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TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

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

2010: The Year In Forty Photos

Photos of 2010 60

You probably don’t want to hear about my year, particularly since it was good. So I’ll do what I did in 2009 and just pick some shots from it, and a track to listen to while you browse.

[audio:BenFolds-Hiroshima.mp3]
Photos of 2010 09

Photos of 2010 12

Photos of 2010 64

Photos of 2010 11I invented a board game for my family to capture the basic mechanics of the amazing but single-player only Flash game Dice Wars. It had some kinks.

Photos of 2010 22Rich’s housewarming. He has a trapdoor in his kitchen that leads to an underground well.

Photos of 2010 14I made cookies for my family at easter, each customised to our esoteric tastes.

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Photos of 2010 21Ceramic.

Photos of 2010 24My cheese and rosemary bread – best eaten while it’s still this hot.

Photos of 2010 26Exhausted in an especially hectic New York City, I’m happy to find Max Brenner The Chocolate Man still exists, and is still an oasis of warmth and butterfat.

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Photos of 2010 37For our pseudo-anniversary, we fed Kim’s fixation with fish at the aquarium, and my fixation with steak at Hawksmoor.

Photos of 2010 38

Photos of 2010 39Hawksmoor’s sticky toffee pudding.

Photos of 2010 43I now own a barbecue, the final artefact I needed to complete my triforce of manhood.

Photos of 2010 42

Photos of 2010 01Our old friend Al was back from New Zealand for a while, so Rich, he and I got together for a fajitas and margaritas night. We got through about a third of the Cuervo in margaritas before I passed out and Rich violated his vegetarianism. Welcome back Al!

Photos of 2010 02It made us think.

Photos of 2010 6030s party for my Gran’s birthday. Anna, me, and Kim.

Photos of 2010 45Vancouver work trip.

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Photos of 2010 03

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Photos of 2010 05Seafood with Relic. That’s Dan Kading, designer of Dawn of War 2: Retribution.

Photos of 2010 06

Photos of 2010 08Halloween.

Photos of 2010 07

Eve 01Christmas. Anna and I are transfixed by our dad connecting a battery and a magnetised screw so that it spins phenomenally fast.

Dad SledThese last few might look familiar.

Directions

Tree Shadow

Frost Fingers