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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

Spelunky Explorers’ Club

Each day, Spelunky generates one set of levels that’s the same for every player. Each day, we play them. Some of us make videos of our attempts. You can browse mine above (click the listy icon in the top left), or see everyone’s on the blog we set up at https://spelunkyexplorers.wordpress.com/.

On the rest of this post are the earliest dailies we posted.More info!

Special Notice

I’ve finally done what I should have in the first place, and set up the Explorers’ Club as its own blog. I’ve also renamed it to the Explorers Club because that apostrophe was annoying me. Therefore, this’ll be the last time I update this post, and all future videos and scores will go up on our new home at: https://spelunkyexplorers.wordpress.com/.

It’ll be the same bunch of people, but they can now post their videos themselves, so the place won’t shut down when I’m away. It also takes up much less of my time each day this way, which means I can keep doing it for longer. Explore force!

7th of September 2013

Tom Francis – The Black Market timebomb

In this video I wonder how anyone survived the bit I died on. Here’s how Anthony did.

When he approaches the Ankh cave, you can see there’s a chunk missing from the shop nearest it – that’s presumably where a red frog blew up and triggered the terrorist alert. Must have been eaten by a pitcher plant or prodded by a tiki trap. I didn’t hear a blast, but it was probably drowned out by the gunfire – I think their reaction would have been instant.

Anthony Burch – Sticky

After this run, I got to hell by repeating the mantra, “always use bombs”. This run is the reason why I came up with that mantra.

Nika Harper – Bad Things Are Bad

Graham Smith – Black Market Frogsplosion (w/ commentary)

In case there were any doubts, everything can go wrong so quickly if you just get flustered. Damsels will be the death of me.

Jason Killingsworth – Arrow To The Heart

This death really hurt, and right on the City of Gold’s doorstep. Completely out of nowhere, no chance to prepare for it or react to it. Insta-kill, game over.

Rich Stanton

God damn it Derek Yu. God damn it!

Richard Stanton hitting the high notes on the 13th attempt at Spelunky’s Daily Challenge! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and he’ll hurl the controller at the wall. Enjoy!

Chris Thursten – Why Is Everything Sticky

I’m doing these again and I’ve got a webcam and a microphone and everything. There’s some competent god damn Spelunky going down in here, let me tell you.

Sorry about the frame rate issues. If anyone has some hot Open Broadcaster tips to share, leave a comment.

Philippa Warr

Today I tried cheating. Chris’s video which I used for the cheating is here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6CHhK…) but I don’t advise you watch it because it didn’t help :(

Explorer Scores
  1. Jason Killingsworth – Temple 4-2 – $218,600
  2. Anthony Burch – Temple 4-1 – $126,375
  3. Tom Francis – Black Market 2-4 – $124,175
  4. Aaron Linde – Black Market 2-4 – $92,275
  5. Graham Smith – Black Market 2-4 – $74,500
  6. Chris Thursten – Jungle 2-2 – $26,550
  7. Rich Stanton – Jungle 2-1 – $42,150
  8. Richard Boeser – Mines 1-3 – $30,500
  9. Nika Harper – Mines 1-3 – $5,400
  10. Chris Donlan – Mines 1-2 – $21,200

Tom’s note: Yep, something happened in the Black Market that day. Something bad. I imagine less than 5% of anyone who went there survived, so extra kudos to Anthony and Jason here. Jason, of course, had the advantage of already knowing the shopkeepers would be mad because he had taken the precaution of stealing from and murdering them throughout the game.

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