errantsignal

Life is Strange (Spoilers!)

Hey all!  This month's episode is out and it's all about Life is Strange!  Be wary of spoilers, though!

December 2015 patron supported

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November 2015 patron supported

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Short Wave Transmission: Disney Infinity 3.0

Hey all!  This month's short is up: I took a quick look at Disney Infinity 3.0.

This is a bit of an experiment and I'm sharing it with you all first before I make it public because I'm keen to get your feedback.  I'm working on the Life is Strange script now, but I went ahead and threw together this month's short at the last minute over the last two days.  It's a lot rougher than the mainline episodes usually are - the analysis is way more shallow, the editing is way more lo...

Fallout 4 and Role Playing (Spoilers)

Hey all! 

This month's episode is up!  This time I'm looking at Fallout 4 and how frustrating it can sometimes be from a role playing perspective (and how enjoyably indulgent it can be when that perspective is ignored).  It's either a disappointingly shallow sequel to a very smart franchise, or a franchise moving in a direction I'm struggling to follow it in, depending on how you feel about it.

Also, you may be confused - the standing plan was to do Life is Strange n...

October 2015 Patreon supported

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SOMA (Spoilers)

Just in time for Halloween it's a spooky game!

I think the video ends up coming across more harshly than I intended to - I actually really really liked the game, I just wanted to love it.  It's scary (but not that scary) and deals with some really interesting ideas (even if it doesn't dwell too deeply on any one aspect of them).  If you liked Frictional's other stuff I'd recommend it.

SimCity Part 2

Hooray, SimCity Part 2 is finished!

Can't stick around for a long post today - gotta start writing up the spookee Halloween stuff ASAP!  Hope your Octobers are going swell!

September 2015 Patreon supported

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SimCity (2013)

Hey all! SimCity (2013) is up!  It is a well-intentioned game with slick production values and pretty music, but also sort of a complete mess that never gels into anything cohesive.

I'm probably going to have a follow up to this episode - the original version of this script actually started with a few comparisons to Cities: Skylines and talking about how this game viewed cities, but once I started going on about how fundamentally the game didn't work I kind of couldn't stop.  How...

August 2015 Patreon supported

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Timeframe

This month's short is up! This time I take a look at TIMEframe, a game that takes place entirely in slow motion.  I liked it! I just wish it used the whole slow motion thing to do a bit more than make things pretty.

Perceivable Consequence

This episode is another one of those dry-ish game design terminology videos.  Perceivable consequence is an odd thing to try to talk at length about it - it's such a fundamental part of traditional game design that it's easier to talk about when it _isn't_ used, either intentionally for effect or in games where it's a problem.

And honestly, I think I could have delved deeper into how directly it's tied to systemic complexity.  The character interaction stuff is really just...

July 2015 Patreon supported

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The Magic Circle (Spoilers)

So, apart from what I say in the video: The game's got some structural weirdness.  Not necessarily in a bad way! It's just... the core mechanic, the *interesting* mechanic, is hacking apart entities in the game.  And it works pretty well, all things considered!  There's probably not enough variety in the way the different monsters interpret the different abilities, but on the whole it's neat to see how you can chain movement, special abilities, combat systems, AI algorithms, and m...

Unreal's Intro

Hey all!  This month's short is up.  It is a fairly unapologetic love letter to the first, I dunno, ten minutes of Unreal?  The game is pretty huge in scope and obviously its true legacy is its engine, but there's always been something about the opening of that game that's stayed with me in the way Skaarj futuretech buildings and monster-filled Nali ruins never quite matched.

Patreon Payment Weirdness

Update: Good news! Per Patreon:

We’ve already started to re-process payments. No patrons will be double-charged, anyone that was double-charged is being refunded, and anyone with a pledge that actually declined is being charged again.

So all's well that ends well, I hope.  Sorry again for the inconvenience!

Original post:

Hey all,

Apparently Patreon is having some tr...

June 2015 Patreon supported

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Sunset

Edit Mark II: Okay, the video is now back online in a less troublesome format.  Sorry for the interruption and/or the e-mail spam, and thanks again for supporting the show!

Edit: After a DMCA takedown threat I'm recutting the episode to not cite another YouTube user's footage. I hope to have this episode back online in a few hours, depending on how long it takes to render/upload to YouTube/process.

Hey all!  Here's this month's main episode - the short sho...

May 2015 Patreon supported

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Only If

Hey all!  This month's episode is up! This time we're looking at Only If, a first person puzzle game.  Check it out!

April 2015 Patreon supported

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Blendo Games

Hey all, This time we're looking at (mostly the first person titles of) Blendo Games. And there's a _lot_ so buckle up!

March 2015 Patreon supported

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Hotline Miami 2

Whelp, I guess it's up same-day for the west coast folks! Here's my take on Hotline Miami 2 (note that there are spoilers for... well pretty much the whole thing).

Life is Strange

Somehow I forgot to post this to Patreon! So, here is Life is Strange, Episode 1! It's got some spoilers for the first episode, but nothing is spoiled for the second one. Also, I'm encoding this month's second episode right now - I don't think it'll be up tonight (switching to 1080p has made the videos take far longer to upload than before) but it'll definitely be up in the next 24 hours or so! That one I definitely _will_ remember to post here in the next little bit!

February 2015 Patreon supported

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Mechanical Focus and Framing

Hey all! This month's short is up, and it's me poking and prodding at some of the feedback I got from the Destiny video. What separates Farmville from Animal Crossing and Destiny? Why are skinner box mechanics in Skyrim cool, but sort of derided in Diablo? I'm not sure there are any concrete answers to those questions, but I've got my ideas. I'm not super keen on revisiting this particular well so soon after the last video. But, as previously mentioned, my video card died while making the ...

Destiny

A few things with this update. First: Yay! A new episode is up! Technically it went up last night, but hey! It's up! And it's an episode! This time I'm talkin' 'bout Destiny and trying not to retread what everyone else has said already. Second: While making this episode my computer kinda died. Well, not the whole computer, but my PCI Express Slot (and increasingly it seems the motherboard overall) has kicked the bucket. I managed to finish editing this thing with on-board video, but that...

January 2015 Patreon supported

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