So, the lengthily-titled ‘Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! Double Pack’ is the Steam Daily Sale today! That means you get two amazing 84-Metacritic-Rated games for 80% off.

<< click that Steam Logo to grab a copy now. Then come back and read why.


That picture above is the thing I’m working on next. It’s called The Swindle, and it’s amazing. Sadly, there’s stuff I’d love to do with The Swindle that simply won’t happen because the necessary programming skills are way beyond me, or they require a genuinely-talented artist.

I guess that’s part and parcel of being an indie – having to make the best possible game you can with what you’ve got. I’ve had to drop brillo ideas because they’d add a year or so to development, and similarly I’ve had to drop equally brillo ideas because I’m simply not dandy enough with The PhotoShop. These are the sorts of problems that can be easily solved by throwing money at other people, people more talented and better-looking than I.

A Steam Sale presents a lovely chance to help with all this.

If you’ve played the games and felt they were worth more than the pittance you paid, please consider gifting a copy to any online ‘friends’ you don’t secretly hate. If you’re one of the naughty people who torrented it, laughing: now’s your chance to make amends and help out with the next project. If you know people who might enjoy some comedy point-and-click games, post the link somewhere they’ll see it. Tweet it, Like it, StumbleUpon it or even +1 it if people are still doing that, are they?

Someone’s going to suggest I start a Kickstarter (I can’t, I’m not in the US) but regardless I don’t really fancy that sort of alpha funding. I’ll explain why in the comments.

Truth is, I’ve got enough cash saved up to make The Swindle amazing. I guess what this boils down to is that if this sale goes well I can afford some help to make it even amazingerer, so please help spread the word and get more copies sold.

Thank you :)

Well, an artist, technically. And “hiring” is probably a bit strong, too.

I’m looking for a talented 2D artist to help out with some of The Swindle’s artwork. It’ll be a relaxed, work-from-home, freelance gig you can fit in around your real job. We can discuss money once I’ve fallen in love with your art style and will pay through the nose to have you involved. Suffice it to say there is some money, but not loads because, hey, “indie development” right?

The Swindle is vector-based sprites, so the ability to use the pen tool in Photoshop is a plus. The ability to do kooky, bold, over-the-top, cartoon style art, and mimic the kind of look in the screens you see here would probably be handy.

Tell you what: if you’re a 2D artist and fancy helping out on an indie game for some money, ping a copy of your portfolio to dan@sizefivegames.com and I’ll get back to you. That’s how we do jobs round here.

Hello! So, now the Kickstarter’s over, I just thought it’d be nice to chip in my two cents about point and clicks. I really hope this doesn’t come across as anything other than idle meandering advice; obviously I’d never deign to lecture you of all people on making adventures, but, as you’re presumably aware: it’s the future now.

Hark! at all the flying cars and robots. Things sure have changed since Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle and whatever that one with the pirates was.

As someone who has made two well-received, top-selling, award-winning old-school, LucasArts-esque point and clicks in the last 5 years or so, I thought it might be nice to impart what I learned from the experience, and what I garnered from the feedback I’ve received. HERE’S FACTS:

People these days have a very low tolerance for tough puzzles. When I was stuck in Day of the Tentacle, you know what I did? I fucking well sat there and damn well worked it out. What was the alternative? Calling George Lucas’ hints line in America for twenty minutes? No chance. Click everything until something different happens, or pixel hunt every screen by sweeping the mouse back-and-forth. That’s what we had to do, and it put hair on my chest. Nerd hair, admittedly, but it still totally counts.

Now, obviously the core of point-and-click adventures is the puzzles, and a good hard puzzle is satisfying. Personally, I wouldn’t change a thing. But I’ve learned that signposting is extremely helpful – back in the day, “memory requirements” meant you had to fall back on “I can’t do that!” or “That’s not going to work” as the stock response for the majority of duff clicks. These days, you’re pretty much free of that limitation. So nudges in the right direction when the player’s practically right are much appreciated.

It boils down to this: just be aware that the joys of The Internet meant lots of people play point and clicks in one window, with a walkthrough open in another, because the ease of it has turned them into big cheaty cheats.

I reckon if anyone was using [clever technology] to track when people stop playing point-and-clicks, it’d turn out they all save and switch off with the introduction of a huge, sweeping area to explore. Suddenly loads of new people to talk to, new puzzles to identify… eugh. It’s probably also where people never bother coming back to the game. It’s daunting! Smaller, tighter, densely-packed areas with minimal to-ing and fro-ing are where it’s at. People loved the quick travel map in Time Gentlemen, Please! Walking around is for idiots.

Finally, and possibly most-importantly: the role of the auteur in adventures is key. When I was playing Full Throttle, there was a personal relationship between you and I. You, at the time, were presumably not aware of this. I knew that solving puzzles wasn’t necessarily about logic, or doing the right thing, it was about what walls you as a designer had chosen to put up. Your brain, your rules.

That’s what makes those games so special, and I’m aware it’s what people like about the Dan and Ben games – they’re clearly about us, and written by us. Whatever stupid logic exists is our stupid logic, and people who play the games often email me like we’re old friends, because they know who I am though the game. It’s what made DoTT so great, and it’s why you’ve found such support through Kickstarter, and I reckon it’s vitally important Double Fine Adventure is largely your game, with your big lovely mucky fingerprints all over it.

Can’t wait.

Love,

Dan

So, I’m preparing a thing about Indie Development, and the thing is themed around “necessity is the mother of invention”.

You know how, in indie development, there’s no money, so you have to think crafty? And actually, the crafty-and-clever thing you did because there was no money wound up being a better feature than if you’d done the money-plush version? THAT.

So, for Ben There, Dan That! I couldn’t afford an artist, and I couldn’t afford to take loads of time doing swanky animations. So I did silly walkcycles and flapping ventriloquist doll mouths instead. This wound up giving Dan and Ben more character than an army of talented artists, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

It’s not just money, either. Hardware restrictions, maybe? Buttonless smart phone input changed your core mechanic?

I need more examples. I want to hear YOUR stories about where your game was made better because Plan A was off limits.

If you’ve got one, pop a story in the comments below, or EMAIL ME: dan@sizefivegames.com

Thank you lots.

From the off, I kind of wanted to leave how The Swindle plays directly in the player’s hands. To a degree, I want you to be able to play it however you want. Like shooting things? Of course you do. There’s enough gunplay hilarity that you can blast your way through every level. Like sneaking around? Who doesn’t? Bide your time and plan your moves to slip in and out without anyone noticing.

Or, you can do what I do in this sort of scenario, which is try to be oh-so clever and sneaky as long as possible, but then just wind up murdering everyone on your way out after it’s all gone tits up.

Up until recently, ‘stealth’ has amounted to little more than waiting around for guards to wander off, hoping that their cheaty-computer MEGA VISION doesn’t catch you. Fortunately, there’s been some rather excellent new stuff that’s gone in this week to bring a lot more depth to the sneaking-around gameplay.

You can now shoot out lights, for example, and hope that you’re shrouded in enough darkness that a nearby guard can’t see you. Or maybe you’ll duck behind a pillar until they pass? Or you could activate Stealth Mode which covers you in enough steam that they won’t notice there’s a crafty thief behind it all. There’s loads going on, and it all feels kind of genuine – don’t clomp around in your size 13 boots near a guard or he’ll hear you and give chase.

I’m not generally big on stealth in games, to be honest. It’s all too stressful for me. But because there’s no punishment for stealth going wrong in The Swindle, sneaking about the place is definitely the most-satisfying way of doing it at the moment. I’m now going to have to work at bringing gunplay up to speed, to make sure that’s just as much fun.

Stealth in 2D was a tricky worry because there are less planes to hide on, no corners to dart behind, but the systems I’ve got up and running at the moment all work really well. It’s all coming together nicely; The Swindle’s gaining a lot of depth gameplay-wise.

No, I’m not quite ready to show it off yet. Soon.

[CAVEAT: I’ve kind of cut this down, to make it readable. Not that it was coherent in the first place, of course. But just so you know: no, I’m not saying ‘this is how it should be’ and no, I haven’t necessarily ‘thought it through’ like a grown-up.]

Here’s the core of it: I’m increasingly aware that death in games is an outmoded concept. It served a purpose in, like, the 1980s because games were short enough that death worked well as a fail state. My argument is that these days, all it does is ruin narrative and frustrate the player, and that surely as designers we can come up with something better.

I’m not saying no death in games. Clearly in some places it works well; VVVVVV and Super Meatboy, for example, which treat death-as-gameplay in a gleeful, short-fired bursts.

This all started because I was trying to work out how to handle death in The Swindle – it’s essentially an open-world platform game that sees you breaking into buildings. Each of the levels will, I hope, wind up being quite large. So quickloading/ checkpoints aren’t really going to be ideal, and sending the player back to the start of the level if they die just kind of felt archaic.

Which brings to mind Alien vs Predator. The first one. Remember how you couldn’t save, and if you died you had to restart the entire level? What that meant was you simply very quickly learned precisely which air vents the aliens were going to spawn from in the opening, and got annoyed at how far you had to sidetrack to grab the Smart Gun but, God, it’s kind of necessary isn’t it? For the well-trodden opening quarter of the level, you were the badassest Colonial Marine ever. And actually, thinking about it, we all know aliens have a penchant for dragging the important characters away to an antechamber and gluing them to a wall. Couldn’t you do that, and take away my Smart Gun instead? Make me escape?

Just a flippant example, of course. That’d probably get annoying quite quickly, too.

I love Uncharted, it’s amazing, but unfortunately it’s the game that during the talk seemed to best solidify my main problem here – death ruins narrative. Uncharted is a beautiful, well-acted, stunningly-designed game that they’ve taken a lot of care over the script to produce a funny, well-crafted story. Unfortunately, it’s a story that’s seemingly being told to you by a confused, crack-addict uncle:

“And then, after solving the riddle Nathan was attacked by mercenaries! He dove left out of cover, but was shot several times in the face, and died a horrible death, slumped in the sand. ‘NOOOOO!’, Sully cried, as Drake’s lifeless corpse slid off a cliff.

“NO. Wait. Sorry, that’s not what happened. After solving the riddle, Nathan was attacked by mercenaries! He dove RIGHT out of cover, but messed up throwing a grenade and it bounced off an idol and exploded at his feet, sending his lifeless corpse cartwheeling across the ruins while Sully shouted ‘Oh God, Nate! NOOOOO!’

“No, wait. Sorry, that’s not what happened. After solving the riddle…” etc etc.

It’s mental. What a weird way to ruin your otherwise-excellent narrative. Quite what the solution is, I’m not sure. Anyone who’s played DooM with IDDQD on will attest it’s a pretty dull affair, so there needs to be some risk, or there’s no tension.

The audience brought up several good examples of games that deal with death differently, from Bioshock’s Vita Chambers to Soul Reaver and Prey’s ‘spirit realms’, which all solve the ‘breaking narrative’ problem, I guess, but in doing so do they really keep the tension up?

I think the sum-up was this: maybe we shouldn’t unthinkingly fall back on convention. As game designers, we’ve got the tools to make anything happen upon death to explain why the player can carry on. You’ve got everything from time travel, clones, parallel dimensions, freak storms, right up to having God turn up, stuff your ghost back in your lifeless corpse and telling you to buck your ideas up. We can penalise death in-game (by removing score, coins, weapons, powerups etc), but instead we’re locked in this cycle of frustrating the player in the real world, by inconveniencing him while the game reloads. Surely there’s a better alternative?

I just don’t know what it is.

So, the good news is I’ve hired a professional to work on the AI code and make the guards amazing. With that all being taken care of, I’ve decided it’s probably sensible to start making The Swindle look pretty. The vast majority of the art is strictly placeholder at the moment, and it’d be nice to be in a position to start showing the game off soon.

I’ve started with the player character – given him a fresh lick of paint and a brand new set of animations; the running animation looks ten times better than the one that’s been in the game for the last six months or so, and I’m really pleased.

Originally I had planned that the game would have a stripped-down kind of tone – everything very simple-looking and crisp. Unfortunately, it’s turned out that that doesn’t really work with Steampunk, which kind of requires everything to be heavily-detailed and busy in order to look successfully Steampunky. Hopefully I’ll manage to tread a line between the two over the next month, where I’m finally going to be able to start going to town on the visuals.

This is what it was all about; the #indieVisibility End of Year Awards Golden Teabag. In ten years’ time they’ll probably be made of REAL GOLD, but for now they’re made out of a REAL TEABAG spray painted gold and therefore pretty dangerously toxic.

There’s too much to say. Winners and photos and thanks, after the jump.



At a crammed-and-amazing festive drink up in London’s fashionable Waterloo last night, the brightest and best of the UK’s indie scene gathered together to celebrate the last twelve months or so of indie gaming.

FIRSTLY: huge thank you to Sheridans who sponsored the event. If you’re an indie developer, they’re your lawyers. Do give them a bell if you’re in trouble with the police or don’t understand a contract.

SECONDLY: huge thank you to the guys from One Life Left who did a beyond-incredible job of hosting the awards. They were literally entertaining, apart from the bit where they stitched me up by making 70-odd drunk indie developers simultaneously Tweet that I was drunk and dangerous.

Thanks also to RockPaperShotgun, IndieGames.com, Rob Fearon, Ricky Haggett and Notch for coming up with the awards and picking out winners.

Thanks finally to everyone who came. I hope you had fun and drank too much and met people, and think it’s worth doing again next year with REAL GOLD teabags.

Here’s our amazing winners, and some photos:

IndieGames.com Strategy GOTY
Frozen Synapse – Mode7

IndieGames.com Platformer GOTY
Explodemon – Curve Studios

IndieGames.com Adventure GOTY
I Fought the Law and the Law One – ben304

IndieGames.com Arcade GOTY
Scoregasm – Charlie’s Games

IndieGames.com RPG GOTY
Project Zomboid – Indie Stone

IndieGames.com GOTY
Minecraft – Mojang

Most at one with nature
Proteus from Twisted Tree

Rudest-Sounding
Vertex Dispenser by Michael Brough

Best Auralgasms
Eufloria by Omni Systems

Most Fun in the Toilet
Super Spike Dislike from Jayenkai

The Rob Fearon Award for having all the ideas and not leaving any for anyone else
Honeyslug for Frobisher Says

RockPaperShotgun best weird ambient rambling music thing
Proteus – TwistedTree

RockPaperShotgun best use of the Unreal engine
Waves – Squid In a Box

RockPaperShotgun best spaceship combat game
Stellar Impact

RockPaperShotgun best attempt to do what mainstream devs will not
Xenonauts- Goldhawk

RockPaperShotgun best co-operative experience
At a Distance – Terry Cavanagh

RockPaperShotgun best game of the year, best story, best doctors, best scene featuring a rabbit that makes you cry, and so on
To The Moon

RockPaperShotgun best use of a dead cat, 2011
Binding of Isaac – Edmund McMillen

Best Placeholder Art
Proteus – Twisted Tree

Best Glowing Lines
Frozen Synapse – Mode7

Loneliest Room
Kairo – Richard Perrin

Best Minecraft
Minecraft – Mojang

Nicest Man
Alex Tutty

Excellence in Character Design
Thomas Was Alone – Mike Bithell

The “Why the fuck is this free?” award for hating money
Stealth Bastard- Curve Studios

Notch’s Game of the Year
“It hasn’t been released yet, but the game that’s inspired me the most in the last twelve months is Proteus by Ed Key and David Kanaga. It’s a wonderful game about exploring and understanding. Not much is explained, and not much happens, but the style works amazingly well, and it’s full of atmosphere and personality. It’s affected how I do game design from now on. Using small tools to convey big messages that might not even be there is a wonderful thing.”

Well done also to everyone who was nominated. You ALL deserve a dangerous teabag.

If you were there, let me know what you thought of it all. Worth doing again? Twittering me is best: @danthat.