Lost Worlds

Halloween highlights and obscurities

At the stroke of midnight, all candy will go on clearance and the curse of the Hallmark Channel will usher in a Christmas with no winter. Before the pumpkin spice vanishes from your latte and Mariah Carey stages a hostile takeover of the airwaves, make some last sacrifices to the Pumpkin King...

Halloween highlights and obscurities

At the stroke of midnight, all candy will go on clearance and the curse of the Hallmark Channel will usher in a Christmas with no winter. Before the pumpkin spice vanishes from your latte and Mariah Carey stages a hostile takeover of the airwaves, make some last sacrifices to the Pumpkin King...

Unpacking Fire Emblem's animations

When Fire Emblem first went international in 2003, its battle animations were the face of the game. The opening chapter fudged its numbers to stage a critical hit for the player, sending them into the intermission thinking about afterimages, impacts, and the dust Lyn kicked up as she slid into place. The E3 2003 reveal trailer highlighted that same sequence, alongside heavy cuts from the 40-odd classes like the Sniper, General, and Mage. Nintendo Power magazine quickly latched on to the battle screen to communicate the RPG's appeal in its Epic Center column and strategy coverage, calling...

Unpacking Fire Emblem's animations

When Fire Emblem first went international in 2003, its battle animations were the face of the game. The opening chapter fudged its numbers to stage a critical hit for the player, sending them into the intermission thinking about afterimages, impacts, and the dust Lyn kicked up as she slid into place. The E3 2003 reveal trailer highlighted that same sequence, alongside heavy cuts from the 40-odd classes like the Sniper, General, and Mage. Nintendo Power magazine quickly latched on to the battle screen to communicate the RPG's appeal in its Epic Center column and strategy coverage, calling...

Inside hobby anime RPG, Plamo Gear

In the early days of 2024, indie developer motamotaBOX self-published Plamo Gear, a free "hobby anime RPG" about kids battling with 15-centimeter plastic model robot "Gears." Gears are customized by swapping out their parts, changing the battle commands available. The title quickly gained steam in the Japanese doujin scene for its of play depth and vibrant visual style; although it only takes ~5 hours to clear the story, exploring party variations can double that playtime. There are two obvious touchstones for Plamo Gear, Imagineer's Medarot and Level-5's Danball Senki...

Inside hobby anime RPG, Plamo Gear

In the early days of 2024, indie developer motamotaBOX self-published Plamo Gear, a free "hobby anime RPG" about kids battling with 15-centimeter plastic model robot "Gears." Gears are customized by swapping out their parts, changing the battle commands available. The title quickly gained steam in the Japanese doujin scene for its of play depth and vibrant visual style; although it only takes ~5 hours to clear the story, exploring party variations can double that playtime. There are two obvious touchstones for Plamo Gear, Imagineer's Medarot and Level-5's Danball Senki...

Making a 2D character creator

Character creation is always the first thing I have on my feature list, and the last thing I actually implement. Truth be told, I'm not happy with the games I make unless you can customize your look in them; they're expressive, they're fun, and if you build them right they're even economical. Once you have a framework for building custom characters, you can design your NPCs using the same parameters as the player characters. Here's my crash course. I used GDevelop 5 so I could embed the end results, but the principles generalize...

Making a 2D character creator

Character creation is always the first thing I have on my feature list, and the last thing I actually implement. Truth be told, I'm not happy with the games I make unless you can customize your look in them; they're expressive, they're fun, and if you build them right they're even economical. Once you have a framework for building custom characters, you can design your NPCs using the same parameters as the player characters. Here's my crash course. I used GDevelop 5 so I could embed the end results, but the principles generalize...

Feed reader support on Lost Worlds

You can now add Lost Worlds to your RSS news feed reader of choice--Fluent Reader, Feedly, Thunderbird, Vivaldi, etc. Copy this link to throw in your reader. It's like Twitter, but faster, ad-free, and without the awful replies. For now this is using RSS 2.0 rather than Atom, though I'm considering Atom support down the line. I suppose it's a bit of an open question at this time what syndication will look like in the future--the powers that be have done all they can to push these features to the backstage of the web, yet I see an unmistakable...