Hard Project: The X-Files
“I think it’s aliens.”
“Shut the fuck up, Mulder.”
If I were asked to list things from my younger days that would be coming back as I pass through the early years of my 30s, The X-Files would not have been on that list. But here we are with talk about a revival floating around, which doesn’t seem like a terribly good idea but may very well be a thing that happens anyway. And that would possibly mean video games, something that the franchise has yet to pull off.
Just like compelling mythology arcs or decent feature films or spin-offs, if you want to be glib.
There were two games based on the show, and both suffered from fairly poor reviews; the first was functionally a mildly interactive movie, the second was a short shot to a Resident Evil clone that was plagued with an obtuse camera and overly complicated puzzles. But neither one is entirely to blame in this particular situation. The X-Files is a really hard show to make a decent game out of. Or a decent feature film, or comic, or sequel, or…
All right, I’m not using that joke again.
Demo Driver 8: Sunrider Academy
Stand back, we’re going to use science on it.
The weird thing about a lot of Japanese video game genres is how the fans who want to make more of them want to make the same exact sorts of games you got in Japan. Don’t get me wrong, the visual novel/dating sim sort of game never really took root in America, it’s a uniquely Japanese genre. But instead of taking that framework and making something new out of it, it seems like the fans making new games in the genre are just… making games that are trying their hardest to be Japanese games, complete with cultural references and behaviors and the like.
I bring all of this up because I am relatively certain that the developers behind Sunrider Academy are not located in Japan. Not entirely certain, but there are little bits and pieces hither and yon that suggest the game was made by enthusiastic fans emulating Japanese games rather than people just making a game about what they saw/experienced/etc. That isn’t a negative verdict right off the bat, though, just a piece of the puzzle. As it turns out, the rest of the puzzle fits together decently.
Telling Stories: You are responsible
You all know that I absolutely hate the idea that roleplaying is some silly thing that has no consequences or stresses. This would be because it’s absolutely not true, and it’s harmful to everyone trying to roleplay with you, but it has even further reach than that: it destroys the idea that you have some responsibilities to your fellow roleplayers. And you do. You have several responsibilities. There are things that you should do when you are roleplaying that obligate you.
Obviously, you’re just trying to have fun. But just like organized PvP or raiding or any other sort of regular activity, that does not mean the fun is without some level of responsibilities. So let’s talk a little bit about what your responsibilities are simply as a roleplayer, even if you’re not running a whole lot of large-scale events or involving everyone you meet in storylines. Just as a roleplayer interacting with other people, it’s reasonable to assume that you can be responsible about certain things.
Challenge Accepted: Deception
It’s super-nice how smart you feel after you successfully unwrap these after just a single try, though.
The central goal of Dynetzzle is to trick you a little bit. Even beyond the obvious challenge, there’s the simple fact that you’re dealing with making a six-sided die every time, which has sides that add up to seven. But that just plain sounds wrong. You can’t get a seven from a single six-sided die without a marker and a willingness to vandalize numbered surfaces, after all. It’s a little thing, but it’s just enough to throw you off your stride and force you to remember that the opposite sides always add up to seven.
Assuming you can work around that little mental block, it’s not a hard game. It needs that block in there to trick you, essentially.
If you’re going to look at games as a series of decisions to make – which I’ve argued in the past – then you have to provide players with a reason to make those wrong decisions. When you don’t have skill as a barrier (i.e. “I know what I want to do here, but I can’t manage it”), you sort of have to fall back on tricking the player into doing something they shouldn’t.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 