All posts by Jonathan Blow

Appearances

A new, short speech about game design.

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The speech is called “Games as Instruments for Observing Our Universe”, given by Jonathan Blow at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont in February 2010.

The talk is short — about 20 minutes — followed by about an hour Q&A (in a separate file). Slides in ppt format are included.

Here’s a bundle containing those files.

The next day, we did a conversational interview at the Firehouse Gallery in Burlington. This started with a short introduction about Braid and my next game, followed by some questions by Chris Thompson, and then questions from the audience. Here’s the audio for that session. (You can right-click and pick Save As… if this opens in your browser in an obnoxious way.)

Other Games

VVVVVV

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If you liked Braid, you may enjoy Terry Cavanaugh’s game VVVVVV. It’s also a platformer that is built around one core interaction, iterating on that piece of gameplay and exploring variations. In VVVVVV you will die a lot, but the penalty for death is extremely low, so it’s no big deal.

There’s a free demo (in downloadable and web-based versions). Here’s the link again.

Game Festivals

The Experimental Gameplay Workshop 2010 is now open for submissions.

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The Experimental Gameplay Workshop is an annual event at the Game Developers Conference where we show a selection of cutting-edge game designs. Each designer gives a 10-to-15-minute presentation.

We encourage all designers who are actively working on new and different design ideas to apply. Here’s a link for more information.

The deadline is January 26, 2010. (We had erroneously listed the date as February 16.)

Braid Development

Braid will be released for the Playstation 3, next Thursday, November 12…

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… in North America. Releases for Europe and Asia are in progress, but Sony has separate submissions processes for all those territories, so we don’t know when those versions will be available.

The PS3 port has been done by Hothead Games. It will be downloadable from the PlayStation Network for $14.99.

I’ll post here when we have release dates for the other territories.

[Update: I originally posted that there may be a release in Japan. This was a misunderstanding. There is a planned release for PSN in Asia but it does not include Japan.]

Uncategorized

Gridrunner Revolution is out.

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Jeff Minter’s new game, Gridrunner Revolution, is now available on the PC.

It’s an interesting game with a lot of subtlety that I have yet to absorb. Subtlety aside, though, this game has nailed the kind of pure, insane quantity Galaga Legions wanted to provide but didn’t know how.

If you’re following this blog because you’re interested in art games, be aware that this is a game about shooting things in outer space — bursting with its author’s trademark style.

Here’s a link to the demo. And here are some videos to illustrate: