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Entries from September 29th, 2008

Empire: Total War on Land

September 29th, 2008 · 2 Comments · Creative Assembly, Preview

Not a lot of stuff we didn’t know in the new trailer (number two of five), but that hasn’t stopped me from writing yet. 1) The campaign map looks great in the three seconds we see of it. I expect that will be the next thing we’ll see. 2) Elephants. Always with the elephants. Part […]

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Seven Deadly Sins

September 28th, 2008 · Comments Off on Seven Deadly Sins · Blogs, Design

Soren Johnson has posted his “seven deadly sins” of strategy game design, a column that (I think) premiered in an issue of Game Developer magazine earlier this year. His point on scripting (#1) and on story (#7) are two sides of the same coin. If you have a story based campaign, like his examples World […]

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Civ IV Colonization First Impressions

September 26th, 2008 · 8 Comments · Firaxis

It’s amazing how much you forget over a decade. Balancing crosses and liberty bells, expanding and entrenching, galleons and glory. Even if this was a home brewed mod, Civ IV Colonization would be a contender for expansion of the year.

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This Sounds Like Fun

September 26th, 2008 · Comments Off on This Sounds Like Fun · Uncategorized

Credit to Randall Munroe at xkcd.

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Grand Theft Peculiar Institution

September 25th, 2008 · 11 Comments · Crispy Gamer, Design

Evan Narcisse has posted the skeleton of a design document over at Crispy Gamer. Though not fully fleshed out – he’s a writer, not a designer – it’s a provocative proposal for an open world action/RPG type game. As we talked, the high concept came into focus: You play as a slave escaping from a […]

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Hinterland Combat Videos

September 24th, 2008 · 7 Comments · Preview, Tilted Mill

Tilted Mill has uploaded a couple of battle movies from their upcoming fantasy city management/RPG Hinterland. Not much to see in them since the videos are both very short and very compressed. You see heroes beating on monsters and then picking up loot. Not a lot of information about the game in that. We do […]

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