Best Games - Pac-Man There are a lot of games that I tend to shy away from when I write one of these. Games that are so universally loved, and commented on, that it’s difficult to find anything interesting to add. I could write a bunch of drivel about how the game plays, how it makes retreat an advantageous strategy, or how Pac-Man is the originator, and pinnacle, of the maze chase genre. Probably stuff you already know and probably stuff you don’t need to read again.

For the second week in a row, all the new writing is going on over here. It’s still very much in an alpha state, so I don’t actually recommend reading it, but you know, you can if you want. Next week I will have something a little more expansive for this spot.

​Changed some stuff o​ver here. The writing, editing, and rewriting continues.

I’m going to post up writing of a different sort today. I have reworked the rules of the board game I have been making. I reworked them so hard that I removed the ‘board’ aspect of the game entirely, and now the whole game is played with cards. The old version was, to put is succinctly, dull. Dull isn’t something you want a game to be, and so, the reworking of the rules. Below is part of the new rule document. I’m going to leave out the combat phase of play for now, since I still haven’t play tested the new style and they will likely change at least a bit. Anyway, here you go. 

As this story approaches the end of ’episode 1’ I have been going back over the writing, and like you might guess, I hate most of it. I’m told this is normal. This is to be expected. The good news is when you are writing you have the ability to change what words go where and what characters say and when. I still have characters that don’t ’talk to me’ but I’m very definitely finding ones that do. I don’t really pick what they say, I just listen and write it down when they say it. That is sort of cool. Hopefully that will make the second draft easier to lay down than the first. Hopefully that will make the second draft better than the first. I doubt it though. Probably won’t be properly ‘okay’ until the 3rd or 4rth draft.

I wrote a short sketch that I put up over here, but I will also post it below. Hopefully the html doesn’t get too screwy on your browser.

Some very slow progress over here, as I reorganize a bunch of story behind the scenes. I’m getting close to the end of the first episode. After that I will go back and edit and rewrite the first episode and move on the the second.

More story work going on here. I have discovered a character that I complete forgot about, because their big scene didn’t happen until now. I could go back through and write them in where they need to go, but I’m still working under the advice of so many writers to resist the urge to edit and revise until after I have the whole story written. I jump back all the time and add little notes for new scenes and changes to scenes in chapter 1,2 and 3, but so far I haven’t significantly revised them. It makes sense now why that is the common wisdom among people who write longer fiction. The problem is, your brain just can’t hold all the ideas that make up a good story at one time. I forgot a whole character. One that I have notes for and the bones of an arc for. As I was writing each scene, that character just didn’t fire anything in my memory. I like to plan a bit and ‘pants’ a bit when writing because I like to know where the story is going, but i also like being surprised when characters do or say something I wasn’t expecting. That also means that you run the risk of not remembering to write in a whole character. Nothing like learning by doing I guess.

Best Games - Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater The first video game, depending on who you ask, was probably a sports game. Either tennis or ping pong. Video games have been infatuated with simulations of real world sports since day one. Only one problem. That doesn’t work at all.

I wanted to take a short break from fiction to write about machines. Well one machine. No, not one machine, a lot of machines. More to the point, my relationship to machines. With machines? Whatever. I’ll start over.

Added more words here. Not much to say about it. Well I suppose I can say this, editing is going to be a whole thing. New scenes, moved scenes, redefined relationships, expanded descriptions. I’ve gone over a lot of writing advice that says you have no idea what you are writing until you have written it, and holy cows is that ever true.

Some slow progress here. I also went back through the first two chapters and made some notes about things that I will change on an edit pass. There are at least 4 scenes that are in completely the wrong spot and quite a lot of fleshing out to do, but hopefully it’s salvageable. I suppose I will only know that when I get closer to the end.

Some edits here, but first I want to get to another story that I did some work on. I sent this one out for feedback twice, made some edits, sent it out again, and then made some more edits. I think it’s approaching something like a final form. I could probably dive back into anything I have written, disassemble it and improve it, but I think this one is close enough to done that I even gave it a title. You can read This , a short character study about a man with a truly terrible super power.

Best Games - Landmaker A few years before developing Landmaker, Taito released Puzzle Bobble, one of the best action puzzle games ever made (which I, sort of, wrote about here). The shadow of Puzzle Bobble is immense. It’s hardly any wonder that Landmaker gets overlooked when people are compiling lists of the finest puzzle games of all time. Is it as criminally overlooked as Uo Poko or Puzz Loop? Probably not, but still Landmaker deserves a place in our collective memory.