TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Playing Assassin’s Creed 4: You Can’t Sword Fire, Man

I’m thinking about posting these Let’s Play style videos as shorter, individual highlights rather than recording every moment and putting it all up in long sequential chunks. Well, shorter than 50 minutes. That felt like overkill, and it also meant I felt weirdly guilty if I wanted to do something that’s boring to watch.

Playing Risk Of Rain: The Engineer And The Shitty Lantern

Here’s what Risk of Rain is like. It’s a randomised shooter thingy, and here I’m playing as one of the classes you unlock later on, the Engineer. More thoughts on why it’s good.

Risk Of Rain

Risk of Rain is kind of an action Roguelike: no saving, death means starting from scratch, and it’s all about combat. You’ve got four skills in an RPG-like hotbar, with RPG-like cooldowns, but it feels more like a shooter. You pump out damage rapidly and accurately, and you’re physically dodging enemy attacks to survive.

I really didn’t like it, and almost entirely because of a weird little message on the New Game screen. Continued

GHGC Dev Log 4: Rules Of Retraction

I’ve finally found the right blend of Unity’s built-in physics and my own custom equations to make the rope in my grappling-hook-game prototype feel strong, reliable and satisfying to use. I also added a lamp post and made some things blue.

If you want to hear about future updates, I’ll always post them on my Twitter.

To Hell And Back In Spelunky

Last night I accomplished probably the hardest thing I’ve ever managed in a video game: going to hell and back in Spelunky. It only took 41 minutes, but it took me hundreds of hours of play – and about 3,000 deaths – to learn how to do those 41 minutes. Here’s the run: Continued

Assassin’s Creed 4 Parts 1-5: Boarding School

Part 1 is a bit quiet, but the rest should be fine – click the listy icon in the top left to see all episodes. Subscribe on YouTube or follow me on Twitter if you want to know when the next one goes up.

Games Vs Story 2

I was away in London at the weekend, with my laptop but no internet, so I took a break from coding to think about how story might work in my next game. Continued

GHGC Dev Log 3: Grappling With Hooks

Yep, it’s got a grappling hook!

I have something in particular I want to do with grappling hooks that I’m not ready to talk about yet. But grappling hooking around is also part of a set of interactions that I hope are going to just feel really nice – to some extent this game would be about the pleasure of execution.

This is just a quick demo of how it’s working right now – shoddily, but well enough to give me an idea of how to refine it. I’m pretty pleased to have got this far in three days, despite still really struggling with some Unity stuff. Continued

I’ve Started Working On A New Game: GHGC

This is a brief look at the pathetic progress I made by the end of my first full day working on what might be my next game.

I have 5 different ideas I’d like to do, but one in particular has been really exciting me, so I’m prototyping that first. If the prototype is fun, it’ll turn into my next game. If it’s not, I’ll prototype something else. Part 2 below. Continued

Exploring Eldritch, Parts 1 & 2

I’m playing Eldritch, a first-person horror/shooter/Roguelike with randomly generated levels and Lovecraft monsters.

The game completely changes after book 1 (above). I thought it was some kind of lite action game, then suddenly the enemies get so much harder that it’s more like a stealth horror game (below). Continued

Gunpoint Development Breakdown

I feel terribly guilty about Gunpoint’s success, so I often wonder if there’s some way I can use what I’ve learned from it to help. The trouble is that offering any kind of advice seems to make people angry – people who aren’t in your exact situation feel like you’re ignoring their circumstances, criticising their methods or dismissing their struggles.

So maybe I can take some advice from myself and share my experiences instead of my opinions.

Lately I’ve got to talk to a lot of developers at conferences and festivals, particularly ones who are working on their first indie game and have lots of specific questions about what we did with Gunpoint. So probably the most helpful thing I can do is give a kind of structured breakdown of Gunpoint’s conception, development, recruitment and promotion, then let people delve into whatever they’re curious about.

It’s not a guide to what you should do, it’s just a guide to what I did and how it worked out. Click a topic to expand it. Continued

Clack: A Very Short Story Inspired By An Amazon Review

Niece Vs iPhone

You can set an iPhone to show and photograph what’s facing the screen, like a mirror. The two things my niece finds fascinating are this, and my face. Continued

I Made A Physical Version Of Word Game Letterpress

For my parents’ birthdays, I made a physical version of the excellent iOS word game Letterpress. This makes me a terrible pirate, I hope no-one minds. I made this video to explain it to them.

Failing Fast In GTA V, Parts 1-10

About me: I am a bad driver, I don’t know any modern colloquialisms, and I just want everyone to be nice. In this video series, I attempt to play Grand Theft Auto V: Angry Jerks Steal Cars And Money And Yell At Each Other. It goes wrong in what might be record time.

We’re up to Part 10 now, click the listy button in the top left to skip to an episode.