Happy New Year!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 31, 2015

It’s New Year’s Eve here, and I will be taking tomorrow off of blogging. I’d say that I’ll be sleeping off my revelry from the night before, but ya’ll know me. We’re having friends over, and we may be having some wild, wild … board gaming and competitive Tetris playing until only about an hour […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Rampant Games - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

RPG Design: Drawing Inspiration from Maps

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 30, 2015

Level 7. It was the most notorious level of the Ultima Underworld series. It was responsible for me giving up on the game for several weeks. Of course, the reason for all that wasn’t the map itself, but the anti-magic effect. But to me, this is an example of what a really awesome dungeon level […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Why Would Anyone Buy Another RPG?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 29, 2015

With the bundles and two steam sales recently (Hey, did I mention Frayed Knights is on sale at Steam? Well, consider it mentioned again!), my game collection is threatening to get out of control again. I’m not sure when I’m going to play them all. I do try, at least. Last night I spent some […]

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

Game Design: Puzzle-Solving vs. Problem-Solving

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 28, 2015

Many types of games emphasize puzzle-solving. Adventure games, hidden-object games, and many popular indie platformer games come to mind (Super Meat Boy being one of the best examples). For me, puzzle-solving is overcoming a problem for which there is a narrow range (often only one) solution, or a “best” solution. The challenge may be in […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Merry Christmas

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 24, 2015

Merry Christmas everyone! I found this old’ programmer pixel art from years ago, and thought I’d repost it. Just ‘cuz I knew you’d appreciate it. Or not. I won’t be posting tomorrow (Christmas Day), so y’all have a safe and wonderful weekend. Good luck, and have fun!

Filed Under: General - Comments: Read the First Comment

Frayed Knights Discounted at the STEAM SALE

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 23, 2015

The Steam Winter Sale is ON.  If you didn’t know. Like the fall sale, there are no special daily discounts – just overall discounts for the rest of the week. According to the current count, there are over 10,000 games discounted right now. That is a lot. One of those games is, of course, Frayed […]

Filed Under: Deals, Frayed Knights - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Spoiler-Free: The Force Awakens

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 22, 2015

I was gonna come up with a catchy title here, but… screw it. Without giving away anything about the new Star Wars movie (at least nothing that wasn’t already revealed in the trailers and commercials), here’s my opinion (totally free and worth every penny): I’ve seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens twice now.  If you […]

Filed Under: Movies - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Thoughts on the Steam Controller

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 21, 2015

In conjunction with the Steam Machines and so forth, Valve has launched a new game controller specifically designed to handle PC games. I picked one up, but I haven’t spent a whole lot of time with it. That’s actually an issue a lot of people have had with it. I’ve heard from some people who […]

Filed Under: Impressions - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Releases This Week

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 18, 2015

Final Fantasy VI – considered by many to be the best game of the entire series – released on PC this week. You can find it on Steam at this link, but I’m not sure where else. I’m not sure what I can say about it that hasn’t already been said by many more qualified […]

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Movies - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Design: Responsible Glitchiness

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 17, 2015

Note: This is a heavily-edited (more like “influenced by”) version of an article that I wrote in 2006 for the old blog. If it rings at all familiar, that’s why. My first Game Developer’s Conference was in 1995. This was when it was still called the “Computer Game Developer’s Conference” (CGDC), and it was the […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

The Dream Game

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 16, 2015

I used to have this recurring dream about an old arcade machine that I’d just discovered, or one that I’d somehow forgotten about. Why an arcade game? I think it’s rooted in that magical era of the arcade. Sort of in the same way we get the (manufactured?) urban legend of Polybius, that era kind […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Returning to the Underworld – Swords and Sorcery: Underworld Definitive Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 15, 2015

Swords and Sorcery: Underworld – the Definitive Edition has just been released today on Steam. For those who remember the original – and the graphically updated “Gold” edition – this is a ground-up rewrite of the game using an engine planned for the sequel. If you played the earlier versions, this thing is… well, it is […]

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Impressions - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Too Sick to Indie?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 14, 2015

I get this crazy idea that if I’m too sick to sleep, too sick to go to work, I’ll be able to take advantage of that sick time and get some indie dev time in (or at least write some blog posts). It almost never works out that way. While I try to be paranoid […]

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Musings on Retrogaming

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 11, 2015

Sometimes I wonder if my weird retrogaming habit isn’t to appease my insatiable inner 13-year-old, who didn’t own a console system, and blew his allowance regularly at the local arcade. That kid had way more time than money, and not a lot of games (for a while). That was probably a good thing for me, […]

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: How Do Players Do?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 9, 2015

I didn’t think about it when I put them in, but achievements are an interesting way to track how players progress through the game without having to resort to sneaky player-monitoring checks. For Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, only 3.5% of the players who start the game actually finish it. I understand that’s not […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Making Weapons in Fantasy Worlds More Interesting by Banning Them

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 8, 2015

The crossbow was once banned for use (“against Christians”) by Pope Innocent III. It was the “ultimate weapon.” The prevailing belief is that this was done because it took minimal training to use and could penetrate a knight’s armor at range. Since knights were the “main battle tanks” of the era, the idea that these […]

Filed Under: General - Comments: 4 Comments to Read



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