Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
player passes the final room, the queen briefly expresses pleasure and then kicks Jill down to
start the process over again. If the player manages to ascend the tower in less than 12 minutes,
she's rewarded with a different and even more challenging tower. The experience of playing
the game, pushing against the resistance of the tower's dangerous rooms only to repeat the
process, mirrors the game's concise story and reflects on the nature of games and their resis-
tance: as players, we jump through hoops and submit ourselves to moments of frustration and
challenge for the sheer pleasure of it.
Platform:
Windows, Mac
Price:
F r e e
http://auntiepixelante.com/jilloff/
Verbs, Scenes, Resistance, Story
NetHack
is one of the earliest games in the roguelike genre, a type of game that often involves
exploring and fighting enemies in a series of levels that are semi-randomly generated and
different every time you play. It's also a great example of a game with a huge number of verbs.
Players can “use” or “consume” hundreds of different items, “flee” when they spot enemies or
“attack” from a distance, and even “pray” to dozens of different gods. Because of the rich variety
of objects, opponents, and situations in the game, these verbs don't feel underdeveloped; they
can all be used in a lot of different ways, with overlapping effects and strategies resulting from
the combinations.
NetHack
has a rich emergent story that's unique every time and requires few
authored elements. The stories that arise from the game don't even need much in the way of
visual context, since the entire game world is represented by letters, numbers, and punctuation
arranged in a grid.
Platform:
Windows, DOS, Mac, Linux, Amiga, Atari
Price:
Free
h t t p : / / w w w . n e t h a c k . o r g /
Verbs, Resistance, Story
As an immigration inspector on the border of a fictional Soviet-bloc-themed country in the
1980s, the player is given the rote task of examining the paperwork of hundreds of would-be
border crossers and then approving or denying their entry. Although the grind of this gameplay
effectively communicates the mechanical feeling of being a cog in the wheels of bureaucracy,
