I guess a couple of things have been niggling me for a while with The Last Mech, but they hadn’t been coming into focus. But after last night’s playtest with Tom, they kinda did. The big change I’m making - or at least testing for - is a simple one, but it could be huge and mess everything up. Or it could make for a more dynamic game.
These changes mark the point where I’m almost comfortable with making The Last Mech semi-public. So I am. I think there’s enough richness in the systems to make a game of push-and-pull with reasons to fight and to run, with a new system adding extra strategy. And I think that feels good.
I’ve written another book about Minecraft! It’s called Minecraft Mobestiary, and it’s a natural history of all the mobs in the game. And it’s out TODAY!
I wrote this for Edge’s website back in maybe 2013, before it was swept away in some Future Publishing web strategy tsunami. I’ve always been quite pleased with it, so I delved into the Internet Archive to mount a rescue.
GTA isn’t just humping dogs and UFOs, strip bars, BAWSAQ and a mouse pointer with an erected middle finger. It’s not just lowball humour, nihilistic violence, misogyny and a seething pool of crass satire that seems to sneer at everything and everyone.
That’s all there in GTAV, of course, but we’re talking about a game with the scale of a state here. For all of the ugliness there’s beauty, too.
Last month was … busy. And exciting! I wrote a lot of words, and I’m actually quite pleased with a lot of them. I thought I’d present a quick chronological rundown, cos I’ve done a terrible job of cataloguing them anywhere else.
I kicked off the year with two weeks’ writing for Minecraft’s website. I wrote about many different things, like the amazing WesterosCraft, which celebrated its fifth anniversary of building the Seven Kingdoms in blocks. I also looked at how a mini-computer built in redstone, and explained the nature of obsidian, along with some other pieces that haven’t gone up yet. I really like Minecraft.net’s redesign and how it celebrates what Minecraft players are making with a mature voice that takes them seriously. Good work, Owen and Marsh.
Just before Christmas Day the final Mechanic column of the year went up, a deep dive into the design principles behind the Dust District level of Dishonored 2 with Harvey Smith.
It also marked the first anniversary of the column. Holy heck! A whole year of it. I posted a quick rundown of its first six months or so here, and since then I’ve looked at Thumper, Crusader Kings 2, Sorcery!, N++, Rimworld, Grow Home and many more. I’m trying to maintain a great deal of variety and to tell stories about great games which many people don’t necessarily realise. I really hope people have been enjoying it.
So, OK, Britsoft: An Oral History came out a very long time ago now. Since then, Read-Only Memory has published a whole new book, the fantastic The Bitmap Brothers: Universe. OK, sure, it was written by my good chum Duncan Harris and published by my friend publisher Darren Wall so maybe I would say this, but it really is a detailed, beautiful, insightful and fun book about an important group of game makers at a remarkable and formative time for the medium.
Each fortnight this year, I’ve been writing a game design column at Rock Paper Shotgun called The Mechanic. It’s all about putting games up on blocks, and taking a wrench to hack out their best features to see how they work.
I’ve covered Doom and Brutal Doom, Duskers and Spelunky, Alien Isolation and Invisible Inc, Kentucky Route Zero and Super Time Force. And lots more besides.
They’re all based on interviews with their designers; what I really like to try to do is to find a feature of a game that players might not be aware of and yet is central to why it’s good. What I love is to be able to explain how much thought and creativity went into something players may never have considered.
Hey so I’m giving some talks on Minecraft soon! The first is at Gamecity on October 25, and then early in November I’m going to Sharjah International Book Festival in the United Arab Emirates, which is kinda incredible.
The talks will be based on the Blockopedia, where I look at the amazing properties of a few different blocks. Here’s the blurb!
To really master Minecraft, you need to know the science behind its many kinds of blocks, from birch wood to brewing stands. Alex Wiltshire, author of the Minecraft Blockopedia, will take you on a tour of the blocks that make up the world of Minecraft, including how grass grows, fire spreads, redstone conducts and beacons … beacon. On the way, he’ll uncover and share the amazing facts, delights and crazy secrets that lie behind this pixel land, and help you build and survive even better!
From April 2013 to August 2015 I was communications manager at Hello Games, which was a role that kind of evolved as I went along, but it boiled down to: if it involved talking with the outside world, I’d have had a hand in it.
So I ran Hello’s social media accounts, wrote blog posts and other bits and pieces, managed its public email address, dealt with press and lined up interviews and meetings. I worked with Sony and Valve’s internal teams, and I also established and managed Hello Games’ presence on various store fronts including Steam and PlayStation Store, and many other bits and pieces.