Carnegie-Mellon Discovers Game Design

[Musenik]

Sarcasm aside, it's a pretty good read for indie developers.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml

[Daire Quinlan]

I tried the actual games a while back. I checked out the site again ...
All I can say is

TOWER OF GOO UNLIMITED !!

Now If you'll excuse me, I'm going to spend the next few hours ignoring my
enormously complicated game of Barbarian Total War in favour of dragging
little lumps of tar around on a tottering but ever growing ediface ...

D.

[Greg Squire]

Cool Article. I've been a fan of the Experimental Gameplay Site (http://www.experimentalgameplay.com/) for some time now. (Looks like their little site is being overloaded right now by the extra traffic generated by the article.) They've come up with some truly innovative prototypes there. "Tower of Goo" is still my favorite. "Swarm" is also kind of fun (in a "demonstrative" kind of way).

[Christian]

Is it just me or only 3 of all those games are good and the rest are bad?

[soniCron]

Is it just me or only 3 of all those games are good and the rest are bad? I've played a good majority of those games and still haven't found one I enjoy at all, and I'm a huge fan of little games, casual or otherwise. I haven't tried the famous Tower of Goo yet, so...

[Christian]

Well, when you try it, im sure you will like it, but it will last not long i guess, for me it was nice until i played it for the third time, then it becomes... senseless.

[Musenik]

Is it just me or only 3 of all those games are good and the rest are bad?

Games like these often range widely in their appeal. Others may find a different set of 3 they think are good.

Tower of goo is the one that, ahem, stands out. A smart game designer would next turn that 1 week project into a richer game, if possible. That may involve turning the goo into something more accessible with a greater wealth of supporting concepts.

Goo is about as generic as it gets. Something like, say cheese, has all sorts of 'flavor' to draw ideas from to enrich the gameplay. Perhaps some cheese is harder than others, makes the supports stronger... Some may soften quicker in the sun, so time might be an added factor... Then next thing you know some drunk mouse comes along and...

blah, blah, blah

fun stuff!

[giraffa]

Well, most of those games probably are not good for casual gamer.
But what really impressed me was the fact that such complete prototypes can be done in such short time - most of them in 2-3 days, a week max.
Of course, to make a real game out of it, much more time/effort has to be spent, as we all know :)

[giraffa]

Well, most of those games probably are not good for casual gamer.
But what really impressed me was the fact that such complete prototypes can be done in such short time - most of them in 2-3 days, a week max.
Of course, to make a real game out of it, much more time/effort has to be spent, as we all know :)

[Bmc]

i tried a few of them, but OpenGl games usually work like crap on my PC so they were all unplayable.

I did try a few of the flash ones, they were interesting.

[DrWilloughby]

I think they are frickin cool! I disagree with their premise, though, that any game can be prototyped in a week. Simply not true. The games they are making are simple little time wasters, and for that, they are REALLY neat, lots of style and flair and originality. I'd like to see what would happen if they tackled something bigger.

[gpetersz]

What was a bit funny for me that the rules state that there should be only one creator, but many games has at least 2... There are 3 rules at all and if one was broken why should I believe that the others were not... ;)