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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

What I Like About Guild Wars 2

As I mentioned on the last PC Gamer podcast, I’m really getting into Guild Wars 2. It’s the first MMO to do anything for me since World of Warcraft, and the best since City of Heroes. And it’s mostly because of one attitude behind it:

“Yikes, that sounds like a lot of design work. Oh well, let’s do it.”

The craziest example is the weapons: every class has a completely different set of skills for every weapon they can use. So even if you stick with one class, you can change sub-class by finding a new weapon, thwacking a few things to learn all the skills for it, decide what other weapon to combine it with, and then pick your favourite two weapon sets and switch between them in combat.

With 8 classes and 18 weapon types, just the process of finding out what the combinations are has been more exciting than most RPG quests. And now that I have a handle on the basics of a few classes, it also gives me vastly more scope for personal choice.

I’ve ended up using a Ranger with a Longbow, Sword and Torch. She has an amazing hail-of-arrows skill with the bow that chews up whole crowds, and a rapid fire volley for softening up the strongest target.

Then she switches. She throws the torch at the nearest enemy, setting fire to them, then starts a bonfire around herself, burning everything that gets close. When something does, she waits for it to attack and then does Flanking Strike with the sword, which makes her zip around her opponent, dodging the attack and stabbing them in the back, making them bleed.

When they turn and fight, she uses another sword skill to backflip away, and can then decide: if they’re low on health, she’ll use the same skill again to jump back to them, to finish them off. Otherwise, she can switch back to the bow or throw another torch.

It also looks nice.

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