xeneth.design

      Getting caught up in the work-like rhythms of this project has perhaps caused it to become slightly  less personal over time. There was initially a lot of frustrated "whatever, I guess this is what I'm doing now" energy that sort of burned off as I began to focus on what made each UFO 50  game special; broadly, these games are far  more interesting than my own problems and limitations as a game designer. Well, playing what amounts to a more focused console version of SimAnt  has put me right back in my feelings today. When I wrote about my reaction to playing CombatAnts  for the first time, I wasn't fully ready to unpack some of those memories and experiences. Apologies in advance for once again getting way too real about my past... So when I say that StarCraft had a huge, but not necessarily positive, impact on me as a teenager, I mostly mean that it changed me in several ways, but not into someone that generally enjoys real time strateg...

    A  common refrain you tend to hear from Final Fantasy VIII 's detractors, (a group I certainly belong to, despite my devil's advocacy) is that its reviled Junction System is "too complicated." That's a bit reductive, and putting stock in stories of forlorn players pushing deep into the game without ever engaging with the system is difficult, given how exhaustively they teach and over-explain it. You can tell your 18 y/o teacher is into you if she slow blinks Heck, given her age and status as a pump-fake love interest, I suspect the only narrative reason Quistis Trepe was written as an instructor and not just an upper-classmate boils down to naturalizing her unhinged level of tutorialization on the topic! Individual spell casts get sucked out of enemies and act like consumables, and Guardian Forces buff you by equipping stacks of spells to your stats; that's about it! Core player understanding of FFVIII 's Junction System wasn't really one of its ...

     After hearing murmurings from Super Eyepatch Wolf and others, I decided to jump into system_erasure 's latest game  Void Stranger completely blind... This is normally where spoiler warnings would be appropriate, but I'm not sure how much I could possibly spoil given I haven't really started the game yet. That's right; I'm stopping to write this in response to playing the game for all of 5 minutes! + + + Void Stranger appears to be a game about defying player expectations. Before even getting past the title screen, I am confronted with a dynamic representation of the simple controls; Up , Left , Down , Right , A , and Start , in black, white, and gray against a field of rising particles. The interface responds to inputs and makes it clear that my controller is indeed working, but pressing Start simply causes it to light up; it does not allow me to actually start the game... How strange. A bit of thrashing around on the buttons yields a minor discovery; did the...