#oneaday, Day 205: Protect Me, Knight!!

As I’ve said before, the Xbox Indie Games Marketplace is a veritable treasure trove of golden doubloons mixed in with stinky, festering turds of considerable awfulness. Tonight I’d like to share with you another one of these golden nuggets of goodness.

It’s called Protect Me, Knight but in the Marketplace it’s listed under its Japanese name which I don’t know how to type owing to its excessive use of kanji. Kanji? Whatever they are. Yes, it’s a Japanese game—those of you who have explored the Indie Marketplace will be aware that the Japanese titles on there often have some of the best production values and gameplay. Even if said production values and gameplay are perpetually stuck about fifteen years in the past.

Take Protect Me, Knight, for example. This is a game so committed to its retro presentation that upon loading it, the graphics sometimes corrupt and you have to blow on the cartridge by pressing A. This is a joke which is funny the first time but which can mercifully be skipped after this point.

Once you’re into the game proper, you’re shown a screen with a princess in a castle imploring the player to “HELP ME MY HERO” and “KILL !@#?ING GOBLINS”. Leaving the game in its attract mode summons up some of the finest Engrish you will ever see. I won’t spoil it for you here. But it’s absolutely legendary. In fact, it’s such a wonderful example of Engrish that it’s almost impossible to believe that it wasn’t done deliberately.

Anyway, the game is a 4-player co-operative game where players can pick one of four characters—Fighter, Ninja, Amazon or Mage—to play as in order to protect the princess from the hordes of “!@#?ING GOBLINS” who want to re-kidnap her. This is achieved on a NES-style static screen. Players run around frantically beating the crap out of all and sundry by hammering the A button or pressing B to use each character’s unique skill. Players can also build barricades around the princess and even push her out of harm’s way. Scoring hot combos causes the princess to throw “LOVE POINT” at you, which doubles as currency and experience points. Between levels, “LOVE POINT” can be spent on powering up characters, or during levels they can be spent to build or upgrade barricades.

It becomes very hectic very quickly. And with multiple players, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It’s an incredibly simple game—and pretty short, too—but it is unashamedly fun. And the Engrish continues throughout the game. The skill descriptions for each new level are hilarious. For example, the fighter’s top skill (a spinning melee attack) is described as “MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE TORNADE!” (with previous levels being “TORNADE!”, “MORE TORNADE!”, “MORE MORE MORE TORNADE!” and… you get the idea.)

It’s a stupid yet fun game in an unashamedly retro style, yet it’s unmistakably a next-gen take on a retro title. There’s no way a NES would be able to handle the hundreds of sprites on screen that this game throws at you without breaking a sweat.

It would make a great XBLA title with online play and leaderboards. Sadly, its immense Japaneseness is sure to see it eternally relegated to the backwater of the Xbox Marketplace that is XBIG. Still, I’ve done my little bit to raise exposure to it now. So gather three friends together, fire up this game for a very reasonable 240 points and Have A Fun!!

#oneaday, Day 204: Inconveniences of the Modern Age

It’s difficult to argue with the fact that, on the whole, life is somewhat better now than it was in, say, the Middle Ages. People live longer, we have more things to do, we are healthier, we have things to keep us entertained and we can travel around pretty much the whole world on a whim.

So, unlike the Middle Ages, where inconveniences tended to be along the lines of “Agatha has consumption” (whatever that is) or “My liege! Thy oxen have run riot throughout the city streets!” or “My, verily that courtesan was riddled with the plague! Farewell, my sweet!”, we now have our own set of things to grind our teeth about. It’s something of a sign of the times. And living in the first world.

Peculiar Bureaucracy

“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy,” said Oscar Wilde and possibly some other people as well. And indeed it appears to be true. When it is impossible to cancel one’s broadband contract in advance because “policy states” that they have a 14-day notice period, one naturally points out that it is well above 14 days before one will be leaving one’s property. But no, “policy states” that a 14-day notice period means exactly that: they will turn it off after exactly 14 days. And not only that, they will charge £26 for the privilege of a man flipping a switch.

This is Orange Home, incidentally. Don’t use them. They’re rubbish. And they have stupid policies. To put this in some context, I phoned BT to cancel my phone line the same day and they were quite happy to cancel it more than 14 days in advance.

Companies That Still Use Fax Machines

We’re in the 21st century! We have email on our phones! We have constantly-on Internet connections! We have printers! So why the bloody hell do I need to use a fax machine in order to send a timesheet to you? You know a scanned copy actually looks better than a faxed copy, right? And you can print it out and everything!

My Battery Is Dead

Have you noticed as phones have got more useful and multi-functional that their daily lifespan has shortened significantly? I remember having a shitty old Motorola brick that sent text messages and made phone calls and that was about it—this was pre-Snake days, even—and it would last about five years before needing a charge. Now? I have to budget my battery life.

Hai! This Costs Money!

Remember when stuff used to be free? You used to be able to get extra bits and pieces for games online courtesy of developers and mod communities. (I know you still can.) Now you have to pay to read The Times online.

There are some areas in which this is a good thing. Online journalists should be paid for their work, and if the stuff’s out there for free, then it’s not going to be easy for companies to pay them. But at the same time, that stuff which you pay for needs to be worthwhile.

When you have to pay an extra 50p to pay by card in the Chinese restaurant, or pay 30p to use the toilets at a railway station, you know something’s wrong somewhere.

We Will Get Back To You

Remember when email was mooted as the simple, almost-instant communication method of the future? Have you tried sending an email to your local council recently? “We will get back to you within 10 days.”

That’s a long time. I could have actually gone into the council offices several times during that time period. At least ten times, in fact. Given that my query wasn’t an especially complicated one, would it kill them to quickly turn around a reply? And not a copy-and-paste form response, an actual reply? Even if it’s just “Yes”. I’d be more than happy with that. (Assuming “Yes” was the answer I wanted.)

#oneaday, Day 203: Things To Do Instead Of Tidying Your House

Your house is a mess! It’s a disgrace. And yet somehow you don’t feel that now is the correct time to do anything about it. There are far more important things to be doing or thinking about. Such as the following:

Going for a walk

You haven’t been outside all day! And it’s, what, lunchtime? You need some Fresh Air. Your mum and dad always told you that Fresh Air was good for you when you were little, so therefore it must still be good for you right now. So why not go outside and get some of that Fresh Air? It’s super-fresh! Mmm! Feel the freshness invigorating your lungs and spirit! Don’t you feel just a little bit more alive, especially now the stale odour of last night’s curry isn’t infiltrating your nostrils? Why not stay out for an hour or two? Go to the park! Sit and stare into space for a while. Fresh Air is good! The more of it you get, the better!

Going shopping

This is an even more fantastic idea! Not only will you get Fresh Air on the journey to the shops, but you’ll also get Stuff once you arrive at the shops! That means once you arrive back home, you’ll have Stuff to find homes for! If you want to go shopping on the pretence of doing something useful for the somewhat medieval state of your hovel, then you could always buy one or more cleaning products while you’re out! Fresh Air and Stuff! Awesome.

Phoning all your friends

You don’t generally like talking on the phone. In fact, you talk on the phone so little that your BT phone bill is perpetually in credit, meaning that they constantly owe you money. So why not use some of that credit and phone those people that you haven’t spoken to or seen for a while? I bet they have lots of awesome news to tell you! And you can joke about how untidy your house is. Plus, you never know, they might actually want to come over. And that will give you an actual reason to tidy your house. Because there’s no point tidying up without a reason now, is there?

Seeing all your friends

Perhaps one of the friends you phoned is having a bad time and wants to rant over a coffee. Perhaps someone who is always busy is having a rare day off and wants to see you. Perhaps you feel like getting some Fresh Air, and conveniently there’s a friend you haven’t seen for ages. So why not get some of that awesome Fresh Air and see your awesome friend? Yeah.

Turning on the television and staring at it

It doesn’t matter what’s on, because you won’t really be watching it. It could be Jeremy Kyle. It could be Ben 10. It could be Last of the Summer Wine. If the last channel you left your TV on was Dave, it’s probably Top Gear. Why not sit yourself down on your couch and enjoy some mindless entertainment? It doesn’t matter if you don’t normally watch the programme in question. It’s on. And you owe it to yourself and to Culture to find out what all the fuss is about.

Making an overelaborate sandwich

Your kitchen is messy, but you’re hungry. What to do? What to do? Make a sandwich! Rummage through your fridge and cupboards for the most disparate luncheon products you can find, slap them all together between two pieces of bread that you don’t think is mouldy, add at least one condiment or sauce, place it on a plate (or, if all your plates are dirty, in a bowl; if all your bowls are dirty, in a frying pan; if all your pans are dirty, in a bit of kitchen roll; if you have no kitchen roll, just pick the damn thing up) and then retire to your couch (where you may optionally turn on the TV and stare at it) and enjoy your creation before realising that your bizarre combination of cooked meats, chilli sauce, some unidentifiable fruits and vegetables you found in the baskets at the bottom of your fridge and mayonnaise doesn’t really go. But you’ve made it now; so you’re damn well going to eat the whole thing if only to be able to tell people about your magnificent creation.

By now it must be bedtime. So go to bed satisfied in the knowledge that you couldn’t have possibly had a nicer day, and of course all the tidying up can wait until tomorrow. When you’ll go through this whole process again.

#oneaday, Day 202: Someone You’re Not

Ever wondered what it’d be like to be someone you’re not? To be able to seamlessly switch yourself from being “you” to being a different persona, depending on the situation?

I’ve been reading The Game by Neil Strauss. For the uninitiated, it’s an incredibly detailed exposé of the world of pickup artists. There are those out there who live by the tenets of this group. And others who believe that Strauss’ story is so much bullshit. But I find the very concept of it interesting, not least for the fact it’s something I don’t think I could do.

The pickup artists (or PUAs, as they call themselves) go into a situation armed with a variety of “openers”, manipulate the conversations using a combination of “negs” (deliberately negative comments), hypnosis, neurolinguistic programming and all manner of other techniques. And, if Strauss is to be believed, many of them enjoy not inconsiderable degrees of success—regardless of the sort of person they “really” are, and regardless of their physical attractiveness.

When I go out, I’m me. I can’t be anyone else. I can’t imagine sidling up to a group of complete strangers at a bar, opening with something like “well, this looks like where the party’s at” and then surreptitiously attempting to manipulate the group and an individual in that group into doing my bidding. I find the concept of it pretty fascinating, though; particularly as I know at least one person who is adept at “playing the game”.

Sometimes I wonder if social situations might be easier if I was able to project a different persona. Those of you who know me know my personality pretty well. But I often feel when I go out into a situation where I’m surrounded by unfamiliar people, or where I’m worried I might make a tit of myself, that I withdraw somewhat. I’ll talk to people if they talk to me, but I often find myself sitting there thinking just that; “I’ll just wait here and if someone wants to talk to me, I’ll let them, but I’m not going to chase down anyone.”

This is social anxiety at work. In some ways, I think that it’s part of me and I’m glad I’m not being a player, hitting on every girl who comes into the bar. But in other ways, I sometimes wish that I could just open up a little bit more and strike up a conversation with a stranger. And by that I mean be the one to initiate the conversation, not wait for someone to come and talk to me or be introduced to me.

I wish that there was an easy way to practice this. But unfortunately, the only way to practice it is to do it. And in nearly thirty years of time on this planet, I still haven’t really got the hang of it.

#oneaday, Day 201: Have At You!

Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade is a time for great games to appear on Xbox LIVE Arcade. Last year we had some real gems including Splosion Man and Shadow Complex. This year so far, we’ve had the opinion-dividing Limbo, Hydro Thunder Hurricane and this week, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair.

Critical response to Castlevania appears to have been almost universally negative. Yet having spent some time with it, I’m struggling to see what the problem is. It’s a solid old-school platform game that I imagine will be an enormous amount of fun in co-op. I’m hoping to test that theory this very weekend—so if you want to play, do get in touch. I’m “sonicfunkstars” on LIVE.

Sure, there are one or two stupid decisions. Offer six player co-op and only five different characters to choose from? Silly Konami. Still, it’s highly probable that most people will want to play as Alucard anyway, so the fact that multiple players can choose the same character is possibly a sensible decision.

The game itself, if you haven’t checked it out, is a curious twist on the usual Castlevania formula. It’s split into six “chapters”, each of which features a version of Dracula’s castle based loosely on one of the past games. They’re not as big as the entire games they’re based on, though the different areas of each castle are clearly recognisable to those who’ve played the games.

The objectives for each chapter are twofold. First of all, the players must work out how to get to the boss. And then they have to beat the boss. Both of these things must be achieved against a strict thirty-minute time limit. This is more than enough time if you know what you’re doing. But, this being Castlevania, there’s one or two confusing “So… where now?” moments to contend with. And there’s no hand-holding whatsoever. If you weren’t aware that characters can double-jump off the surface of water, for example, there’s no way you’re ever going to finish the first level. You can have that tip for free.

Character progression isn’t handled the same way as the RPG-style levelling of the Metroidvania games. There’s no experience points, but characters do have equipment. The different playable characters each have their own quirks. Jonathan Morris, for example, can only wield the Vampire Killer whip as his weapon, but is able to equip up to four subweapons to throw at enemies. Alucard gets suitably dhampiric skills to hurl at enemies while yelling things. (“DARK METAMORPHOSIS!”) And the others have skills appropriate to how they played in their respective games.

Characters can level up individual stats by picking up various food items from around the levels. These don’t appear to bear any particular relation to the stat they increase—donuts increase intelligence, apparently—but I guess you can learn what they do. And if you’re learning the layout of a level, you’ll quickly learn where you can go to increase various stats, because they’re in the same place each time.

Where I see Castlevania being interesting is in challenging yourself to beat each level faster and better. The top few gamers to beat a level have a replay saved online for all to witness. And there’s some impressive playing on display already.

I also predict that online co-op will prove to be thoroughly entertaining, but as I say, I’m yet to try it.

It’s not for everyone. If you don’t like platform games, Castlevania in general, pixel art or prog rock backing music you’ll probably hate it. But for those of us who can recite Dracula’s full speech from the beginning of Symphony of the Night? Enough talk! Have at you!

#oneaday, Day 200: Day 200

And it is with something of a sense of anticlimax that I reach my 200th daily entry on this blog. It’s ten to midnight, I’m sitting in my pants in a stuffy study wondering if I should go and get a glass of milk, play the three Words With Friends games I’ve got on the go at present, stare at Twitter in the hope some revelation might come my way or simply go to bed.

Today didn’t start particularly well, though I managed to get out of bed early for once. Something which I won’t go into right now got me feeling not-particularly-good early on. Downright depressed, in fact. As such, I spent the vast majority of the morning not achieving very much at all. It’s difficult to focus when there’s nothing to really focus on.

That said, the day did improve somewhat later on. I have a second interview for a job I actually want on Tuesday. This is a Good Thing, and brings me on to my next point.

Some time back, I promised that by Day 200 on this blog, I would have made a decision on what I’d be doing. Now, as it happens, said decisions have been pretty much made for me by circumstances beyond my control. But here, for those who give a damn, is what’s happening to me over the next few… I don’t know how long.

I am soon to leave Southampton. In the words of my good buddy Kalam, who just skipped town to live in London and is having mixed feeling about the whole thing, “I’ve got all I can out of this town”. There’s certainly no jobs here that I want to do. If you’re not an accountant, a lawyer or a docker here, there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of work. And I refuse to apply for a job I don’t understand the description for on principle.

I don’t know exactly when I’ll be leaving Southampton. But it will be some time before September 10, which is when the contract on my flat is up and is also, ironically, the birthday of my estranged wife. I will probably be out of here sooner than that, depending on how this interview goes and how soon I’d be able to start at this new position which I’m not going to talk about for fear of jinxing it.

Those of you who are still in Southampton: this town has been a big part of my life ever since I first came here in 1999. Even in the years I didn’t live here, it was still “home”. I have emotional ties and attachments here. And as such, I don’t want to leave it quietly. My time with this town may be coming to an end, but I’m determined that I give myself a proper send-off. So please: if and when I announce I’m doing something to say goodbye, it would mean a hell of a lot to me if as many of you as possible could attend. I know this isn’t “the end” and I’ll doubtless see many of you again. But I’m going to Cambridge, which is a pretty long way away. So I’d like to say a proper goodbye to those I won’t be seeing again for some time. This is a heartfelt request. I’ll try and give as much notice as possible. Keep an eye on Twitter, Facebook and here. And, as arrogant as it sounds, make sure I have a send-off I won’t forget in a hurry.

Beyond this isn’t yet clear. The outcome of Tuesday will impact the details of what happens next. In an ideal world (which I know far too well we don’t live in) I’d get this job, be able to start pretty soon, move back up to Cambridge to stay with my folks for a little while, earn some money, get back on my feet and then the world is my generic clamshell laptop computer.

I have mixed feelings about all this still. The circumstances of everything suck. There’s no changing that. And it’s going to be tough to leave behind this city that’s been home for so long. But at the same time, a new start might just give a fresh outlook on anything. And being back at work will actually be nice. It’s tough to fill the days sometimes, and that’s what can lead to depression and not dealing with things very well.

So in summary: I’m not out of the woods yet. But I’m at least on the path.

Apologies this has been such a melancholy entry for such a milestone in the whole #oneaday project. Let’s hope the next 165 days mark a new beginning. I’m past the halfway point now. Should be smooth sailing downhill from now.

Right?

#oneaday, Day 199: Waving Goodbye

So, Google Wave is going bye-bye, huh? Can’t say I’m particularly surprised. As cool an idea as it was, there just wasn’t the buy-in from people that it deserved. Largely because a goodly proportion of the Internet population didn’t seem to understand what it was actually for.

It’s easy to assume people who didn’t “get” Wave are just a bit slow. But the fact is, Google never did a great job of explaining what the technology was for in the first place.

“Yay, collaborative editing!” they’d say.

“Yay, we can do that with Google Docs!” everyone else would say.

“Yay, you can see people typing!” they’d say.

“Yay, who gives a shit?” everyone else would say.

“Yay, it’s like a combination of email, Twitter and a word processing document!” they’d say.

“Yay, I’ve never wanted to combine those three things together!” everyone else would say.

It’s a pity, as I’ve seen some genuinely interesting uses of Wave out there. One particularly cool Wave I was invited to took the form of a moderated “text adventure”, where participants could direct the protagonist (played by the moderator in the role of an interactive fiction-style narrator) by inserting commands. Eventually, the non-linear nature of Wave allowed two parallel storylines to develop at once—one happening in the present, another as a flashback. Wave’s ability for anyone to edit and insert new content at any point in the “conversation” meant that these two things could continue going on without becoming overly confusing.

Then there were all the possibilities for things like education. But then you have to deal with your average teacher’s technophobia.

When I was working in schools, I had a grand idea that Wave could be used for the preparation of interactive resources. The fact that media such as YouTube videos, flash thingies, pictures, text, hyperlinks and even iFrames could be inserted meant that Wave could have been an ideal tool to use on interactive whiteboards during lessons, and also a good means of collaborative planning if teachers in question weren’t able to meet and discuss things. As they frequently aren’t.

As a result of many of these things, I had a Wave account which largely went unused because no-one else was using it. This is a shame, as I could see the potential in the service. But the fact the service was invite-only for so long, and then by the time it went public people were still scratching their heads and wondering what to do with it—these things meant that it didn’t have a particularly “mass market” appeal for the average Internet user.

All is not lost for the moment, anyway. Wave is going to remain open—Google have just said they’re stopping development on it. They’ve also open-sourced a goodly proportion of the code, so enterprising clever people with mathematics in their brains will be able to pull it apart and make it better, faster, stronger, I’m sure.

So it was a swing and a miss for Google on this one. To be honest, though, I think it’s good to see them experimenting with different technologies as a company. It would be very easy for Google to just think “Right. We do these things. And we do them well. Let’s just stop there and make bundles of money and stick them in our ears.” But no; they seem to be on a constant quest to make the lives of the Internet’s denizens better. Sometimes these things work. And sometimes they don’t.

So raise a glass to Google Wave, the web app that couldn’t. And start speculating on what they might be up to next!

#oneaday, Day 198: Bzzzzz

I shaved all my hair off yesterday. Well, most of it. I took it all down to grade 2. Then I shaved most of the rest of it off today, chopping it right back to a 1. Now I’m pretty much ready to be a space marine.

The reason I did this, and the reason I bought some clippers a while back, is that my hair and I don’t get along. It grows incredibly quickly, has a “sweet spot” which lasts roughly two weeks when hair gel is super-effective and allows me to shape it into something vaguely resembling an actual haircut, and then it gets ridiculously long and/or thick. At this point, I have a difficult decision to make. Do I continue to allow it to grow in the hope that some sort of inspiration will strike me and I’ll be able to pull off long hair? Do I shave it all off? Or do I go to the barbers?

All of these have their flaws. Option 1 never happens, largely because I can’t be bothered to spend hours pratting about with my hair in the morning. Aforementioned “sweet spot” comes when I can run a bit of gel through it, ruffle it up and have a reasonably convincing “spiky” style. Faffing around putting things in the right place though? Blow-drying? Balls to all that.

Option 2 is the easiest option, and now I have my own clippers I can do it. However, I find myself worrying that if I shave all my hair off I’ll look like either an idiot or a cancer patient. And I’ve never quite had the guts to shave it right off, though this time, at a number 1 on my clippers, is the shortest I’ve ever done it.

Option 3 fills me with dread. I don’t know how to talk to barbers, or hairdressers, or whatever they are. I don’t even really know what the difference between barbers and hairdressers is. The repertoire of haircuts I feel comfortable asking for is limited to two (“grade [x] all over” or “grade [x] sides and back, trimmed on top”) and I find myself suffering considerable anxiety when I contemplate asking the barberdresser for advice on what haircuts might suit me. Also, I often baulk at the idea of asking someone who charges £6 to shave my head for advice on what might look good when there are people out there who would happily charge fifty times that to tell me that I really should consider rocking a bedhead emo medium-length swept back twat cut with highlights.

So out come the clippers. Simple. Super-effective. No-nonsense. And the upside of it all is there is a period of several months where I don’t have to do anything at all to my barnet in the mornings save give it a bit of a scrub if necessary. No need for expensive haircare products. No need to spend any time looking in the mirror wondering if I ruffled it up too much and I just look like I haven’t brushed it. It’s just my head with a light Fuzzy Felt coating.

Someone answer a question for me, at least: is it socially acceptable to ask the person who is about to cut your hair what they think you should do with it?

pete — I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite haircut on the Citadel.

#oneaday, Day 197: Blind Girl

The Xbox Indie Games Marketplace is, at best, a mixed bag, as the vast majority of community-led games portals tend to be. There are some extreme examples of awfulness in there—the most notable that I’ve tried recently being Dossun Island, an 8-bit style platformer with dreadful animation that was clearly designed by someone who has no concept of how parallax scrolling is supposed to work. But then there’s some excellent stuff in there too—stuff which would be worthwhile on Xbox LIVE Arcade. Anyone who’s played games such as Beat Hazard will be aware that there are some genuine gems amongst the millions of massage apps and video-based crap.

And then there’s the “creative” games. For some time now, the term “indie game” has been associated with creativity, artistic experimentation and, of course, that overused word “pretentiousness”. Ever since Braid came along and either charmed or irritated everyone, the term “indie game” has been synonymous with doing things that little bit differently.

One such example of this creativity that I had the good fortune to stumble across tonight was an 80-point game called Blind Girl. In it, you play the titular blind girl and, via some very interesting game mechanics, have to collect musical notes.

Blind Girl, being blind, can’t see anything. So when you enter a level with her all you can see is her face, sitting there in inky blackness with her eyes closed. Moving around causes her face to change into some bare footprints, and the sound of her footsteps causes red “sound waves” to emanate from wherever she is. These sound waves bounce off walls, so by her making noise, the player is able to “see” the layout of the level.

As the game progresses, Blind Girl starts learning a tune. By tapping A, she can sing the part of the tune she has learned so far. This sends out green sound waves which, as the tune grows in length, travel a much greater distance and reveal much more than her footsteps alone.

As a simple maze game, it would be interesting enough. But it’s the twists and puzzles created with these simple mechanics that make Blind Girl such an intriguing game to play. “Enemies”, in the form of sinister floating eyes, are introduced a few levels in. There are red and green variants of these eyes. The red ones will chase Blind Girl if they hear her footsteps, but she can sneak past noiselessly by the player using the analog stick more lightly. The green ones will chase Blind Girl if they hear her singing. However, you can also only see where these eyes are if you hit them with the respectively-coloured sound wave, or if you’re right up close to them you can see “Z”s floating, indicating that they are asleep. Many of the puzzles revolve around manipulating the behaviour of these eyes to clear a path to the musical note, and there’s quite a few examples of creative solutions required.

Following the tradition of Braid, between levels there is some text that makes some attempt to tell a story about our titular heroine. The writers made the strange decision to do this all in rhyme, too, and the “titles” to each level are also in verse. Some of them are a bit clumsy, and it comes across as a very self-conscious attempt to be “arty”. It doesn’t detract from the game at all, though. Just be aware that if Braid‘s books irritated you, Blind Girl‘s poetry might rub you up the wrong way too.

Blind Girl is a pleasure to play. It’s pretty short, so it can easily be played through in one sitting. But the simple game mechanics, which are introduced gradually and paced well without the need for a fourth-wall breaking tutorial, work so well that it’s well worth doing that playthrough. There are times when it’s challenging, but it’s never so difficult that you want to throw the controller down and never play it again (something I experienced with Braid, and something many people have experienced more recently with Limbo). It’s a simple, polished, creative game that is a fine example of someone creating a game which doesn’t easily fit into the traditional “niches” and genres. I guess it’s a puzzle game at heart. But like many other indie games, it’s treated more as a free-flowing, interactive piece of art rather than a “game”.

Check it out. The trial allows you to play about a third of the way through the game, but the full thing is only 80 points. If you’re the slightest bit interested in creative game design, you could do far worse than check it out.

#oneaday, Day 196: Things The World Needs Significantly Less Of

The world is full of “stuff”. Some of it is good. Examples of good stuff include trifle, Spotify, refrigerators, kung po chicken, those marker pens that smell of fruit, pianos (so long as they are in tune), friends, hot chocolate with whipped cream, people who are nice, digital cameras, the Squadron of Shame, Civilization IV, headphones with comfortable earpieces, that Original Mint Source shower gel (so long as you don’t get it on your bellend or up your arse), lamb tikka dhansak, Twitter, gin and tonic and, of course, the music from Space Channel 5.

But there are just as many—if not more—things that the world really doesn’t need any more of. In fact, some of these things I’d argue the world doesn’t really need at all. Because, in many cases, we got along just fine without them before they were invented.

Here is a selection of things the world could do with significantly less of.

1. Redundant information signs on motorways

“QUEUE CAUTION,” says the ungrammatical sign in bold, orange, backlit capital letters. Your car is not moving. Not because you stopped to read the sign. No, your car is stopped because it’s in a queue. You were aware of the fact your car was in a queue long before a sign informed you of this fact. As it happens, since the sign informing you that yes, you are in a queue appeared approximately two miles after the queue started, it feels somewhat like it’s mocking you. As such, you decide to shout at the sign.

The sign does not respond.

2. Suit jackets with fake pockets

Clothes either have pockets or they don’t. If you’re a girl and you like wearing pretty dresses, chances are you don’t have pockets very often. As such, you may well carry a handbag for the express purpose of carrying around your “stuff”. Said pretty dresses don’t tend to have pretend pockets for some unspecified purpose.

Gentlemen, on the other hand, are used to having pockets. The typical gentleman’s attire features pockets on the trousers at the very least, and jackets usually have pockets as well. So when a suit that looks like it has pockets but doesn’t comes along, that’s a sure-fire ticket to frustration city. Particularly when you try and put something in the jacket pocket instead of the trouser pocket because when you put things in your trouser pockets your trousers fall down because you forgot to bring a belt and you can’t put anything in the jacket pocket because it isn’t actually a pocket despite looking like one and ARRRGH HOLD THIS FOR A MINUTE WILL YOU?

3. People who talk about fashion as if it’s a science

Shut up. Just stop talking bollocks. People can wear whatever they want. Most people have a pretty good idea that wearing something in a fluorescent colour is probably going to make you stand out a bit, and wearing strappy shoes with big heels may well make you 1) fall over and 2) have hurty feet. When some jumped-up hussy comes on TV explaining to everyone that the particular shade of brown you see in front of you is the “perfect shade for summer” (despite it being purple last year, and yellow the year before) everyone should yell, as one, “FUCK OFF”.

Fashion is not a science. You know what is a science? Science.

4. The adjectival phrase “must-have”

If you took the term “must-have” at face value and immediately purchased everything described as such, you would be very poor indeed. “Must-have” items often tend to be expensive and/or pointless, and there is some crossover with the world of people who talk about fashion as if it’s a science.

No, that handbag is not a “must-have” item. It is something that someone rich who likes gaudy silver handbags might enjoy purchasing.

Genuinely “must-have” items for acceptable functioning in modern society include: water, underpants, trousers/skirts, shirts/blouses/t-shirts, shoes, a toilet (arguable, given the stench coming from some doorways in Southampton on a Friday night), soap, deodorant, food of some description.

5. Extremism

If you are a terrorist, you are quite possibly an extremist. You hold an extreme viewpoint, and in your case, you’re prepared to die for it.

But extremism isn’t just about terrorism. It’s also about the people who bring out the tired old “Britain is full!” line when talking about immigration. The people who believe that all Muslims are terrorists. The people who use the phrase “YOU’RE IN ENGLAND, SPEAK ENGLISH”. And on the other end of the spectrum, people who describe anyone with an opposing viewpoint to their own as a “Nazi”. People who go on a march for a cause which isn’t entirely clear to anyone except themselves. People who protest for the sake of protesting, rather than actually having something worthwhile to protest about.

All of you, just stop it. Shut up. You both sound ridiculous. And as for you, Captain Terrorist? Attention-seeking of the highest order. Grow up.

6. Companies whose purpose their own employees can’t explain

I’ve told this story a number of times before, but there was a time when I did some temping for a local “loss adjusting” company. On a side note, this was the only job I’ve had which literally bored me to tears on several occasions. And that’s not an exaggeration.

Anyway, the point is this: this company dealt with issues so boring that no-one else would ever want anything to do with them, let alone have a burning desire to enter that profession. But the sheer string of companies that charged exorbitant rates per hour that their “cases” went through was ridiculous. In one case relating to tree-related subsidence on a property adjacent to a Transport For London-owned railway, the clients made a claim to the insurance company, who contacted the loss adjusters, who sent in some engineers to look at the damage, who sent in some builders to give a quote for repairs who hired some solicitors to sue Transport for London for the costs and then hired some draftsmen to write up said costs who then hired some other solicitors to recover the costs from someone else who then… I fell asleep by this point.

Ask an employee of a company like this “what do you do?” and if they spend more than three seconds thinking or going “umm”, then that company doesn’t really need to exist.

7. Doorstep salesmen

“Hi! Would you like to…”

“No. Goodbye.”

*SLAM*

There are many, many more things the world could do with significantly less of. Evil people. Cheaters. Assholes. Murderers. Men who walk into shops with their shirts off. R&B singers. Jedward fans. Types of cigarette. Brands of bottled water. Rapists. People who flash their fullbeams at you when you’re in the right-hand lane going 90+ mph overtaking people on your left. Onions. County council employees. People who use the word “fuckin'” in spoken sentences the same way people use “lol” when writing. People who use “lol” as punctuation. Aniseed.

I could go on. But I won’t.