Category Archives: video games
I made a new soundtrack to The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time
Yes, I did. “But it already has a soundtrack?” you say. Yes, but I made a new one. I wanted to make music for video games, but how do you get someone to trust your abilities in doing it if you haven’t ever made music to a video game before? You start by making music to an existing game without […]
I played Undertale and now I have some demands on the video game industry
Yes, I write about games now too. Get used to it. I do whatever I want! I played through Undertale, also known as the game where you get different endings depending on how many monsters you choose to kill or spare. It’s created mostly by one single person, Toby Fox, and is probably most known for […]
Steam vs itch.io – which one is the best? (and can you even compare them?)
When I want to play a game, I search for it on the web and look for a button where I can “play”, “download” or “buy” it, and often I find what I’m looking for on the game store Steam. Steam is kind of a standard hub for PC gaming, but the thing is that when I click “buy” or “down […]
What I learned from watching 50+ hours of Super Mario 64 speedruns
Here’s a clip of the speedrunner “KANNO” beating the old Nintendo 64 game “Super Mario 64” in 6 minutes: Here’s me beating it in 15 years: What’s the difference between the two? Answer: One of them is a normal guy who takes a long time to beat Super Mario 64, and the other one is the b […]
Watching every episode of Pewdiepie’s Minecraft series was fun and I also learned a lot about storytelling
This text could have been about playing Minecraft. But since Pewdiepie’s Minecraft series from 2019 is so much more than just him playing Minecraft, this text will be more than just reviewing him playing Minecraft: It will be about how he brought life and purpose into an almost pointless game by c […]
Consider this before uploading a game to Steam
To upload a game to Steam, you have to (except giving them $100) sign an “NDA” (non-disclosure agreement = don’t spread any secret information we give to you), and when you’ve signed that, you also have to sign their “SDA” (“Steam Distribution Agreement” = probably containing rules a […]
Creating things that don’t exist yet – ft. Josef Fares’ attitude
I played the game “It Takes Two” with my friend, and realized that: This game is unlike all other games. So now you may wonder, did Josef Fares, the creator of the game, read any books on how to create games before making It Takes Two? No! ? “Well, I never read books on how to design a game. I […]
AI and sampling end the “quality vs quantity” discussion for good
Remember when Daniel Ek (king of Spotify) said that musicians need to make more songs than they currently do to survive in the music business? I’m NOT interested in that statement, but I’m interested in how people reacted to it. They reacted like it’s impossible to make more stuff than they cu […]
The Nintendo 64 graphics were better (Why perfection is the opposite of creativity)
First of all, this isn’t any “The times were better back then” nostalgia. Yes, I grew up with Nintendo 64, but I also grew up with GameBoy Advance and I don’t have the same love for those graphics. So now I’m done with the self-deceptive lies and can go on with the text. I’ve talked abou […]
Why Banjo-Kazooie looked too good for a 90s game
The image above is a screenshot from the room "Water Switch Area" in the Nintendo 64 game Banjo-Kazooie's overworld, taken on the site noclip.website. Banjo-Kazooie had very nice-looking graphics, and here's a question: How could it have that? It's strange, because Nintendo 64 was a technically limi […]
Building a terrain engine for browser games (Games should start fast, and run fast!)
I got annoyed at how complicated gaming is. You need a powerful computer, you need to find a game, decide if you want to buy it, wait for it to install and maybe register an account, and THEN you can hopefully start playing. That's a 2000s PC desktop mindset that still rules gaming, which is weird b […]
How are the creators of It Takes Two so creative?
The game It Takes Two is one of the most creative pieces of art I've seen, so full of variation and dense of content. Josef Fares is the director of the game and he often talks about "bringing out the creative monster" in people, but I felt he never specified exactly how he does that, and I wanted t […]
Don't keep it simple when programming?
When I play Rise: Race the Future, I crash into the "walls" beside the roads in the same frustrating way every time. They could have made more ways to physically interact with these walls but they made it simple by making them all work exactly the same everywhere. Creating a game is a bit like being […]
We need the Game Boy Advance user design on the internet!
Great user design is when there's no user design at all. Any user interface (buttons, menus or whatever) is one step too much between the user's wish and a result. Earlier I talked about making games that start fast, and I think the programmer John Carmack said something like (can't find the quote!) […]