reference is Frayed Knights 2. It naturally looms large in my mind and consumes a good deal of my focus. One […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Programming - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Game Announcement: Subterranea

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 11, 2014

Okay, I normally don’t like to report on games that are this early in development, but I make plenty of exceptions. In this case, it’s because creator John Mabbot… well, he asked. So here it is. The game is called Subterranea, and it’s another one of these games that, on paper anyway, sounds like it […]

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Quick Take: Dungeon Fray

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 10, 2014

I am as much of a sucker for the big-name RPGs as anybody else. Yes, marketing works on me, too, go figure. But I still love to check out the unsung, relatively unknown little indie games. Sometimes they do a better job of scratching the itch. Sometimes not. Dungeon Fray is one that I hadn’t […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: Playing For Quarters Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 7, 2014

I love digging out the old quotes about video games from the 80s and 90s. So much has changed, and so much seems quaint in retrospect, but the fundamental truths are usually still there once you strip out the technology and assumptions of the era. This one comes from the 1996 Computer Game Developers’ Conference […]

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