Happy Holidays!

What better way to celebrate the season than with oversized pixels?

A (Growing) List of Recent FPEs

FPE = first-person explorer = A 3d game with a first-person perspective and emphasis on exploration. Mechanics and goals are either downplayed or absent, and special attention is given to aesthetic and mood. Sometimes also called "walking simulators."

Dead Esther - The Chinese Room - Dan Pinchbeck - dearesther.com

Korsakovia - The Chinese Room - Dan Pinchbeck - www.thechineseroom.co.uk/korsakovia.html

Elevator: Source - Pixeltail Games - pixeltailgames.com/elevator

Stanley Parable HD - Galactic Cafe - Davey Wreden - www.galactic-cafe.com

Radiator Series -Radiator - Robert Yang - radiator.debacle.us

Level with Me - Robert Yang - rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/23/level-with-me-level-with-me/

Trip -Team Cosmonaut -Axel Shokk - teamkosmonaut.com/trip/buy/

Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving - Blendo Games - Brandon Cheung - blendogames.com

Antichamber (previously Hazard: The Journey of Life) - Alexander Bruce - www.antichamber-game.com

Fract OSC - Phosfiend Systems -Richard E Flanagan - fractgame.com

Kairo - Locked Door Puzzle - Richard Perrin - kairo.lockeddoorpuzzle.com

Miasmata - IonFx - Joe and Bob Johnson - ionfx.com/product_pc_Miasmata.php

Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Frictional Games - amnesiagame.com

Slender: The Eight Pages and Slender: The Arrival - Parsec Productions/Blue Isle -  Mark Hadley  - www.parsecproductions.net/slender/

Gone Home - The Fullbright Company - thefullbrightcompany.com/gonehome

Animal Memory - Gausswerks - Jack Monahan - http://forums.gausswerks.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=302

Dinner Date - Stout Games -Jeroen D. Stout - stoutgames.com/

Hubris and Four Keys - Andrew Yoder - mclogenog.wordpress.com

Proteus - Ed Key - visitproteus.com

The Witness - Jonathan Blow - the-witness.net

Judith - Steven Lavelle and Terry Cavanaugh - distractionware.com/blog/2009/04/judith/

Radio Silence - Terry Cavanaugh - distractionware.com/blog/2010/04/radio-silence/

Cradle - Flying Cafe for Semianimals - flying-cafe.com

Sunset - Tale of Tales - http://www.tale-of-tales.com/Sunset
TRAUMA -  Krystian Majewski - traumagame.com
NaissancE - Limasse Five - naissancee.com
Eidlon - Ice Water Games - icewatergames.com/about
The Old City: Leviathan - PostMod Softworks - postmodsoftworks.com
The Rapture is Here and You Will be Forcibly Removed From Your Home - Connor Sherlock - connorsherlock.wordpress.com
Marginalia - Connor Sherlock - connorsherlock.wordpress.com
Myst - Cyan - cyan.com/games/myst
Mirrormoon EP - Santa Ragione - mirrormoongame.com
Return of the Obra Dinn - Lucas Pope - dukope.com
Wooden Floor - Fabien Zech (pheenix93) - wooden-floor-game.com
The Moon Silver - jefequeso1 - desura.com/games/the-moon-sliver
Bad Day on the Midway - The Residents - wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Day_on_the_Midway

On UDK and Reveal

Mike did a nice post on his blog on why custom engines are always better (in theory) than pre-built ones, using our game Reveal as an example. 

He alludes one of my bigger frustrations with UDK, that straying at all from a tool's intended purpose usually results in as much or more work than not using the tool altogether. When  I wrote Reveal, I thought I was being clever by designing it's features around the things UDK was supposedly good at: cloth physics (for wallpaper and magazines), rigid body physics (destructible boards), and dynamic lights (the swinging light bulb). In the end, all of these things required a good deal of custom scripting from Mike, and even then plenty of compromises were still necessary (I had forgotten the wallpaper was originally supposed to be seamless. The strips turned out to be a fine substitute, but their rubbery movement and the way they pop off the wall is still weird). I had designed a game I thought I could make 95% of on my own, using the tools UDK already had, but in the end I was totally reliant on Mike to get my game up and running. Consider it a warning, I guess, before jumping into UDK as a non-programmer thinking you can make anything beyond a deathmatch-style FPS. It's possible, certainly, but working against the grain of the engine isn't a pleasant experience, and not how I as an artist/designer want to spend my time.