Sunday, September 13, 2009

Batman: Arkham Asylum

I was planning to buy Prototype but the guys at my local games shop talked me into buying this instead (and those guys know their games.)

I'm not a big Batman fan but I love the gothic feel of the game. Essentially, Joker has taken over a lunatic asylum and is throwing a 'party' for Batman. The game is a lot of fun and it's easy to pick up and play; it's got a short learning curve.

My only gripe is that it is a bit easy. I'm 28% of the way through and I haven't faced any real challenges, even though the boss fights are ... tricky, but not tough. You get lots of hints, too. I guess I should have played it on difficult level.

Anyway, it's not enough to put me off the game and the storyline is pretty cool. All in all, I would suggest this game for people like me: people who don't play superhero games but would like to try something different.

Playing it on the 360, of course.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Current Projects

I'm working on two current projects:

1 A tutorial on how to set up a word scramble game in AS3

2 A new game that involves manipulating blocks in order to roll across an obstacle course. It's in its early stages. Previous to this, I worked on a couple of game concepts but decided not to flesh them out.

I'm still trying for that 'killer game': the next Tetris.

Speaking of Tetris, this documentary is an absolute MUST for game designers. It's awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn9dO_iL7lo

Escapoids

Escapoids is a game that I completed a short while ago.

Although it is based on an earlier game, Drench, I redid it from scratch because Drench was done in AS2, and Escapoids in AS3. Escapoids is the first game for me where all the code is held externally in .as and class files. It felt odd to code that way at first but I'm getting used to it.

Play Escapoids here

Play Drench here.