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TOM FRANCIS
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Hello! I'm Tom. I'm a game designer, writer, and programmer on Gunpoint, Heat Signature, and Tactical Breach Wizards. Here's some more info on all the games I've worked on, here are the videos I make on YouTube, and here are two short stories I wrote for the Machine of Death collections.

Theme

By me. Uses Adaptive Images by Matt Wilcox.

Tom’s Timer 5

The Bone Queen And The Frost Bishop: Playtesting Scavenger Chess In Plasticine

Gridcannon: A Single Player Game With Regular Playing Cards

Dad And The Egg Controller

A Leftfield Solution To An XCOM Disaster

Rewarding Creative Play Styles In Hitman

Postcards From Far Cry Primal

Solving XCOM’s Snowball Problem

Kill Zone And Bladestorm

An Idea For More Flexible Indie Game Awards

What Works And Why: Multiple Routes In Deus Ex

Naming Drugs Honestly In Big Pharma

Writing vs Programming

Let Me Show You How To Make A Game

What Works And Why: Nonlinear Storytelling In Her Story

What Works And Why: Invisible Inc

Our Super Game Jam Episode Is Out

What Works And Why: Sauron’s Army

Showing Heat Signature At Fantastic Arcade And EGX

What I’m Working On And What I’ve Done

The Formula For An Episode Of Murder, She Wrote

Improving Heat Signature’s Randomly Generated Ships, Inside And Out

Raising An Army Of Flying Dogs In The Magic Circle

Floating Point Is Out! And Free! On Steam! Watch A Trailer!

Drawing With Gravity In Floating Point

What’s Your Fault?

The Randomised Tactical Elegance Of Hoplite

Here I Am Being Interviewed By Steve Gaynor For Tone Control

A Story Of Heroism In Alien Swarm

One Desperate Battle In FTL

To Hell And Back In Spelunky

Gunpoint Development Breakdown

My Short Story For The Second Machine Of Death Collection

Not Being An Asshole In An Argument

Playing Skyrim With Nothing But Illusion

How Mainstream Games Butchered Themselves, And Why It’s My Fault

A Short Script For An Animated 60s Heist Movie

Arguing On The Internet

Shopstorm, A Spelunky Story

Why Are Stealth Games Cool?

The Suspicious Developments manifesto

GDC Talk: How To Explain Your Game To An Asshole

Listening To Your Sound Effects For Gunpoint

Understanding Your Brain

What Makes Games Good

A Story Of Plane Seats And Class

Deckard: Blade Runner, Moron

Avoiding Suspicion At The US Embassy

An Idea For A Better Open World Game

A Different Way To Level Up

A Different Idea For Ending BioShock

My Script For A Team Fortress 2 Short About The Spy

Team Fortress 2 Unlockable Weapon Ideas

Don’t Make Me Play Football Manager

EVE’s Assassins And The Kill That Shocked A Galaxy

My Galactic Civilizations 2 War Diary

I Played Through Episode Two Holding A Goddamn Gnome

My Short Story For The Machine Of Death Collection

Blood Money And Sex

A Woman’s Life In Search Queries

First Night, Second Life

SWAT 4: The Movie Script

Fallout Girl: Striking Out

Previously, on Fallout Girl.

Fallout Girl 3

At some point during my peaceful reign over Tenpenny Towers, I found myself chainsawing an old man in the neck. In his office, which for some reason he’d kitted out like a doctor’s surgery, I found an old tape of someone talking about androids. Specifically, an escaped android who’s looking for a doctor to have a little work done. Ah, that’s probably it – he was a doctor. I knew there had to be some explanation.

I’ll be honest, I don’t much care where my dad’s gone. He was a nice enough chap to have around when I was growiing up, but I’m sure he’s got a good reason for striking out on his own. Jesus, I’m what, twenty eight? I’ve been living with my parents long enough. Besides, he’s quest-critical. The worst that could happen is that he falls over for a while.

So I didn’t have much interest in Fallout 3’s main quest. But I had a lot of interest in an escaped android. The tape wasn’t much of a lead, but I headed out from the safety of Tenpenny to investigate it all the same.

Fallout3 2008-11-03 23-06-32-07

What I found, almost immediately, was a raider camp. Slipping down a mountainside I sniped a lookout’s arm off with Tenpenny’s rifle, then ploughed through the two entrance guards with my baseball bat. Inside it was a fairly small warehouse, but a hole in the wall lead to a huge cave complex beneath. Decked out like a nightclub. I snuck around it smashing people with a sledgehammer and planting landmines in their pockets until I came to a friendly man named Smiling Jack. Jack wasn’t a bandit like the others, he was a weapons merchant with an enormous arsenal who didn’t much care who he sold to. I put a landmine in his pocket and took it all from his corpse.

Fallout Girl 2

Tenpenny’s rifle was immediately obsolete. I had laser rifles, laser pistols, grenades, missile launchers, flame throwers, and something called The Terrible Shotgun. But it was on my way out that I found the jackpot: The Fat Man. A handheld nuclear warhead launcher. Handheld, but not light – its weight tipped my haul over the humanly haulable limit, and I was slowed to a crawl. Usually this would be irrelevant – I could just fast-travel home and ditch some stuff. But I’d slipped in with a minimum of fuss, which left a maximum of enemies still roaming the camp. No fast travel till they’re dead.

With a sadness I set the Fat Man down on a step and set about disintegrating the camp’s inhabitants. It turned out they had a Goliath caged up, which I left well alone, as well as some slaves. Since I was going to have to kill all their captors anyway, it seemed rude not to set them free, so I unlocked the pen. See? I can be nice.

Fallout3 2008-11-03 23-11-10-40

Slaves don’t have any weapons, of course, but they’ll snatch any they find on the ground as they run, so they might be of use against the last few guards too. One nabbed a Chinese Assault Rifle from the nearest pile of radioactive ash, and the rest ran gratefully off in the direction I’d just come from. The direction I’d just come from after dropping the Fat Man. Fuck.

Am I really going to have to do this?

I shot the armed one first, figuring he’d turn on me when I started gunning down his pen-pals. I caught the next one in the back with a critical laser blast, atomising him as he ran. The third exploded entirely of his own accord – either a landmine I hadn’t seen, or a missile launcher lurking behind the shacks. But the final slave was too far away to hit with my fancy new rifle. I had to pull out Tenpenny’s Sniper for its superior accuracy. Three feet from the Fat Man, 40% chance to hit.

The shot ripped his right leg off at the knee, sending him pitching forward in a sprinkler-spurt of blood face-first into the dirt. All was still. The Fat Man was safe.

I’ll be nice tomorrow.

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