Have you ever had a gaming epiphany? The past ten years of gradually fading Castlevania games just snapped into place for me, like the sixth bullet in a badly-planed Russian roulette.

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood is the missing developmental stage between the (S)NES era action-platormers and the modern action-RPGs. If you look at the enemy design, semi-linear exploration, and even the menu screen, Rondo plays like a first draft of Symphony of the Night. Both games open with a cinematic (read: rigged) boss battle that deftly mixes hook and tutorial. In Rondo you fight Death, and in Symphony you fight Dracula, but it’s the same trick in both places. Each game lays down foundations of series continuity. Rondo begins in Aljiba, a town from Castlevania 2, as it is razed by monsters. Symphony starts, funnily enough, at the end of Rondo. Even the spinning cogs that unlock secret doors in the clock tower are the same.

In fact, the overlap is so extensive that Rondo and Symphony feel less like drafts and more like genre remixes of the same game. They’re so similar, in fact, that you can imagine why Rondo didn’t see US soil for 16 years. With the all-too-common localization delays in the 90′s, the PC Engine‘s failure, and Symphony‘s subsequent runaway success, Rondo would have felt like a redundant atavism by the time anyone seriously considered sending it over to the states.

Now consider the situation from Konami’s perspective. When they created Symphony of the Night, they revised Rondo‘s foundations, essentially to incorporate a Super Metroid kind of non-linearity, but otherwise aped Rondo of Blood. This is the exact strategy they employed for Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia, progressively shallower remixes of their predecessors. There are probably marketers (or worse, misled designers) at Konami who just won’t stop chasing lightning with a bottle.

And no man can say who shall emerge victorious what they can do to fix it.

It looks like Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be taking a page from the Chronotron handbook. According to the MTV Multiplayer blog, the game will occasionally feature dopplegangers that follow your inputs after a brief delay. Now, these are the evil kind of twins, so you’ll have to calibrate your plans on the fly to [...]

Today marks the first day following the wrap-up of the GDC 2010
interview series. So first things first, thanks to all the developers
who took the time to chat. You’ve probably noticed that we’re still
missing Tuning and Today I Die, but I’m still
waiting to hear back from those devs regarding interviews. Interested
readers are invited to cross their fingers, but warned that held
breath can result in anoxia and disappointment.

As cool as it was to cover these interviews, we’ve missed a hell of a
lot of interesting news during the interim, so I thought I’d spend
today on the highlights reel.

span.gametitle {text-align:center;font-size:x-small;font-style:italic;} 2010 IGF Main Competition and Student Nominees Aaaaa! A Slow Year Closure Cogs Enviro-Bear 2000 Heroes of Newerth Joe Danger Limbo Miegakure Monaco Owlboy Rocketbirds Shank Shatter Star Guard Super Meat Boy Today I Die Trauma Tuning Vessel Boryokudan Rue Continuity Devils Tuning Fork Dreamside Maroon Igneous Paper Cakes Puddle Puzzle Bloom Spectre [...]

Ulitsa Dimitrova has something in common with World of Warcraft because you lose when you stop playing. On reflection, it has that in common with life as well. Developer Lea Schönfelder helped explain why she adopted this unusual mechanic, what it has to do with a dead Russian child, and how it all ties into storytelling.

Spectre is a curious exercise in storytelling. It’s somewhere between a choose-your-own-adventure book and a platformer, which is a fascinating blend to play. Lead engineer Asher Vollmer walked me through fitting all the narrative pieces together, the weave of player agency and storytelling, and the story web. Read on for his thoughts

The title for this interview is misleading because we already covered Puzzle Bloom with designer Jess Rahbek for our PAX 10 2009 interview series. So I merely touched on the relevant game for this IGF nomination and spent the rest of the interview catching up with Jess’s exploits since last we met. So the scope of today’s text covers the role of Unity in Jess’s development career, public prototyping as a AAA development strategy, and Jess’s pet iPhone project. It’s all cool stuff, so hit the link and start reading.

Puddle is one of those physic sim/puzzle games where you manipulate the level to indirectly control an object trapped inside. It’s akin to those old wooden labyrinth games, but replace the bearing with a pool of liquid. Graphic Designer Pierre Lemasson helped answer my questions about the game’s origins, why everything is cast in silhouette, and new features in the offing. The answers are hidden behind that link above the excerpt.

Paper Cakes is unique at the IGF because it’s a novel game that would have worked just as well on paper as it does on a computer. In fact, if the game is ever published outside the freeware universe, I think a paper-bound walkthrough is called for with dotted “fold here” lines to explain each level. I didn’t pester developer Machiel van Hooren about that specific idea, but I did ask him about the paper prototyping process, simulating a sheet of paper on a tablet, and the game’s future. Read on for his answers.

Will Taylor Grahm is as charming as he is informative. It doesn’t hurt that his game Igneous is an exuberant romp. Stay tuned for his remarks on making bugs into features, iteration through genres, and why a tiki totem would be racing through a volcano in the first place.