Hello from Boston, City of Beans!
This’ll be a short update, since I’m currently traveling across the east coast. Last week, I was visiting family in Buffalo. Then I spoke at a game developers conference in Rochester. (More on that below.) Today Amanda and I are visiting my old college campus for the first time in almost 20 years. Over the weekend, we’re going to a family wedding.
Honestly, what I want to do most right now is lie down with Amanda on our misshapen couch and pet our beautiful cat who will be justifiably upset with us for being gone two weeks.
Here are some exciting recent professional developments. This newsletter is about having fun making games, and I’m fortunate enough to say I’ve had fun working on all of these projects…
🏆 I had a game trailer featured at IGN Live earlier this month!
Table Flip Simulator is a wacky, yet emotionally relatable physics title from YYT Games, who I previously collaborated with on Fallen Legion Revenants. I’m the narrative director on the game, which debuted its first trailer at IGN Live. In the game, players can throw all sorts of objects at annoying people in their life, from rude coffee shop patrons to angry penguins in Antarctica. At one point, the player becomes the President of Antarctica. The story is pretty wild!!!
Table Flip Simulator will be out on Steam next year. Yes, you can and should wishlist it!
🤖 Details about the VR game I’m working on are coming out!
Clone Drone VR (working title) is a sequel to the hit indie game Clone Drone in the Danger Zone from Doborog. I’m the narrative lead for this VR sequel. It’s my first time designing a narrative in VR and I’m learning a lot about what works and what doesn’t when the player’s in a snazzy helmet.
In CDVR, players fight killer robots with light swords and the combat is shockingly realistic. (Stay with me here.) The player can aim for and slice off a robot’s hand or poke their sword gently through a robot’s head. There is going to be a shockingly poignant and character-driven story, which I hope will match the deep combat experience. More soon on this one.
💬 I spoke at Narrascope last weekend!
I was thrilled to give a talk at Narrascope last weekend. Narrascope is the conference for celebrating narrative games, which I spoke at two years ago about publishing interactive fiction via newsletter. This year, the conference was held in person at one of my favorite places in the whole world: The Strong Museum of Play in Rochester. Any place where you can play a giant Donkey Kong cabinet and visit a life-size recreation of Sesame Street can count me in.
I gave a lecture called First Person Talkers, which was about games where conversation is the primary mechanic, as opposed to jumping or shooting. I took a deep dive into how conversation games make dialogue feel more immersive, and how I applied those lessons to the development of Fix Your Mother’s Printer, a game I released last year. The video of the talk isn’t up yet, but I made the slides from my talk publicly available. When the video is on YouTube, I’ll be sure to share it.
🎲 Your Turn: Working on any exciting projects, big or tiny? Send me an email or share them with the world using the Comment button below.
☀️ Summer Break: I’m taking next week off to catch up with work after being away from my desk for two weeks. I’m currently writing about developing the cast of characters for the Sexy X-Men game, so that update will be out soon.
8 responses to “I’m Flipping Out!”
FPT FTW! I’ve been bringing this fictional character NearChan together with a group of friends through illustrations and all of us having access to her twitter (branching to more networks soon). Trigger warning: crypto/blockchain ahead 🫣 https://x.com/NearChanKawaii/status/1809744937619173460
Love that you’re collaborating with illustrators on a new cross-platform narrative project.
Okay, I braved the trigger warning and clicked the link! You could definitely sell hologram stickers of those panties, lol.
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to say hi to you at Narrascope, but I really enjoyed your talk! Sharing a summary of research is really illuminating and something I’d like to see more often.
So glad you came to see the talk and that you enjoyed it! Thanks for sponsoring the event. I’m enjoying my snazzy Game Editors pen.
Yes, I agree. I want more people to have access to high quality information, regardless of paywalls.
Hey Geoffery – You asked what we’re working on. I’m helping out a solo developer on a game I though you might be interested in since it’s narrative focused. It’s The Operator…an X-files flavored adventure where you play a federal “operator” who works back at the Agency HQ helping agents in the field. The interface is 100% played through a 90s-era interface. I’m also working on the next issue of The Soloist!
This sounds super cool! I was a big X-Files fan back in the day, and a 90s UI is the key to my heart. When will The Operator ship?
Looking forward to the next Soloist! I picked up What Lies Beneath at Millenium Games in Rochester. I want to play more solo TTRPGs.
Love all this. Awesome stuff, dude. Keep it up!
Thank you, Brian! Great to see you here.