#michael real

Kotaku: “What A Fan Learned About Game Development By Making His Own Star Wars Games” by Stephen Totilo

Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo has written an uplifting piece about the lessons one Star Wars fan learned about making his own fan game. Totilo tells the story of a 21 year old man named Michael Real who had been using the game creation tool Project: Spark to essentially cobble together something that looked like a Star Wars game. It also goes into detail about reach iteration of Real’s Star Wars games…

Kindness Coins is a game by Arden, Spider, Jordan Battiston, and Michael Real about Nice Guys and relationships.

Download (Mac, Windows)

Why Try It: Cute character designs; subverts the trope of the Nice Guy and inverts typical romance narratives.

Time: Five minutes.

How to Play: Use the mouse to select dialogue choices to advance the story.

Author’s Notes: "you play as a person that a dating sim protagonist is trying to pick up"

More Info: You can read more of Arden's thoughts on writing the game, which go further into the topics of Nice Guys and the portrayal of romantic relationships in games. 

Kindness Coins was made for the Pulse-Pounding, Heart-Stopping Dating Sim Jam, an event where participants created dating simulation games over the course of a weekend.

Traditionally, dating sims place the player in the role of a young person (usually a boy) with the goal of attracting one or more romantic interests. Kindness Coins subverts this trope by placing the player in the role of the object of a typical dating sim protagonist's desire. This piece by Kim Moss further explores the problems with the ways that romantic and sexual relationships tend to be portrayed in games.