It’s the end of the year, and that means loads and loads of top 10 lists of various kinds. Top 10 indie games of 2010, top 10 RPG games, top 10 porn movies, etc etc. I decided to go for something completely different: I’m going to list the best games of the year that I haven’t played…and why.

Let’s get on with it! Here’s a list starting from the game I’m most likely to play (but probably will not), to the ones I definitely will not pop into a console or PC.

10 – Minecraft

This weird little indie title has conquered the world. Everyone loves this one-man project that has sold millions and millions, and people keep making movies, build complete working ALUs (and CPUs) and generally muck around in this free-form 3D adventure game that doesn’t contain a storyline at all – instead it relies on emergent gameplay and the users’ imagination to create user-generated narratives.

Personally, I can’t be arsed with it. Yeah yeah, I get the idea: it’s fun to build with LEGOs, and this is essentially LEGO but with monsters, collecting things and exploration mixed in a gigantic bowl. The possibilities are endless. There’s countless hours of fun in this game. And that’s the problem for me. I don’t want countless hours of fun – I want a nice and entertaining game that won’t take too much time off my hands. And I definitely don’t want to learn how to play, or spend time finding out what exactly I want to do with all the possibilities in the game.

However, since it’s PC based and seems to be fairly easy to get into I still might, just might, try it sometime. I highly doubt it, though.

9 – Limbo

Limbo intrigues me. Who wouldn’t like an artsy black-and-white game about a little boy that gets stabbed to death and ripped in pieces over and over again? To me it sounds very much like the concept of experiencing the same day over and over again, until you figure out what you need to do to break the curse. Always liked stories like that. They contain a lot of subtext about guilt and punishment, as well as atonement.

However, from what I can see in the screenshots this game looks like it requires a lot of dexterity. I’m getting to old for that stuff – I’m not going to play a game that requires split second timing while solving puzzles and avoiding giant spiders and whatnot.

Not to mention that reviewers seem obsessed with that giant spider. As an arachnophobic, this game seems like a horror game to me. And not in a good way.

8 – Starcraft II

I was pretty excited about Starcraft II a while ago. I loved the first one; I liked the story and the general polish of the game, and the thought of a sequel made me smile. But once the sequel came out I found myself…disinterested. It’s like I know what it’s going to be like without having to play it.

I’ve loved RTS games, from Dune II to Warcraft to Total Alliance, Command and Conquer, World in Conflict, and many many others. But maybe it’s all come to an end, because I simply don’t feel like building another base, clicking and selecting a bunch of troops, and marching them off to their mostly-certain doom. Been there, done that.

I like strategy games, but turn-based ones are much more appealing to me. That’s why you don’t see Civilization 5 or King’s Bounty: Crossroads in this list of games I haven’t played.

7 – Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect was a nice game. Good dialogue, cute quests, nice gameplay. I thought I’d be playing ME2 as soon as it came out. But hell no, they’ve gone for a real-time approach in the battles. “We’re trying to reach a broader range of customers”, “we’re trying to appeal to both RPG fans and shooter fans”, “today’s games require a more intense experience” – whatever, I’m not playing it.

There’s simply no way that I will spend time on a game that requires motor skills. I even ditched Fallout 3 because it was too shooter-like for me. If I’m going to invest time in a game I demand that it rewards me with fun most of the time – not hard work and frustration. I guess I could go for a game that had auto-aiming and auto-hiding. A game in which your character’s attributes determine whether you hit or not, and whether or not you’re getting hit. And that would include not being able to aim better than your character – otherwise the difficulty would automatically be upped in order to compensate for most players’ agility.

But Mass Effect 2 is not that game.

6 – Red Dead Redemption

Grand Theft Auto was pretty fun. You rode around this 2D city, stole cars, avoided the cops and acted as a glorified errand boy. Then something happened… I think there was a GTA3, and some sequels to that one, and then there’s this cowboy game that people refer to GTA with horses. Oh right, Red Dead Redemption. As you can tell I’m not one of Rockstar’s biggest fans.

Cowboy themes are cool but I don’t care much for sandbox games these days. It’s too much freedom for my taste. I’m certain that the story is excellent in RDR but I have a suspicion that it’d be like wading through frustrating and boring bits just to see bits and pieces of excellent dialogue. If I have the choice I’d much rather watch some Clint Eastwood flick.

5 – Super Meat Boy

I know surprisingly little about this game, except that the protagonist is a dude with no skin, he is fairly pissed (maybe because of aforementioned lack of skin?) and that it’s a platform puzzler. I used to love platform games. I got 100 exits on Super Mario World, yo. But maybe the honeymoon’s over and the magic’s gone.

This game interests me in the same way Braid did. It’s a game I’d like to play and would like to like. But I tried Braid and I couldn’t feel gripped by it. I have the feeling that it’d be the same thing with this game, so to save myself time and effort I simply won’t try it.

Beside that, it’s been way too hyped. “Ooh, look at this quirky little indie title! It’s a masterpiece!” Bah, I don’t believe in masterpieces. There are good games, there are bad games, but anything that people try to sugar coat too much is bound to taste like crap when you get through the sugary outer shell.

4 – Rock Band 3

I’m not going to write a long piece about the qualities of this particular game. Instead I’ll just put it in four simple words: music games are passé.

Don’t get me wrong! They’re still awesome at parties and it’s still fun to mash buttons on plastic guitars. I just wouldn’t play it by myself anymore. And if I’m not going to play it except at rare occasions it’s not really worth buying, is it?

The songs are pretty nifty though. Everything from Dio and The Doors to Metric. Good setlist.

3 – Halo: Reach

Cinematic space opera shooter. A lovely combination of words. I think they’re relatively applicable to Halo: Reach. Unfortunately there’s one word in there that I don’t like. Can you guess which one?

Indeed, shooter.

It’s not that I don’t like action games. I do like them! And I do like the satisfied feeling of shooting down an enemy or watching a big explosion. The problem is just that they’re suited for the next generation. Sure, there are people in their 30s playing these games, but those people have been playing them continuously for years and years. I was pretty sucky at Quake 2 but I did play it online a bit. I played Unreal, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Half-Life 2 and many other games. But they’re all just too hard for me – I flail around like an epileptic with my mouse and send off rounds into everything but the enemies I’m supposed to hit.

I’m sure that I can train my skills if I put my mind to it. But why would I want to? I play games to relax and have fun.

2 – Call of Duty: Black Ops

Come on, after writing about Halo, do I really have to write anything at all here? Yes, come to think of it, I think I do. I can mention something about run-and-gun, cover-based gameplay. It’s natural to let shooters evolve into cover-based games, requiring you to add some strategy and planning into your gunning. The problem with that is that developers seem to assume a very high entry level skill.

Let me make an analogy with driving a car. I never got a driver’s license when I was young; no money, no one to drive with. Later on I was simply too lazy and didn’t see a need for it. Now, at the ripe age of 32, I’ve finally gotten my license…and I’m noticing an interesting thing: people who’ve been driving for years have no understanding about the problems a new driver have.

Driving a car requires a lot of coordination, decisions to make, and things to notice in the surroundings. I’ve had my license for some weeks but I still get…confused…if there are too many things happening all at once. Especially if I’m upset or irritated too. It’s pretty much like that with action games: people who’re used to the concepts of running, aiming and looking for cover all at once see all these things as natural, but for me it’s like trying to juggle while tying my shoelaces with my toes. Bloody hard, is what it is.

So, no thanks to Call of Duty. I have enough work, learning to become a better driver.

1 – World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

I tried WoW for a couple of days because my ex had a trial account and nagged me into giving it a shot. I created a shaman, killed innocent creatures, got killed a few times, met some annoying people and got my character up to level 10. That’s when I thought things would start for real.

And that’s also when my ex told me that I need to start playing with other people to get anywhere in the game.

I like cooperative gaming as much as the next person. I had a lot of fun in Gears of War (even though I suck), and I like the thought of grouping up to kill large horrible monsters. But WoW seems way too planned. I like the Diablo 2 multiplayer: get online, check for an open game, and go mess up Diablo’s rear end. Quick, simple, no socializing. In WoW people seem to want to talk about things and join guilds and plan raids and….snore.

Wake me  up when Diablo 3 gets here.

Yesterday I posted a link to Damn You, Auto Correct on Facebook, and it was received by quite a few comments on how that afternoon suddenly became less devoted to work, and more devoted to giggling at hilarious auto corrections.

Here are a few examples:

I love that site!

One of the new features I’m adding to Spandex Force: Superhero U compared to the original game is online accounts. Now, now, don’t be alarmed! I’m not aiming for a draconial Ubisoft-like “you’ve got to be online to play my game” approach. Instead, I’m doing this to leverage new technology and new platforms.

The first three platforms that I’m targeting are:

• Windows – standalone 800×600 resolution application
• Mac – standalone 800×600 resolution application
• Web – 640×480 Flash version

In order for the web version to really make sense, the next logical step is to have centralized accounts. That way you can start playing the game on the web version and then download a standalone application and continue right where you left off. Or for that matter, you can play the standalone version at home and then use the web version when you’re out and about. Or at work, even though I wouldn’t expect anyone to play games at work of course! Tsk tsk.

I’ve also been eyeing iPhone and Android, since that would be completely awesome. Do some leveling up while you’re commuting, and then move on with the storyline on another platform when you have more time – or something like that.

In order to support these online accounts I’ve created a minimal API. I had a look at stuff like OpenID as well, but that’s just complicating things in absurdum. Instead I went for the simplest method I could think of that’s still reasonably secure: use your e-mail address and a password to log in.

Now for some technical mumbo-jumbo.

My API defines the following actions:

• Seed (input: e-mail) – Generate a new seed value for this e-mail address (i.e. this user)
• Login (input: e-mail, hash) – Authenticate the user
• Password (input: e-mail, scrambled password, hash) – Set the password for the user and login
• Heroes (input: e-mail, hash) – Get a list of this user’s heroes
• Save (input: e-mail, hash, revision, hero data) – Save a hero
• Load (input: e-mail, hash, hero name) – Load a hero
• Delete (input: e-mail, hash, hero name) – Delete a hero

So… What happens when a new user creates an account?

1. Enter e-mail and password
2. Call “seed” and get a new seed value. This causes the server to generate a random number and connect it with this e-mail address in the database
3. Combine the seed and the scrambled (MD5-hashed) password, and use MD5 to generate a hash
4. Call “login” with the hash
5. The server notes that there’s no password set for this user, so it requests a password
6. Call “password” with the e-mail, the hash and the scrambled password. This is the only time the password is communicated from the client to the server – and even then it only sends a scrambled password. I.e., the clear text password will never be stored anywhere
7. The server authenticates the hash and logs in the user

Of course, after this the normal login procedure skips 5 and 6.

So, essentially: I’m trying my best to protect the user’s password, and I’m adding a server-defined seed to make sure that the server always has control over the login procedure. This ought to give decent security combined with an API that works from any client and is as simple as possible. The only thing needed is an e-mail and password.

The seed could be rationalized away, and only the hashed password could be used instead. But I’d prefer to not send that over the ‘net more times than are absolutely necessary – which is exactly once after you’ve created your account.

The only downside to this API is that any client can create a new account… Essentially, this opens up for DoS attacks that create thousands of new “dummy” accounts, filling up my database. That’s why I have timestamps and the possibility to prune the database from empty/unused accounts regularly. Then again, if this does become a problem I can always require a valid e-mail address before an account is activated. See, that’s why it’s clever to use the e-mail as the username.

Have I missed something essential?

Last weekend I attended Gamex in Stockholm. This was the first time in 14 years that I’ve been to a gaming event, if you’re not counting a LAN party 10-11 years ago. It was surprisingly fun even though I did expect more. More what? More of everything!

The place wasn’t too crowded; full of gamers and kids mostly. The main topics seemed to be Call of Duty: Black Ops, Kinect, game development educations, and various LAN gaming areas. Not terribly exciting but combined it made for an interesting experience well worth a visit during Saturday and Sunday.

I’m a bit jealous at all the game dev educations these days. Kids have it too easy! They get everything served in silver platters – myself, I had to get a C128 (since it has a simple built-in assembler) and learn the hard way how to construct simple C64 games in assembly. Bah bah, grumble grumble. But on the other hand it seems like many of the game dev educations are quite short and focused on giving students some basic help in producing code/art…but not a stable foundation in Computer Science or similar “real” topics. So I might be better off this way anyway.

One of the high points for me was seeing Diablo III. I have a slight tingling sensation in my nether regions after watching the gameplay video. It felt extremely familiar at once – and yet so strangely new. I can’t wait!

Another interesting thing was Kinect. Aside from the pet-the-cat game (whatever it’s called) I didn’t see anything worthwhile, but the pet-the-cat game completely fascinated me. I loved the idea of taking care of cute pets and petting them using the motion control. Not enough for me to buy an Xbox360 right now, but…maybe later.

Little Big Planet 2 was also fun to watch, but not very impressive. The same with Donkey Kong Country Wii, and various other games. However, I tried Quantum Theory which was…strangely appealing, despite being a Gears of War clone. I don’t like action games but it was pretty cool! Street Fighter IV was also very good indeed. I’m almost, ALMOST, considering getting a second console aside from my Wii.

I was hoping to see more “new” things and get inspiration for KarjaSoft projects. No luck there, even though I found an interesting tabletop tower defense thingy which made me think of online tower defense…. I also had a brief chat with a company providing an acheivements API. I think I kept their business card, so I shall have to see what can be done about that.

All in all it was a good time; not very productive but fun!

Finally some crappy pictures: a general overview picture, a pic of Diablo III gameplay, a stormtrooper presenting The Force Unleashed 2, a Lamborghini and a cosplay competition.

Work has been keeping me quite busy lately, so progress on Spandex Force: Superhero U hasn’t exactly advanced in gigantic strides these last weeks. I don’t have my latest build on this computer so I can’t show you the screenshots of the new gameplay modes, so I guess I’ll have to discuss something else entirely. Something else in this context means Stockholm, the city I just moved to.

It’s interesting to look at Stockholm as a newcomer. Swedish people generalize about the three largest cities something like this:

Stockholm – Full of busy, arrogant, distanced and ambitious people.

Gothenburg – Full of easy-going, pleasant but loud people.

Malmö – …I have no idea. What do they say about Malmö? Full of immigrants?

Now that I’ve moved to Stockholm I can’t really say that I agree with the stereotype. I find enough slow-moving laid-back people in Stockholm to satisfy anyone’s needs, and while the cultural attitude is a bit different I don’t think it’s…malicious or obnoxious or any other -ous word. People are people no matter where they live.

On one hand I wonder if that is due to my “accept all people for who they are” upbringing. On the other hand, maybe I simple feel more at home in a city that leaves some distance between people. I like being social as much as anyone else but damn it – I love being able to go to a bar and just have a beer without running into vague acquaintances too. Not only being unrecognized – being ignored by the others.

But enough of this asocial behaviour! Tomorrow I’ll be more social again: it’s time to visit GAMEX, a Swedish game expo, and then have dinner and a movie. I have some ideas for the future of KarjaSoft – maybe I’ll get even more inspiration tomorrow…

“What have you been up to, Karja,” asks the casual browser of this blog. “You’re slacking off with the updates again!”

Before you read too much into the title of this entry, there will be no speculations regarding psychological reactions to hostage situations. Instead, I’ll give a brief summary of my last few weeks: packing, work, stress, threw away half of my belongings, moved the other half 250 km (thanks for the help, Mauri!), and – in general – more stress.

My life has changed quite a bit in the last year, and even more so in the last six months. I now find myself with a new job, living in Stockholm, in a large house instead of a rented flat, with a new girlfriend and adorable cats, about to get a driver’s license (hey, I’ve never needed one before now!) and generally with less spare time than I’m used to.

Despite this, Spandex Force: Superhero U has progressed! I’m currently working on episode 2 (seen above, but Time Master doesn’t make an appearance in that episode – he’s just there ’cause I love how he looks). I have also received invaluable feedback from Pätr regarding the first episode, and I’ll modify the difficulty and the minigames accordingly.

Oh, and apparently the music sounds like something from softcore porn. But hey, a bit of softcore never hurt anyone. (Okay, okay, I’ll see if I can do something about that too.)

One thing I got back from the feedback is that the game is very similar to the original Spandex Force. The art is improved, I’ve learned a bit more about game design and so on – but at the core I guess I am aiming for a similar experience. In fact, I chose to keep many of the situations from Spandex Force: you still rescue old ladies from being run over, there’s still fires to put out and so on…I guess one could say that this game will be more like what I wanted to do with the original one, but I didn’t have the resources back then.

Oh, and the humor isn’t quite as…daring. There are no animals getting hurt, there are no transvestite villains, and so on. This is a conscious choice, to keep the game family-friendly. Sometimes I feel like I’d love to make a very edgy game, but I don’t really have an urge to shock people with my games anymore; gone are the days of my (very old) Shit Invaders and Spank da Virgin games. Good humor is good humor, regardless of questionable themes.

Speaking of various approaches to humor, I’m on the fence regarding Comic Jumper. If I had an Xbox 360 I’d love to check it out, to see if I “get” the humor or not. Tentacle porn levels at Hent High… That’s clever.

A while ago I discussed some things that are not present in Spandex Force: Superhero U. Since I’m done with v0.1 of the game I thought I’d mention some of the things that are present as well, for good measure.

Q: What’s the main structure of the first episode?

First you create a male or female hero, assign colors and choose hair/face styles. After that you’re dumped in the main university screen, where you get to meet your professors and classmates, and select three classes out of five to take in the first episode.

After you’ve finished your schoolwork there will be an interruption – a student has been kidnapped! It’s up to you to ask around for clues, and eventually storm off to the villain’s lair to rescue the damsel in distress.

Or at least, that’s what you think…

Q: Is there more to the game than that?

The text above describes the first episode of the Adventure Mode. If you want to just play around a bit, there’s also a Relaxed Mode, and later there will be a Battle Arena for fighting other heroes.

In other words, you can play the Adventure Mode when you have a lot of time, or just spend 15 minutes now and then. Everything you do in the Battle Arena or Relaxed Mode will benefit your hero in the Adventure Mode as well!

Q: What’s the gameplay like?

There’s a fair amount of dialogue and adventure-like gaming on the various screens, but the main gameplay is puzzle based. There are three different types of match-3 game mechanics (swap, slide, twist), in combination with three different main game modes (battle, clear all locked tiles, fill up the power meters).

The most important game mode is swap match-3 battles against villains, other students and various obstacles. In these you use your superpowers to defeat your opponents.

Additionally, there are also special modes e.g. when you collect clues.

Q: What about the RPG parts?

There’s a lot of RPG elements too in the game. You collect experience points that will level up your character. Leveling up gives you more health, and power points that you can spend on mental, physical or elemental power levels.

There are also 27 different superpowers, divided in the three different power types. Depending on your reputation level, you can buy new powers and level up old ones. This means that you can upgrade your old powers to make them useful later in the game.

If you have spare cash you can also buy artifacts such as helmets, weapons, shields and capes. These give various bonuses, for example power bonuses, extra health or bonuses to money collected.

Q: What about replayability?

You decide yourself which classes to pursue in each episode, you assign power points however you wish, and you upgrade powers at will. This means that there will be classes you haven’t seen and powers you (probably) can’t afford to buy on your first playthrough. The story will be the same, but your heroes will develop quite differently!

Now, I really should get started on making a webpage for the game!

Spandex Force: Superhero U is my ongoing superhero puzzle/rpg/adventure game scheduled for release late 2010. Just how I will manage that is…a bit unclear right now, but I still think it’s do-able. This week has been dedicated to make the game give of squeaks and whooshes and bangs, not to mention music as well. It’s only natural that each game I make takes up more space than the last one, but this time things have gone bananas: only the music takes up more than 50 MB right now. That’s more than the entire Wildhollow game.

Justice Gal (with awful colors that I selected) and Time Lord have a friendly chat

So, what does that mean exactly? It means that I have a large array of different scenes for which I need music. Also, inside the puzzle games I’m using longer music loops, and randomizing which ones to play. All in all, I’m trying to make this game more varied.

Another thing I have been working on is making a web version of the game. Yes, spandex will be readily available for all – no matter if you run on Windows, Mac or a public computer. In fact, it almost runs okay on my HTC Desire as well; some more tweaking is needed. Aforementioned 50 MB of music will of course have to go for that. I’ll have to lower the quality and reduce the number of songs I use. It also messes up the code a bit. Instead of specifying:

“In scene Y, play song X”

I have to make function calls:

“Gimme a song to play for scene Y”

But all of that is pretty much on the way now. Version 0.1 will be done in September, all according to my very well-defined pragmatic ad-hoc plan.

Game status as of September 23:

Art: 92% done
Sound: 70% done
Code: 80% done
Design: 75% done
Dialogue: 20% done
Homepage: 0% done!
Secret stuff: 10% done

A recent private thread on Juuso’s GameProducer forums discusses Test Driven Development and offers insights into benefits of the paradigm. I can’t argue that there are benefits, but I also don’t see the point of applying it to minor projects like casual games. In general, I’m very sceptical towards evangelic people who claim that one process/development method/paradigm is applicable to all kinds of projects. TDD is great for large systems, TDD is a fresh way of looking at design, etc etc – but it’s not relevant for KarjaSoft.

Why not? The primary reason is that my games evolve relatively organically, and the initial overall design is rarely the final one.

“Well, that’s the beauty of it all! You can apply continuous refactoring – and TDD is great for that!”

Look, I don’t just mean that the code changes. I mean that I rewrite essential basic requirements of the game all the time. Partly, this is because I’m doing this for a hobby. It’s meant to give me pleasure, and just “doing stuff” feels good. But also, it’s largely because my game designs change along with the art I have. I’m very much doing art-driven game design, and the art I have depends on what artists I find and what I can do myself. …Nothing of which is set in stone at the beginning.

“Why don’t you just gather all the art you need and then do the design afterwards?”

Because that’d take longer, and because there’s a constant give-and-take between the art and the design. If I get a decent enough price for the backgrounds I can hire a GUI artist, and then I need to design the power and item stores to utilize the GUI art. But wait, I can’t afford a GUI artist! That means that I have to design the stores in such a way that I can create the art for them myself. All of this moves to and fro for many months.

But enough of that. Yesterday I encountered a situation where I really could have used a TDD approach. I have multiples among my tokens on the game board, and since the beginning I’ve had some issues with deciding if there are three or more matches when a multiple’s involved.

I decided to just let it go and finish all the other stuff first, but now the time has come to fix this bug. And for some reason the logic in my code isn’t working:

if ( found > 0 && index == multiple &&
tiles[i][j].active && tiles[i][j].state == "Active"
&& (tiles[i][j].index < 3 || tiles[i][j].index == multiple) )

It never correctly identifies a line of three or more, that begins with a multiple!

No big deal. I’ll just have a closer look at it, rewrite the function to become cleaner and easier to read, and then fix the problem. If I had used TDD the code would already have been prepared for this, and I could simply have added another test case. Now I have to spend an hour (-ish) to make this work properly instead. TDD would most definitely have helped.

…But on the other hand I just lose an hour this way, compared to the time I’d have had to spend if I went with full TDD from the beginning. I’m a firm believer that it’s way too easy to suboptimize, and that implementing a theoretically more effective method often will cause the end result to be more costly. Choose the right tool for the task; not the prettiest and sexiest tool.

Spandex Force: Superhero U is moving along with gigantic strides. The first episode is playable, and it’s now possible to create a hero of your own – just like in the original Spandex Force. With a few additions.

So, what’s the current status overall?

Art: 90% done
Sound: 20% done
Code: 75% done
Design: 75% done
Dialogue: 20% done
Homepage: 0% done!
Secret stuff: 0% done!

What the…?! I have a bunch of stuff left to do! No time to waste on blog posts!