05 Aug 2011
In the olden days, software was bought in a real physical store, came in a physical box, and was written onto some piece of physical media. If that software had problems with it, or lacked important features, then there was no real way to get an update out to the consumer. I think once or twice I had a game with such bad defects that they mailed out replacement floppy disks, but it was exceedingly rare. In general the mantra was “get it the right the first time, or don’t bother.”
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27 Jul 2011
I present to you, my game for Windows Phone: MustEatBrains!
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26 Jul 2011
In late 2006 (yes, this story starts five years ago) Microsoft released the first version of XNA, a development platform for writing games on the PC and Xbox. It put all the nitty-gritty details that generally plague game development behind a modern type-safe programming language (C#). It let developers focus on the more interesting aspects of game design. As someone who has dabbled in game development in the past, this simplified platform sounded like a great way for me to get back into it.
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29 Jul 2008
I’ve been having a good time with Last Night on Earth, but poking around on BoardGameGeek I’ve always been a little jealous of those swank miniatures that some people have painted. I’ve also noticed that it’s very possible to confuse the heroes while playing, so the painted figured do serve some functional value. So I decided to take up an arts and crafts project to paint the pieces from my game.
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17 Jul 2008
I think zombie movies are most successful when they focus on what it means to be a survivor. Take our world, fuck it up, and then tell the story of the people living in that world. The world is some modification on ours, so we can relate to it; but the world is also changed, so it’s a little more interesting.
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05 May 2008
I quite enjoyed 28 Days Later. It’s a zombie movie that’s not a zombie movie. In this world it’s not about the dead rising, it’s about a virus that turns people into rage-filled assailants. This curates a different theme from the normal shambling hordes (even compared to those movies that do have fast zombies). The story is unveiled in an interesting way too, with the events of the movie happening well after the initial outbreak. You usually don’t expect mystery from a zombie flick, but 28 Days Later delivers. Thoroughly enjoyed it, and highly recommend it to anyone with the stomach for the thrills and gore.
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27 Feb 2008
In continuing my exploration into zombie tabletop gaming, I decided to give ZombieTown a spin. From the reviews I knew that this was one best played with more people, and thankfully I had a set of patient friends willing to fill out a six player session. Unfortunately I didn’t anticipate the poorly written rules that turned the entire night into one big confusing… something. I want to say “tornado,” but that implies fast, which it was not.
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13 Feb 2008
After my first foray into zombie board gaming, of course I was excited to try out Zombies!!!, another entry into the genre. Unfortunately I walked away with a decidedly mixed experience.
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22 Jan 2008
Let’s face it, I’m a gamer geek. I stand today as a video game playing computer programmer… but that pales in comparison to the path I took to get to be who I am today. In my days I’ve done everything from D&D to CCGs. And the sad part is that I played most of them in my head. Fellow geeks are hard to come by when you’re young, so I spent more time thinking about these games than actually playing them. I think that’s what defines a real gamer: someone who can fuel themselves with the mere idea of a game.
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16 Jan 2008
I’ve been doing quite a bit of ranting about a potential zombie video game over the last couple months. And after all of that, I randomly came across a zombie board game at a store downtown. I had no idea such a niche existed. There are people out there that are so dedicated to their zombie apocalypse scenarios that they actually carry them out in real space with miniatures and everything. In other words, my kind of people.
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07 Dec 2007
When making my request for a specific type of
zombie game, I had no idea that there was in fact an entire web site devoted to that genre. So I went through and tried a whole bunch of them to see if what I was looking for already existed. Short answer: no. But some of them were close.
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05 Dec 2007
So I may not have found my game about zombie defense, but there are no shortage of movies on the subject. I completely stumbled upon Fido by chance last night. Nothing about the title or cover caught my eye, and honestly I would have skipped it entirely if it hadn’t been on Xbox Live Marketplace when I was too lazy to go to the video store down the block. The preview totally won me over.
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29 Nov 2007
So I recently ran into this little Flash zombie game called The Last Stand. Zombie games are plentiful, but this one is interesting in its focus on zombie defense with light RPG elements. Each night you defend yourself against the zombie horde, and each day you decide how to split your time between repairing the barricade, searching for other survivors, and looking for weapons.
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