At this point, I probably don’t have to tell you how awesome Portal is. On the off chance you haven’t heard of it, I’ll only say that it’s a first-person puzzle game about shooting wormhole-style portals in walls and using momentum in clever ways, and is filled with delightfully black humor. It’s also only $20 […]

About a month ago, I put video games on hold (except the flash fighting game! I promise I’m not abandoning you, Joseph!), and started helping friends make movies. I couldn’t quite explain why I was doing it; the best explanation I could provide was that I was “lonely” making games, but beyond that all I […]

The DS version of Shiren the Wanderer is coming out in the US. If you’re a fan of Rogue-likes (Rogue, Nethack, etc.), and especially if you think most of them are too easy, you will love this game. It is very deep, and pretty, and well-designed, and will make you cry like a little girl. […]

The frequently-brilliant Alex Kierkegaard has written an excellent article on what arcades are really about, what Japanese players understand about them that keeps them in business, and what Western players didn’t understand until it was too late. I’m going to spoil the article by telling you right here that it all revolves around never continuing, […]

A Québécois group called the “Kokoromi Collective” are asking for simple game submissions for a party called gamma 256. No prizes, just the warm fuzzy of a whole party full of French-Canadian hipsters “ooh la la”-ing over your game. What makes this interesting to me is the restrictions; pick-up-and-play mechanics, no audio, playable with a […]

Just a quick note that TIGSource is running a “B-game (as in B-movie) Competition“, asking specifically for submissions that are so bad they’re good. I look forward to the terrifying results, and may be compelled to submit something.

Here’s a fun little exercise: if you’re passionate about making video games, tell yourself that the real money in the video game industry is in churning out boring, simplistic casual games for middle-aged housewives, and watch as you quickly lose all interest in video games, give up on the whole medium, and fall into a […]

When I was 17, I designed a collectible card game. Nevermind the fact that I’d never designed any other kind of card game, and nevermind the fact that collectible card games cost millions of dollars to publish and are only ever designed internally by large companies, most of which are formed exclusively to publish collectible […]

As is fairly obvious from the things I write here, I’m a huge fan of the video game company Treasure, and strive to make games with the same feeling of innovation and wonder that they make. With only three games to his name (written in Multimedia Fusion, a game construction kit, no less) however, Joakim […]

As you probably know if you’ve been reading Inverted Castle for a while, “doujin” (which literally translates to “do it yourself”) is the Japanese equivalent of homebrew comics, video games, and other media, most of which are parodies or homages of commercial works; i.e. “fanfic”. In addition to the gigantic, semi-annual Comiket doujin convention in […]