GUNPOINT

Piren'e Colass:

I’ve only just notice from talking you talk (never seen you talk up close before, podcast/ minecon/written word dont show it), but if you grew your hair you would look quite a bit like David Tennant.

Kero:

Final boss? FLURRY OF FISTS!

Daniel Cardin:

Are you going to have a portal 2-like community level thing. THAT WOULD BE SO COOL since you mentioned that the game itself isnt crazy long. Also get yourself into the Humble Indie (Stealthy) Bundle to take away the dilemma of choosing if you want to charge for it or not. It’s not a real bundle yet, but it needs to be.

IanS:

I totally agree, the bolt-on story thing is infuriating. (I’m looking at you, Mirror’s Edge). I can think of a couple of games that handled it well:

Portal: Had a minimal story, but came up with a cunning way of having a strong character (i.e. one way communication over a PA).

Dear Ester: Complex story, in that the player has to piece together what’s going on from a bunch of random fragments of narrative. It works because there basically is no game mechanic – you never get fooled into thinking you’re in control of the story. Your objective is simply to explore and understand.

Any other success stories out there?

Ryan E:

Ive played a little flash game where scripted events (dialogue only) happen here and there but there’s a silly mechanic that makes each one special. The game is called Westerado on Adult Swim Games and u play as a lonely cowoy trying to find an arsenist who murdered his family. The silly mechanic is that in the middle of any conversation you’re having (with anyone you see except active enemies), you can choose to point your revolver in the speakers face! This can be done sometimes to get more information from someone, force them to cooperate, scare them away, or outright kill them. Simple, but it goes a little deeper allowing you to kill main characters, devistating the plotline. I played the game once and litterally murdered everyone i met! Granted i got nowhere in the plot and eventually made enough enemies to where an angry mob with shotguns gang banged me. Anyway, just wanted to mention how this game gives a goal to accomplish and let you go about solving it.

raza:

limbo. bioshock. flashback. zelda. the list is too long to manage.

good stories makes great games immortal.

Josh W:

It occurs to me that you want things the other way round; stories with games around them, or stories as threads within games. Of course, that makes them close to easter eggs, in that you probably can’t just have them all follow one from another like a tiny prescripted string, except that the player has to dragon’s lair their way through making their part of that scripting happen, instead these threads would have to just exist at different points, filling in details and flowing in certain directions, but not be particularly complete, although some of their threads might be. Uplink is one game that works a little like this, although it’s main story is a lot more “hey you do this, the world cannot go on without it”.

Josh W:

Also, don’t take my dogmatic style as saying your solution is crap, sounds quite good actually, like mirror’s edge almost was. I especially like the idea of holding the two elements at mostly arms length except for when they have an opportunity to play nice together.

TheJoggingLlama:

Hi im back again to remind you of my idea to make a mac version which is exactly like the pc version just on a mac

Jason L:

Hi thx for reminding him to do what you want him to do just make Gamemaker on Mac not out of date and im sure hell get right on that.

TheJoggingLlama:

Is that sarcasm cause i dont understand all these terms

A. Player:

Jason L: You can actually export to Mac from GMS which is the newest version of gamemaker, FYI

Daniel Cardin: I think a Hitman Absolution-Portal 2 mix would be awesome. Mainly, making it so that the levels have to be achievable by the creator of the level in order for them to be able to put out the contract.

Fletcher:

Really good Dev Log.

Stories are inherently linear in nature, while games are non-linear. I think marrying the two is a worthwhile goal for any game. But the best way I’ve found to do so is to tell stories through modular design, meaning the player can stumble upon story elements freely within chapters, giving the player the illusion of freedom and the illusion of creating a narrative for a personal story. If that makes any sense.

Darius:

The Wing Commander series did it very well, the games are still playable today (although the gameplay isn’t as much fun as it used to be *both due to hardware quirks of emulation and it is a bit aged*) and the story / independent plotlines still work.

The problem is you have to have choices and outcomes matter *good or bad* so you have to spend a lot of dev time on bad outcomes some players will savegame skip over.

Add massive cutscenes with expensive voice actors and the problem with building multiple plotlines / story outcomes becomes obvious and not too many game devs try.

Bioware tried and ended up giving up with Mass Effect (after doing well for 2 games they made a default cannon for ME3, like it or hate it)

neverfall:

Really enjoyed the game. The villain was apparently ‘a guy wearing a coat’ (according to witnesses)

Artwork made it look a lot more feminine though.

AApickleAA:

please make updates with more missions the game is FUCKING AMAZING. i dont even care if you charge for them (as long as it have 5+ missions) the game is amazig and i want more.