the-road

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  • George Broussard goes minimalist in Ludum Dare entry 'The Road'

    by 
    Danny Cowan
    Danny Cowan
    04.30.2013

    Industry veteran and outspoken Duke Nukem co-creator George Broussard sets his sights on the indie-focused Ludum Dare competition with The Road, a side-scrolling browser game that reflects on the futility of existence. Ludum Dare is an online game jam held every four months in which indie creators are given 48 hours to create a game based on an assigned prompt. Designed around the theme "minimalism," The Road challenges players to survive endless waves of falling objects and ground hazards in the hopes of living a long, fulfilling life. In an interesting twist, the player's squarish avatar grows into a tall rectangle as it ages, making it more difficult to survive as the game progresses. After each death, players are given a brief (and often morbid) summary of how they made their fate. Broussard challenges players to survive past the age of 20; be warned that you'll likely suffer many deaths before you reach your teenage years. Personally, I made it to age 19 before I died of explosive diarrhea. Harsh.

  • DayZ mod is going for the hobo appeal

    by 
    Justin Olivetti
    Justin Olivetti
    11.16.2012

    For all DayZ fans who feel that the inclusion of powerful weapons and relatively plentiful supply caches don't accurately portray their personal vision for a horrible post-apocalyptic zombie world, then a new mod in the making might do the trick. Called DayZ 2017, the mod seeks to progress the game world forward five years to a time when everything's a lot harder to come by. Modder Luke Hinds explained his reasoning on the DayZ 2017 website: "I now want to go back to basics and really focus on what made Rocket's mod really tick with players, and that was scarcity and threat. The main changes will be taking out most loot and making what's left very rare." Hinds cites films such as The Book of Eli and The Road as inspiration. He created "hobo-like" characters who look far more worn-down and a combat that slants more toward melee than ranged. DayZ 2017 hopefully will arrive by the end of the year. Recently, the makers of DayZ cracked down on a different mod that sought to monetize the game through a bounty system.