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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

Red Faction Guerilla Tales: Fully Destructible Integrity

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I didn’t realise the recent Red Faction game was by the guys who made the excellent Saints Row 2, and I didn’t even realise Saints Row 2 was by the original Red Faction guys. I just rather childishly thought “Ugh, Red Faction” and ignored it. I didn’t expect it to be the first game to claim freeform destructibility and not actually be lying. And I certainly didn’t expect it to be one of my favourite games this year. Anyway, here’s a thing that happened:

I’m sandwiched between a GDF building and the compound’s armoured walls, angry APCs swarming the roads outside, when the crash happens. The cab of a large cargo truck bursts through the thick black wall in a fountain of rubble, run off the road by the careening GDF cars. The civilian driver bolts out, giving me both an opening and a free vehicle to drive through it. I clamber in and reverse out.

There’s already a similar truck parked in the garage back at the rebel base when I arrive, and I’m not entirely sure my heavier number is going to fit. I decide to find out full speed, so I not only crash headfirst into the other truck, but actually drive up its crumpled chassis and punch through the roof of the garage.

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I flop limply out of the driver side door onto what remains of the roof, pick myself up and assess the damage. I figure I can make it slightly less obvious if I can just push my truck back down through ceiling, so I start pounding on its roof with my sledgehammer.

When the blast clears, I’m on a rock twenty meters away, black smoke billowing up from where the garage used to be. There’s a second detonation as the fire reaches the truck below, and the last few struts and girders clank to the floor. I back quietly away and talk to my boss.

I’ve unlocked something called The Grinder, so main plot be damned, I’m spending my salvage on making one of those. I have a little left over to buy the ability to teleport to any safehouse, so I zip to the furthest one to try it out.

It’s like a different planet, closer to Cumbria than Mars. It’s green, for one thing, and the cars are all differenty. One is a beautifully idealised designer vision of a future-car, impractically low, wide and sleek. I love it so much that I run directly towards it, am hit in the shins by a hubless hoverwheel, and somersault onto my back, beaming. I get up and hijack it – the doors open upwards! Of course they do! – and its one careful owner just says “Good luck!”

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I speed off across the Martian countryside to the hostage rescue mission I picked up on arrival. The setting turns out to be a municipal building across a huge open plaza, and there’s a taxi in the parking lot so cool that I’m going to have to come back to admiring it later or no-one’s gonna get rescued today.

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The guards let me stroll all the way up to the building itself before they get angry, at which point I finally try the Grinder on a live target. It charges for a second and then FOOSH! A razorblade the size of a dinnerplate has buried itself in the guard’s duodenum. Holy shit! I’m keeping this.

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The Grinder swiftly clears out the ground floor – I can take little credit – but no hostages; they must be upstairs. FOOSH! One guard staggers back through a first-floor window with a blade in his diaphgragm. I have time to untie one of the three hostages before FOOSH! Another guard crashes over a balcony into the foyer, landing face-first on the razor in his skull. This is brilliant. This is every sci-fi fantasy I’ve ever had. FOOSH! A guard tries to high-kick me and finds a foreign object the size of an LP in her thigh.

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Outside is an army, which I instinctively try to electrocute with the Arc-Welder before realising we’re going to have to double back. I hammer out a new backdoor to the building and lead my charges through the hole, on a painful dash to the cover of the next brick wall. FOOSH! FOOSH! FOOSH! I can’t razorblade them all, but they’re so pervasive that even in the quiet shade of a cafe I have to cut a few down to buy us a moment’s peace.

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My friends make it round the quiet corner one by one, but the third girl lingers too long at the threshold to take pot-shots at the encroaching squadrons, and she’s felled. The survivors need no cajoling, we scarper for the carpark almost in unison. On arrival, we have a problem: futuro-car’s a two-seater. No wonder that bastard said ‘good luck’.

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The taxi! It’s doors are portholes how cool is that? Once we’ve all climbed in, the discs of glass slide back into place and I speed off in a light drizzle of gunfire, my two fares looking completely unmoved by our plight. I’m having the time of my life.

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