The Camera Is The Enemy

Check out this "second-person shooter"

The camera is actually the enemy looking at you, and there are multiple cameras (split screen) when there are multiple enemies. This is a pretty interesting idea and the game explores it well. There are slow moving enemies, fast moving ones, enemies with shields, teleporting enemies, a really annoying bird thing that suddenly swoops in fast, zombie enemies that come back to life after killed, and more. The "blind" enemy is one of the more interesting ones in that you have to use the cameras of other enemies to even see him.

The ammo mechanic is simple and well-done too. You have a laser and missiles, each which recharge slowly to their max capacity. It takes 3 laser shots to kill a normal enemy and one missile. It's actually suboptimal to sit on your unused missiles, because then you aren't getting any benefit out them refilling over time. So using both missiles and the laser is a good idea. I'm glad that playing in a fun way is also the right thing to do here.

I just wanted to spotlight an interesting mechanic for you guys, but go ahead and play it for yourselves.

Unity3d and Sirlin Games

This second-person shooter was made in the Unity game engine, by the way. Speaking of Unity, if you're an experienced Unity programmer, or a programmer who would like to learn more about Unity, you could help out with online versions of my card games, or a fighting game, all of which are using Unity3d. You can talk to my tech lead Thelo about it here.

Visual Display of Radiation Information

When I saw this method of displaying different levels of radiation expsoure from different sources, I thought of Edward Tufte. He's the professor of information display, and you might check out his books if you're not aware of him.

Visual Explanations
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Envisioning Information

Anyway, I like that the radiation chart from xkcd.com gives a sense of scale with boxes representing quantity, then showing that the entire collection of blue boxes from the first panel fits inside just a three of the green boxes from the second panel, and so on. It helps build our intuition about just how much radiation is contained in those last few yellow boxes. Tufte would also like that words and images are intermingled, and that the author cites the sources of his data. Great job, xkcd.

Where Did/Would You Buy Sirlin Games?

I'm basically sold out both Yomi and Puzzle Strike, but I did get ahold of a very limited quantity of each at www.sirlingames.com. The next print runs are on their way, and I'm planning to support your local hobby game stores even more from now on. I'd like your help though.

You can help by filling out this survey and letting me know where you bought Yomi and/or Puzzle Strike, and just as importantly, where you'd *like* to buy those or future Sirlin Games. If there's a great local game store near you that you wish carried Yomi or Puzzle Strike then let me know! Maybe you'd like to have a gathering place to play for fun or in tournaments. Or maybe it's just a great game store that you're proud to support.

On the other hand, if you ARE a retail store owner, I'll refer you to Dan Yarrington, CEO of Game Salute. Sirlin Games is now a proud member of Game Salute, and you can contact Dan about purchasing and promoting Sirlin Games for your store, as well as details about becoming a Game Salute Select Store (it's a good thing!). You can e-mail Dan at Salute@GameSalute.com or call at (603) 401-2080.

Don't forget to fill out that survey. Thanks!