This Katamari “Kake” is the geeky thing my housemates and I did this Saturday for the local IGDA’s themed picnic event.
Our cake looked a lot better in real life, though, and we even won Best Overall Theme.
Edmundito
Hi! I'm Edmundo Ruiz and I make fun interactive things (like video games) for a living.
My Friends:
Ciro Durán (ES),
M.E. Chung,
Dave Gilbert,
Francisco Gonzalez
Aug 18
Aug 17
“ Braid is a brilliant exploration of a principle that [Jonathan] Blow has addressed in the past: certain game genres have been prematurely left by the wayside, victims of the ongoing march of technology.
» The Cardinal Sins
I just finished Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator - Case 7: The Cardinal Sins. It’s the seventh chapter in the 8-part freeware graphic adventure series created by my friend Francisco Gonzalez. If you haven’t checked the games out yet and you like old-school adventure games, I recommend the series. Every case is quite enjoyable, and I’ve also contributed to bits and pieces here and there; I was even the model for one of the characters on Case 6. This time around, I reworked the graphical user interface for it, although I kept it to the classic Sierra adventure game style as well for consistency with the previous cases.
One of the things that strike me about these games is how much effort Francisco puts into them in terms of production. He’s pretty much the sole designer, programmer, artist, and animator; the only thing he doesn’t do is music but he does contribute to some of the voice acting which, by the way, is all lip-synched. So, for a freeware game is pretty good. There are several things in the games that I would criticize here and there, but these games are a prime example of what making games for a hobby is like, where you can really do whatever you want for fun, and while you get fans and get criticism, in the end these games are primarily made for Francisco’s enjoyment, and for the graphic adventure fans.
He started working on these games around 2003. He’s about to start Case 8, the last case in the series, and I can’t wait to see the whole series to be complete.
Aug 12
» EA Announces Henry Hatsworth Casual Game For DS
Henry Hatsworth is a game pitched and directed by ETC alumnus Kyle Gray. He’s working on it over at EA Tiburon, which is mostly know for making sports titles.
Aug 10
Just Read: Persepolis
The Complete Persepolis is an autobiographical graphic about a girl named Marjane Satrapi who grows up when the Islamic Revolution happened in Iran. I loved this book.
One of the things that I really liked was that the way each chapter was written nails down the point of view from Marjane’s age such that it started out with very child-like thoughts and stories, but as she grows up the narrative/dialogue became much more adult like.
But what I liked the most was that many chapters of the book felt like they were written about myself or my family. Perhaps this was because I noticed that the Islamic Revolution had the same sort of shennanigans happening back home, and when Marjarne is sent to study another country (just like I have) later on, the author excels at depicting some of the complications when two different cultures change a person, especially while they’re still growing up.
I’d recommend this book to any of my friends because it’s a great read and because I feel that if they read it they might understand me a whole lot better, at least how I feel as a person, which is sometimes hard to describe.
And I haven’t seen the movie version yet, but now I want to buy it.
Aug 03
Humanity Lobotomy (via foureyedmonsters)
» A lecture about how our games are inherently conflicted.
Jonathan Blow gives a pretty interesting talk about the current state of AAA games and how the model needs to change before the medium can mature and enter its “golden age”.
Aug 02
The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses is out! It’s the book based on the game design class I took at the Entertainment Technology Center.