joe randel's art dump

We’re repainting our bedroom. It was an awful robin egg blue thanks to the previous owners. It’s now a lovely creamy sand colour. It was supposed to be more of an cantelupe but we don’t get much light in that room of the house so the colour is different then what the paint chip shows. And actually… this is the second colour we put on it since our first choice looked like crap in the room. Oh well, it still looks nice. We still have the door , baseboards, window trim and closet doors to do though. Suck…

I hate room painting, but it will look much better then the other colours and the final result will look great with all the proper stuff in the room.

On a side note, you know that witch touching game I’m always going on about for the DS called Doki Doki Majo Shinpan? Well, it’s inspired an actual naughty witch touching game for PC called Majo Michi. I guess it’s pretty much the same kind of game only you can touch much more ^_^

Now if you’ll excuse me… I must find a torrent for this game ^_^

Okay… how adorable does this game look?

too damn cute

It’s for the DS and what it’s about is your a zoo keeper and you have to raise a bear girl for two weeks in real time.  Things actually still happen in the game world while it’s turned off.  I don’t know much about the game other then what you can see in the pictures.  Looks like you can exercise your bear girl, listen to music, get her some book learnen… take a bath with a bunny girl… hang out with a cheetah girl.  Oh man does this game look super cute ^_^

I doubt it’ll come over here, but then Cooking Mama did so you never know.  It’s being developed by Vanillaware of Odis Sphere so you know it’ll have to 2D goodness that Joe loves.

Here’s the game’s site although there isn’t much there right now.

http://www.dmpl.co.jp/kumatan/

Remember that DS English teaching game I posted about a few days ago?  The moetan one?  Yeah… that one.  And you thought… oh my… Japan is crazy and/or awesome and/or scary?  Well, Joe’s got ya covered for another dose of sexy DS English learn’n.

^_^

This one has a promo vid too.  It’s called Moe Sta and has three cute characters named Grammar, Idiom and Word.  All I have to say it why can’t we get some of this cute/sexy language learning over here? T_T  I know I would have loved the heck out of school if I had these as learning characters… Instead I remember having a talking pineapple try and teach us French.  Yup, that really worked…

sigh…

On a DS related topic.  There’s an adult PC game that has been released in Japan that mimics the DS packaging.  It’s called Lyrical DS and it actually had me fooled in to thinking that the DS had an actual adult game.  No suck luck though as the DS means Dramatic Story.  So it’s just clever packaging but I do think the game is played and set up like a DS on your monitor which is kind of cool.

I’ll just have to keep on dream’n ^_^

So what makes people hardcore gamers?  Being up on all the latest game news?  Playing all the latest releases?  Having a game collection that you could retire on?  Maybe some of those things but I think that one that is usually over looked is that a good gamer should not be afraid to play games out side of their comfort zone.  They should play all sorts of games because it will round them out as a great game player and they will expand more in the world of games.

Why am I bringing this up?  Well because when I was on “vacation” I stumbled across Cooking Mama 2 for DS and I quickly snatched it up.  See, when the first Cooking Mama came out I was so excited about the theme of the game that I was totally going to import this game.  But it got picked by a publisher and the later got picked up by me ^_^  I loved it.  I thought the game was fun although a bit easy, but still fun.  Just nice to pick up and play for a quick round or two and totally unlike anything that I owned at all.

So what do I think of the second one?  It’s pretty much the same as the first but to me that works.  They’ve expanded the recipes so they cover the globe more and not just Japanese delights.  They’ve tweaked the things that you had to do in the first one so they’re more fun to do or just to mix it up a bit for players from the first one.  New additions are the ability to cook your recipes for Mama or one of several other characters and then they grade you on your cooking ability.  It’s fun but does seemed to be similar to the regular cooking aspect of the game.  You can also unlock new outfits for Mama stickers for the pictures of your meals and even choose the colours for the kitchen and utensils you’ll be using.  Which doesn’t effect game play but it’s fun to do and my daughter loves it.  Although I think they could have toned down all the rainbows, flowers and hearts in the title. ^_^

Cooking Mama 2 is just too much fun for me.  Even though it might seem as an expansion for the first one, I really like it.  The game just screams cute and is full of colour.  I really want to try the multiplayer too, I bet it’s fun.  It’s probably the closest to an Iron Chef game that I’ll get.

Okay, so yesterday I went on a grandpa type rant about game design and how it lacks compared to games of days gone by.  There where lots of comments in the yey and nay categories with regard to the post and rather then comment back to each one I thought I’d flip it over and view some games that I think have great game design.  Just to prove myself wrong, here’s a short list.

Crazy Taxi – This game is the ultimate in terms of great design and challenge.  Why?  Well, the game world is set up but never changes for the player.  The game itself never increases or decreases in difficulty during play.  It’s only the player that can make each play time different.  The more skilled they are the better and longer they will play.  It also boils down to the player vs the clock.  Time is the only enemy the player will ever face… other then maybe running low on people to pick up if they get really good.

Shadow of the Colossus – This game is brilliant in terms of design (both play and artistically).  The player knows the goal for each Colossus.  Destroy it.  That’s it, that’s all.  But they have to figure out how to get the job one once they get there.  Kill it and get rewarded with the next Colossi to take down.  The player never gains any skills other then what they have.  No items… nothing.  The game is about the hunt and thats it.  But the hunt is mixed with a puzzle.  Can’t figure out how to kill the Colossus?  To bad for you… the game gives no pitty.

Metal Warriors – This game goes way back to the SNES days.  It’s pretty damn hard platformer where you pilot a mech but there is no health bar for you to check.  You just have to gauge how much damage you’ve taken as you play and if you start to smoke, then get the hell out.  And good luck to ya once you are out since you’ll have to find a mech to continue forward.  The game is relentless and there is no spoon feeding at all.  Ever.  It start challenging and ends challenging.  It’s one of those games that you hold your head high for beating because it’s that damn hard.  Yes… I beat it ^_^

Boktai – Remember this GBA title, the one where you need the sun to play?  It’s from Hideo Kojima and you play a vampire hunter but depending on the sun you can be stronger or weaker.  The sun also serves as a way to solve puzzles in the game.  Some called this game too gimmicky but I loved it.  The puzzles are great and really make you think and the sun plays a great roll in how and when you play.  Thus making the player not in control of every aspect of the character they’re playing with which means they’ll have to consider when it’ll be most in the their favor to play.  I loved it!

I guess that can be it for now, their are others out there with great game design but it’s late so I’m going to bed.

Any other games that people think I’ve over looked, or maybe not played?

So I’m talking with my producer today regarding my favorite topic in game design: spoon feeding.  Let me explain.

In every studio I’ve worked in (and just watching the game industry mostly) I’m constantly seeing game design get dumbed down because studio’s are afraid that if games are too hard then players won’t like them.  It’s a constant trend of keeping games from being actually challenging by giving items and level ups to fake a sense of accomplishment for the player.  We’re not really seeing to often a game where the player really has to push to succeed.  What if the player can’t succeed?  Then that’s bad.  The player might go find something else to do.  So dumb it down and let the player do cool things so they thing they’re all bad ass.

I can’t stand it.

Remember back in the day where you would rent a game for your NES, Genesis, SNES or what have you and you where actually challenged by it?  You would have to rent it a second time to beat it probably because you wanted to beat it so badly.  And it wasn’t due to the fact the game had 80 kajillion hours of game play it was because it was designed to actually challenge the player?  Where are those games now?

Gamers of today aren’t being challenged by what they buy.  The games are more of an game experience… like a movie.  You’ll get to the end of the game eventually, just like a movie.  That’s what the makers want.  They don’t want to make you think to hard about the game you’re playing and to me is an insult of what they think of me.

I want challenge, I want to think about game play.  I don’t want to be spoon feed my games.

I only have so much pull on the titles I work on being a art guy but I always make sure that the design decisions will lean towards accomplishment and rewards for the player.  It’s a formula that works.  Make the player work for things.  Give them a sense of pride when they figure something out.

They paid for it after all.