Michael Silverman

Most of my favorite games were spawned by rapid prototypes. I can't think of a better way to discover new kinds of fun in a digital form. In that vein, I'm starting a Rapid Prototyping Experiment. I will try to turn out a small flash game that can be re-embedded in a blog post at the very least every two weeks for the course of the summer.

It should be an adventure!

I was thumbing through my bookshelf and found one of my favorite childhood gems.

I'm now looking at the stuff from such a different perspective. As a man-child aged guy I'm in an interesting place to look forward into my adulthood and back into my childhood at the same time. Everything about Calvin and Hobbes is good stuff, more images after the jump.

Nicely done.

Update: Now Via Hulu thanks to our overlords at NBC.

Just wanted to post about my upcoming less-than-rapid prototype currently named "Star D"

I've wanted to design a game that is played on a star grid for several years. I even tried prototyping it a few summers back with no luck, so I decided to take on the challenge once again... and this time, its personal.

This GOTW is in honor of father's day. One of my earlier gaming memories was playing "A-Train" with my dad back on our old machine. It was published in the states in 1992, but it was first released even further back in Japan under the title: "A Ressha de Ikou" -> "Take the A-Train"

(Image and facts via Wikipedia) You can get the game to run on a DOS emulator, and I recommend it. It still holds its own as a well designed piece.

Studio: Artdink

Format: PC, 1 Player, DOS - Emulator version here.

Core Mechanic: Build and operate a railroad which indirectly causes urban growth.

Control: 3rd person isometric via HUD.

The goal here is to figure out how to stop the dots from reaching the center of the star.

Keep in mind that this prototype is more the core mechanic "toy" instead of a full fledged game. (No win state, they just keep re-spawning) When it was time to make the plunge and start designing the enemy system and so on I had a "why?" moment.

I've recently become much more interested in societies, cities, and simulation in general. I'm currently of the belief that by focusing on simulating a real world phenomenon, it will let me express my artistic POV in a meaningful and worthwhile way.

First off we have a lovely fluid animation:

These time lapses are really making an impact on my design sensibilities. There is an inherent play to affecting a society over time. It has an implicit underlying narrative structure. The city is intrinsically tied to space, time, and humanity.

Charlie Silver, incoming IMD undergrad has a featured post over at Gamasutra about Painkiller.

I think he is talking about a couple of underexploited areas in game design. For one, space is too rarely used as a meaningful gameplay mechanic. Also, few games use intelligent agents, not necessarily as better killing machines, but to impart a feeling on the player. Interesting stuff Charlie.

This time a classic fun flash game, "Grow Game." I replayed this recently because of the narrative structure. You can play the game and watch an interesting story unfold in many different ways without feeling personally at fault for bad endings because the middle sections are completed by autonomous agents. The "AI" is simply an animation, but if it were procedurally controlled... well, its an interesting thought.