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Multiplayer humanity sim One Hour One Life reincarnates on Steam
Jason Rohrer's wildly ambitious humanity simulator One Hour One Life has resurfaced on Steam today. Previously available only direct from the developer, it's a real-time survival and crafting sandbox - familiar stuff, but with a twist. Every time you play, you begin as a random, helpless baby, unceremoniously spawned from another player. For your first few minutes, you're dependent, and must be carried and fed…
Feature: Shoot the real me!
We asked a lot of people: what would you do to a clone of yourself?
Over the past several weeks I have sent a lot of interesting people who work in the games industry an email containing the following scenario: "You enter a room. The door locks behind you. From a door opposite another you enters. This other you is a perfectly identical clone, created in the exact instant you entered the room, but as every second ticks by they…
Jason Rohrer, he behind RPS favourites The Castle Doctrine, Cordial Minuet, and Sleep Is Death, has his new game out today - One Hour One Life. And this time he's taking on, well, all of humanity?
In one of those strange "thinking about a person and then they phone you for a chat" moments, I was wondering what Jason Rohrer might be up to earlier this week. It's because his MMO burglary/home defence game The Castle Doctrine pops into my head from time to time. So obviously I then get an email saying "Hello, here is the trailer for my new…
Feature: Collaborative storytelling without the pen and paper
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. Sleep Is Death brought a little of the pen-and-paper experience of collaborative storytelling to the PC.
Cordial Minuet [official site] - Jason Rohrer's arcane-themed magic square betting game - has officially launched. As you might expect given Rohrer's previous game launches this one also involves a fair bit of showmanship in the form of a gold amulet 'n' cash giveaway. I've not played since pre-alpha so I'd imagine it will have been tweaked a little in the interim - at least…
Feature: Playing for pennies
"The next step is where you take out your credit card," says Jason Rohrer. We're on the phone for a Cordial Minuet preview session. Cordial Minuet is Rohrer's current game project – a gambling game based around magic squares into which I must deposit real money if I wish to play, even at this pre-alpha stage. I deposit $5. I'll get back to the payment…
An occult-themed game of skill where players use magic squares to try to generate real cash all rooted in the developer's own experiences with Texas hold 'em poker? Why yes, Jason Rohrer does have a new game in the works, thanks for asking. It's called Cordial Minuet because an occult-themed game without an anagram would be even sadder than a gaming news article without a…
Feature: The Most Dangerous Game
Jason Rohrer isn't like other game designers. He isn't really like them at all. From his early days eschewing videogame norms to make a game about the inevitably of death and loss in Passage to cooperative storytelling intrigue-o-tron Sleep Is Death to wild (and controversial) Minecraft "religious" experiment Chain World, Rohrer's games aren't escapism. They often make people uncomfortable. They often make him uncomfortable. The…
Feature: Are Rampant Sales Hurting Players?
OK, first things first: Castle Doctrine, Passage, and Sleep is Death creator Jason Rohrer is a giant. I am automatically more inclined to believe anything very tall people say. They've seen so much more than the rest of us from their monolithic neck perches, their giraffe-like forms stretching up into stratospheres I've only dared imagine. Also, it's instinct: big person beat me up, ergo ideologically…
I've not had a chance to go back to Jason Rohrer's fascinatingly bleak, tricksy home invasion MMOette The Castle Doctrine since launch, but it's now on update 8 and has seen a number of changes. Most headline-making (as you can see) of those is the concept of perma-perma-death.
Feature: A Game For Everyone
A real high-point of every GDC is the Game Design Challenge. Well, was. Sadly the tenth year of this annual treat was the last, with organiser Eric Zimmerman bringing proceedings to an end. And wow, did it go out in style. With the apposite topic, "Humanity's Last Game", some of the biggest names in the industry put forth their pitches for the last game we'd…
Huh, that was quick. Then again, everything I experienced of Jason Rohrer's home invasion MMO-ette The Castle Doctrine last week did come across as essentially finished, so I suppose there's no reason not to release it to the world now. The version the Passage dev has put out is billed as an 'alpha', in that time/Mojang-honoured tradition, and sells for half-price while that's the case.
Feature: Fatalist Dungeon Keeper
Right then. Now I've had a little catharsis by revealing how home invasion-themed MMO The Castle Doctrine made me feel, I want to talk a little more about its mechanics.
Feature: An Englishman's home
The Castle Doctrine, the upcoming game from Passage and Sleep Is Death creator Jason Rohrer, is an indie MMO about criminals invading your home, and you invading their homes. A combination of base-building and puzzle-solving, it's also an examination of how it feels to be both victim and villain. I've spent some time with an early version of the game. I killed a woman for…
Feature: Also: Far Cry 3, preventing kingpins and the 'but is it a game?' debate
In the first part of an extensive, illuminating and arguably controversial interview with Passage, Sleep is Death and Chain World creator Jason Rohrer, we discussed his new game, the fascinating but sinister home defence MMO The Castle Doctrine, making virtual possessions and people matter and why he chose to include only male protagonists. In this second and final part, we pick up mid-chat about issues…
Feature: Love, theft, home and beating dogs with batons
Indie dev Jason Rohrer, creator of Passage, Sleep Is Death, Inside A Star-Filled Sky, The Diamond Trust of London and the near-mythical Chain World is a divisive game designer, because reasons. I personally reckon his stuff is reliably fascinating, bold and often important (including on those occasions that I've rather bounced off it), so I've been very keen to find out more about his upcoming…
About the easiest way to start a bar fight among those who deem themselves educated in videogames is to bring up Jason Rohrer's Passage (missus), an unwitting poster child for 'artgames.' It worked its morose magic on me, while others found it arch and ungame, but between that and the lofty ambitions (though there are disagreements on the execution) of two-player storytelling game Sleep Is…
Feature:
In the beginning, there was a GDC presentation. Just a quiet little talk between developers, and a what-if experiment wherein a one-off, modded version of Minecraft was personally passed by Passage/Sleep Is Death/Inside A Star-Filled Sky creator Jason Rohrer to a curious audience member, who would then be the only person to see what Rohrer had built inside the game. The rules: you do not…
Feature:
Chain World, the secret Minecraft game that we first posted about
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