Weekly Game Music: Corruption With Rage and Melancholy (ObsCure II)


New week, new music.  Ready to get scared?  Here’s an excellent sad music from the horror game, ObsCure IICorruption with Rage and Melancholy by Olivier Deriviere is the type of music that’s exactly what’s written in the title: a swing of two linked emotions.

ObsCure II narrates the misadventures of 4 college friends who discover mutated monsters in their university.  They quickly discover the Black Pores from the previous game has started to spread among the students, mutating them into monsters.  The students attempt to uncover the source of the vile plant products.

ObsCure II is a horror game, complete with bad weapon handling and uncomfortable camera angles.  Differentiating itself from many games of the same genre is the American college theme and the inclusion of co-op play.

ObsCure II was released on PC, Playstation 2, and Wii in 2008.  It was later ported to PSP and PSP Go.

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Global Game Jam 2013


Hey, everyone.  Global Game Jam is less than a day away, and I figured it’ll be a good time to provide some practical advice from a seasoned jammer who’ve went through 3 Global Game Jams, and at least 5 local, 8-hour Game Jams.

How it works

Before we get to the advice section, though, here’s a brief description of how Global Game Jam is conducted.  It’ll help frame my suggestions later.

Global Game Jam is a global event where teams attempt to create a video game, board game, or card game related to a common theme in under 48 hours.  At most locations, the Jam starts at 5:00 pm (local time) where an introductory video is shown to get everyone comfortable.  The theme will be presented at the end of this video, and members are given about an hour to brainstorm on their own game idea.  Each participates will present their idea to everyone at the end of this brainstorm session, and teams are created based around popular concepts.

Preparation before the event

If you intend to make a video game, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend that you learn how to use a game engine (NOT a framework).  Such skills will prove to be useful regardless of whether you’re a programmer, artist, composer, or a writer.  For starts, I recommend playing around with GameMaker for 2D games, or Unity for 3D.

I also recommend bringing a laptop if you have one, even if you’re making a board game or a card game.  There’s going to be a lot of typing and re-writing going to be done in your game, so the faster the tool, the better.  Plus, you’ll need the internet to submit your game, too!  Even if you don’t have one, most site provides computers, so I wouldn’t be too worried about it.

Lastly, if the site you’re going to is open for the whole 48 hours, bring a sleeping bag and an extra set of clothes.  I will guarantee you you will stay up for a long, long time.

Coming up with an idea

Anyone with a bit of knowledge on the gaming industry will know that most console games are made by teams larger than 30, for 3 or more years.  For an event with only 48 hours, and team size of less than 10, attempting to make a game a size of a console game is, to put it lightly, impractical.

On top of that, the idea must be related to a theme.  Unfortunately, the Global Game Jam theme is kept secret until the very day of the event.  It’s highly unlikely that any ideas before the event would mesh well with the presented theme.

Thus, you will have to come up with a simple, Angry Birds-style idea on-the-spot.  Additionally, the idea should at least provide a game mechanic to build on, such as how the game will be played.  I personally have several sheets of paper ready before the theme is presented, and write down every notes and game mechanics I can think of that vaguely reminds me of the theme.  The rules doesn’t specify how much the idea has to be related to the theme, after all!

Also see: Coming Up With a Game in Global Game Jam.

Team building

What you need for a team, and how many people will be entirely dependent on what game you’re trying to make.  The criteria I provide below are what have personally worked best for me.

For team size, with a game like Angry Birds, I found 3 or 4 members were optimal.  If a game idea is art-heavy or philosophical, I would go for 5 or 6.

If you intend to make a video game, I strongly recommend having at least one person devoted to making artworks, and one person devoted to programming.  If you plan on making a board or card game, devote one person as a writer for all the rules.

Development

First thing first: do not get attached to your team’s game idea.  Be prepared to scrap everything the moment you notice the game won’t be fun.    Even I personally scrapped my game ideas twice before.

Since it’s entirely possible that this will happen, your team should make something playable as soon as possible.  Forget about the artworks, sound effects, even the menus and the end-game results: the sooner you know whether the basic gameplay of your game is fun or not, the better.  If it’s not fun, scrap it, and make another game again as rapidly as possible.  Polish can always come later.

Time is of essence, here, so you should mainly stick with the tools you know.  If a feature is taking more than an hour, forget about it, and move on.  If a bug is going to or already is taking more than an hour to fix, hide it instead.

Lastly, have your game playtested by people outside of your team as soon as possible.  Keep note of where they seem to “not understand” about your game, where they enjoyed the game, and where they didn’t.  Playtesting help prioritize which tasks are more important, and may even reveal that some bugs may not have to be fixed!

Closing note

Above all else, have fun, be persistent, and make sure you get a lot of food and rest through this exhilarating event.  Good luck!
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Weekly Game Music: Kittens, Cake and Cotton Candy (SimCity Societies)


New week, new music.  It’s time we talk about SimCity Societes.  Yes, that city-building game series!  Here’s Kittens, Cake And Cotton Candy by Trevor Morris.  Quite an optimistic music for a simulation where you play mayor and god!

SimCity Societies is a simulation of city-building.  It’s lack of story is made up by the numerous different scenarios the player can create.  The goal, of course, is to make the greatest city…by the player’s definition, of course.  Unlike the previous series, SimCity Societies also allows one to socially engineer the city, effecting how the city looks and operates.  For example, a more authoritative society causes more security cameras appear at various parts of the city.  Anything is possible in SimCity!

SimCity Societies was released on the PC in 2007.

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Weekly Game Music: Team Fortress 2 (Main Theme)


New week, new music.  As a sort of belated celebration that Team Fortress 2 Beta is now out for Linux, I present you, Team Fortress 2 (Main Theme)!  The fast-paced orchestrated composition by Mike Morasky really gets the adrenaline running.

So, about Team Fortress 2‘s story.  It’s only mentioned via webcomics and other non-game related mediums, but it goes something like this: two brothers, Redmond and Blutarch, convinces their wealthy father, Zepheniah Mann to purchase several land pieces in the US.  As fate may have it, Zepheniah comically catches every disease possible while traveling to these newly bought landmarks.  Upon death, Zepheniah made sure his son had to earn his land.  Thus, both brothers decide to hire mercenaries to take over Zepheniah’s land.

Team Fortress 2 is a team-based first-person shooter which pits team RED and BLU against each other.  The various missions can include capture-the-flag (or briefcase, in this case), defending/taking over marked bases, and man-of-the-mountain.  On top of various different characters that all plays differently from each other, Team Fortress 2 also has a lot of unlockables as well.

Team Fortress 2 was first released on the PC in 2007.  It’s available on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Mac, and Linux via Steam.

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Weekly Game Music: Deep Red Pastures (Baten Kaitos Origins)


New week, new music.  We start this year with a little-known JRPG game.  The genre is full of audio surprises.  Anyway, here’s Deep Red Pastures, composed by Motoi Sakuraba.  It fits with the windy setting of the game, Baten Kaitos Origins.

Baten Kaitos Origins starts with our hero, Sagi, tasked to commit murder by his boss.  Yeah….no, Sagi doesn’t fall for this one, but another unknown being takes care of the job for him.  Sagi, of course, gets blamed for it, and has to uncover the case behind this problem to clear his name.

Baten Kaitos Origins is a card game, where every weapon, equipment, magic, and items are represented as a card.  It’s quite an explorer-happy game where a card could be hidden at any nook and cranny.  All battles are turn-based, where in each turn, the player has a hand of cards (and thus, moves) to choose from before attacking or defending.

Baten Kaitos Origins was released on the Gamecube in 2006.

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