ECOFISH

This looks like a good moment to mention Ecofish, a small indie game created by just 4 guys 10 months ago: Eduardo 'Barkley' Jimenez (coder and project lead), Toni Ros & Manuel Usero (graphic artists) and me. We released it originally on iOS (Apple store), XLIG and recently on PSM, the store for Sony mobile devices and PSP Vita.

My part on that project was game designer (along with Barkley, the coder), level designer and kind of scrum master / tester / producer. It was a pleasure tele-working with them, and was also very helpful to ease the pain of working at my employer back at that moment. A pity I couldn´t invest more time, since I could barely spend a couple of hours on working days, so I had to book most of my weekends almost exclusively for this project.

Anyway, I feel proud of my participation on that project, I think it´s among the best pieces of work I´ve done in my career and (particularly the level designs) I can say I was practically the sole owner of them (so if you don´t like them you can certainly blame me for it :D). I recommend anyone interested on indie games to give it a try. More info here.

HOT COFFEE

I just found an interesting article of how the whole Hot Coffee crisis happened after the GTA San Andreas release. You can read it here.

Truth is, this may have been a turning point for Rockstar. That company was famous for challenging the boundaries, but after the Hot Coffee mod discovered hidden sex mini-games seems like the company learned the monetary value of taking some risks, and since then they haven´t exactly tried to innovate in terms of content. GTA 4 was more of the same in my opinion and I suspect GTA 5 will follow the trend. We´ll see.

A GAME STUDIO IN THE CLOUDS

Thanks to a friend, I took a look at a very interesting Gamasutra article, which I share now with you all (Click here). It´s about how to run a videogame studio without a central office but spread around the world based on teleworkers. Enjoy!

VIDEOGAME REVIEWS

Actually it´s no surprise since everyone in the videogame business knew about it, but seems like it´s has been made public in the last weeks: The objectivity of certain websites is under question, since they regularly receive gifts, travels and other presents from publisher PR departments.

Anyway, make your own opinion. Here is one of the articles explaining the current situation.

MACHINATIONS

Here is an interesting article about a designer´s tool for balancing game economies. Ernest Adams has written some good books and this tool (you can find it here) can be useful for data-heavy games...

... but honestly I think it´s not intuitive, requires some work to master and eventually it sounds easier to build a simple system in code rather than building these diagrams. Anyway, some people may find it useful. Enjoy!

MIRROR´S EDGE

God bless the Steam summer sales. You get great games for almost nothing. I bought 7 for around 30 euros altogether.

And as usual, any game I buy I try to finish it. First one has been Mirror´s Edge. I played the Xbox demo 4 years ago and although I liked the visual style it was too difficult so I passed. But in PC is easier, so I gave it a try.

Mixed feelings. On the plus side it´s visually unique, the controls become second nature relatively soon, you do have the feeling of being a parkour artist and often suffer vertigo when jumping from roof to roof. I always value when you try to make something different, and for the most part Mirror´s Edge achieve it.

On the minus side the story is weak and predictible, the supposedly oppressive city and subjugated citizens look extremely bright and optimistic and you miss some variation on gameplay, since it´s always jumping and more jumping. Some additional game modes would have been appreaciated as well.

I recommend the title (not so much the iOS version) as long as you like puzzles and platforming. Too bad EA announced that it was not planned to continue the IP, I suspect a sequel would be much better.

DUKE NUKEM: THE DOCTOR WHO CLONED ME

In a previous post I mentioned I had finished Duke Nukem Forever. Not a great game, but I dig the series humor.

Taking advantage of the Steam summer sales, I bought the expansion "The doctor who cloned me" and I recently finished it. Again mixed feelings: There are some fresh and enjoyable ideas regarding the Duke Nukem clone army that you fight, and some brilliant level design (like the portal-like scenarios where you need to pass the Duke Nukem tests) but again it´s often visually poor, and after you finish the doctor the plot totally changes in favor to another alien invasion which offers little to the game. I´m prone to suspect it was a group of levels who didn´t make it into the game, and later they were added to this DLC.

So once more, if you like the Duke Nukem persona or shooters in general I may recommend it, otherwise it´s not the game for you.