The Beginner's Guide

[trepid_jon]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/303210/

This game is awesome and has incepted me with inspiration.

Don't spoil it before the rest of this thread and whatnot, just play it and cum your pants. Wait, what?

*SPOILERZZZ*

It only took me 90 minutes, assuming there's no bonus half / rest of the game like Portal.

Anyone who has made maps and mods or even just played them or created or enjoyed anything creative should appreciate this game which is more of a cheerleading-for-gamedev kinda game.

I've sat around for 15+ years making random maps, mods, prototypes, and all sorts of unreleased shit, but the cool part is this Coda character managed to string em together through abstract concepts visualized and played through "games" not just maps. When it starts out with a "Hello, DustWorld!" map considered a game, I narcissistically (word?) threwback (words?) to my first opengl program that used cs content for a 2d AK in a dust world.

Basically, this whole game reminded me of learning to map and mod, and then it's inspired me to do more and release whatever whenever without worrying about whatever whenever it comes up.

And now I've lost my train of thought, the whatever whenever stuff confused me, asshole.

Anyways, play The Beginner's Guide. It good...

* oh and I streamed my playthtough on twitch here http://twitch.tv/trepidjon/v/19067831

[AfterShock]

Thanks for the stream, I watched the whole thing

I think you got different things from this game than I did, which is kind of cool really. It largely just depressed me a lot. I guess if the person the game is about is actually himself and hes narrating his own work and putting deep meaningful attachments to it, then it's kind of pretentious, but maybe that's deliberate.

Largely it just reminded me of how lonely and depressing online / virtual spaces can be, which in a way is good that other people feel the same way I suppose.

I still have a bunch of unreleased / unfinished games too. i guess most game devs do!

[trepid_jon]

I had the same reaction as well. I was thinking maybe Coda committed suicide, it got really deep and depressing for sure. In the end, I think it's Davey's early works before finally making Stanley's Parable.

Reminds me of FF development too, not just mapping and modding and gamedev in general, working on so many things and wondering what's the point or worried about releasing things too early or unpolished. In the end, all that really matters is any kind of activity and not worrying so much about things beyond your control.

[squeek.]

I looked into it briefly after watching a different playthrough and it seems that Coda doesn't exist and the games were just part of the narrative. More info.

[trepid_jon]

Well ain't that bout a bitch haha but that makes sense.

There's a lot more too the game too, like no clipping and finding the books and whatnot.