Dec 16, 2015

The Paradise of Issyos, Priorities and Progress

Two freeware games I'm most proud to have helped with have been released and that, dear reader, does make me rather happy. Here you can download Locomalito's excellent arcade platformer The Curse of Issyos and here you can play the Greek version of educational/political/strategy twine The Paradise of Debt (Ο Παράδεισος του Χρέους). I did come up with the Greek names for monsters and things for the former and translated the latter. 

Now that you know, I suppose it's time for me to get back to finishing Workers In Progress SE: Progress Harder which is almost done and looking way better than I expected it to and Earthling Priorities which has stalled again but is really close to release.

Dec 14, 2015

Game Cities: The Motionless City

Did you know that I spent over 10 years of my adult life almost exclusively studying cities, urban planning, the geography of cities and urbanism? Well, it's absolutely true. I even have the PhD, papers and teaching experience to prove this and, to cunningly and swiftly change the subject, as I've always been fascinated by those intricate, built manifestations of society and loved working on games, I've decided to bring the two together. My first attempt was that ambitious City RPG that's been --to put it mildly-- put on hold, but now more things are afoot.

I've already started consulting on city matters and exercising my fantasy urban planning skills for an amazing indie project I cannot say much about (yet), am actively looking for more work of the sort and have even slowly began organizing a book about the crafting of cities and settlements for games.

What's more, I thought it might be a nice idea to start writing a few simple articles about games and cities. Or even about the principles of urban planning that can be applied to level design. About storytelling via the built environment. Then again, a series of articles might be too time consuming to be a great idea after all. We'll just have to see how that goes I suppose, as I'm in no position to make any promises. For now, let me attempt a first take at an article of the sort.