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Jason Rohrer's new game is a devilish gamble with real money
Jason Rohrer's games are often somewhat ... unconventional. Passage was a game about growing old, and Sleep is Death required players to constantly be engaged with the story they were creating in order to keep the game alive. Now, Rohrer is developing Cordial Minuet, a gambling game with an occult twist. Another twist: you bet, and play for, real money. Here's how it works: two players connect to each other via the internet and, after making their bets, are shown a square with a series of numbered tiles. The numbers shown are different each game, but they always add up to 111. There are six rows and six columns. 666. What one player sees shows up rotated 90 degrees to the other player, so that one player's columns become the other's rows and vice versa. Players each choose two columns, one for themselves and one for their opponent. The idea is that you want the column you choose for yourself and the column your opponent chooses for you to intersect at a high number. On the other side of the scale, you want the column you pick for your opponent and the column they pick for themselves to intersect at a low number. This repeats for several rounds before a winner is declared.
Steal in-game stuff, earn real-world money in The Castle Doctrine's crazy contest
Who says (virtual) crime doesn't pay? Jason Rohrer, developer of controversial house defense and burglary game The Castle Doctrine, is taking $3,000 from the game's alpha-period earnings and offering it up as a bounty to any and all players during a special contest to celebrate the game's impending January 29 release date. The current exchange rate is $146 in-game dollars to $1 real-world dollar, so the more money you have in game, the more money you can claim. While the $3,000 bounty will be divided amongst all players, only the best (worst?) criminals can also win some other real-life prizes. The top eight players will receive various items that touch on Rohrer's personal history. Sixth through eighth place will receive a $50 gift card to Custom Cartridge, a guns and ammunition store Rohrer visited, second through fifth place will receive an anti-burglary device known as a Door Devil, while first place gets a dog club - "the club that started it all," as Rohrer describes it. Each of the top eight players will also get to have their favorite in-game painting become a real-life, 20x20" giclee-printed canvas. Players have until 5 p.m. Pacific on Monday, January 27 to amass their virtual fortune, at which point Rohrer will take a snapshot of the server database. The top eight players will be ranked according to their house value, so long as that house is on the public house list, and not kept private. You can read more about the contest, as well as its rewards and rules, on the official Castle Doctrine site.
Castle Doctrine dev says sales hurt players, developers
Oh boy, look! It's that game you like, and it's 20 percent off right now! Sales are great, aren't they? Well, The Castle Doctrine developer Jason Rohrer doesn't think so. Rohrer argued on his blog that rampant sales create a "culture of waiting," where players wait for a good sale before pulling the trigger on a game, which in turn makes launches weak and early adopters disappointed. Take that hypothetical game from earlier. You're ready to bust out the wallet for the 20 percent off price. But wait, what if it goes down to 30 percent off? Or 40 percent? Even 50 percent? Potential buyers can wait indefinitely, which Rohrer argues hurts the developers. "Launch weeks become weak, and developers grow to depend on sales for financial survival," Rohrer posted on his blog last week. "This waiting game is likely decimating your player base and critical mass at launch by spreading new players out over time." Rohrer also pointed out how he believes sales hurt early adopters: "To put it bluntly: sales screw your fans," Rohrer wrote. "Your fans love your games and eagerly await your next release. They want to get your game as soon as it comes out, at full price. But they are foolish to do that, because a sale is right around the corner." To counter the culture of sales, Rohrer will be offering his own game, The Castle Doctrine, at a pricing scheme that is the "inversion" of the sales business model. The game, in alpha state, is available now for $8. When it comes to Steam on January 29, it will cost $12. One week after launch, it will rise to the full price of $16, which Rohrer wrote that it will remain forever. "Anyone feel burned by that plan?" he asks.
Jason Rohrer buries a board game, wins Game Design Challenge
Game designer Jason Rohrer designed a board game, built it out of 30 pounds of titanium, then buried it in the Nevada desert. A Game for Someone was his entry in the last GDC Game Design Challenge, which carried a theme of "Humanity's Last Game," and it won.Rohrer has never played his game, and he doesn't expect anyone else to for 2,000 years, when future humans discover the mysterious artifact in the desert. Instead, he designed it first as a computer game, using repeated AI playthroughs to automatically refine its rules.Rohrer then handed out sheets of paper loaded with GPS coordinates. One coordinate, on one of the papers, leads to the game; Rohrer estimates that if one person tried one coordinate per day, it would take 2,700 years to find the game. Imagine hundreds of game designers, programmers, artists, academics, students, and journalists dragging metal detectors through the desert. Now that's a game idea.
Jason Rohrer's The Castle Doctrine burgles with friends, out now
The Castle Doctrine is a massively multiplayer indie game about home defense, burglary and the lengths a desperate man will travel to ensure his family's safety. The Castle Doctrine comes from Jason Rohrer, the developer of Sleep is Death, and it's available now for PC, Mac and Linux as a public alpha for $8, half off its eventual full price.The game has no DRM, and one purchase includes access to all future updates and a lifetime account on the main game server. The Castle Doctrine is open source: Each purchase comes with PC and Mac builds, and the full source code bundle that can be compiled on Linux. The source code bundle includes the server software, enabling players to establish and run their own servers, should they wish.Check out The Castle Doctrine (and check out, if you like it) right here.
'Indie Speed Run' online game jam judged by Kellee Santiago, Ron Gilbert, Notch, et al
Indie Speed Run, despite the name, is surprisingly not what we call the Friday nights we spend practicing our no-death VVVVVV runs. It is, however, the name of a new online game jam, one which runs from now until January 6.The way it works is pretty straight-forward: Developers visit the official website and register as a participant. Once enrolled, each contender (and/or team of contenders) has 48 hours to create a game using two secret elements given only to them, and while those 48 hours must be consecutive, they can occur anytime between now and when the event ends in January.Once the event does end, every game created during its span will be made freely available on the official site. Meanwhile, a star-studded panel of judges (Kellee Santiago, Ron Gilbert, Notch, Dino Patti, Trent Oster, Jason Rohrer and Vander Caballero) will determine which team is most deserving of Indie Speed Run's $2,500 grand prize and will announce a winner February 5.
Jason Rohrer's massively multiplayer game, The Castle Doctrine
Jason Rohrer, the developer behind such unconventional cult hits as Diamond Trust of London, Sleep is Death and Inside a Star-Filled Sky, has a new game in the works titled The Castle Doctrine. It's "a massively multiplayer game of burglary and home defense" and will come soon to PC, Mac and Linux, according to its official site (which is pretty barebones at the moment).The website does reveal a few images, two of which are side-by-side above, showing what we can assume is The Castle Doctrine, unless Rohrer is trying to really confuse everyone. It looks to be a top-down, 2.5D pixel-fest with puzzles and some things covered in blood. How fun.
Diamond Trust of London now available outside of Kickstarter
Jason Rohrer's virtual board game Diamond Trust of London was the first retail DS game to be crowdfunded via Kickstarter, and now it's followed up that achievement by being the first DS game to be available outside of Kickstarter after a successful drive. In other words, you can just buy a copy now.Rohrer is selling Diamond Trust directly from his website for $30. A counter on the site shows that there are around 4,500 copies left as of writing, which doesn't seem like very many copies at all. While missing out would teach you a lesson about scarce resources, much like we're sure the game would, it seems like a less fun way to learn.
Jason Rohrer trusting Kickstarter for Diamond Trust of London pre-orders
Jason Rohrer's DS board game, now known as Jason Rohrer With Music By Tom Bailey: Diamond Trust of London, was finally officially approved for publishing as of last week. With Nintendo no longer a hurdle, Rohrer is now seeking Kickstarter-based pre-orders to actually manufacture the game, a first for a retail DS game."As I faced Nintendo's large manufacturing minimum, a serious question arose: how many people in the world would want to play it?" Rohrer said in the explanation of his Kickstarter drive. "Kickstarter is a perfect way to answer that question."To get the game, you must contribute at least $35. At $55, you get one of 1,000 limited-edition copies, with mysterious special items included. "I've decided to keep the nature of these special inclusions secret as a surprise," Rohrer said, "since every package will have a unique collection of special items in it." As always, the bonuses get ever more extravagant from there.All you need, though, is one copy of the game. You can play multiplayer from a single cartridge using Download Play. "There is one minor benefit to playing with two cartridges," Rohrer noted: "both players can hear their own, separate, generated music (the music is too big to send to the downloading player during DS Download Play)."
Diamond Trust of London was in Nintendo approval for seven months
Jason Rohrer's ninth title, Diamond Trust of London for Nintendo DS, has been teased, tortured and tested since it snagged publisher Zoo Games in May last year. Nintendo has been checking out the master revision of Diamond Trust of London since October 2011, and now, seven months later, it's approved for lift off. And publishing. Mostly publishing.Rohrer says the lengthy process has a "non-disclosure-agreement-shrouded story" and that "negotiations" were involved, but Diamond Trust of London is now officially ready to roll, with one major catch: the title. It is now officially called Jason Rohrer with Music by Tom Bailey: Diamond Trust of London, a change that was necessary for Nintendo's approval. Updates about publication are coming soon, Rohrer promises.
'Us and the Game Industry' is the next documentary about indies
Whereas Indie Game: The Movie aimed to explore the lives of the people behind some of indie gaming's biggest titles, an upcoming documentary on the indie gaming scene entitled "Us and the Game Industry" seeks to capture already established success cases in that world. Cases like Jason Rohrer (Inside a Star-filled Sky, Sleep is Death) and Jenova Chen (Flower, Journey) both show up in the premiere trailer, seen above."'Us and the Game Industry' is a film about the new thinkers at the new frontier of experimental computer game development," the film's Vimeo page reads. "This film explores how their motivation, design process, focus and execution are creating unique and new possibilities of connecting people and providing the possibility for uncharted experiences outside the normal realm of commercial games."So -- yes -- it's almost assured you'll hear several indie devs wax philosophical on the process of game design when the film eventually arrives (no launch date is given, and the film's official site has yet to go live). And frankly, after the emotion fest that is Indie Game: The Movie, we're looking forward to some cold, hard pretention.
Jason Rohrer's Diamond Trust of London coming this fall
Zoo Entertainment has officially announced its intention to publish Jason Rohrer's DS strategy title Diamond Trust of London. The board game-esque title, which is about the conflict diamond business, was originally to be published by Majesco. Zoo's IndiePub label " rescued Diamond Trust of London from a year-long holding pattern," Rohrer said in the press release announcing the deal. Zoo plans to sell the game this fall. There's only one thing left to do before that goal can be achieved: make Diamond Trust of London. " Development of Diamond Trust of London is scheduled to begin shortly with an anticipated limited edition release this fall," the press release notes.
Jason Rohrer's Inside a Star-Filled Sky shoots onto Steam
The latest game from the indie genius behind Sleep Is Death has arrived on Steam, and we're infinitely happy. That's because Inside a Star-Filled Sky ($8) is a shmup that happens to explore the idea of infinity, letting players journey into enemies, power-ups and even their character, which all become new levels -- all with more things to transition into and out of. If it sounds different and, well, kind of weird, it is. But you can find videos that do the best job of explaining its unusual premise at the Steam store, reachable via the Source link below. Just don't get lost in there.
Sleep is Death creator's latest still coming to DS
The latest game from prolific indie designer Jason Rohrer, Diamond Trust of London will finally see the light of day on DS. In an interview with Charge Shot!!!, Rohrer said that he's landed a publisher -- Zoo Games -- for the long-awaited handheld release, which was originally being handled by Majesco. Diamond Trust of London is Rohrer's 16th game and, in keeping with its developer's penchant for unconventional concepts, is a strategy title which revolves around the underground "blood diamond" trade. If it captures anywhere near the amount of genius found in other Rohrer games, such as Sleep is Death and Inside a Star-Filled Sky, we're sold. [Ed. Note: Since this post was published, Charge Shot!!! has updated its interview with Rohrer to clarify that his Inside a Star-Filled Sky, and not Diamond Trust of London, is coming to Steam "soon."]
Jason Rohrer reveals new game, 'Inside a Star-filled Sky'
Jason Rohrer, developer of the terrifically innovative Sleep is Death, has unveiled the identity of his next project in an appropriately mysterious manner. An official site for the game, titled Inside a Star-filled Sky, is filled with all manner of strange symbols, a quote from Justice Scalia in the case Rapanos v. United States, a coded .zip file and a brief, perplexing product description: "A recursive game for one player by Jason Rohrer." Man, we eat this kind of stuff up. The aformentioned .zip file is actually filled with a chain of other .zip files with single-letter names -- going through all of them spells the phrase "A Table Made of Green Stone," and leads to a site which contains what appear to be screenshots from the game. What does it all mean? We're not sure, though we imagine a few conspiracy theories are bound to pop up in the comments of this post. However, we are sure that, as a Jason Rohrer joint, it's going to be brilliant.
Sleep Is Death is now pay-what-you-want
As of right now, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't at least try Jason Rohrer's delightful, unique game, Sleep Is Death. Rohrer has officially lowered the price to ... well, whatever you're willing to pay for it. The minimum is $1.75 -- in order to cover processing and bandwidth fees -- but beyond that you can set your own price. The purchase nets two copies of Sleep Is Death -- one for you and one for a friend on Mac, Linux, or PC -- along with access to all future updates. In case you missed our hands-on impressions of the game, it's essentially an adventure game with a sizable twist: it's actually being created as you play. It can only be played between two people, with one acting as the 'player' and the other acting as 'controller,' who creates the story and game assets on the fly. If it sounds bizarre, it is, but it's also one of the most intriguing game concepts we've seen this year. Whatever you choose to pay for it, it will be a small price to pay for the opportunity to create stories like this. [Via GameSetWatch]
Jason Rohrer Anthology gravitating to DSiWare [update]
Diamond Trust of London, the strategy title about the diamond trade, isn't the only game from Sleep is Death designer Jason Rohrer headed to the Nintendo DS. The ESRB lists an "Alt-Play: Jason Rohrer Anthology" featuring three of Rohrer's previous games, published by Sabarasa Entertainment. Included in the set are Gravitation, the two-player Between, and Rohrer's best-known game Passage, which is also available on iPhone. This DS collection, then, will be another option for those who want to feel terrible about their mortality on the go. Sabarasa's recent press releases list the Alt-Play collection as an "upcoming project," and confirm that it's being made for the DSiWare platform. It certainly makes sense as a download: it may be three games, but those are three very brief games. [Update: Sabarasa press releases also mention that Rohrer's puzzle game Primrose will be released separately on DSiWare.]
Hands-on: Sleep Is Death
A lot of game critics you talk to will tell you that, after making a career of playing games, it takes a lot to impress them. But that's not exactly the truth. Perhaps I shouldn't speak for them, but I know for me that all it really takes for a game to knock my socks off is that smallest yet boldest of features: A single great, new idea. I'm not talking about squishing together the dual-stick shooting of Geometry Wars and RPG elements and hoping for the best. I'm talking about an innovation that takes a single step back from the whole idea of what video games are and reapproaches it in a way that feels utterly fresh. Sleep Is Death is just such an idea.
Jason Rohrer on going from indie to the App Store
We covered Jason Rohrer's Primrose when it first came out -- the creator of Passage, a critically-acclaimed indie game, had taken his first steps onto the iPhone with an abstract puzzle game, and in this latest interview with Edge, Rohrer says he's on the iPhone to stay. He says that when he first moved from strictly art/indie games to more commercial development on the iPhone, he worried that he was selling out: he wasn't a fan of cell phones at all or any Chinese-made gadgets sold by American companies, and yet the iPhone's platform seemed most "palatable" to him in terms of making games and a little money from them.And yet he says the iPhone still has pros and cons -- even in an "open source, free software" world, Apple's system offers a choice: you can buy a packaged-up version of the software and throw a little money back to the developer (not a ton -- he says you've still got a better chance at making a living from Vegas than you do from the App Store), or you can still try building and installing your own version on your iPhone. As an open-source developer selling apps on the App Store, he says, "you're charging for the service and convenience, not the content."Still, he echoes the sentiments of lots of other developers: "There is no quality filter, except for the whims of the masses." Apple's App Store offers up an intriguing system for many indie developers like Rohrer, who want to earn a little money for their games without setting up all of the complexity and burdens of a more traditional publishing channel, but it's still tough to keep from getting lost in the mix.
Jason Rohrer: Spielberg's 'LMNO' project probably cancelled
Before it was known as Boom Blox, Steven Spielberg's puzzle game project was known as PQRS, and it was revealed alongside an Xbox 360/PS3 action game, codenamed LMNO, about a former secret agent on the run with a dynamic AI character.Boom Blox, of course, was released to great critical acclaim, but LMNO hasn't been so lucky. In fact, the last thing we heard about it were rumors that the team had been laid off (which Spielberg denied) and the project put on hold.In an interview with Edge, Passage creator Jason Rohrer revealed that he had been involved with the project. "On top of (odd programming jobs), I did some consulting work, most recently for EA on the Spielberg LMNO project," he told Edge. "My understanding is that project's pretty much been canceled now, what with the changing economy, but I'm not sure."[Update: EA responds, telling Kotaku: "The rumor is incorrect. EA remains deeply committed to its collaboration with Steven Spielberg and projects we are developing together. LMNO was a code name for a project in development at EALA. While the project continues to develop at EALA with Steven, we no longer refer to it as LMNO. We have no further details to reveal at this time."]
