Game Playing

I finished Within a Deep Forest, thus finishing another indie game I just had to. I definitely like atmosphere of it. What I find interesting about both WaDF and Knytt (nifflas' other game, which I finished awhile ago) is that while both have a fair bit of backtracking, it never really felt tedious. Despite the games being low on the enemy count, traveling around was fun and compelling. I figure the blame lies in the fact that the level design in both are quite elegant. The levels were never too hard for too long, often after one difficult screen will be some easy relaxing movement. Also the nonlinearity of these games lends very nicely to exploration fun of it.

I'm now playing Battle of Wesnoth and Which Way Is Up? With Wesnoth, I'm very interesting in the possibility of designing campaigns or modding it in some such way. Turn based strategy is a favorite of mine, so I figure it'll do me some good to mess around with it. Which Way Is Up is 2d platform game done for the PyWeek competition, where python game coders will spend a week on making a game based on a particular theme. The game is obviously inspired by And Yet It Moves, but so far I actually like this one more. Some how the movement feels more polished, but I'm willing to go back just to confirm. I'm also interested in the idea of using open source games written in Python/Pygame with the possibility of playing with the code and seeing if I can make something fun.

Oh and I also started an imageblog, HUD Burn-in. It's an experiment, so I'm just running with it, seeing how far it goes, if keep up with it, etc, etc...