Smartbomb

I think this one could be revealing a bit too much about my psyche. During a recent episode of River Cottage Autumn, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall gave a fleeting reference to lovage – a plant I have been gleefully looking for excuses to talk about since I first heard of it a year or two ago. To [...]

THE GLOBAL ECONOMY IS COLLAPSING! IT’S THE END OF CIVILIZATION! Alert readers will already be aware that I have a degree in economics. The main thing I learned from this is that our banking system is a fragile house of cards built on blind hope and empty promises. This blog isn’t the place to discuss [...]

A shameless Dungeon Keeper knock-off. Well, almost. The idea behind Metaquest is that the player takes on the role of an MMORPG developer, and must build up a game that attracts players. Money is spent on hardware, software and staff, which all determine how large your game can be and what you can put in [...]

I have become slightly obsessed with cocktail cabinets. I think it’s because I’m planning on getting a place of my own, soon – my mind is reaching out for things to decorate my future house with. Really, a cocktail cab would probably be a bit too impractical for my living room, but that hasn’t stopped [...]

Ghettris is a deeply serious game about racial segregation. Players are given a sequence of randomly-shaped blocks of a particular colour; green, say. Once they have completed a solid, horizontal line, the line fuses together to form a ‘ghetto’. Then the player starts getting blocks of a different colour; say, indigo. Players must complete an [...]

In Whalestrike, you play as a young boy who is friends with a cyborg whale from space. Your objective is to destroy modern society by assaulting a string of contemporary strongholds, with the help of your heavily-armed pal. Key to the game is that you must dodge your own attacks – the enemies are relatively [...]

The Weekly Game Idea feature is an attempt to get my brain ticking over by coming up with little nuggets of invention. They’re deliberately quite short and shallow, because I usually just want to get across a single idea; I have a separate category for actual, grown-up game design stuff. I will endeavour to come [...]