Corvid Sun

indie game development by J. Walton

STAGE ONE: An Autumn Invitational

In an attempt to reinvigorate my drive to work on game stuff, I’m doing a thing.

Rules

0. Anyone can participate (the “invitation” part comes later).

1. Pick one of your favorite video games.

2. Create an “analog” game that distills the essence of it, but…

3. Only include the guidelines for playing STAGE ONE or LEVEL ONE (whatever that is).

4. At the end of your rules, briefly describe how the players might create their own STAGE TWO+.

5. Fit everything onto the front and back of a single sheet of paper.

6. Do this by Sunday, November 6, linking it here.

Invitations

A. I will read and give feedback on all submitted games. I will attempt to play some or all of them.

B. I will also tell the authors what additional work is needed before they will be invited to join a very short anthology (3-8 games?) called STAGE ONE, probably printed as a Scoutbook, which will be Kickstarted/Gogo’d when the booklet is completed (assuming enough people accept the invitations) and distributed at/near cost. Contributors get free copies and rights to their games forever.

C. Games who accept my invitations get played and edited hard, with compassion but little mercy. If we have too many games, we can either try to organize a second booklet or come up with some other plan.

D. This is indie games, so you can always give me the finger and do whatever else you want to with your work, at any time.

E. We all benefit from awesome, tight little games that are great for playing with new audiences.

40 Comments on “STAGE ONE: An Autumn Invitational

  1. Simon C
    October 26, 2011

    Iiiiinteresting. Tempted to do something like Civ, along the lines of the rules for Rock of Tahamaat. Complex problems, simple solutions.

    Or else it’d be fun to do Basic D&D as a tower defence game.

  2. Phil Kalata (@Kalaphi)
    October 26, 2011

    What do you mean by analog game?

  3. Jonathan Walton
    October 26, 2011

    Any game you can reasonably make in the time period is fine. “Analog” has been used in a kind of tongue-in-cheek way to refer to tabletop games of all kinds (board games, card games, roleplaying games), live action games, and hybrid things that don’t fit neatly into categories. But if you want to write some code, by all means, be my guest.

  4. skrir
    October 27, 2011

    This is really tempting. If nothing else, it’s got me thinking about what the essence of my favourite games is.

  5. clweeks
    October 28, 2011
  6. Mike
    October 28, 2011
  7. Stephen
    November 1, 2011

    My tribute to No More Heroes:
    http://www.mediafire.com/?ob96mk6dw4gz29u

  8. Pingback: Return to Maniac Mansion | Teapot Dome Games

  9. Scott Slomiany
    November 2, 2011

    Okay, here’s my Shadow of the Colossus entry.

    Dropbox link:
    http://db.tt/ykPGNlGM

    I don’t have time to playtest it this week, but I put out a call for anyone who can, and I’d update it accordingly.

    However, I do have a question with regards to your plans to publish these entries: How do you get around the issue of these games inspired by copyrighted material of corporations without losing their “inspired-ness”? Wouldn’t you need permission from all of the license holders, or is there a sense of creating all new artwork and such?

  10. Jonathan Walton
    November 2, 2011

    Scott: I’m obviously not going to publish anything that’ll get me or anyone else in legal trouble. If some games hew too closely to other people’s IP, that’s something we’ll have to deal with in the editing + revision process, assuming they make it that far.

  11. Hans Chung-Otterson
    November 2, 2011

    Mushroom Kingdom Stories: http://bit.ly/sArB0y

  12. Nick Wedig
    November 2, 2011
  13. Pingback: Mushroom Kingdom Stories « Little Plastic People

  14. Pingback: Scrabblenauts | Teapot Dome Games

  15. Nick Wedig
    November 3, 2011
  16. Jackson Tegu
    November 4, 2011

    Well frick, you totally got me. I am listening to the prettiest music right now & glad that i’ve spent the hearing about and playing a couple other games that shall be posted soon, and here’s my homage to a great series.

    I’ve done some fancy layout-ing. Both files are the same, one’s in landscape & one’s in portrait to make on-screen reading easier.

    Remember 6 Differences? http://www.ivoryboy.com/6-differences.html
    He also did 5 and 4.

    So here are those. All of em, the whole series on two sides of paper.

    http://fallaway.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/differences-port.pdf

    http://fallaway.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/differences-landsc.pdf

  17. Steve
    November 4, 2011
  18. Steve
    November 4, 2011

    And I’ll be rewriting Fortunes and Thieves when I’ve got some time. I want to tighten the starting situation and have the fortune hunters already in the vault, with the treasure, and having to get out of the compound with it.

    I also want to simplify the skill ladder, and create a little bit of a budget out of successes and failures to spend on:

    - healing (for players), and
    - creating challenges (for GMs).

    I also need to clarify that levels consist of between 1 – 5 challenges, and challenges are rated between 1 – 7 (skill rolls needed to complete them).

  19. Mike the Villain
    November 4, 2011

    Here’s the updated link for the revised Resident Evil+. I’m much happier with this version.

  20. Orion Canning
    November 5, 2011

    http://files.meetup.com/2003651/%5BStage%201%5D%20Dragon%20and%20Warrior.pdf

    Here’s my game. It is both a hack of Silver and White and a sword and sorcery D&D style grindfest based on Dragon Warrior. I’m strangely proud that I was able to do the layout entirely in word.

  21. graypawn
    November 5, 2011

    Naughty Duck’s Dream Adventure.
    http://metagate.wikidot.com/mythicadventure

  22. Mike Olson
    November 6, 2011

    Okay, here’s HALF OF EVERYTHING IS LUCK, my Goldeneye 007 game.

    http://venturehomenews.com/rpg/HalfOfEverythingIsLuck.pdf

  23. Hans Chung-Otterson
    November 6, 2011

    I probably don’t need to say it, but, as the invitational is coming to a close, nerves get to me: my game is 3 pages. 1 of those pages is simply a throwaway title page, serving basically so I could fit my name on there. It’s obviously up to you, Jonathan, if you want to disqualify it on that basis, but I can easily take out that first page & keep the game exactly the same.

  24. Mendel Schmiedekamp
    November 6, 2011

    My Alpha Centauri inspired game is Lost Colony.

  25. Jonathan Walton
    November 6, 2011

    Just posted all the games I’ve received so far:
    http://thouandone.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/stage-one-the-games/

  26. Robert Bruce
    November 6, 2011

    My Pokemon game:

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MaQINl8u5ZwUD4uaAgJ9waXxYuvfXvrpR6eJUBGQgAg/edit

    Thanks to Jackson Tegu, Ross Cowman, and Daniel Nguyen for helping me playtest!

  27. Simon C
    November 6, 2011

    I’ll get there! I’m nearly done!

  28. Simon C
    November 7, 2011

    Done!

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1164498/Heavy%20is%20the%20Head.pdf

    Heavy is the Head, my tribute to the game I wanted Civilisation to be.

  29. Lorenzo Trenti
    November 7, 2011

    Here it is: http://www.valis.it/?p=207
    Paprboy Unleashed
    I’d really like to publish it in a diagonal format to evoke the isometric view of the original game.

  30. Hans Chung-Otterson
    November 7, 2011

    Simon–Love it. Want to play.

  31. Steve
    November 7, 2011

    Just updated Fortunes and Thieves with the changes I wanted to make.

    Simon, I hope we can play Heavy is the Head next week!

  32. Loshon (@loshon)
    November 7, 2011

    Whew, 11:49PM local time, hope it isn’t too late!

    Guild Wars inspired game “The Fissure” https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4HW7K1guLTEOTA3ZDJlYWQtNzlkNy00MDk3LTllMWYtMzFjMWIzNDM0NTgy

    I have rights to all the artwork.

    Really cool thing you have going here!

  33. Jonathan Walton
    November 8, 2011

    I updated the games page with links:
    http://thouandone.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/stage-one-the-games/

    I’m going to review them in submission order, starting with my own, so I can illustrate the invitation process and the ruthlessness I’m willing to subject myself to! Lead by example!

  34. Pingback: RDGP EPISODE 22: SCRABBLENAUTS BY NICK WEDIG | Ruthless Diastema Games BlogCast

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Information

This entry was posted on October 26, 2011 by in Game Chef, Stage One.

Categories

PacNW Game Meetups

%d bloggers like this: