Roll Some Dice

I have to say I'm pretty blown away by the response to Half of Everything Is Luck . My last post on it had a whopping six viewers . That's the equivalent of everyone who follows this blog reading it once! It's pretty gratifying when you can reach 100% of your audience. Anyway, I've made a couple post-deadline improvements to the game based on feedback from one person, and I figured I'd post 'em here for anyone who's interested. And really, even if only half of the people who read that last post are interested, that's still three people -- enough to play a multiplayer game of Goldeneye ! The mind reels. So here they are. Ammo Instead of spending Rounds and tracking Ammo Reserves, every weapon has a row of check boxes and a set of coins (pennies, nickels, or dimes). The boxes represent its Clip. Every time you roll a 1 on a Shoot die (regardless of whether it's “kept,” if Aiming), check a box. When the last box is checked, the Clip is empty, an

After doing some grueling research tonight -- plugging the N64 back in and playing Goldeneye 007 to refresh my memory -- my entry for Stage One, Half of Everything Is Luck , is done. I agonized for some time over the name, and nearly settled on one of several really bad puns, but playing the Facility reminded me of the dialogue at the end between Bond and Trevelyan (which the movie ripped off word for word, BTW). "Half of everything is luck" seems like a pretty accurate summation of this game. I've seen people posting about the layout they've done for their entries, and my reaction has been, "Man, layout ? For reals? I'm just trying to squeeze everything on the page here." So it's not pretty, and it's not fancy, and it's probably wordier and crunchier than most submissions, but I'm willing to bet it's one of the only one-person games made for this thing, so that's something, anyway. Honestly, it never even occurred to me to m

Well, hello blog! Yikes, it's been over a month. I hate when that happens. Anyway, Jonathan Walton -- Master Chef of  Game Chef for the past few years -- has a game design contest going right now that's captured my attention and imagination. The challenge: Make an "analog" version of the first stage or level of a video game. The whole thing has to fit on one sheet of paper, front and back, and the deadline's this Sunday, the 6th. The first thing I thought of was Goldeneye N64 , because some part of my brain is constantly thinking about Goldeneye , so that's what I'm doing. Goldeneye 's first "level" -- or map, anyway -- is Arkhangelsk Dam , a rather straight-up Point-A-to-Point-B mission, which makes it pretty well-suited for this kind of thing. Don't just stand there! I'm representing the map itself with three sheets of college-ruled notebook paper, corresponding to the Drop Point , the Tunnel , and the Dam itself. Thes