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8 months ago
Feature: I'm in
What Works And Why is a monthly column where Gunpoint and Heat Signature designer Tom Francis digs into the design of a game or mechanic and analyses what makes it good. I think difficulty is one of the most under-solved problems in game design. We've barely started to break out of the assumptions and principles that were concocted to keep people putting quarters into arcade…
2 years ago
Michael Brough has launched an expansion for his fantastic and fiendish hacking roguelite 868-HACK [official site]. PLAN.B is its name, and add new mode, new progs, and new power-ups is its game. More of a good game is a good thing.
Remember 868-Hack [official site]? It was a grid-based strategy/puzzle mash up released on PC in 2015 in which you control the avatar of a hacker trying to break into a system full of nasty viruses. There's been no updates since it wormed its way onto Steam, and I had no inkling that one was coming until creator Michael Brough tweeted than an expansion is coming…
4 years ago
Back in 1873, it was the norm of the day for 'magazines' to publish 'reviews' of games weeks before said games went on sale. Now that humanity can't hold anything in its memory for more than fourteen seconds, reviews tend to hit the insta-second a game goes on sale. Pretty silly of me to publish a Wot I Think of Michael Brough's amazing/terrifying cyberpunkish rogueliteish…
Feature: Sinister cyberpunk roguelike
868-HACK is sort-of-cyberpunk sort-of-roguelite, in which you play the avatar of a hacker trying to break into a system riddled with glitches, daemons and viruses. It falls somewhere between Pac-Man and Uplink. Well-received on iOS in 2013, it's due out on PC very soon. I'm several years too late to the party here (it is too late to visit Dwarf Fortress?) but increasingly I'm drawn…
5 years ago
Feature: Smestalk
Next in our series of firesideless chats with the developers of PC games nominated for an award at this year's Independent Games Festival, it's Michael 'Smestorp' Brough talking about his signature, haunting 'glitch' style, why he will continue to resist convention, his mixed feelings about the nomination and which of his two nominated games, Corrypt and 868-HACK, he's most interested in.
