Sarah's Run

To those who dont follow any of my other social networks, I took a break from working on Phantasmal to make another short game about messing with gravity… again.

This time though it’s not BOXGAME, but Sarah’s Run: Escape from Capital Evil

you can play the 10-level preview here, you can follow my progress making the game at it’s development blog. (EDIT; you can now also track the game on IndieDB here)

Hopefully I’ll be able to offer pre-orders of the game to fund development (and stop my debt getting any worse), if you want to be notified when pre-orders are available, sign up to the mailing list.

here are some screenshots for ya:

In other news, I’ll be speaking at the World of Love conference in london later this month, and then I’ll be at the love jam for the weekend. should be interesting as I’ve never been to an IRL jam before, nor have I actually met any of my fellow indies face to face either (well apart from how an other speaker Tom Betts was one of my lecturers at Uni).

If you are attending I look forward to seeing you 🙂

also I fixed up my games page a while back but haven’t mentioned it here, it’s re-organised a little and I added plenty of games that were missing, including some unfinished stuff like ZIP QUEST, ZagiZigi and A Fishing Adventure (which placed third overall in ludum dare 17 woo!) and I even included my first ‘proper’ game, Platform Lemmings

Kliche醒来之后感到非常的湿，这一切不过是一场梦，一场春梦。

So recently a few folks have remarked how Square-Enix totally ripped off my linear RPG, of course I have a team of lawyers working on getting me the billions of yen they owe me, but in the mean-time, a very awesome person called janz approached me asking if it would be cool for him to translate the game into Chinese. my response was ‘Hell yes!’

You can play this version of the game by clicking here.

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on a personal note, I am really psyched about this, it’s the first time one of my games has ever been available in a language other than English, so a huge thanks to janz for his awesome offer and translation 😀

Stay classy, but if you dont want to…

It seems I like to keep this blog ‘classy’ limiting my posts to info about game development, finished games, and general classy stuff.

the bad news? I’m not all that classy, behind this calm and collected blog is a person totally crazy and irritating and desperate for attention and a chance to post any random thought or scribble to the internet.

so to prevent that from happening on this blog (so strangers who read this blog think the word ‘sophistication’ is named for me) I am making a crappy blog.

the warning is visitors to my crappy blog will still think ‘sophistication’ is named for me, but its meant to be spelt ‘sophie’s fist-ication’.

there will also be games posted to the crappy blog, but only the crappy ones (likely I’ll add one tonight after I take part in my first klik of the month).

anyhoo, if you like the relationship you have with me now, best not visit the new blog… but if you kind of wish I was a bit more of a scatterbrain pervert, then check it out!

IndieVault.it interview

so IndieVault.it recently did an interview with me that was posted today, making me feel like some kind of celebrity or something. anyway, if like me Italian is all alien to you, here’s the English version:

First of all, let us say how we appreciate your personal and fine art style. When did you start drawing and making games?

I first started making games in my early teens, I’d wanted to do it for a while by then and the opportunity first presented itself as a shoot-em-up maker that I found for my amiga, you could only really change the graphics so it was more of a re-skin than a new game, but that didn’t stop me trying to build epic stories and adventures. I was hooked from then on. as for drawing I’ve been doing that ever since I was old enough to hold a crayon, my parents always seemed to have lots of paper to spare so I took advantage of that.

Is there a particular leitmotiv in all your games? What do you try to convey?

There isn’t really any deliberate theme or anything I apply to all my games, but I always try to make sure they have character and soul of some kind. I also always try to make games that keep the player thinking and engaged, even if I’m working on a fairly ‘casual’ game I expect the player to be paying attention. When people play my games I feel like they are lending their brain and mind to me, so I do what I can to look after it until they want it back.

We enjoyed a lot The Linear RPG, we think it’s a great way to explain the RPG’s genre in all it’s glory (and limits). Can you tell us something about it? And what do you think about the actual RPG scene?

The Linear RPG was made in under 48 hours for a competition, we were given the theme ‘LOFI’ so I figured I’d interpret that in the gameplay, and strip away everything I could whilst still being able to call the game an RPG. it was my interpretation of ‘grindy’ type RPGs that ultimately you have two choices; push forward and fight tougher monsters, or grind and get stronger. so I made one button for each of those actions. I never set out to make it fun, or a parody, I just wanted to see what the game would be like.

as for what I think about the RPG scene, I’m a big fan of just about all kinds of role playing. that’s not to say I don’t think there is room for improvement, for example stat-based RPGs are in my opinion bad games, in that it doesn’t matter how ‘good’ the player is at them, but how long the player spends playing them; you simply cant get better when you play. In general the genre is what provides the strongest examples of narrative in games, which is one of my favourite things about it, but I don’t slay 50 orcs before I can turn over a page when I read a book.

Your “time travel” prototype, Foresight, is a pretty interest concept. How about making a full game on it?

I’d love to, but I am not too sure where to take it from where it is, which is why I’ve posted it as it is for now. perhaps someone will see the idea and have a great thought on where they could take it, or maybe I’ll even make it a smaller part of another game. on its own right now its at best an idea, as a game all you do are the same actions over and over to get from one place to another it needs more to be engaging but I don’t know what yet.

And finally: what is Phantasmal? Can you talk about this “SHMUPRPG” game?

Phantasmal is my current ‘big’ project, its about a girl who is tracking down someone from her past, and has to deal with some pretty hefty mystical stuff along the way. I wanted to give the player a big fantastical world and story and I have all of that planned out. the gameplay however is a little more freeform in design, I recently decided the current battle system was not so fun, so I took it out and I’m currently re-writing a new one. (I don’t think gameplay should be planned out in advance, it should be constant experimentation until you find something you can’t stop playing). the RPG part is fairly standard, you are a young person with a quest and a big world and conflicts to overcome. character advancement wont be down to leveling up though, you’ll have to go to dojos and train for yourself. the SHMUP part is part of the conflict, enemies will shoot and move like bullets from a bullet hell shooter (though probably not so many bullets lol) and it will be just as important to dodge the attacks as to go on the offensive yourself. I think casting regenerate and barrier on yourself are a great way to miss out on potentially fun new defensive gameplay. lately its actually been turning into more of a SHMUP-RPG-Beat-em-up though lol, but if thats what turns out to be fun then so be it, if not I’ll try other stuff. anyway, I’m very excited about the project, its the kind of thing I’ve been wanting to make since I was a kid, and now I have the skills and the software to pull it off so its cool to finally be working on something like it.