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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

New Gunpoint Test Build Soon, Sign Up Here

Update: build sent out 15/02/12, thanks to everyone who signed up. You can still sign up to put yourself down for future test builds.

I’m almost ready to send out a new test version of Gunpoint to anyone who’s around and able to give me some brief feedback. There’s no selection process, just sign up on the mailing list here and you’ll get it in the next day or two:

The Gunpoint Testing Mailing List

Also, Gunpoint was just previewed on BoingBoing! Brian Easton played an early build and seemed to really dig it!

Solutions to puzzles can be as elegant or kludgy as you need them to be. That’s a lot of the appeal of Gunpoint; there’s rarely a single solution and you are free to do things your way.

Link.

Eurogamer Gunpoint Preview

Chris Donlan has been playing Gunpoint, and gives it a lovely write up over at Eurogamer:

“The interface is uncluttered and intuitive – you just drag beams of light from the object you want to act as a trigger towards the object you want that trigger to activate – and the whole system’s bristling with opportunities, especially when you start to factor in enemy AI.”

Gamasutra Interview

I am interviewed on Gamasutra! Here is a question from that interview!

How did you come up with the concept?

I feel like a lot of games are designed on the assumption that the player is stupid: a tester doesn’t have the intended experience, so I guess we’ve gotta force him to look at that spaceship crash, lock him in the room until the enemies are dead.

I wanted to make a game with the idea that the player might be smarter than me. Let him think of solutions that never occurred to me in hours of playtesting, and give him the tools to be more creative than I was when I designed this level.

I don’t think that testers are being stupid, I think they’re being defiant. And they’re defiant because the game isn’t letting them be creative or smart or funny, it’s trying to make them have a packaged experience.

So the Crosslink gadget, which lets you rewire any of the electrical things in a level, is my way of giving you some of the designer’s power. It’s almost like a level editor: I restrict some things to make sure it’s a challenge to complete, then I let you design how you want the level to work to achieve your objective. You can be clever, efficient, complicated, funny or cruel.

True PC Gaming Interview

True PC Gaming interviewed me about a bunch of things – both development and general opinions. Here’s one!

What are your thoughts on how the PC gaming industry as a whole are dealing with the problem of intrusive DRM and piracy?

Big companies move slowly, particularly public ones who keep having to point to the past to justify their strategy. To anyone who’s been paying attention, it’s been obvious for a long time that the customer isn’t just king anymore – he’s God. He can do whatever the hell he likes. No-one has the technology to stop him from taking whatever he wants.

Developers that are quick to adapt have focused on making the player want to support them, rather than pissing him off with increasingly intrusive attempts to restrict his access. Slower companies are still trying to get back to a time when people were forced to pay for software, and however safe that might seem, plans that involve angering a God usually aren’t sustainable.

Link.

Gunpoint In The Press

Gunpoint got lots of wonderful write-ups when I put up the first batch of shots two weeks back. In fact, the reaction took me by surprise a bit, and I’ve been struggling to keep up with all the interesting e-mails that have come in since.

I wasn’t expecting anyone to cover this, so I didn’t really talk to anyone beforehand. If you work for a site or mag and are interested in covering Gunpoint, just drop me a mail at pentadact@gmail.com.

I’m always happy to sort you out with a recent build so you can have a play, and answer any questions. I managed to do this with Ars Technica, so their piece is a preview. Here are some quotes from that, and some of the other lovely words people wrote about Gunpoint.

Gunpoint hands on: an intelligent indie spy thriller—with breakable glass

“Guns actually introduce tension into the game, which is a rare thing in modern action titles… In minutes I felt like a capable killer, and began skulking around each level like a pro. The full release can’t come soon enough.”

Ars Technica

 

Gunpoint Points Out Its New Look

“In between murdering trees and optimising for search engines, Tom’s drafted in some artists to dramatically overhaul the game’s look, which results in the rather eye-catching, Flashback-y aesthetic…”

Rock, Paper, Shotgun

 

Secret agent indie Gunpoint makes being an electrician cool

“From plumbers and farmers to … Noids, video games have a long tradition of elevating blue collar jobs to rockstar status. Now, after eying these new Gunpoint screens, it looks like we’ll be adding “electrician” to that list when Tom Francis’ secret agent game arrives this Christmas.”

Joystiq

 

This Indie Game is Giving me Flashbacks of, Well, Flashback

“It looks wonderful, in a “Deus Ex meets Canabalt” kind of way. It also helps the game has photocopiers. I love games with photocopiers.”

Kotaku

 

Stealth Platformer Gunpoint is Looking Mighty Fine!

“Gunpoint looks absolutely glorious.”

IndieGames.com

 

Gunpoint’s Graphics Now As Awesome As Its Concept

GameSetWatch