Xong is an odd and idiosyncratic munge of a Rogue-like, a level-based puzzle game, and an Arkanoid clone. It's Rogue-like, in that it's an ASCII graphics game with procedurally-generated levels, but the actual gameplay is puzzle solving with Breakout-like aspects.

You're a white square that moves with the arrow keys; scattered about the level are a bunch of colored bricks along with some enemies, and a level exit. The level exit is colored, and to use it, your "puck" must be of the same color. It's also generally located someplace hard to get to initially.

You can eliminate bricks by shooting your puck at them (CTRL plus direction); the puck picks up the color of the last brick it eliminated (but is white by default). You can, if you want, let a puck bounce around, Arkanoid style to eliminate a bunch of bricks, but it only moves in cardinal directions. There are usually some spare pucks lying around to pick up, which will be necessary if you lose your puck in a black hole.

The only way to eliminate enemies is to direct them into a black hole with "chevrons" -- direction indicators that you lay with ALT + direction key. Chevrons also affect puck direction. Enemies move in predictable, Pong-like ways, so they're fairly easy to avoid, but leave a red line behind them, Snake-style, which kills you if you intersect it, though it gradually disappears behind them.

It's actually pretty interesting, although in common with other Rogue-likes, you can get dull levels, and can also get into a condition whereby the current level cannot be solved. There's no level restart or save game, so you don't have a recourse other than starting over. It's pretty imaginative, though.

I've been working on a 2nd edition of Pax Britannica for a couple of months now (ongoing discussion on Boardgamegeek here).

One of the things I like about the modern world is the easy of access to visual resources -- not all public domain, of course. But for a test this weekend, I decided it was otiose to continue using the money from Axis & Allies (and anyway I was running out of bills toward the end-game), so produced my own game money. And I wanted it to look period, so I found a reproduction of the "white" Bank of England five pound note that was used from the late 19th through early 20th century, and had Karen take it into Photoshop to modify it, producing:

...with variants for 1, 10 and 20 pounds, printed on differently tinted paper.

Similarly, I've replaced the "colonial office income table" of the first game with cards for each of the Great powers; a pound amount, with some appropriate legend ("The Chrysanthemum Throne allocates for colonial ventures" for Japan) on the front, and the country name and an appropriate image on the back:

That's an official portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm, of course. Britain has Victoria; France the famous painting of Marianne leading the revolutionaries; the US a period tinted postcard image of the Statue of Liberty; Japan the Meiji Emperor; Russia the Czar Alexander; Italy King Umberto; and Austria-Hungary, the King-Emperor Franz Joseph.

Plus, there's a wealth of vector-graphic images of flags, including historical ones, through Wikimedia and Creative Commons (though I haven't found a good one of the Spanish royal flag), and even a nice illustration of HMS Dreadnought:

Simon Read's New Star Games specializes in sports games where you manage not a team but the career of an individual athlete; the New Star Soccer series demonstrates the virtue of this, providing a style of play quite different from either the high-res "you are there" gameplay of conventional sports games or the spreadsheet-like play of sports management games.

New Star Tennis is his latest outing; as the name implies, you're a tennis player on the international circuit. You plan activities week by week, including training, participating in a tournament, relaxing by playing minigames (darts, kart riding, going to the casino or betting on the horses), or shopping. Equipment can allow strength and stamina training, but also apparently to attract sponsors, you have to live some kind of extravagant lifestyle, so you need to buy crap for the sake of buying crap.

When actually playing tennis against an AI-controlled opponent, the game is a somewhat odd combination of a "player skill" game and a "character skill" game -- that is, you're moving your character and triggering tennis strokes, but accuracy and power is apparently affected by character stats, which you increase by playing the training minigames. As well, the keyboard UI is a bit difficult to master -- the game works considerably better with a joystick controller.

The need to train is a problem, in that the training minigames are moderately tedious, and you need to spend quite a lot of time with them to be competitive in tournaments.

In New Star Tennis, the life-sim/player management aspect of the game feels less original than in the New Star Soccer games, perhaps because tennis, unlike association football, is not a team sport; and the lack of team connection, also, reduces the feeling of connection to the real world. That is, without the panoply of national and international leagues, and the ability to move from team to team as your career advances, the game feels flatter.

Still, the New Star games are invariably well conceived and executed; the players you oppose seem to have different styles and respond in believable ways; and in general, if tennis is a sport you are interested in, New Star Tennis is worth a look.

Hit or Not is a social network game on Facebook. It works like this: You listen to a clip of music from a band, and rate it. You lose or score points by how close your rating is to the average rating of other users. If you like, you can "sign" the band (the fantasy being that you're running a label), and if the band "does well" (rises in ranking) you gain additional game money. You can also "sell" acts you have "bought" for a one-time gain, a "predictions market" effect.

The developers allow basically any artist willing to upload a song to feature their music on the site. The game offers players the opportunity to purchase a full mp3 of any song they listen to, sharing some of that income with the artist. In addition, the game has the usual SN game limits on energy ("battery power") and game money, and you can pay actual money to get more. So the business model here is obvious.

It's an interesting and novel approach to social network gaming; it is, however, flawed in at least two regards.

First, you aren't actually rating the music as to how well you like it; instead, you're attempting to predict how the average user, that is, the tasteless monkeys who constitute the vast bulk of the public, will respond. Thus, your score is not based on your taste, but on your ability to predict the taste of the hoi polloi. Actually, that's not even true; your score is based on your ability to predict what the hoi polloi will predict is the taste of the masses; it's two levels of indirection removed from actual taste.

Second, while the service may be of use to artists, both through direct sales to players, and through the promotion effect of being rated highly in the game (leaderboards that show the most popular songs are available on the top menu), it is not useful to players as a song discovery mechanism. That is, the service does not pipe music to me on a "recommendations system" basis, serving music that others who rate things the way I do like -- in the fashion of Amazon recommendations. If it did, it would help me find music I like. Instead, it seems to pipe music at me randomly. It's not intended to benefit me; it's intended to benefit artists. (Well, and the developer, which retails the artists' work.)

Consequently, unless you find it enjoyable to try to predict what kind of music stupid people will like (or rather, what kind of music stupid people will predict other stupid people will like), you will probably not enjoy it for long.

And yet -- it is an interesting and novel use of social network gameplay, and even if the basis of the game is not well thought through, at least it displays more creativity than yet-another-snorepeg.

A pity, in a way; if they'd tied a recommendations system to it, it would actually be useful, and along with modest gameplay dynamics, would help sustain repeated engagement.

Dani Bunten Berry was, along with Chris Crawford and Will Wright, one of the giants of the early days of computer games in the United States. Her work was, throughout his (later her) career, motivated by the idea that games should be social activities; as she put it, "No one ever said on their deathbed, 'I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer.'" This despite the fact that she worked in an era when multiplayer games were hard; her Modem Wars was the first commercially released head-to-head computer games to support online play, published at a time when only a small portion of PC owners had modems.

Her best known work, however, is M.U.L.E., originally released for the Atari 800, a machine that had ports for four controllers, and designed for multiplayer play. It is almost forgotten today, except by designers who admire its design greatly. Once, probably 15 years ago, I was having lunch with Warren Spector at an industry conference, and mentioned that I would be seeing Dani later; he got a faraway look in his eyes, and mentioned that playing M.U.L.E. is what had convinced him that worthwhile and meaningful work could be done in computer games, and motivated his transition from tabletop. I offered to introduce him, but he declined, saying he didn't want to appear to be "a drivelling fanboy."

The game has now been recreated, remarkably faithfully, by Turbozilla, with the approval and permission of Dani's children, and is available for free, for PC, Mac, and Linux. Necessarily, the experience is somewhat different from the original game, since the modern version is designed for remote Internet play, rather than as an experience of several people clustered about a single machine; thus, some of the social aspect of play is missing. But the essential gameplay is preserved.

One of the critical problems any such limited-duration game supporting a small number of places face is the difficulty of attracting a critical mass of users. That is, you frequently go to a site that supports such a game and discover that no one is there, making it impossible to get into a game (and Planet M.U.L.E., the new implementation, has no support for soloplay against bots). However, on the small number of occasions I've visited the site, there have always been people waiting to play -- sometimes only a few, but that's all you need.

Unquestionably, you should play this thing, both to experience a vital piece of the field's history, and to explore what many regard as one of the best computer games ever created.

Some years ago, Walt Freitag, a LARP pioneer, published a short game in a LARP zine, called The Files, Mr. Freitag. He described it as "a game for gamemasters," and it works like this: one of two players begins by saying "The files, Mr. Freitag." The other responds. They must take what each say as established, building a sense of character and setting over time -- both characters may lie, so what is said may not be literally true, but must be accepted in some sense. The dialog continues until some resolution is reached.

Just to give a sense, a dialog might go this way:

A: The files, Mr. Freitag.
B: I don't have them.
A: On your person? I hadn't expected that you did. But we know for certain fact that your agency has them.
B: The last I heard, Zeb Constantine had taken them from our agent in Prague.
A: Hah! You make me laugh. You know full well that Zeb Constantine was an android. The real Zeb Constantine has been in the gulag for the last six years.

...and so on.

This is not a "game" in the sense that we usually use; it has the merest tissue of a rules set, no clear goals, and hardly something you could call a quantifiable conclusion. Freitag's point, and a good one, is that it is useful training for a gamemaster, of either the tabletop or LARP variety, who must be prepared to improvise details of the setting, story, and characters of his game at a moment's notice. Even with comprehensive preparation, players are likely to do the unexpected, and gamemasters must be able to respond.

The Files, Mr. Freitag may be characterized by its author as "a game for gamemasters," but it is also undeniably an acting game.

Acting games, too, typically have the barest tissue of rules, and in fact rarely couch their restrictions as "rules" -- rather, as instructions from the teacher or director. There are rarely clear objectives for the "players," nor a quantifiable outcome. Their purpose is analogous to that of The Files, Mr. Freitag; to give players experience with envisioning a character, playing a role, understanding the use of stance and space and expression, of improvisation, and so on -- in other words, to build specific acting skills.

A game design formalist such as, well, myself, might well say "these are not games at all," but such a claim overlooks an important point: You can draw a virtual continuum from acting games, through games such as the jeepform that rely hugely on improvisational roleplay, through games such as narrativist RPGs that provide more structure but still depend on character and story, through conventional dice-driven RPGs, and on to digital RPGs, which adopt the mechanical conventions of tabletop while virtually eliminating any actual roleplay.

Or to put it another way, acting games are interesting, or should be, to game designers, because they cast light on the intersection between roleplaying games and theater.

Acting games are used mainly in acting classes -- and in a way, this is one of their weaknesses. While they may function as a mechanism for practicing skills, the whole purpose of acting, of any sort, is presentation before an audience; in this, in a way, theater is the antithesis of a roleplaying game, for the only "audience" for the action, dialog, and character expression of an RPG is your fellow players. Because an RPG does have outcomes, and playing it is the end in itself, not a mechanism for skill development, the experience can be emotionally impactful and aesthetically pleasing for the players.

I've previously remarked that I could see jeepforms, in particular, being staged before an audience, and thus expanding the circle of those affected from the players to a wider group; the jeepform is almost a form of improv with a set of guiding rules, and while the participants sometimes "break the fourth wall" by speaking OOC to discuss implementations of the rules, the portion of time they spend doing so is small relative to the time spent roleplaying (the inverse of the usual tabletop experience).

A typical acting game involves a few minutes of improv under some restrictions and guidelines, and if a particular student does not produce anything sublime in the process, well, that's only to be expected, and there is no stigma attached. Low stakes are a positive, since they remove anxiety and free the participants to attempt to be creative; but they also mean that the results are less likely to be powerful.

I would suggest that more sophisticated acting games could fruitfully borrow techniques from the jeepform, and from other games, to produce more impactful experiences for students; the sense that there are outcomes for characters, that a larger experience shapes a strong narrative, that this is something short of a play but something more than a skit, a work of its own with a strong theme, is likely, I suspect, to evoke stronger performance, and better work.

I note in passing that Cassady (author of Acting Games) often calls for "yellow stars" for people who accomplish certain outcomes in his exercises; as a game designer, this immediately suggests to me that he is sensing a lack of motivation, of goals, or quantifiable outcomes at times. Teacher's gold star is unsatisfying stuff, when you could be a winner, and a degree of friendly competition can be motivating to students as well.

Equally, designers of roleplaying games may find it enlightening to spend a few hours with one of these books, to see what kinds of scenarios are used to elicit improvisational performances from acting students, since many of these ideas can be used in a roleplaying scenario as well.

City Traffic Simulator is, in fact, a tram sim; that is, you operate a light rail car in an invented European city.

There's a bit of a sim/tycoon aspect; you don't lay new lines, but you earn money by transporting passengers, with which you may purchase new tram cars. You start with the ability to run only one of several routes in the city, and unlock new routes by successfully transporting some number of passengers of different social classes.

As with most vehicle sims, it's not an intense game; the pleasure comes more from the feel that you're actually operating the vehicle, and from the scenery (photography of what I assume is the Czech countryside scrolls as your tram moves). Correct operation is surprisingly tricky, at least at first, however; trams, like all trains, have considerable inertia, so gear-changing to hit your marks takes a little effort. In addition, there are crossings with lights, and you are penalized money if you go through a red light or pass through a crossing at more than 30km/hr. You're also penalized if you don't stick to the tram's posted schedule.

On the whole, it's quite well done for what it is, impressively so for a lone-wolf developer; and while there are plenty of railroad sims, I don't know of any other sims of urban light rail. And it's both freeware and open source.

One word of warning; the file is hosted on a site which pops up ads -- many of them, if you aren't careful to click on the correct link ("click here", quite close to the bottom of the page).

When you watch this video I want you think substitute "cult leader" for "game designer", and "cult member" for "game player" - particularly in the context of online, free-to-play games.

The Great White Destroyer is a 2D Gamemaker game in which you play a shark. Cahrtoothus, the shark god, is bored, and you must entertain him by destroying and eating everything in sight.

Controls are simple, if a bit muddy; your shark moves in the direction of the mouse pointer, and holding or clicking mouse buttons increases or decreases your speed. You automatically chomp on anything you catch. By building up a head of steam and hitting the top of the water, you can leap up, which is useful both for catching seagulls and for diving back down onto boats, kayakers, and the like. Naturally, there's blood in the water as you progress, and swimmers make entertaining screams and such.

After a while, humans start throwing explosives at you, which you must avoid, and it's possible to die; but you can also go into "blood frenzy" by eating enough, at which point you are faster, chomp harder, and are invulnerable as long as the blood frenzy lasts.

Once you've completed the main levels, there are a second set of levels (the Mr. Manatee levels) that are, in essence, a series of boss battles.

The Great White Destroyer is amusing, in a transgressive sort of way, and while it's not free, the demo provides a number of levels, and should you decide to buy it, well, $6 is not exactly an arm and a leg.

Instead of posting about an imitation of an old-school platformer today, how's 'bout I give you a slice of the real deal? You most likely haven't come across this as it was only released in Japan and, erm, Scandinavia. Which is a damn shame, as this is one of my favorite titles to grace the NES. As someone who swears by Mighty Bomb Jack, Capcom's Disney-licensed titles, and all the usual suspects this isn't said lightly. The game was developed by Sunsoft, who admittedly have a less than stellar track record (Aero the Acrobat? Ugh.) This game is their unsung masterpiece, however, and deserves your attention. There was a great deal of love put into this, and is readily apparent in every aspect of aesthetics and design. If you're into platformers this cult-classic title shouldn't be missed.

I'll get the basics out of the way first. Mr. Gimmick is a masocore platformer, the kind that was in vogue around the same time Michael Jackson (may he rest in piece) and Reagan (...) ruled the world. It was crafted in '92, when other developers jumped ship to newer and sexier consoles. Sunsoft took advantage of their knowledge of the platform by squeezing the most out of its graphics and sound capabilities. They also managed to code some neat tricks throughout, but more on that later. Mr. Gimmick's special power is to will a star into existence; it can be thrown as a projectile weapon or jumped on as a makeshift platform. You guide your green dude through seven levels; it's a fairly short game but it will take you a while to complete. It's pretty tough. So far so familiar right? The devil's in the details my friend, and the designer thought of everything here.

I'm going to go on a minor digression. One of the first games I ever played was Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on the 'brick' Game Boys of yore. I was five, maybe six. The entire game is engraved into my memory, but two moments especially stick out. The first was when I collected the bombs and bow & arrows; for whatever reason I thought it would be way awesome if I could shoot bombs out of my bow. I mapped both items to the A and B buttons and mashed both buttons. Sure enough it worked. It didn't serve any practical purpose but it made me giddy that it was part of the experience. The other was when I mucked around the in-game shop, where I got the bright idea of stealing the extremely-expensive bow mentioned above. After some underhanded maneuvering I snuck outside victorious. I thought I was so cool. After expending my arrows on the neighborhood dog I returned to the shop to gloat and restock. I didn't expect it, but the shopkeeper pulled an Emperor Palpatine and zapped me for my entire life as soon as I entered the shop. Getting killed by an assumingly meager shopkeeper was punishment enough, but the game didn't stop there. Whenever I spoke to other characters they no longer called me by my name. I was no longer the silent hero Dusty to them, I was branded the low title of "THIEF" for the remainder of the game.

I couldn't articulate myself at that time, but it meant a lot to me that my half-brain ideas were also conceived and accounted for by the developer. Those tucked-away secrets added depth and credibility to the game, and go towards making it a more believable world than the cheap parlor tricks of CGI and voice acting ever will. I mention the above anecdotes because Mr. Gimmick embraces this holistic mentality, which permeates throughout the entire game; every level is chock-full of these small and wonderful moments of discovery. Just messing around in the first area is good fun. Watching the protagonist, his bouncing star, and the enemies bound across the screen puts a smile on my face. In the second area there are Spinies straight from Super Mario Brothers; if you bop them with your weapon they'll flip over and flail their legs about. If you jump on them, their kicking legs will actually move you, and you can push them into the brink for a point bonus. If you use a shortcut in the same stage you'll catch the boss off-guard and he'll be napping. You can simply push him off the edge of the screen to beat him. These are a couple minor examples that are typical of the game; every last section and screen is rife with fully-fleshed out and fun ideas. There isn't any filler here. There even are low-intensity sections intended solely for atmosphere (one's pictured above) that predate Seiklus and Knytt by a decade. Masocore titles are all about learning the game absolutely, but most titles only have completion itself as a reward. Because of the attention to detail here, exploring and playing are a reward unto themselves. This is ultimately a game about play, which is pretty cool.

You know that I'm not one to go crazy over aesthetics, but I gotta spread some love for this art direction. Compare this to Nintendo's in-house work of Kirby's Adventure, released just a few months after Mr. Gimmick. Stylistically and technically I find this to be the prettier game, hands down. And the music? Brilliant. The assets ooze charm, and further immerse you into the game world. Even if you don't have the platforming chops to complete this you should check out that annotated gameplay video linked above. It's superbly done, and details tons of interesting historical bits and gameplay tricks. If you're a platformer fan I'll hold it against you if you don't play this, though. If it weren't for the first and third Mario Bros. installments I'd be able to call it my favorite 8-bit title.

N.B. This is a ROM, so you'll need an emulator to run it. I linked to VirtuaNES, my emulator of choice.