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Imagynasium Educational categorySoftware category

Title screen from Imagynasium

How do you teach creativity? Educational software too often gives children a blank canvas for art without inspiring them to use it – not just painting or making music but doing it with purpose and an idea. Constraint and direction aren’t flashy, but they’re undervalued.

Imagynasium is a masterclass in meaningful creativity. It shows how to find art in circumstance, like a deep interest or a scarcity of supplies. Rather than throw players into a bottomless toolbox, it teaches the value of drawing from your environment. Any program can let you paint a picture; Imagynasium helps you figure out why you would want to. » Read more about Imagynasium

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DC people: come meet industry vets and talk game design Blog category

I’ve cooled down post frequency a little bit as I enter my final semester of graduate school, but I’m excited about participating in an upcoming event!

I’ll be a guest at “Everything You Wanted to Know About Game Dev,” an International Game Developer Association-sponsored meet-and-greet event with industry veterans about game design and development. I’m honored to participate alongside people like Chris Klimas, the creator of Twine, and Grant K. Roberts, lead designer of Never Alone. Although I don’t develop games, I hope my knowledge and criticism of historic game design will be useful for attendees looking to bounce around ideas or learn about what has been attempted in medium’s margins.

Plus, it’ll be a fantastic event with a ton of talent to mingle with.

The event takes place on Saturday, September 26th at 6pm at American University in Washington, DC (my alma mater!). This will be a friendly mixer event, and we’ll likely head for drinks afterwards. If you’re interested in game design from a professional, hobbyist, or just plain-old curious perspective, come on by.

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The Obscuritory on Twitch! Blog categoryStreaming category

Time for a moderate-to-big announcement: I’m dipping my toes into game streaming!

I love taking The Obscuritory into the wild and meeting people with an interest in the weirder corners of gaming. Streaming is another great way to share unknown games with an enthusiastic audience, so I’ve decided to explore it a bit. I have no intention of becoming a dedicated or regular streamer, but broadcasting obscure games and talking with viewers is a new opportunity that I’m extremely excited to try.

My goal is to put on a show that’s entertaining and informational, mixing history and design discussion with game-playing. Don’t expect memes and over-the-top reactions; I want my channel to be a more thoughtful and open place where everyone can learn, share, and build positive culture with obscurities. Again, I might not even stream much after my first trial run – especially if it turns out to be too much work – but when I do, I want to use the platform for good.

My first stream will be on Monday, September 7th at 7pm EDT on twitch.tv/obscuritory. To celebrate the occasion, I’ll be playing a grab bag assortment of games I haven’t previously covered on this blog. (Not telling which ones…) It’ll run for two or three hours, so please drop by! This’ll be a fun event that I hope you’ll come watch.

(Any future streams will likely be announced via Tumblr.)

UPDATE: Thanks to folks for coming by for the stream! I was a little incoherent during lots of it and said spoke out of turn a bit, so I won’t share the archived video link, but everyone seemed to have fun regardless. I may do other sporadic streams in the future.

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Unearthing Subterraneans Blog categoryShooter category

Title screen from Subterraneans

Last month, as part of a big batch of CD-ROMs I ordered from the terrific Wayne Bibbens, I came across a prototype of Subterraneans, an unfinished first-person shooter by direct-to-video shlock horror group Full Moon Features that seems at least loosely based on one of the studio’s unproduced movies. The Subterraneans disc – dated February 6, 1996 and labeled as a demo – also includes Origins of the Puppet Master, an unpublished digital comic based on Full Moon’s most successful franchise.

This looks like the first time the game has ever surfaced, so let’s talk about it! » Read more about Unearthing Subterraneans

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Majestic Other category

Screencapture of the Majestic and EA Games logos from a publicity video by Mercury Multimedia

Since the first online RPGs and MUDs, games have existed as services as much as physical products. Persistent updates and tightly integrated social elements can open new frontiers for interactivity, but they also signpost an inevitable end when those games will go offline and become effectively unplayable. Gaming at-large tends to view those endpoints as extremely undesirable, and from a preservation perspective, game closure is a massive loss. But like live theater or performance art, some games are designed as experiences, transient participatory events that, no matter how long they run, are never meant to last generations.

The most fascinating ephemeral game is Majestic, an experimental, X-Files-inspired alternate reality game about the chaos of the information age that ran for less than a year before its publisher pulled the plug. Majestic still stands as one of the most ambitious interactive entertainment projects ever undertaken. Intended as a personalized ongoing event for adult audiences that didn’t enjoy gaming’s typical epic-sized power fantasies, the game might have heralded a new direction for the entire medium had it succeeded. Instead, it imploded almost immediately. Majestic cratered despite launching at a time primed for an evolution in cross-media entertainment, and although no one has attempted anything in its scope again for good reason, many ideas it tackled have become almost fundamental in digital media.

We can’t play Majestic now, so from a slew of articles and anecdotes, I’ve tried to assemble its history and offer a glimpse of what it was, why it failed, and what it could have been. » Read more about Majestic

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Traffic Department 2192 Action category

Title screen from Traffic Department 2192

Traffic Department 2192 is a three-part game, but there’s really only two parts. For the first episode, it’s brash and snappy, an occasionally clever action showcase with a nasty mouth. Then for the remainder of the game, it settles into a groove, losing the constant resourcefulness that made it so interesting. At sixty missions, the game runs probably twice as long as necessary, and its unevenness can probably be attributed to the realities of episodic shareware development. Yet it holds together through these changing styles thanks to its consistent shoot-em-up fundamentals that work even once the splash has worn off. » Read more about Traffic Department 2192

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At Mysterium 2015 Blog category

Hey New Englanders! I will be in Boston this weekend from Thursday, August 6th to Sunday, August 9th for Mysterium, the annual Myst convention. Yep, it’s still happening! This is my first year going, and I’m looking forward to meeting some adventure game fanatics and talking about some of the out-of-the-way favorites I love so much.

I doubt that anyone reading will be attending, but on the off-chance that you are or are in the Boston area and interested in saying hello, please drop me a line! At the least, consider this a public warning that I’ll be talking to strangers about The Journeyman Project and Welcome to the Future.

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Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness Strategy category

Title screen from Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness

The world continues to grapple with the aftermath of the Western slave trade. As a society, we still often don’t know how to discuss or even acknowledge the West’s deep history of racial oppression. We intermittently sort through this dark period of history through art both reflective and aggrieved. Despite the wealth of literature and visual media tackling the legacy of institutionalized racism – particularly in America but also elsewhere touched by slavery – games have deferred from addressing race more than any medium; the gaming world’s well-publicized dismissiveness towards diversity concerns makes it generally inhospitable to socially charged, historically conscious work.

In these circumstances, the existence of Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness – a slave rebellion strategy game from 1988 by Afro-Caribbean developer Muriel Tramis – is a miracle. It challenges culture and history on multiple levels, as a cathartic release over centuries of ingrained prejudice; as a retelling of the slavery narrative; and as a classic game that dismantles homogeneous understandings of gaming history simply by existing. » Read more about Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness

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Gunman Chronicles Shooter category

Title screen from Gunman Chronicles

From the moment Gunman Chronicles begins with a slow monorail sequence, the game tells you that “Yes, this is like Half-Life.”

But then the train passes by a hallway suspended in anti-gravity. “No, this isn’t Half-Life at all.”

Developed as a standalone mod for Valve’s groundbreaking first-person shooter, Gunman Chronicles noticeably wants to break the mold that it came from. Its style rests firmly between the claustrophobic linearity of its host game and the more expansive set-pieces that would define future genre pacesetters like Halo. No doubt Gunman Chronicles is a fun ride; it has tightly scripted sci-fi action chops and a sense of danger. It’s also an awkward game, the middle child of a genre caught growing midway.  » Read more about Gunman Chronicles

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