So what are we restarting with? Well, what else? A review of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse!

Upcoming reviews:

• Monsters
• Tucker and Dale VS Evil
• The Disappearance of Alice Creed
• Solomon Kane
• Timer
• Going Postal
• Screamers

Yep. Fun this shall be.

Meanwhile, have you read A Stray to Botaram?

Now this, this is poetry.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

(Matthew 6:5-6)

I think a lot of Christians would do well to remember this one. When they encounter yet another idiot claiming that “our God is greater” (i.e. we are better than other people) or go to a church that cost more money to build than some people earn in their whole lives, they should remember what the person they believe is the Son of God actually said. Truly following Christ is not about making a big fuss about your faith or the might of your God; it’s about living by Christ’s principles. It’s about turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, and showing mercy when others wouldn’t. It’s about giving to the poor, and not turning away those that society has cast out. It’s not about fetishizing death by crucifixion, either; it’s about loving life and the living, and being prepared to sacrifice everything in the name of love.

If you’re not willing to do that, you better STFU about “your” God.

That the Jews assumed a right Exclusively to the benefits of God. will be a lasting witness against them. & the same will it be against Christians

- William Blake

The new version takes a slightly different approach, treating passwords almost like inventory items, and allowing you to combine passwords via drag & drop. Finding them is also easier: the game plays a sound to let you know when you’ve found one, and when reading journals etc. there’s a scanner option which highlights them in the text.

This way, the puzzles are more visual and more accessible, while still fitting with the setting and plot.

A short video-type-thing about one of arguments that always get repeated when the “Are games art?” debate pops up again. I mainly did this to get it out of my head.

Otherwise… enjoy! We certainly did.

This is wrong on so many levels, it approaches actual beauty. It’s like poetry.

Thank you, Multimedia Fusion. Thank you, Clickteam. You have made the life of a hard-working game designer a little brighter. Merci beaucoup.

Then, in the morning, Verena told me she had dreamt nearly the same thing. In her dream we were in Frankfurt, and the details were all different… but she also dreamt about asteroid impact and a giant wave.

How creepy is that?

Right now I’m working on a remake of The Infinite Ocean to teach myself how to use my new tools. It’s about time, anyway: I still get regular comments about the game, and the current version doesn’t run on most systems. I’m not changing the graphics or the plot, by the way – though I’ll probably make some changes to the writing here and there. I am, however, working on improving the interface and the puzzles (such as they are), to make the game a bit more accessible.

So far MMF2 is proving… interesting. It’s like a slightly cruder version of Construct, but considerably more stable. Some aspects of its design are infuriatingly inelegant, but it works – and it makes flash games. So I can’t complain much.

And I’m still writing stuff for Nexus City (check out the screenshots!), which will be so awesome that even I can’t wait to play it. Hype much? Probably. But the test versions I’ve seen make me very happy.