Independent

It looks like my time in Korea will be coming to a close soon. I’ve had an amazing time here, teaching English, meeting people, having experiences, writing about and making computer games… and I’ll be sad to leave. I’m also excited, though, for what the future might hold. My current plan, for when I leave Korea is to do some extended traveling throughout Southeast Asia and beyond. 

That’s exciting in and of itself, but what really has me stoked is the idea of attempting to communicate my experiences while traveling through computer games: of using computer games as a form of travel writing, if you will. You may have noticed that I’ve already been pursuing this idea to some extent with Freedom Bridge, Being There, and Loneliness: my recent notgames about Korea.

To my surprise these creations have gotten a fairly warm welcome (especially Freedom Bridge, which made its way around Twitter and the blogosphere), and now I’m looking at pursuing “travel games” in a more extensive fashion.

This is where you come in. I know that I’m going to travel when I leave Korea, because I know that I can fund the travel by doing web design while on the road. But that won’t give me much time for making games. So I’ve started a Kickstarter project to see if I can’t raise enough funding to allow me to focus on game creation while traveling, instead of web design. 

So I’m asking you to watch my intro video, check out my project website, GameTrekking.com, and consider making a contribution if you think it’s worth it. I don’t know that I’ll make anything great, or memorable, but I’m going to give it my sweat and blood—I’m excited to try and use the interactive medium in a way that it hasn’t been used before, and see what happens. 

Thank you always for taking an interest in this website, and my work.

A quick update to let everyone know what’s going on with this site, and with me

You may have noticed that there haven’t been a lot of articles/reviews lately, and that I’ve been posting more of my own games. The reason for this, unsurprisingly, is that I’ve been more focused on game creation the last few months than I have on playing and reviewing. A while back I said that I was hoping to get into a more consistent writing schedule, but as I’ve reassessed my priorities and my available time, it has become clear that that isn’t going to happen—at least not right now. 

This doesn’t mean that I’m through writing: I plan to keep writing game reviews and articles for the foreseeable future—I just can’t promise you a consistent or frequent schedule. I’m busy with a large web development project, and all of my “free time” is currently being spent on my own game design projects. Speaking of which… Read more »

To my dear NG readers: just wanted to apologize for the lack of content of late. I’ve been fairly busy recently, and have let my writing slip. I’ve been working on a number of small games, among other things, and have two mostly-finished projects that just need to be polished up a bit before I release them. I also have two web design jobs that are needing attention at the moment, and am in the process of teaching myself Python and C++ in order to complete yet another game for a rather tight deadline at the end of March. Once that’s out of the way I’ll be able to turn my attention to finishing a couple of games I’ve been playing, and writing the articles I’ve been eager to write for a while.

Come April, I’m also going to focus on creating a more consistent update schedule for this website… perhaps a consistent by-weekly article to start, and maybe even weekly down the road. 

So thank you for your patience. If you’ve been visiting NG by browser to check for new updates, I’d suggest you subscribe to get email or RSS updates instead (or Twitter, or Facebook), so that you can be notified automatically when a new article is available. 

Finally, just for fun and kicks, I’ve uploaded a couple of my old games to the “My Games” page (hence the header you see above), so knock yourself out with those.

I haven’t written any reviews for a while, and that’s partly due to the fact that I’ve been getting back into game creation a bit, after an extended hiatus. Among other things I entered a mini Ludum Dare compo recently with the theme of “Tragedy and/or Comedy,” that ended up lasting five days, rather than the usual 48 hours. Also, unlike most LD compos, this one required collaboration, so I worked with Mitchell Hillman, who created the sprites.

I decided to tackle the tragedy theme head on and create a game about genocide. Bunnies vs. Bunnies is the outcome. I wrote a whole spiel about what I was trying to do with the game, but looking at it now it seems pretentious and lame, so I’ll just let the thing speak for itself (or not). 

You can download the game here (sorry, Windows only).

You can download the source (Game Maker file, sprites, music) here.

The game is short (five levels), and shouldn’t take long to play through. If you find a level too frustrating or difficult, you can use the “N” key to skip to the next one. Any feedback or comments are welcome and appreciated, including but not limited to bug reports, general observations, and whether you think the game is worth continuing to work on. Specifically, I’m interested in possibly pursuing a more developed, multiplayer version of the game (I think it would be great to have a multiplayer game that was purposefully unbalanced, and unfair, where one person played the oppressor, and the other person the oppressed).