I added some physics today and discovered that I was spending too much time playing basketball and football with apples in a cave I just digged. It's pretty fun.

That's a good idea, it's another thing the player can do to get food.

P.D.: It's not that I want a very simple combat, it's just that I want to avoid stressful situations. There'll be some danger but not too much.

BioShock honestly bored me (and hundreds of others based on Internet searches) because fetch quest followed by fetch quest is not exciting, even with enemies to shoot. To this day, I have yet to find someone who says they can play BioShock for more than a few hours at a time (compare this to Mass Effect series and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where many people were publicly admitting to no-life-ing the game).

That's because BioShock gameplay is nothing new to you, it's not trying to innovate at all, but that doesn't mean the gameplay is bad; it's just that you've played similar stuff and are bored of watching the same patrons again and again. Imagine playing Bioshock without having played another FPS before, you'd think gameplay was good. That's all I'm saying, the core mechanics are not that bad, it's just that they are not appealing to you.

Please don't make claims about the gameplay quality of BioShock unless you have actually played the game. No, BioShock would not be what it is without the dressing. The gameplay quality of BioShock is exactly decent, nothing more. The developers basically banked on story and setting, and they succeeded.

I played Bioshock and got bored soon but, as stated before, even when I found the gameplay to be dull, I'd not say it's bad.

You're right when you say that Bioshock would not be what it is without the dressing, I didn't denied it. All I'm trying to say is that, from my personal point of view, that's not what we should be doing, even if you sell millions of copies. In my opinion, the core mechanics should be more important than the story, when it's the opposite I just quit the game, even if it has an awesome story and it's being praised by the press.

Chess is also a game that is centuries of years old, was required to learn for millions of people of many different positions of power and wealth, and is today being integrated in many schools as mandatory learning.

The success of Chess is only loosely applicable to games we could develop as indies.

The age or how many people play a game has nothing to do with quality. It's a deep game that requires no dressing because it has a great design behind it. It'd be great even if it was released yesterday and played by just a bunch of people

Dull gameplay becomes acceptable if the story is engrossing. This is proven financially.

BioShock is hailed as one of the greatest FPS games because of its story and engrossing atmosphere. But play the game and you will realize it the gameplay itself adds nothing really new to the FPS genre and that the majority of the game is the player performing 'fetch quests' to gather some items.

The Last of Us, acclaimed by many as possibly the best PS3 shooter to be released this year, has a very engrossing story. However, when it comes to gameplay, there is nothing it adds to the FPS genre (reminds me of Call of Duty), and many of the fights occur in cut-scenes where you have to press some button within a short amount of time in order to win, which is a criticism that is often acknowledged but passed over because the story is just so good.

You are confusing innovation with gameplay quality. "Bioshock" and "The last of us" might not be anything new, but they have a fun gameplay, sure, the story helps to avoid noticing how repetitive they are, but that's all. Gameplay is very polished and it'd be fun for Bioshock fans even without the dressing.

So in "Bioshock" and "The Last of Us" the story helps but there must be a gameplay better than just decent.

I agree that in those games the dressing is way above the gameplay, that's why I'd prefer to have them as a TV show, book or a movie instead of a game.

I've played a few games where the story was great but the gameplay was dull, I ended up quitting after a couple of hours(sometimes minutes) and searching for the cinematics in Youtube.

It's personal preference as to whether a story is needed, but in terms of financial success, a great story with average gameplay will pay off more than great gameplay without a purpose.

I was speaking about game quality rather than financial success. Sure, if you are focusing on earning money you should really worry about the dressing. But from my point of view those are dirty tricks you can use to cheat the gamer. For example, there are some RPGs where you start with some old clothes and a rusty sword, fighting wolfs, by the end of the game you are a fully equipped-knight fighting dragons; that's ok as long as the gameplay gets deeper, if the core mechanics don't progress at the same pace then you're just using a dirty trick. Smart players will notice this and quit the game. Sure, you'll sell tons of copies, that's what many commercial games do.

You can choose to learn from most commercial games and make things that look like hollywood blockbusters (which will look awesome and be financial successful) but I'd rather experiment and try to do something I can call quality entertainment; once I've done that I'll worry about marketing and making it more appealing(adding the dressing).

So basically we differ in the final goal, your point is that financial succes tells us what's right (and what we should do) but I don't feel the same. Everyone has a different point of view of how videogames should be made

<img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

P.D.: Chess doesn't have a story but it's one of the best games ever made. Its core is so good that it doesn't require any dressing at all.

Testing the digging system I made for my fox simulator. Brainstorming here!

<img src="http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/8049/nzg.gif" border="0">

Games don't need stories, unless they need a story.

I agree with Sulli. I bought "To the moon" a few days ago on Steam, it has a beautiful story,it'll make you cry, the problem is that gameplay couldn't be more boring and gets in the middle. It's a game that should be a short movie, a graphic novel or something similar.

It's great to have a good story but just if you have a good gameplay to support it. If you have a good idea for a story don't waste it on a game with dull gameplay.

Graphics, music and stories are great, I love art in games and I've bought a couple of soundtracks but they're useless without a solid core, and that's gameplay; the rest is just a dressing.

Designing comes first, add the dressing and polish it after.

Yeah, sometimes indie games forget about the story or it's very minimalist (like in Braid), that's just a design choice, some studios have a "pure" style and want to focus on gameplay.

I'm designing a game where you play as a fox in the forest. It's like a relaxed sandbox where you play just to disconnect for a while and have fun.

Right now I have a prototype where a world is randomly generated, you can control the fox and dig a den, it's pretty fun to dig for a while creating caves and all that. You can also eat or collect food and store it in your den for later.

I've got some planned features like adding rabbits and some small animals (that will require some basic AI to make it fun) so player can choose between hunting, collecting nuts, berries, etc. I also want to add some customization to your lair, it's not minecraft, it's just a fox simulator, but you'll be able to use leaves and fallen branches to create some basic stuff. I'll also add a day/night cycle.

So let's do some brainstorming!

Can you think of more tasks or things to add? Keep in mind that I want to make a game to relax and have fun, I was gonna add a hunter so you had to run and hide but decided not to do it because it'd be too stressful. I might include bears or bigger animals, to create some danger, but it won't be hard to flee.

"Xbox 360 Controller recommended.

Keyboard controls:

WASD + SPACE"

It's playable with WASD but it might be better with the arrow keys. Looks pretty great, I'll plug my xbox controller later and rate it :)

Yeah, sorry for the 404 error, my bad, it's the link what is not working(don't know why). Try playing the web version from the Ludum Dare website.

The Hero's Journey (or get the treasure and run) - Ludum Dare #27 Entry

<img src="http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/compo2/thumb/c373cbb8a30dd67d0e50487767d71f18.jpg" border="0">

"The Hero's Journey (or get the treasure and run)" is a platform game which tries to be fun and somehow educational at the same time. It's a very basic representation of Joseph Campbell's "Monomyth"; if you don't know what this is you'll find out playing the game.

In the game you must get to the treasure chest and then keep running until you get to the beginning again. You'll repeat this task a few times but the stage changes.

The game features three game modes (easy, normal and endless). It's designed to be easy so, from my point of view, most players shouldn't have any problems when playing on endless (which is the hardest).

Instructions: (they are included in the game) Arrow keys to move and "X" to jump.

NOTE: Desktop version is recommended

Includes nerdy references!

P.D.: I was too tired to focus on fixing the crappy collisions.

Ludum Dare Entry

Web Version

A Wizard's Aventure (GBJAM Entry)

<img src="http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/6084/ptp1.png" border="0">

<img src="http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8208/7w5i.png" border="0">

Description:

Guide a young wizard on his quest to recover the true names, the words that give powers to the practitioners of the magical arts. Wizards are beginning to forget this words and someone must be behind it. Explore the island and talk to the villagers to find out what's going on.

Genre:

Exploration/Adventure/Platformer

Instructions:

Use the arrow keys to move, X to jump and Z to interact

Developers: Ludipe, aquilicoco, Dieguillo24

Entry

Kongregate

Windows

Quick postmortem:

GBJAM ended a few days ago but I didn�t have enough time to write a proper postmortem as I was going on a family trip.

For the occasion I teamed up with aquilicoco (creator of the amazing pixel art) and Dieguillo24 (the composer who helps setting the mood). We worked together mainly because neither of us had enough time to make anything decent on his own.

The idea was, once again, too complex for a game jam, I should learn the lesson and start aiming for simpler projects, maybe an arcade game. The last two days were crazy, I designed the game and wrote the story almost in the last two or three hours, and that�s the reason why it looks like an early prototype. I tried to get rid of the bigger bugs I found so at least it would be a playable prototype.

My website

I wasn't even going to submit mine. I wanted to create something way to complex and creative to be achieved by just one person in 48 hours. I submitted it as a screensaver <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle"> , it's almost impossible to play it without finding bugs.

Entry

Postmortem

I don't know why but when I saw MolyRun I thought it must have been done with construct.

Anyways, GBJAM is next.