These forums for Electron Dance were closed on 09 December 2014.
ARTICLE PIMPIN' TIME
  • I just wrote a Thing about Might and Magic and Dark Souls and all of this great existential bullshit if you're interested in reading it--I figure you folks are the ones who'd like to read my shit, and this would be a great way to let each other know if we published something we might have missed! Enjoy!

    http://www.caltrops.com/2014/03/13/review-might-magic-pc/
  • Did I mention that your tweets and articles about Might & Magic helped inspire The Matter of the Great Red Dragon? I'm really with you about the innocence of these games, their desire to be fun and awesome and pleasing. It's refreshing, and I miss it.

    And ah, making maps and taking notes. Some of my older games were designed to require note-taking, because I thought it was such a wonderful thing for a player to do. It meant getting invested in a way that modern games rarely allow you to. (And yet, when I update The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge, I'll add an automated quest log.)

    I'd love to see a modern game in that spirit, but so far nothing's quite done it for me.
  • I didn't know that! Robb Sherwin has apparently taken some inspiration from the same for Cyberganked, and obviously I was inspired to write TWEEZER from that--actually this piece expresses a lot of what TWEEZER means.

    I'm finding it interesting how Might and Magic VI still gives that sense of ownership even with an automap and quest notes. I guess it's that Skyrim , like so many other games, thinks you're stupid. It doesn't think you're as stupid as, say, Bioshock Infinite thinks you are, but I think that's why I've gone so sour to AAA: It doesn't respect my intelligence.

    I'd love to make a game where people have to map themselves. One of the best dungeons in Might and Magic comes at the end--you're put in a maze and told to figure out the name of the guy who put you there--after mapping the maze out, the walls spell out the name. It's this amazing bit of level design that doesn't exist in Skyrim--there isn't a single memorable layout there--hell, that doesn't exist in AAA in general any more. I'd love to make a game that's made up of dungeons like that. I love moments when you suddenly understand the whole picture and that leads to the solution.

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