Nightmare Reaper

What even is Nightmare Reaper. Like, what is this. When the boomer shooter revival hit, you probably expected things to stay mostly nostalgic, tired and true formulas with some updates here and there. Project Warlock did this, DUSK did this, ect. Enter Nightmare Reaper, a little game that has been in early access for a few years that has finally reached full release at 1.0 and about a billion new features. It is a large beast that uses roguelike elements without going full roguelike. The classic FPS formula with about a hundred asterisks. A looter shooter where instead of minor number changes, you can potentially get a double barreled shotgun that spews exploding fire balls that turn every single room into a wildfire. It is a lot.

It might also be one of the most innovative and downright thrilling FPS games to see the light of day since ULTRAKILL first appeared with episode one.

Procedural Level Generation in Sure Footing | AI and Games

Tommy Thompson has a series of videos looking at the artificial intelligence in various games. This often includes many behind-the-scenes insights into how particular games work. It also occasionally includes details of the procedural generation in some games, since that sometimes falls under the umbrella of AI.

Here’s a little experiment with my heightmap engine. I took some real world geodata (of Lake Paranoá), treated it a bit and exported to a TGA file that can be imported by the game. The results are actually really nice!

Slight variant on the coastal highway generator, this one attempts to remove some of the V shapes from the original (the Vs are in the second image). The algo basically replaces these V shaped detours with an intersection which can be used to visit the original target of the V, or continue onwards along the periphery of the island. It has some artifacts that still need worked out.

Magic Castle

The year is 1997. Keiichi Matsunami and Hiroyuki Itoh have left their job in order to make their own job, by renting the place of a family member, a few computers, a Net Yaroze. With the help of two other individuals, they formed KAIGA in order to make Magic Castle. 

The Binding of Isaac

Edmund McMillen is arguably the quintessential indie developer. He began his career in 2001, releasing crude games on Newgrounds laden with toilet humor and dead baby comedy – out of the first fifteen games he released, ten of them literally had the words ‘dead baby’ in the title. Irreverent and undeniably talented, he quickly made a name for himself with several titles that still attract attention today; Gish, Triachnid, Coil, Aether, and a small game named Meat Boy that quickly turned into the much larger project, Super Meat Boy, put together by Edmund and Tommy Refenes, which remains one of the most critically and commercially successful indie games to date.

With the financial success of Super Meat Boy, Edmund was free to spend time on more risky ventures that he didn’t expect to get as much attention, but would be more personally fulfilling. Teaming up with Florian Himsl, a programmer who had previously worked with Edmund on Triachnid and Coil, and later Danny Baranowsky, who had composed the music to Super Meat Boy, Edmund focused on what had started as a week-long game jam project with Florian; a roguelike featuring procedurally generated dungeons inspired by The Legend of Zelda. For the name, he chose a story from the bible which represented the mixed feelings he had about his own religious upbringing; the Binding of Isaac.

Massive Chalice

Double Fine’s initial success with crowdfunding definitely came from nostalgic fans, but their second attempt showed that they had learned something very important. Massive Chalice was initially hit with some controversy upon the start of its kickstarter campaign due to creating a system where heroes the player controlled would be paired up to create offspring, but there was no mention of same sex coupling. Director Brad Muir, who also worked in key positions on Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, and Iron Brigade, actually took this criticism into account. He admitted he never considered this, citing a blind spot from himself being heterosexual, and announced this feature would be added, resulting in the final game letting same sex couples adopt children into their family line. While just allowing a cosmetic option would have been enough, turning into genuine strategy showed real care for what their fan-base wanted. Double Fine knows their audience, and they’re willing to be humble and grow, even when they make mistakes. These qualities result in quaint but charming experiences with a special sort of flavor of their own, and Massive Chalice (the last game Muir made with Double Fine before joining Valve) is no exception. 

Organ Trail

Sure, MECC’s The Oregon Trail was a landmark edutainment title teaching kids the harsh realities of American pioneers making the perilous cross-country journey in a covered wagon, but you know what it was missing? Zombies, a post-apocalyptic setting, and a depressing score. The Men Who Wear Many Hats’ indie darling Organ Trail does all this and more. Mixing up George A. Romero’s penchant for zombie cinema and procedurally generated quasi-educational gameplay works better than you might suspect, right down to the sometimes dodgy controls.