A Quantum Immortal

Please stop reading this post and go watch the first two minutes of this video (spoiler alert!).

The video is a complete walk-through of the excellent free game The Stanley Parable. The game can be completed in about 7 minutes, but you’ll want to play it over and over again to fully explore it (or you can just watch the full walk-through).

I don’t want to give too many spoilers, so I’ll just say it has some of the best narratives I’ve seen, including Bastion. The role of the narrator in this game is … unique.

So if you haven’t already, go see at least the first two minutes of the video, and I highly suggest you spend the full 31 minutes either playing or watching all the different endings.

I’m a square myself.

Still no release date 🙁

This is a cute math game I’d recommend to anyone learning addition, and in general 🙂
You shoot two’s and three’s at numbers trying to subtract from them and get exactly zero.

At least that’s how I feel after I played a single time at it.

It’s a combination of 16 more and less familiar games, which are time-slotted – just try it. Most games are very easy, but the rapid changing of games makes it challenging. Another bit of coolness is that it analyzes your different game skills:

Link.
Not “the hardest game ever”, but the game looks really evil.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/19/1945235&from=rss

I think RTS games are currently wrong. What do I mean by that?

Current RTS games do test strategy and tactics, but they also require a high degree of micro-management. Top Starcraft players are measured by their APM, and a player with high thinking skills but a less than agile hand is at a disadvantage. The anticipatd Starcraft 2 doesn’t seem to hold great promise to change this.

What I want is this: In addition to the point-and-click action we all know (and love), I want RTS games to offer me strategy/tactics menus. I want to be able to order the computer AI things like:

• “build the base, 10 drones, and the entire tech tree up to Guardian

. Then build 10 of these and 25 Mutalisks and send them after the nearest Terran opponent.

• “Organize all my troups into battle formations while leaving 10% on defense and go search & destroy all opponents”
• “Build up to 3 overlords and scout for Vespene gas. Once found, take a drone there to build a base. Once the base nears completions, send other drones there to mine the gas”.

Such commands should be easily programmable in the game as it ships. Special player-made commands could be added before and during a game. The player’s major role should be to select and define strategies, not to gather up individual drones to build structures or to micro-manage an attack. Of course, as I said, the micromanagement can stay, but it must not be how you spend the better part of a game.

Note that most of the “strategy commands” I want are probably already present at some form inside the computer’s native AI player. As a player, I want to have access to this AI and parts of it. Once this is developed enough, I can imagine different Starcraft tournaments where players are only allowed to pre-program the strategy.

Now I wonder how long till these ideas become reality and how difficult it would be to program a extension for the existing Starcraft that accomplishes something like this.