Comments on: DropN, or: Why7?

By: Games of the Year 2012

Games of the Year 2012 — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 20:57:43 +0000

[...] far fewer videogames this year than in the past, as I’ve been doing other things with my free time. ANYWAY here is my obligatory list of Games That I Really Liked That Came Out in the Last 365 [...]

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:27:00 +0000

I think the key thing is: the quests have to be compelling, and they have to take place in a compelling context. So… make your life more like Skyrim, I guess!

By: Giles Bowkett

Giles Bowkett — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:27:19 +0000

Glad you liked it! I’ve got the video in my cue. (Would have watched it already but no HTML5.) My hope with my blog post is to figure out my own real-life quest log that even comes close to being as addictive as these games.

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:14:50 +0000

Hey, you wrote Github vs. Skyrim! I thought about that one a lot, since I work at a company that more or less does things the "Github way". I appreciated that you took time to point out the tension that exists between the "Github way" of doing things and the various compulsion loops that are easy for us to work at. Also, I imagine Drop7's similarities to poker are intentional. If you haven't watched this talk about Go and Poker by the creator of Drop7, you should drop everything (pun not intended) and do so.

By: Giles Bowkett

Giles Bowkett — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 09:57:10 +0000

I started on a CoffeeScript port, but never finished it, so I’m excited to see this code. I used to play it obsessively, stopped for a while when I noticed similarities with poker, but over Thanksgiving achieved my highest-ever score in normal mode (well over 500K). I have some YouTube videos on strategy for it as well.

By: Chris Bateman

Chris Bateman — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 08:23:00 +0000

I stopped playing the game quite rapidly because I found it too addictive and distracting, so I may not have reached the point of strategic play you mention. Most likely by the time I would have been getting to the point that state-space searching could mitigate the luck, I wouldn’t want to play anyway – this was always what I disliked about Chess. I prefer a game where strong intuition is more valuable than accurate turn projections – mostly, I don’t want to be playing games if I feel I could create a computer program that could play better than me. :)

*waves*

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 18:54:22 +0000

Thanks for the link. I’d never thought about block puzzle games (broadly) in terms of volatility, but you’re right, it’s the dominant mode of every major stacking game except Tetris.

I disagree on a couple points in it: 1) “hardcore” mode provides very very short games. I usually get 10 games done during a 15 train ride. 2) I think there really is strategy and room to grow, and that luck plays less of a role than you think. It was actually Eric Zimmerman who taught me that. Every time I lose I think about the last 10 or so turns and what I could have done better, and believe me, there are plenty of moments when I could have done better. It’s about understanding probabilities: being able to look at each of the 7 moves you can possibly make on any given turn and figuring out what the best one probably is. Luck plays a huge role, but your job as player is to mitigate the bad outcomes

By: Chris Bateman

Chris Bateman — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 16:44:49 +0000

Did you see my remarks about the volatility of Drop7 that I posted about a year ago:
http://blog.ihobo.com/2011/10/drop7-and-volatility-in-puzzle-games.html

*waves from afar*

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 13:12:40 +0000

Thanks Chris!!

By: Chris Bateman

Chris Bateman — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 12:56:54 +0000

Loving what you’re doing here. :)