I’m guilty of opening too many browser tabs and recently rediscovered pages for Reus that I’d opened in February, intending to write a highlight about the game. Now on the brink of June, I’ve discovered that the game has already been released without my noticing! I’m going to go ahead and detail the game anyway.
Reus, developed by Abbey Games, gives you control of four gods of nature with power to create mountains, swamps, oceans, and forests on a small planetoid. As you reshape the planet, tribes will settle in resource-rich areas and develop objectives for their civilization. You can support their goals by using the gods’ powers to alter aspects of ecosystems, converting blueberry bushes into apple trees to provide a food bonus for their granary, for example.
Raising mountains where no mountains were before.
The player cannot control the human towns or their goals directly, but must interact with them solely by shaping the environment. Ecosystems present synergies between plants and animals. Placing certain flora in proximity to others will augment their yield and provide more resources for the nearby settlers. As their surroundings become bountiful and their civilizations grow, the humans will offer up ambassadors to the gods which can be adopted to enhance their powers. If towns become too prosperous, they may wage war against one another or rebel against the gods themselves, prompting smiting from above to keep them in check.
You can grab Reus on Steam, GoG, or others for $10. I will be picking it up when I have a chance, although I already have a significant backlog of unplayed games from 2012 waiting for me to finish my own game.
This weekend I added a few new levels, added the second world map to the main menu, and made some improvements to moving platforms that let me make this river level.
Jumping from raft to raft can be tricky with the variable jump angle controls, but after replaying the level for a few dozen deaths I felt a lot more comfortable with choosing the right angle for each jump to match the speed of the incoming platforms. As you can see in the video, the world map still needs work on the bottom half and the levels still don’t have background images, but I can only produce more art by sacrificing coding time. If there are any bored artists out there looking for contractor work, send me an email.
I haven’t done any more work on NVorbis audio since last weekend because I got too excited about adding new content. More levels, more fun.
Level selection through the world map works! Now I’m populating the maps with as many new levels as possible. I might include a shot of the map in the next gameplay video.
Playing music through the XNA MediaPlayer leaves noticeable gaps between the end and restart of a looping mp3 so I’m working on an alternative to play compressed .ogg files. I ran across OGGSharp on Codeplex and hoped to use that as a black box without dealing with buffers and streams to save myself some dev time but my 30 second audio loop would cut out before the first loop was even finished. Now that I have no choice but to dig deeper, I’m trying to understand this sample code provided by Renaud Bedard. In between frustrations, I’ve been toying with some background designs for World 3 of Afterdeath.
I was able to put out an initial gameplay video last weekend showing three of the levels from the first world of the game. The Cliffs of Despair are styled after the Greek underworld and the mythologies of their afterlife. Not all restless souls will be at peace with Death, making it a challenge to cross the river Acheron and follow Captain Buzzkill into the next afterlife.
This weekend I’m working to expand the foundation of the game by adding the world map from which players will choose which paths to explore in their search for the missing scythe. Once that’s done, I’ll be adding dozens of new levels to populate the maps. There’s more than a few sketched out in my design notebooks just waiting to be converted to a playable format. I’m excited to have new levels to test with Afterdeath’s current four characters. Each level brings new depth to the characters’ individual movement schemes and new challenges for me as both player and designer.
Any guesses which afterlife Death will find itself in next?
Every relentless protagonist needs an unstoppable antagonist. The robot is a machine built for theft, designed to steal the key to Death’s power right out from under its bony nose. Captain Buzzkill, nicknamed for the inopportune entrances that accompany having buzzsaws for hands, must have journeyed far to reach Death’s domain in the underworld and steal the scythe. Someone clearly went to a lot of effort to build this pilfering automaton, but why? The only clue is the polished symbol upon its chest.
Will Death be able to catch the robot before the scythe is lost forever?
Light sources and shadows have made their way into the latest build of the game thanks to KryptonXNA. Here’s a brief taste of gameplay as the polishing and fine-tuning continues. This is one of the early levels of the game that acts as a sandbox for learning to use the variable angle jumping to cross a chasm. There are multiple paths to the other side to suit multiple players’ tactics and skills.
It’s back to work and business as usual. After a sleepless workweek, everyone got a brief sugary taste of the Harvest Day festivities taking place in the Sucrose Sovereignty, one of the six game worlds of Afterdeath. February has come and gone too soon, but it was not for nothing.
The character classes have been overhauled, allowing the ongoing fine-tuning of Death, the All-Seeing Eye, Dead Icarus, and the Traveler. Moving platforms have been added, redone, and finalized, ready to whisk the player away to new places. Projectiles are also getting a makeover, providing far more customization in the level editor to create more nuanced maps.
Now that I don’t have to draw smiling saccharine serfs day and night, I’ll be striving to produce more art assets to bring the Greek underworld to life… or bring Death to the Greek underworld. In the absence of bad luck, there should be new gameplay videos soon for World One of Afterdeath, Cliffs of Despair.
A horde of zombie videogames shamble across the screen every year. You’d think gamers would tire of safeguarding their brains and scoping for headshots, yet these games continue to attract players within every genre, from Resident Evil to Plants vs. Zombies.
Even Minecraft has zombies.
A Century of Zombies
The living dead command such instant fearful recognition after centuries of foundation laid by popular culture. From the reanimated corpses of ancient folklore to the 1930’s silver-screen servants of sorcerers to the 1970’s familiar flesh-eating zombies crawling out of graves, the undead have stayed in the spotlight of popular culture. From there zombies quickly became rabid agents of hyper-aggression, transmitting virally, spawning apocalypse after apocalypse. Consumer allegories and resource anxiety aside, what makes zombies so popular in videogames?
Seeing a zombie spinning toward you with a chainsaw in Resident Evil triggers fight-or-flight.
Fight or Flight
The sudden fear from spotting a threat sends adrenaline coursing through the player. Videogames thrive on this fight-or-flight response and there’s nothing better for inspiring fear than zombies. Consider: Amy, Treyarch’s Call of Duty, DayZ, Dead Island, Dead Nation, Dead Rising, Dead Space, Half-Life, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1, Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead, Lollipop Chainsaw, Minecraft, Plants vs. Zombies, Red Dead Redemption, Resident Evil, Walking Dead, WarZ, and dozens more that begin with Z…
Physical Fear:
Everybody knows zombies want to kill you, possibly devour your brains. You can try running, but relentless, sprinting, mauling zombies will follow you to the ends of the earth, even with a missing limb or two. The wise look over their shoulders from time to time for fear of discovering they’re surrounded. Dead Space tapped the anxieties of extremely persistent zombies with creatures that wouldn’t be deterred by the player making a last stand in a tiny room or hiding in the corner. The necromorph zombies would only take to the vents and burst out from the air duct behind you.
An emotional connection is as easy as feeling that someone depends on you.
Emotional Fear:
A struggling group of survivors forms the foundation of many zombie stories, causing fear of losing friends and family to the horde. Even worse than death is the fear of infection. Inevitably the NPCs you have met or the fallen members of your party will return as undead, forcing the player to fight their former friends or die by their hands. Betrayal is at the heart of all zombie narratives, not just betrayal by reanimated humans but living ones as well. Whether it’s competition for the most points in the round or the best gun in the level, there’s bound to be as much backstabbing over limited resources as brain-gnawing.
“We’re going to share everything equally, right?”
As you accumulate resources, you become just as attached to your favorite gun as your fellow survivors. This emotional attachment is exploited in DayZ where the scarcity of weapons and vehicles makes you afraid to lose it all to a chance encounter with a walker.
Existential Fear:
Rebuilding barriers in Call of Duty is the best way to keep from being surrounded.
Zombies represent the ultimate obstacle. The other, the unknown, there is no reasoning with the horde. You can outrun them at best, outwit them if you’re clever, hold them back if you have enough ammo, but you can always count on more of them. Any leak left unplugged will eventually become a flood.
By far, the worst aspect of zombies is the ennui of knowing that as soon as they surround you, everything you have worked towards is undone. All those boarded windows for nothing! Not only have they defeated you, but with your objective failed you will now become one of them. You have become the obstacle. Few games have represented this transition. Dead Space provided several death scenes that transform Isaac into what he hates most before respawning. Telltale’s The Walking Dead carries the most impact, with the player bitten and infected, forced to talk their young companion through the process.
Learn the hard lesson now or later?
So Why Zombies?
Why not vampires or aliens or mutant hillbillies? The bottom line is that zombies are narratively easy. Unlike any of their supernatural brethren, their agenda is clear. Brains brains brains. In the past century of zombie-like beings there have been few exceptions to the horde’s goal of rampant and senseless killing.
A new game of Left 4 Dead means being stranded in a remote location with a gun. No exposition necessary.
Therefore when a player first sets eyes on the archetypal zombie, there is no doubt in their mind what conflict is being presented. You don’t need to waste any time on exposition or explaining the motivations of the antagonist, protagonist, or any of the other characters. As Left4Dead and Call of Duty have proven, it is engaging enough simply to be dropped in the middle of a zombie-infested area with a gun in hand, no questions asked.
What Can We Learn From Zombies?
If zombies are so prevalent only because of the simplicity of their narrative demands, we can extract the elements that can make zombie games great and apply them toward games with other themes and conflicts.
Fearless, Relentless Enemies:
When you round a corner in a modern shooter and come face to face with an assault-rifle toting human, you undoubtedly do not experience the same fear response as with a shambling corpse. Games can benefit from introducing adrenaline-inducing enemies that do not hide behind cover, hesitate when they spot you, or retreat when you press the attack.
Emotional Connection with Characters:
This can be achieved with the possibility of death of a beloved character or the persistent survival of a despised character, as The Walking Dead would teach us. The attachment with a character need not even be emotional, you can also fear losing characters for their highly-leveled utility, as in FTL or X-COM.
Just one more shot at getting your favorite gun.
Emotional Connection with Resources:
Whether it’s your favorite silenced, scoped, laser-pointed rifle or your souped-up car in your favorite color or the animal companion you’ve had since the start of the game, tension comes from fearing the loss of a thing you can’t stand to be without. Customization and personality within the virtual space keep the player connected to the experience and differentiate between separate playthroughs.
Personal Goals and Sense of Agency:
As long as there’s a checkpoint at your back, you’ll never know fear. There has to be something more at stake than just the last 2 minutes of gameplay. On the tail of customization come the ploys to gain the components of customization, tactics of accumulation and hoarding. Every new game can bring different circumstances that force a different plan and leave a unique impression on the player. The most engaging zombie games are the ones with serious stakes and difficult choices left in the player’s hands because it takes building something to really fear losing it.
Look for Nonadecimal to explore these themes later this year in an experimental zombie game. Or get a headstart by telling us about your favorite zombie experiences and help us make your perfect game.
