I have fallen back into dota 2 this weekend, after dropping it for about 3 and a half months. The last time someone asked me if I liked it, I had to say "I am not sure". I still feel the same way about it, but I am starting to hone in on the bits of it that I do enjoy (and the ones that I don't like so much). I think it say a bunch for the game that it took me around 30 hours of play to gain an opinion of it, or maybe it is illustrative complex the game is. Much like the RTS games that it is descended from, much of the moment to moment play in the game is a micro management game, which comes down to understanding animation timings and clicking at exactly the right time. I enjoy this much more than the micro in star craft 2, which I find to have to many moving bits to really feel like micro management, and starts to feel like an interface management problem. The larger macro game is a bit harder for me to enjoy, as it is quite broad in terms of the decisions that can be made. I think this is my beginner reading of the game however, I am still at the level where I don't understand the buy orders for each of the various moving units on the field, much less how I need to balance my purchases against the other team. This may all be a moot point because I have yet to perfect the micro game, and can't really purchase the items as quickly as I need to keep up with the level of play in the rest of the game. Valve has made this a bit better by integrating user build orders into the interface that help you decide what to buy and when. I think that this may speak to my larger issues with the game, which is that the level of play needed to keep up with other players is so far beyond what I am capable, even after 30 hours of play. Those thing said however, I still really enjoy playing the game, and there are a number of things that I would borrow from it for my own design. the fact that they didn't seem to ever throw away any content. If you can think of an element for the game, it is in there. Weapons that do major modifications to the behavior of some of the heroes, but don't do anything for the other heroes, strange item delivery systems. It seems like the design was one ongoing shit sticks session, and I really enjoy that. I wonder what got taken out, if anything. It does seem to lend itself to a game that has a bunch of breadth, which the depth comes out of. The system starts with a bunch of branches, which are quickly pruned as play goes onwards, and then converge on correct builds. The points in the game that allow for branching decisions seem to be centered around the play within a team, the hidden information around what the other team is doing, and the specifics of how a player approaches the micro game.

!https://dl.dropbox.com/u/43672/blog_static/software/wave_trip.png(wave trip)! The final game in the set of music creation games that we did at Lucky Frame. I am sure there will be more, the next thing we do will not be as clearly connected. This game is a cross between a cave flyer and sound shapes. I am really proud of the game design decisions that we made on this one, I think it is both accessible and deep. "Wave Trip Website":http://www.luckyframe.co.uk/wavetrip/

I am going to try to finish more things this year. I was a bit disappointed that I looked back on 2012, and didn't have a "crazy long list of games like I did for 2011":http://jonbro.tk/blog/2012/01/12/year_of_games.html. Some might argue that it is quality over quantity ("one of the 2012 games got into the igf for petes sake":http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html), but proliferation is its own reward. I also started a bunch of games last year, but never finished them to the point that I was comfortable with releasing them. This year I am going to try my hardest to get things to a state where I enjoy them, and where I feel comfortable with giving them to others. As such, I am going to participate in "1GAM":http://onegameamonth.com, a project in which I am going to release 12 games in 2013. I think it should be doable, I already have the first 3 lined up, I just need to come up with another 9. I am also writing "750 words a day":http://750words.com/ for the month of January. Writing is one of the skills that I feel like I am lacking in the games that I make personally. It is amortized a bit by working with lucky frame, but my jam games suffer from a lack of story. I will probably post up an ebook of my rambling for anyone that is brave enough to download it at the end of the month.

There is a "kickstarter called sportsfriends":http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gutefabrik/sportsfriends-featuring-johann-sebastian-joust that is nearing its final days right now, and it looks like it is going to be a tight one. I am writing this in the hope that it will help explain why I think these games are really enjoyable, and hopefully get other people the opportunity to play them. The game I want to talk about is "TENNNES":http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gutefabrik/sportsfriends-featuring-johann-sebastian-joust/posts/358829. Plenty of things have been said about J.S. Joust, and it is one of the games that I have spent the most time playing from this pack. Doug has been touring with it like mad for the past few years, and I have played it with him and others, late into the night. It is a singular experience, and I hope that everyone gets to play it at some point. Enough has been said about this game in other, smarter venues though, so I encourge you to follow some of the links off the kickstarter page. Hokra, Barabariball, and Pole riders I have spent a bit of time with. I don't know them all that well though, as I havn't had the opportunity to really dive in deep. I am super pumped to kick back with a controller and the guys at luckyframe and dig into all of them when they come out. Also, due to the fact that they are core sportsfriends games, there is plenty of information already available about them. I don't think I need to Where does that leave us? TENNNES. It is not one of the core sportsfriends games, but it is going to be availble for pc with the pack, and I really think that it is amazing. After hearing the "Idle Thumbs podcast talk about it":http://www.idlethumbs.net/idlethumbs/episodes/happy-halloween, I asked JW for a copy of it. Much of what I have written is repeated in that episode. TENNNES has been running on a computer at the office non-stop since I got it. Every moment of downtime has been TENNNES. TENNNES is just tennis, more or less, but filtered through the simplicity of pong, i.e. you could play it with a beer in one hand (with the correct joystick). It is incredibly deep though. Watching a match as an uninitiated player looks pretty much the same as pong, but as someone that has played it, you can see crazy risky shots and amazing saves and incredible points. It is a strange combination of approachable in its controls, but crazily deep in the outcome. We are still finding optimal stragies and new gambits for serves weeks into playing. And we are only playing two out of the three possible courts in the game. TENNNES also creates this amazing competitive space, where you end of vibrating with energy after a close match. I have left several matches sweating and swearing. This seldom happens to me when playing an online multiplayer game. Something about having your competition in the same room with you really helps the game itself. I hope this encourages some more people to pledge to the kickstarter.

I have been playing a bunch of Far Cry 2 and Hotline Miami recently. They are both really nice examples of improvisational play, but the details in each game create for wildly different experiences. Each game has a similar start state, a planning phase where you attempt to work out your path through a problem. In Far Cry 2 the problems generally amount to figuring out where the enemies are in the check point that you are working your way through. Hotline Miami blocks the information off from you a little bit. In blocking off the information, it requires you to repeatedly play through the same situation, planning a little bit further into the problem each time. This is almost an improvisational approach to creating a composition, which is the piece that you play once you have gathered all the information about the level, and play through it to the end. This play system is supported by one hit kills, and an extremely fast restart system. Far Cry 2 on the other hand has a bit longer load time, and you are required to walk back to the location that you were just working through. This, coupled with the amount of damage that you can soak up, makes it less likely that you will give up on a situation, and continue to improvise through to the end. The fact that you don't have perfect information about the problem at any point during solution means that there is a bunch more force towards dealing with the unfolding issues. It is interesting how wildly different the pace of a game can be controlled by these types of tweaks to the underlying mechanics, and framing of the games.