jason rohrer
Rumours
Further Confirmation That Spielberg’s LMNO Is D.O.A.
1:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Way back in October, we brought word that Spielberg’s “ultra-real” game, code-named LMNO Project, had been shelved — a rumour EA said was “incorrect”. More »
Features
1:00AM Leigh Alexander | Audiences constantly demand video games fight familiar boundaries. We’re sick of the same old, same old. We want creativity, artistic integrity, elegance and depth–or do we? Do players know what they’re asking for when they look for “more” from games? And if this is really what we want, then what’s with the mixed reception–both cultural and economic–when we get it? More »
The Path For Art Games
1:00AM Leigh Alexander | Audiences constantly demand video games fight familiar boundaries. We’re sick of the same old, same old. We want creativity, artistic integrity, elegance and depth–or do we? Do players know what they’re asking for when they look for “more” from games? And if this is really what we want, then what’s with the mixed reception–both cultural and economic–when we get it? More »
News
Primrose: Passage Developer Puzzles Your iPhone
10:40AM Michael McWhertor | Jason Rohrer, the developer behind memorable and experimental artistic games like Passage, Gravitation and Between, has released his latest title, Primrose. It’s an unconventional—for Rohrer, anyway—puzzler, designed with the iPhone in mind. More »
Passage Makes Journey To iPhone
9:30AM Michael McWhertor | Jason Rohrer’s lovely and, for some, heartbreaking game Passage has found another home: the iPhone. If you’ve already played the Windows, Mac or Linux version you now have an on-the-go option. More »
Disjunctive Play and Otherness: Between
4:30AM Maggie Greene | Jason Rohrer (of Passage, Gravitation, and others) has put together a very different experience in his latest, Between. Hosted by US Esquire as part of their ‘Best and Brightest 2008′ feature, it’s a two-player game with a twist. In his latest Gamasutra feature, Ian Bogost takes a look at the game and the element of disjunctive play we find — a game designed to highlight just how far apart we all are, not bring us together: More »
Artistic Saturday Timewaster: Estamos Pensando
6:30AM Maggie Greene | Kotakuite Daniel Novais sent me an email this past week, asking me to take a look at his “little short artsy game” called Estamos Pensando (Portuguese for ‘We Are Thinking’). Inspired in part by Jason Rohrer’s Passage, Estamos Pensando is a sweet, sad, and polished little game. Daniel said that he’s now trying to work on something a little happier, since one comment on Rohrer’s Gravitation noted that these ‘artsy’ games are usually depressing. There are Portuguese and English versions of the game, and gameplay is quite simple. The game has apparently gotten some nice initial reviews since its submission to the Brazilian symposium SBGames 2008 festival, and it’s worth a little bit of your time. More »
Learning from Go: Single Player Game Design
6:30AM Maggie Greene | Jason Rohrer’s ‘Game Design Sketchbook’ has an interesting meditation up on the nature of single player game mechanics — a lot of the achingly simple, but endlessly challenging board games that Rohrer points to require a minimum of two players. Rohrer’s question is how to make a single player game that doesn’t rely on typical mechanics to provide depth and challenge? Is it possible to have a game with the (gameplay) depth of go without falling back on AI or randomness or ‘physical’ contests? Well, in short, no: More »
Weird Artistic Timewaster of the Day: Regret
3:30AM Maggie Greene | Jason Rohrer (creator Passage, Immortality, and others) is back with another game, this one with the theme of regret (bet you never would’ve guessed from the title). Rohrer and a journalist writing about the design process game up with the theme, after nixing such topics as “stop snitching”, “torture policy”, and “stop-and-frisk”. The game itself deals with feeding animals … sort of: More »Weird Artistic Timewaster of the Day: Immortality
7:30AM Maggie Greene | We’ve mentioned Jason Rohrer’s weird little works before, in the form of Passage and Gravitation; now with his ‘Game Design Sketchbook’ column at the Escapist, he puts up new little games monthly. This month features the theme of life, death, and immortality (appropriately called Immortality): We generally assume that immortality is good, just as we assume that death is bad. Of course, universal immortality (all six billion of us) would be physically impractical. But what about individual immortality? What about for you? If you could become immortal, would you? Immortality is a game about that question, and it’s also about the converse of that question: Does death have some fundamental value that we usually ignore? Immortality [The Escapist] More »
