This is an excerpt from the Spelunky book, which is currently in a StoryBundle featuring a number of other great game-related books. Since this excerpt is about the Zelda series, it should be noted that it was written before the latest Zelda game,...

This is an excerpt from the Spelunky book, which is currently in a StoryBundle featuring a number of other great game-related books. Since this excerpt is about the Zelda series, it should be noted that it was written before the latest Zelda game, Breath of the Wild, was shown at E3 (I’m cautiously excited about it!).

Indifference

I played games everywhere as a kid—on my parents’ PC and their Atari 2600, at the arcades, in the car with my Game Boy, and at friends’ houses where I was introduced to Chinese pirate multicarts and exotic game systems like the Neo Geo and TurboGrafx-16. But for me, that era still belongs to Nintendo. My uncle was the first in my family to get a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and I spent entire visits playing Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. When I wasn’t playing, I’d read my new issue of Nintendo Power compulsively until the next month’s issue. No one in the 80s built worlds as magical and well-crafted as Nintendo did. And although many talented men and women deserve credit for that, the one who stands out among them all is the developer who I was most excited to see in the crowd at IGF 2007: Shigeru Miyamoto.

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EXPLORER.GMK: An Excerpt From the Spelunky Book

spelunkyworld:

Here’s the second excerpt from the Spelunky book. It’s from a chapter called “EXPLORER.GMK” that discusses the very earliest build of Spelunky, the core elements of the game, the importance of themes, and the relationship between artists and their influences.

(this post was reblogged from spelunkyworld)

Spelunky's Journey From Pixel Game To Console Classic

spelunkyworld:

Kotaku has published an excerpt from the Spelunky book! This is a chapter called “Improvements”, about changes made to the original freeware game, why making fan games is so carefree, and how to make monsters feel more “alive” with only simple behaviors.

(this post was reblogged from spelunkyworld)
spelunkyworld: “ The Spelunky book is finally here, weighing in at 222 pages! It’s available both as a physical book (which looks very nice - the editors and printers did a great job), and as an eBook. It’s been a long road - I appreciate the... Click for high-res photo

spelunkyworld:

The Spelunky book is finally here, weighing in at 222 pages! It’s available both as a physical book (which looks very nice - the editors and printers did a great job), and as an eBook.

It’s been a long road - I appreciate the patience of all the backers and my editor, Gabe Durham. Before this, I’d never written anything longer than what I ended up cutting from my first draft (about 10,000 words). So thanks for bearing with me!

I’m happy with the final book. There was a lot I wanted to say - about game design, about the craft of game-making, and about my influences - that had to be tied together through the story of Spelunky’s development. You’d think that since I created the game all the thoughts I needed would already be in my head, but I rarely have a full understanding of my own work at the time of its release (this is something I discuss in the book itself). To put together the entire picture, I revisited my old emails, chats, and forum posts, and also read other people’s thoughts on the game.

The result is that I learned a lot about Spelunky and my feelings about game design and creativity after writing this book. Hopefully readers will get the same kind of satisfaction from it. At the very least, it should give you a sense of what it was like to make a good-sized indie game, from the freeware version on the TIGSource forums to the Xbox 360 remake and beyond.

Thanks again to the backers, to Boss Fight Books, and to the many people who read the book and gave feedback. Look for excerpts of the book to be released in the coming days!

(this post was reblogged from spelunkyworld)
spelunkyworld: “ I’m excited to announce that I’m writing a book about Spelunky for Boss Fight Books! Boss Fight Books is the publisher of books about video games, and they’ve released six so far: Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, ZZT, Galaga, Super Mario... Click for high-res photo

spelunkyworld:

I’m excited to announce that I’m writing a book about Spelunky for Boss Fight Books! Boss Fight Books is the publisher of books about video games, and they’ve released six so far: Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, ZZT, Galaga, Super Mario Bros. 2, and Jagged Alliance. Each one is written by a different author and focuses on a single game, examining the subject from both a personal and historical perspective.

Spelunky will be a part of Season Two, which is being Kickstarted right now. The other books in Season Two are Metal Gear Solid, Baldur’s Gate II, Bible Adventures, World of Warcraft, and a mystery game to be voted upon by fans. Needless to say, I’m really happy that Spelunky and I are featured alongside games and writers of this caliber!

Spelunky will actually be the first Boss Fight book to be written by one of the developers. I’m going to be using the development of the game as a vehicle to discuss related topics, like roguelikes, randomization, and designing challenging games, to name a few. My hope is that the book will appeal to fans of Spelunky who are interested in its history and the choices behind it, as well as game developers, current and aspiring, who may be able to get something useful from how I’m currently thinking about video games and video game design.

Finally, if you haven’t read Season One of Boss Fight Books, I highly recommend checking it out! Not only is it a very fresh and unique take on video game writing by a cadre of talented writers, but the physical books are really cute and fun to have around and look at. I can’t wait to see Spelunky on the shelf next to the rest of them!

(this post was reblogged from spelunkyworld)

Maturity, Challenge, Art and Games

Some recent online discussions have prompted me to write something short on the above ideas. The first discussion erupted when a Kotaku writer called George Kamitani a “14-year-old boy” for including hypersexualized women in the character line-up for Dragon’s Crown. The second discussion had to do with a video I did with Anthony Carboni and Doug Wilsson where we played Spelunky and talked about games a little bit in general. Perhaps “discussion” is too strong a word for a few YouTube comments about maturity and challenging games, but nonetheless, it made me want to develop and clarify my feelings on the topic further.

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Making it in Indie Games: Starter Guide

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Every now and then someone will ask me for advice on making it as a professional indie game developer. First, it’s a huge honor to be asked that. So I want to say “Thank you!” Second… damn, if I really want to help out it’s a serious endeavor. Of course, I could always say “Give it your best! Work hard! Be true to yourself!” and it wouldn’t be a terrible reply… just not a terribly useful one, either.

So here it is. Here is what I’m going to link when that rare situation arises again, because it’s too much work to write it up more than once! This is advice that I feel may actually be practical to someone who is just starting out as an indie game developer. Hope it helps!

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Pixel Art Tutorial


UPDATE: I’ve completely revamped my pixel art tutorial! This one was getting too crusty. The new tutorial is here!

Note: This tutorial was created in 2007 for my personal website. Some small tweaks have been made since then, but nothing too significant.

In this 10-step tutorial, I’ll teach you how to create a “sprite”, which is a stand-alone two-dimensional character or object. The term comes from video games, of course.

Creating pixel art is a skill I picked up because I needed graphics for my games. After a lot of practice, I became kinda handy with it, and started to see it more as actual art rather than just a tool. These days, pixel art is quite popular in game development and illustration.

This pixel tutorial was created many years ago to teach people the basic concepts behind pixel art, but I’ve streamlined it a lot since its first incarnation. There are other pixel tutorials around, but I find them to be overly-complicated and too wordy. Pixel art is not a science. You should never have to calculate a vector when doing pixel art.

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Before Spelunky I started a simple little roguelike game. Here’s the tilesheet I made for it - feel free to use these tiles in your own (non-commercial) projects, if you like. No credit necessary, although it would be appreciated!

Before Spelunky I started a simple little roguelike game. Here’s the tilesheet I made for it - feel free to use these tiles in your own (non-commercial) projects, if you like. No credit necessary, although it would be appreciated!

How to Tell When You Gave Artists Too Much Control Over Design

Earthworm Jim

A half hour into Earthworm Jim on SNES, and three things became painfully clear to Andy (Hull) and me: 1. wow, Earthworm Jim is a worse game than we remembered, 2. Earthworm Jim was designed by visual artists with little experience in game design, and 3. modern studios haven’t learned from Earthworm Jim, because some of their games share a lot of its negative traits.

Ultimately, what we enjoyed about EWJ were its quirky characters, humor, and animation, which were unmatched at the time. But it’s because those elements came at such a premium that it pales in comparison to other run n’ guns and platformers of the era, like Contra or Mega Man. Though Jim and his cohorts are remembered fondly (and with good reason), it’s not likely to be a game we’ll come back to very often.

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