Plasmacore & Slag

Couldn't really start this blog now without talking about Plasmacore and Slag, as they have in part inspired me to start getting back in to game design and production in my spare time.

Slag is a high-level language with a nice syntax and fantastic pick-up-and-play-ness to it written by Abe Pralle

Plasmacore is a set of libraries for Slag geared towards cross platform 2D game development and also written by Abe. Current platforms supported are PC and Wii (if you have a dev kit, natch), but iPhone support is coming soon and with it, potentially Mac support. Personally, I'd love to see something that allows publishing to the web, though not quite sure how that would work... whether you would do it Flash based, or Java or what..

Thanks, Gamasutra

Games4Change

This is a great set of presentations for anyone looking at making awareness raising games. It's aimed at non profit organisations and as such covers a fair chunk of the game making process and a lot of background info for those unfamiliar with the mediun.

Click launch toolkit to view: http://www.gamesforchange.org/toolkit

Thanks, Ars Technica

RPG

Currently throwing around ideas for an old school RPG for the PC, web and iPhone.

Main influence would be NetHack, with a bit of Dwarf Fortress (though no where near as scarily deep) and Chaos, as well as dashes of Deus Ex, Planescape Torment and maybe even Masq.

For visual style, I like the retro feel of sprites being based around single colours and distinctive shapes and also think that this could help readibility massively.


Wish list of features so far is:

* Stat-less progression, characters expressed in terms of adjectives, verbs and adverbs instead.

* Innovative combat in the vein of old school Chapionship Manager, perhaps even with quicktime events.

* Human-ish conversation system, talk your way out of sticky situations.

* Level up each contact in your address book. Other contacts may turn up as foes to defeat!

* Funky retro graphics.

* Level editor end-game, store your valuables in your own tower or dungeon to attract adventurers, but make sure they have to fight or be cunning to get the prizes!


Anyway, all I've got so far is a few crappy first attempts at pixel art for some of the characters. I'm wondering how many different kinds I can do before it gets difficult to tell them apart.



Note for some reason, the conversion to png or the image upload has made the background colour less black and blurred some of the pixel-i-ness.  Click to see raw image.

Amanita Design

An awesome independent developer with a very distinctive visual style. They make the Samorost games. Also check out Questionaut (made for the BBC) and their upcoming game, Machinarium.

Thanks, RockPaperShotgun.