Kickstarter boost: of pawns & kings, Blue June

I back a fair number of story-game kickstarters. Usually I blog about them when the game ships and I've had a chance to play the complete game. But today I'm pushing a couple of projects which are still crowdfunding.

(I have no connection with these games except that I saw them on Kickstarter and said "hey, that looks cool.")

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of pawns & kings is a point-and-click set in a lush 3D-rendered environment. A boy goes off into the wilderness to discover what happened to his grandfather. The author cites Monkey Island, Riven, and Labyrinth as inspirations. I just wanna run around that jungle and mess with puzzles.

There's a demo, but honestly I backed it on the strength of the KS intro video, which bubbles with enthusiasm.

The project has a week to go and is only at 27%. I say this is a shame.

(Web site; KS page; demo.)

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Blue June is a 2D point-and-click about a girl pulled into a nightmarish dream version of her school. Stylized but atmospheric.

(KS page; demo on Steam, Itch.)

The project is in its last 24 hours and is 75% funded. Give it a push.

Mysterium 2021 report

Another Mysterium has come and gone. It was online again this year. I took lots of notes! But if you want to go directly to the goods, check out the Mysterium Youtube channel.

Some highlights:

Rand Miller doing a live let's-play of Myst. Not all of it, just an hour's worth of running around with off-the-cuff directory's commentary. This was Myst Masterpiece Edition (1999, still slideshow-style but improved resolution). Favorite bit: all the trees on Myst Island were rendered as perfect cones with a foliage texture. But when you look at screenshots, you see that the silhouettes are a little bit fluffy. Why? Because Rand loaded them up in Photoshop and smeared all the edges with the thumb tool. CGI magic!

Of course the big upcoming news is the Mac/PC/VR port, which is due "third quarter" -- which is to say, by the end of September. They did an hour-long State of the Union report on that.

(Panel, Youtube.)

I see they called it Steam Deck

I wrote about Valve's rumored portable a couple of months ago, when the rumors surfaced. Now we see the thing! It is called the Steam Deck.

The point is that the Switch is super-duper-popular, but it only runs Switch games. The iPhone is super-duper-popular, but it only runs iOS games. Your regular gaming PC isn't portable, but it can run all games (except for a few console exclusives, but whatever). Fill the gap.

I don't have any particular clue, but this seems like an obvious winner move on Valve's part. In my earlier post I talked about wanting a portable device for quickie games -- puzzlers, micro-roguelikes, small narrative games. That's what this is. I'm not going to play giant immersive adventures on it. I'm going to play little things while I eat lunch.

Possible pitfalls for the Steam Deck? It's not cheap. It's heavier and bulkier than the Switch. The battery life can't possibly match Apple's vertical engineering. Valve is trying to support every possible game interface (thumbsticks, trackpads, touchscreen); at least one of those will probably suck. (Cough cough trackpads.) The GPU can't melt tungsten blocks, which means the noisy people will hate it. And Steam needs to trim their storefront down into something that makes sense to casual players on a small screen.

Doesn't matter. The wide-open Steam ecosystem is the selling point. I think that will be sufficient. As I said, I will go out of my way to make sure Meanwhile is a joy to play on it.

"But the Steam Machine flopped!" Okay look. The Steam Machine -- a custom Linux gaming box -- had no selling point over a "regular" Windows gaming box. It had fewer games. The hardware wasn't inherently better or cheaper. You saved the cost of a Win10 license, but that's marginal. As a replacement for the (huge, established) "buy a PC" gaming market, the Steam Machine had no leverage.

The Steam Deck is a new market. It's not a replacement for anything. There is no established line of Windows-compatible gaming portables. People who want that form factor have either a Switch or nothing, and this has way more games than the Switch. (I'm sure you'll be able to stick an Itch.IO client on it too.)

Also, Linux portability is way past where it was in 2015. Valve's developer page says that "most [Windows] games work out of the box" thanks to Proton. (Proton is basically WINE tuned for Steam games.) Developers will have to test on Linux, but Valve is betting that a burgeoning Steam Deck market will push most of them into it.

As I said, it's a smart move. If it works, it sets up a world where Windows and Linux are equivalent gaming platforms -- developers will support both and players just won't care. Then Valve will be in a position to relaunch the desktop Steam Machine. Right? No more MS tax, no more MS ads in the start menu, no more MS redesigning the UI every few years. Just two thumbsticks and a screen that plays games.

So, anyhow, yeah. I'm going to preorder a Steam Deck tomorrow. Maybe it'll all fall down again, but it's my fun-money. And Meanwhile will be well-tested on it, at least.

(I'll make sure Hadean Lands runs too. But a seven-inch screen with a virtual keyboard might not be ideal for parser IF. I'm still working on redesigning the parser model from the bottom up, sorry...)