All posts

Games

Game development

Stories

Happiness

Personal

Music

TV

Film

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

Chris Livingston’s Merchants Of Brooklyn Movie Script

Is Amazing

I appreciate that many of you must already read his blog, but a) this is too good to go unlinked, and b) I never formally nodded to Chris’s excellent relaunch as First-Person Shouter, aborting one idea – itself the blog to accompany another aborted idea – to revive yet another aborted idea: a general games blog. Soft contrast designs with harmonious palettes, liberal use of colourful images and strictly logical layouts make my eyes happy.

shot32

Merchants of Brooklyn is an ultra-violent CryEngine 2 game about not so much Merchants as cavemen. Chris has not played or seen it, which makes his screenplay adaptation – Cloned Cavemen of Future Brooklyn: The Movie – all the sweeter. Let’s play a clip:



THE PRESIDENT OF BROOKLYN

How is the network of sky bridges coming along?

SCIENTIST

Incredibly well. As I suspected, cavemen are extremely
adept at building networks of sky bridges.

THE PRESIDENT OF BROOKLYN

So, no problems?

SCIENTIST

Well, we did have a setback. One caveman had his arm
cut off with a chainsaw.

THE PRESIDENT OF BROOKLYN slams his fists down on his desk.

THE PRESIDENT OF BROOKLYN

Dammit! We were so close to making this work.

SCIENTIST

It’s okay, we have, like, thousands of spare cavemen.
Too many, really. We’ll just get rid of him and replace
him with one of the many, many extra cavemen we have.

THE PRESIDENT OF BROOKLYN

Not on my watch. I want that caveman fixed and back to
work tomorrow. Give him a new robot arm that turns into
different weapons.