Meg's Clips

My work has been published in the Indie Game Magazine, Kraze, Hardcore Droid, Dialect Magazine, thalo, IndieReader.com, IHeartChaos, GamerHub.tv, Geek Magazine, NerdyButFlirty, DIY Gamer, TechCoquette, TapScape.com, (The)Absolute, and many other outlets.

[megsclips]

A Pyre of Roses tells the story of Michael Attzs, a young man with a tragic life. No aspect of his life, from the mystery of his birth family, to the accident that killed his first wife and child, to the stranger who bums a cigarette and then tries to frames Attzs for murder, is straightforward. Most of the story is told over the shoulder of “Auntie” Beatrice, who has cared for and protected Michael since his childhood, although like everyone in this novel, her own life has not been smooth. Her love and concern for Michael shine out in a story where everyone has something to hide.

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The blurb for Lara Vapnyar’s upcoming novel Still Here says the book is about an app that will keep digital profiles alive after the owner has died. The app will do this by searching for patterns the original poster used and applying those patterns to the account after death.  Actually, that’s about as far as I got in the blurb before I knew I had to read this novel.

And yes, this story is about digital personas, how we craft our online identities, how we make our lives seem happier and fuller online, and how much our technology knows about us. And, yes, it’s about what happens to those personas when we die. But it’s also an unsentimental look at the relationships between exes and romantic near-misses.

(via Performed Happiness and Real Friendships in “Still Here” | (The) Absolute)

[megsclips]

Total War Battles: Kingdom brought to us by SEGA packs so many choices and customization into the usual strategy game pattern of farming for resources and improving your combat units. Sure, players will build barracks, blacksmiths, stables, and so forth, as well as upgrade these units including land tile improvements for better results. But placing these is more than just the typical click-and-wait since there are so many options to consider. Productivity is affected by neighboring buildings, by terrain, by the quality of workers, and by seasons, so each minor choice actually matters in the game. Once your city is functioning, you’ll be able to raise medieval troops and send them into battle. Each unit has a specialty and a weakness. All of these units can also become stronger by spending earned XP on upgrades. Again, players can choose from a variety of upgrades and customize their units for their particular combat style. Injured units require time or gold to heal, and then they’re ready to fight another day. Total War Battles: Kingdom allows players to fight one-off combat encounters in Missions, follow a storyline, or duel against other players. There’s a range of difficulty levels, again allowing players to customize their experience and decide between a tense, challenging combat or a quicker and easier battle.

(via Total War Battles: Kingdom)

[megsclips]

I love applied games and I’m also a sucker for personality analysis, so I was excited to try the free game. In Scoutible, players have mysteriously landed on a desert island, which is probably my favorite type of game…. Monkey Island, Sims: Castaway, MyTribe, Stranded Without A Phone, even Next Island (I’ve spent a fairly significant chunk of time pretending to be stuck on a deserted island).  I had really high hopes for Scoutible, I was already imagining a Ready Player One future, where we’d all unlock insights into our personalities and career skills through playing a survival game.

The game is in beta, but even accounting for that, there’s very little gameplay so far. There’s a female avatar, while not particularly aspirational or attractive, she gets full marks for wearing a shirt and pants.

One of the skills assessed is the candidate’s emotional intelligence or interpersonal skills, but the obvious problem to me is that picking the “correct” dialogue option in an game isn’t at all the same skill as dealing with clients and coworkers’ emotional states. Noting the differences between humans and NPCs is a major part of applied emotional intelligence.

When I was interacting with Scoutible’s few NPCs, I was given the sort of black-and-white options we always try to avoid in game development. One NPC failed to do what the boss NPC asked him for — do you scold him, or do the task yourself? Then do you complain about his laziness or make excuses for him? I was disappointed by the lack of nuance in any interpersonal interactions.  These felt like generic job interview questions with a thin veneer of gameplay over it.

(via “Scoutible,” a Game That Hopes To Replace Job Interviews (Sort Of) | (The) Absolute)

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Science fiction in general requires good writing to keep it from becoming a meaningless technobabble story. With “trons” to build and “cosments” to collect, good writing could take AstroNest from spreadsheets in space to a vivid and exciting sci-fi adventure. Unfortunately, the combination of typos, spelling mistakes, and poor localization in the game’s text makes directives hard to understand and really destroys any world building intent a player may have in the process.

(via AstroNest: The Beginning)

[megsclips]

I just finished Americanah, a wonderful novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the author of Purple Hibiscus, among others. Adichie came to my attention through her non-fiction work, We Should All Be Feminists, but her fiction should not be missed.

Americanah tells the story of a Nigerian woman’s years in the US, and her eventual return to Nigeria. I was attracted to this novel because I usually enjoy expat stories and cross-cultural adventures, and I thought it would be an interesting way to learn more about Nigeria. Adichie handles the theme well, blending moments of cultural discovery that will be familiar to any expat, with moments that were uniquely Nigerian (and uniquely Ifemelu). I found Ifemelu’s mixture of reverse culture shock and comfort on her return to Nigeria is particularly moving.

(via Nigerian and American Expectations Collide in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Novel “Americanah” | (The) Absolute)

[megsclips]

In the Walking Dead: No Man’s Land from Next Games Oy, high production values and solid combat mechanics help this stand out from the crowded field of freemium zombie battles. The zombie apocalypse setting will be familiar for fans of the show and comic, players will send survivors on dangerous missions to gather materials, XP, weapons and more. Meanwhile, players use a familiar system of resource gathering and upgrades to improve base camp. Camp improvements include a weapons workshop, a training camp for survivors, farm plots and so forth, to give your survivors the best chance of defeating the zombie hordes. 

(via Walking Dead: No Man’s Land)

[theabsolutemag]

A Manhattan Scandal About Manhattan Scandals in “Swans of Fifth Avenue”

The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin, the author of Alice I Have Been, tells the story of Truman Capote and his New York socialite friends, especially highlighting his relationship with Babe Paley. This whole novel is a gossipy delight, especially since I was mostly familiar with Truman Capote through In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and this story reveals a whole new side. I love manners novels, and this has wonderfully cutting accounts of which social activities are acceptable (sleeping with friends’ properly pedigreed husbands) and which are embarrassing faux pas (touching up one’s lipstick in public).

After years of gossiping, traveling, and dining in all the right places, Capote publishes a short story, “La Côte Basque 1965,” about the scandals of thinly-veiled Manhattan socialites. Predictably, Manhattan society is outraged by Capote’s publishing of deep secrets and dirty laundry, not to mention his terribly unflattering descriptions of very recognizable characters.  Swans of Fifth Avenue shows Capote’s affection for Babe Paley, his closest friend among the “swans,” but even her secrets slip out and appear in his work. Or did they slip out accidentally? The novel also covers Capote’s decline from witty new writer to a drunk and drugged out hedonist, and by the end, it’s hard to know just how much of Capote’s public airing of friends’ secrets was thoughtless, calculated, or just self-destructive.

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[theabsolutemag]

Hey! VINA: Find New Pals, Boring Small Talk Not Required

Let’s be honest, it can be hard making adult friends, especially as we get older and our peers are becoming increasingly occupied with keeping tiny humans alive and healthy. Or when work moves us to a new city, away from our usual support networks.  Wouldn’t it be cool if we could skip all the boring smalltalk about the weather and the traffic, and see who’s likely to become a friend? The ladies of Vina have noticed this problem, and are starting a networking app to match awesome ladies up with awesome new lady friends….(continue).

[theabsolutemag]

Enjoy Charming Magical Realism in Menna van Praag’s Novels

Menna van Praag’s stories, The House at the End of Hope Street,The Dress Shop of Dreams, and her newest novel, The Witches of Cambridge, all invite readers to a Cambridge where magic lurks around every historical corner. These three novels are not a series, although it makes perfect sense that an enchanted bakery, dress shop, and rooming house would all coexist perfectly with the tourists and academics of Cambridge, so readers can start with any book without confusion….(continue).

[theabsolutemag]

No, Seriously. Don’t Skip “Monument Valley”

Monument Valley. Are you playing this? You probably should be.

This mobile game from ustwo has been out for a while, but the description of it as a casual puzzler kept me expecting yet another underwhelming freemium click-and-wait game. I missed out on months and months I could be playing Princess Ida on her beautiful puzzle path!

In each level, players are tasked with helping Princess Ida through a strange and gorgeous world towards her goal. Over time, she’ll have friends to help her and obstacles to overcome. Ida’s paths have a dreamlike, Escher quality to them, creating such pretty scenes that iam8bit has art prints based on Monument Valley levels, but they also make perfect sense as gameplay.

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[megsclips]

The minimalist graphics blend clean, simple icons with black-and-white stock photography. It’s a great look, monochrome with occasional splashes of red, stark and dark without being gory. As I gathered materials, food, and the occasional weapon, I spent a lot of time running back and forth, because you need so much stuff to build improvements, but you have only a little-bittie carrying capacity. You can upgrade it, for a price, but I’ll get to that later. Each location is measured in hours from your home, and if you’re out after dark, the frequency of zombie attacks increases. Plus, you’ll need to rush home to sleep and eat (you can only eat in the apartment. Apparently I’ll eat found cans of meat, but only at my kitchen table).

Roll-to-attack combat systems usually remind me of good times playing tabletop, but inBuriedTown, I wasn’t able to make any attacks. Zombie encounters were just watching them scroll past, telling me how much damage I’d given or received, and hoping I wouldn’t die. You’ll want a ranged weapon, so that you can read text about zombies being destroyed before you read text about zombies reaching you. I couldn’t find out how many hitpoints the attacking zombies had, but I’ve played enough RPGs to know that if dealing 5 damage is good, 10 damage is better.

(via BuriedTown Review | Hardcore Droid)

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Til Cows Tear Us Apart is about two girlfriends, Enora and Quanee, and their struggles to smuggle a payload of cows across the galaxy to Truxon, where cows are super valuable because the citizens really, really like cows. Ahem. (Hmm, that part’s probably not kid-friend either.) The spacefaring duo need sneak to past alien customs, battle bounty hunters or try fast talking out of trouble. There are multiple paths with different endings, depending on player choices, or whether you use the FTL drive to warp out of or into trouble. Along the way, the cow counter on the top of the screen keeps track of how many cows have been sold, given as bribes, teleported away, or otherwise disappeared.  In between conflicts, Quanee and Enora will flirt, discuss their heist, and listen to the radio, in a Cowgirl Bebop kind of way.

(via It's Space Cowgirls and Blasters in Til Cows Tear Us Apart - Gameindustry.com)

[megsclips]

I love text-based adventures, probably because I can never decide if I like reading books or playing games more. Doublespeak Games’ A Dark Room opens in, well, a dark room, and most of the story is conveyed in text descriptions, with a resource table. But that format adds to the mystery, rather than interfering with it.A lot of this game relies on countdown meters, which is one of my least favorite mechanics. Normally, I would roll my eyes and give forth a long rant about designing click-and-wait games, but by the time I realized that clicking to stoke the fire wasn’t just a lead into the starting the game, but actually a core mechanic of the game, the worldbuilding had me hooked. I found scattered teeth in the traps we set, which was enough of a hook for creepiness and for a crafting mechanic that I kept playing.

(via In 'A Dark Room' - Gameindustry.com)

[theabsolutemag]

The Best Stuff That Didn’t Suck: 2015

Don’t think you can consume yet another “best of” list? Well ours is a little different. Our list of interesting recommendations aren’t all from this year. Some of them are old, some of them are new, but all of them are awesome things we discovered this year that we think you’ll like too. (Hey, that weirdly rhymes.) Enjoy!

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[theabsolutemag]

Comforting Mini Puzzler “Grow Recovery” Is A Game That Actually Boosts Your Mood

I loved the browser minigames GrowCube and GrowTower, so I was really excited to put eyezmaze’s newGrow Recovery on my phone. The basic premise of the Grow games is deciding how to add new items to the scene. Each item interacts with the other items in interesting ways, and to complete the game, you’ll need to find the optimal order so that each item is used in the best way possible. Of course, plenty of “wrong” combinations are great fun to watch, too.

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[theabsolutemag]

“No Pineapple Left Behind” Hilariously Pokes Fun at the Not-so-Funny Flaws of the American Education System

No Pineapple Left Behind is a satirical sim about education and standardized testing, developed by Subaltern Games, creators of the serious strategy game Neocolonialism.

In this single-player PC game, players run a middle school and turn their pesky students into test-taking pineapples. Pineapples are preferable to students because pineapples just take standardized tests and sit quietly in class, while children ask questions, demand teachers’ time and energy, and other pesky things. The school’s goal is to pass exams, and pineapples are great at filling in bubbles and passing exams…(continue).