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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

On PC Gamer Lately

The PC Gamer site moves pretty fast these days, so I might occasionally recap what I’ve done there recently. Here’s some of my stuff from the last month:
 

The complete Minecraft Experiment

Finally finished my Minecraft diary about playing in hardcore mode. Response to its end was amazing, for a story about a man trying to eat a cake while falling to his death on fire. Definitely looking to do another in a different game.

Mass Effect 3 wishlist

Relapsed on both the previous games lately – the differences are extraordinary. Mass Effect is by far the most compelling main story of any BioWare game I’ve played, it’s so weird that Mass Effect 2 is narratively bankrupt when it improves so much else. This list is how I want to see the best bits combined.

Games as art masterpieces

I put up a collection of awesome art/games mashup images by artist Drew Northcott. We used them in our mag a few years back, but few seemed to get the references. Wanted to see them get a bigger exposure.
 

Playing the first three hours of Deus Ex: Human Revolution

It’s brutal, and should be illegal on a gamepad.

Magicka Vietnam is a thing now

One of the most sublime announcements I can remember, a game whose very name is both setup and punchline, and an indulgently batshit trailer. Starting to really like the Magicka guys.

Mojang interview: why they’re making Scrolls

Got to talk to the Minecraft guys about why their next game is a turn-based strategy based on collectible card games.
 

Dawn of War 2: Retribution review

Loved it. Relic are now the best RPG developer never to have made an RPG.

Picks from Dead End Thrills’ ridiculous Crysis gallery

Old but still astonishing, even next to Crysis 2.

Editorial: How mainstream games butchered themselves and why it’s my fault

Realised the restrictive tropes that frustrate me about modern games are probably my fault. Bulletstorm’s creative director responds to explain why his game is made that way, which starts an interesting discussion.
 

‘A very good chance’ of Spelunky HD on PC

Megaton hypernews of the millennium. So goddamn excited. Also, a little on why the days of XBLA as the ‘big time’ for indies may be over.

Battlefield 3 wishlist

Not all me this time, since Bad Company split office opinion somewhat and we wanted to get a good selection of views. My main one is for a return to the emergent camaraderie of leading a squad of strangers in Battlefield 2.

Reinstall: System Shock 2

I go back to the cold metal corridors of the Von Braun, and remember how personal stories kept me going in this place.

Skyrim preview

No revelations, just my overview of what we know so far and which bits are exciting.

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