All posts

Games

Game development

Stories

Happiness

Personal

Music

TV

Film

TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Hello! I'm Tom. I'm a game designer, writer, and programmer on Gunpoint, Heat Signature, and Tactical Breach Wizards. Here's some more info on all the games I've worked on, here are the videos I make on YouTube, and here are two short stories I wrote for the Machine of Death collections.

Theme

By me. Uses Adaptive Images by Matt Wilcox.

Tom’s Timer 5

The Bone Queen And The Frost Bishop: Playtesting Scavenger Chess In Plasticine

Gridcannon: A Single Player Game With Regular Playing Cards

Dad And The Egg Controller

A Leftfield Solution To An XCOM Disaster

Rewarding Creative Play Styles In Hitman

Postcards From Far Cry Primal

Solving XCOM’s Snowball Problem

Kill Zone And Bladestorm

An Idea For More Flexible Indie Game Awards

What Works And Why: Multiple Routes In Deus Ex

Naming Drugs Honestly In Big Pharma

Writing vs Programming

Let Me Show You How To Make A Game

What Works And Why: Nonlinear Storytelling In Her Story

What Works And Why: Invisible Inc

Our Super Game Jam Episode Is Out

What Works And Why: Sauron’s Army

Showing Heat Signature At Fantastic Arcade And EGX

What I’m Working On And What I’ve Done

The Formula For An Episode Of Murder, She Wrote

Improving Heat Signature’s Randomly Generated Ships, Inside And Out

Raising An Army Of Flying Dogs In The Magic Circle

Floating Point Is Out! And Free! On Steam! Watch A Trailer!

Drawing With Gravity In Floating Point

What’s Your Fault?

The Randomised Tactical Elegance Of Hoplite

Here I Am Being Interviewed By Steve Gaynor For Tone Control

A Story Of Heroism In Alien Swarm

One Desperate Battle In FTL

To Hell And Back In Spelunky

Gunpoint Development Breakdown

My Short Story For The Second Machine Of Death Collection

Not Being An Asshole In An Argument

Playing Skyrim With Nothing But Illusion

How Mainstream Games Butchered Themselves, And Why It’s My Fault

A Short Script For An Animated 60s Heist Movie

Arguing On The Internet

Shopstorm, A Spelunky Story

Why Are Stealth Games Cool?

The Suspicious Developments manifesto

GDC Talk: How To Explain Your Game To An Asshole

Listening To Your Sound Effects For Gunpoint

Understanding Your Brain

What Makes Games Good

A Story Of Plane Seats And Class

Deckard: Blade Runner, Moron

Avoiding Suspicion At The US Embassy

An Idea For A Better Open World Game

A Different Way To Level Up

A Different Idea For Ending BioShock

My Script For A Team Fortress 2 Short About The Spy

Team Fortress 2 Unlockable Weapon Ideas

Don’t Make Me Play Football Manager

EVE’s Assassins And The Kill That Shocked A Galaxy

My Galactic Civilizations 2 War Diary

I Played Through Episode Two Holding A Goddamn Gnome

My Short Story For The Machine Of Death Collection

Blood Money And Sex

A Woman’s Life In Search Queries

First Night, Second Life

SWAT 4: The Movie Script

World Of Goo Is Coming To Steam, Gentlepersons

Upupdatedate! Caleb points out that 2D Boy have now confirmed that pre-ordererers will be able to use their magic code to register the game on Steam and receive it there too. Fine job, Valve! I guess I forgot I got a magic code.

It’s also coming to Greenhouse and Direct2Drive – we care less about that here at James, but it’s great to hear they’re getting so much distribution-love.

Update: It’s coming to Steam, with eight achievements, and it only took ten months of me badgering them to sign it! Person-who-signs-things, Jason Holtman, notes in the announcement that “More people have told us to get World of Goo on Steam than any other title coming this year.” Possibly that IP-spoofing spam campaign was a step too far.

I’m buying it again. Direct from the developers is a good way to buy things, because they get all the money, but Steam is a good way to own things – on any PC, automatically updated, and nothing to lose.

Original post:

Supportive Drool

World of Goo (out Monday, £10/$20, 3-4 hours long, DRM free) is made by people for whom a level must have a point, and that’s strange to modern eyes and fingers. We’ve come to expect that games have a format, and a steady stream of content that fits it. This set of weapons, these possible enemies, plot delivered to you through this earpiece, progress implied by an increase in that stat, and all future experiences will be variations on those seen thus far.

Best Level Ever

World of Goo doesn’t have a fixed format; it is squishy. Whatever world it wants to take you to, the fundamentals of the game bend to realise it. Whatever engineering concept it wants to play with, old mechanics are plucked out and new ones glopped on to explore it. And whatever conceit of modern life the game chooses to mock, the entire visual grammar of the world inverts to caricature it with dreamlike brilliance.


It makes absolutely no sense that the art, writing, design, levels and music could all be done by the same guy.