Flipnote Studio + Flipnote Hatena = Awesome

Here I am, thinking “I haven’t played any new games lately, what can I write about?” Well, I have been spending a great deal of time with the DS, but not with a game. Let me tell you about this underrated killer app that is Flipnote Studio. This application is freely available to all DSi owners, I know, this article is intended for those who do not own a DSi or have not bothered trying the application.

The first thing I liked about FS is the price. It’s abso-freakin-lutely free! Heck, if I’m not mistaken, it was free back when the web browser was at 500 points! So I download it and give it a shot. What I found brought me tears of joy. I could fulfill my childhood dream of being a cartoonist/animator! Not skipping a beat I threw together this little piece:

The interface is ridiculously simple and the basic animation tools are pretty intuitive. Again, I drew the animation above right after downloading. The more advanced tools take some practice, just as with making a complex animation by hand; so the learning curve seems well proportioned. The built-in instructions (just like every other DSi Ware title has) along with the packed-in animations will help you through this process. Besides drawing with the stylus you also use images from the Nintendo DSi Camera application (be warned – the pictures will be turned to monochrome) and use the microphone (or previously recorded/edited bits from the Nintendo DSi Sound application) to add sound.

Graphics-wise the application has a simplistic, elegant layout composed of straight lines, smoothed edges, solid colors and pixelated frogs. This style prevails when using the online client and can be seen on the PC counterpart of the website. The elegance of this design helps you acclimate to what a flipnote is.

The flipnotes, or animations, produced always have a rather “artisan-ish” feel to them; they never show more that three colors on screen at the same time (from a choice of four), and sounds and music experience some loss as they are always recorded through an open microphone in a room that probably isn’t a recording studio. Now, to me this is a good thing; with all artists using a standardized tool, talent plays a key role in what constitutes a good flipnote. A few cheats can be seen here and there, but they are easy to spot.

Another rather awesome feature is that the software acts as a client for the Hatena web page. Think of it as YouTube but everything’s hand-drawn. That’s where I found the little gem at the header of this post. They have this form of currency – stars – that is used as a mean as showing one’s appreciation for a particular piece of art. You can throw yellow stars around with reckless abandon, but a star of any other color will actually cost you, so when a piece of art has a red, blue or green star, you know it’s that good. The only downside of this online community is that it’s littered with preteens… which can be a bit annoying for us older folks (mostly because their tendency to meddle around one’s lawn). Every once in a while a creative kid comes up with a new fad like a roulette animation that you pause to determine how many stars to give or a single-frame animation that says CHAT ROOM where kids rush to post comments (therefore making the animation ridiculously popular while not being an actual work of art). There are supposed to be “channels” to keep these grouped but still kids will abuse this by submitting these to EVERY channel. In the end, the really good stuff always makes it through to the headlines and together with being able to keep tabs on your favorite artists and built in suggestions, browsing around their site is still a generally pleasurable experience.

At the moment I’m working on this really awesome short film (almost 200 frames so far!) for a new webcomic I’m working on. Click HERE For more info about my current projects. If you wish to follow my Hatena work, my search code is: You can add me as a favorite author if on the DSi or subscribe to my RSS feed if watching on your PC. If you have an account and want to post your search codes go ahead and leave a comment!

Scribblenauts and Metagaming

Metagaming is a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself.

In simple terms, using out-of-game information, or resources, to affect one's in-game decisions.

-Wikipedia quote

There are two separate instances in which I’ve seen this term used. The first being when players use knowledge obtained outside a game’s narrative to gain an advantage in-game. For example, imagine an FPS that takes place in your hometown, you would have an advantage over other players, especially right after the game’s launch, because you already know the “maps”. In a less realistic scenario, Imagine a fantasy game based on a book in which those who have read the book may have an advantage. In role-playing games it is considered metagaming if a player says or does something their character should not know about, this is usually considered cheating.

The other instance would be a videogame that is extremely flexible in what the player can do to achieve a certain goal. The truth being this instance is the same as the former as the players’ knowledge gives them an edge when offered so many possibilities. It seems to me, though, that the word was assigned to this phenomenon as a need to name this trend which is a necessary step in the evolution of video games, another fad just like the term “sandbox”.

In Pac Man, you control the hero and are given a goal to devour all the pills in a maze without being caught. However you are limited to moving up, down, left or right at a steady pace. Stopping isn’t even an option, unless you keep walking against a wall. The only tools you have are power pills, which enable you to defeat the guardians of said pills. This is the base from which most games evolved from. You are given a character, a set of moves, enemies, a level and a goal to reach.

This impending evolution forced game designers to expand all of these options. More heroes to choose from including power-ups, more moves, more goals, more enemies with more ways to defeat you or to be defeated, greater goals and even optional achievements.

Now take a look at this here game called Scribblenauts. A game made popular by its claim of having limitless possibilities. You have the hero, Maxwell. The moves? Well you can walk and jump, initially then there are the power-ups… thousands of items and creatures you can summon as long as you can spell their name correctly. The goal? Find the Starite; some levels have sub-goals you need to accomplish before the Starite appears.

Put this way it sounds horribly simple, right? It is just another side-scrolling platformer, but with a whole lot more power-ups! Just like the (back then) groundbreaking Grand Theft Auto… why, just another top-down adventure game with many goals (missions), many power-ups (weapons, vehicles) and huge levels!

If you have not played this game I certainly recommend you try it. Scribblenauts developed a ridiculously large database of items and characters with such detailed descriptions that the game basically knows what everything is just like the player does, so when the player tries something, the output will be the very close to what the player expects. While solving the puzzles is lots of fun, the best feature is definitely the “sandbox” title screen. While on the title screen, you are allowed to summon stuff, but there is no real goal or time limit. You just put things together and see how they interact. This tickles your brain in a certain way that causes great satisfaction. Try digging up those really obscure words you think will not be there, and make them interact with something completely unexpected. The result will be just what you expected.

Summon a vampire and a priest. The priest will freak out and run away, unless the vampire catches him first and turns him into a ghoul… unless you summon a cross and hand it to the priest, who will proceed to righteously smite the vampire until it is turned into a pile of ashes.

The puzzles range from the obvious to the ridiculously impossible. I find myself putting the game away from time to time just to take a break either because the games the puzzles have gotten too easy and repetitive or because I just can’t figure out how to beat one (I could always resort to my list of fail-proof items, but the idea is to be creative). The sounds and music are just OK, and the controls… well the control sucks. Why didn’t they make the character controlled with the D-Pad so the touch screen could be used exclusively for scribbling and placing items? Having the two things controlled the same way will make your guy suddenly dash into a mine you just set and were trying to move. This happens a lot.

It is fascinating how the game knows what everything is. Imagine now if your favorite game “knew” all this about everything on it.

My point being that terms such as “sandbox” and “metagaming” should not be turned into “genres”, but they should be a model for all videogames to come. While I don’t expect every new videogame hero to be carrying a magical notebook that allows it to summon stuff, I certainly hope game developers learn from the way Scribblenauts manages each and every item, character and place. The task would be simpler to integrate into another game, as there is a set list of items, characters and places. Say there’s a FPS that has guard dogs, well if the player picks up a steak from the mess hall, he could use it to distract the dogs, but the same would happen with every other item that can be carried and happens to be of interest to a dog. What if I grab the dog and release it in the mess hall? What if I take some dog poo and…

Let the player experiment. Have them put the gun down and start looking for creative ways to get through. Let every character have a personality and a set of priorities, even that dumb grunt. What if I leave a dirty magazine here, will the guard stop to look at it? What if I cut down a tree and leave it there, oh, he would definitely freak out… but carrying that tree around is gonna be a pain… I need a plan! Let every item have physical properties. What if I set the enemy base on fire? What if I knock down this wall? What if I drive this tank into a swimming pool? Let every game have a realistic physics engine. What if I load this fridge into the catapult? What if I load myself into the catapult? What if I load the fridge then get inside?

Every game would be a “metagame”, every game would be a “sandbox” but they don’t all have to be Grand Theft Auto Meets Scribblenauts. You still get a character, a set of moves, a goal and a level, only that furniture would not be bolted to the ground, and a gun would not be glued to your hands.

DSiWare: Cheap Gaming FTW

Recently, because of a very busy schedule (being a successful blogger and all) the DSi has been my prime source of gaming and general entertainment (well, then there’s my iPod too). One day I was playing Sudoku via DSiCade (a DSi-web-browser game site) and though it sure is a good time killer and doing it on paper sucks, I thought maybe I should buy a copy for the DSi that didn’t depend on a Wi-Fi connection (not very portable now, is it?).

Luckily for me I was given $20 as a gift a few days later and I decided I was going to splurge and spend it all on videogames. Now, if you spent $70 on your latest game, please don’t jump out the window. I’m talking about DSiWare, downloadable games for the Nintendo DSi.

I browsed through their “store” a few times and made a “shopping list” of items I could get for a total of 2000 points ($20). On the Nintendo DSi shop they organize their games by price, that being: Free, 200, 500 and 800+. On the free section so far they only have the DSi Browser and Flipnote studio and there aren’t any games worth more than 800 in the 800+ section, so the math is very simple. I decided I’d get 2 500s and 5 200s. The 800 point games look like they’re trying too hard not to be “softcore”, and well, there is no such thing as an eight dollar hardcore game.

More specifically my choices were:

• Puzzle League express: A puzzle game formerly released for the DS. I recalled playing the demo before and I figured it was quite a bargain to get it for $5.
• Bookworm: Classic word-finding game I had played on PC. Again, a bargain for five bucks.
• EA’s Sudoku: There are about 1000 Sudoku games in the DSi store, but this is the only one that included all levels of difficulty for 200 points. El cheapo!
• Touch Solitaire: This one was the opposite as Sudoku, other games for the same price had more features, but this one is a first-party title.
• Mario Calculator: More of an app than a game, for those times I find myself reaching for a calculator. Also, it’s got classic 8-bit Mario! Yeah!
• Mario Clock: See Mario Calculator. A bit more useful as it has an alarm and promised to include some level of 8-bit Mario playability.
• Spotto!: I had 200 points left and went for this one. Game play looked OK and it’s also a first-party game.

And now the verdict!

• Puzzle League Express: Very generic puzzler, pretty good background graphics and music, although the bricks and their animations are extremely lacking. The game play is extremely simple to the point it only becomes challenging when it starts moving ridiculously fast. You can try to arrange some combos and stuff, but the result isn’t satisfying enough to risk filling your screen with bricks.
• Bookworm: Plays just like the PC game, the touch controls make it even better… but somehow this is the one I play the least, it kinda gets boring. I also find it irritating how it doesn’t allow different player profiles. I share my DSi with my whole family, and having someone quit your game sucks hard.
• EA’s Sudoku: Works like it promised. A bit too easy, though, especially if you lean on the error checker. Turn the music off, it’s a 4-second loop I kid you not. When the puzzles start getting easy you can input puzzles from a newspaper or Sudoku book. I finally broke out this book I had that had ridiculously tough puzzles, one of them took me 64 hours WITH the error checker on! This implies the game auto-saves and you can pick it up later.
• Touch Solitaire: Just what I needed! A game you can pick up and let go just like that. The interface is ridiculously clean, music is null except for a few jazzy fanfare-y bits and it keeps a time, volume and battery power display on top. More games should do this.
• Mario Calculator: Easy to sue, neat old-school graphics, an occasional Easter egg and a unit converter that even converts age (as in, dog years to hamster years).
• Mario Clock: Whenever I plug the DSi unit in to charge, I leave the clock on. It features a “screen saver” not unlike the Mario-themed visualization. Mario will walk forever and there won’t be any obstacles on his way. You can press B to jump or A to speed up in order to catch coins and power up mushrooms. After you grab enough coins it unlocks a different “level”. The level changes every 15 minutes or so. On the hour Mario will reach the castle, the fanfare will play and fireworks will announce the hour (8 explosions at 8 o clock). Pretty neat for a clock.
• Spotto!: Ah, Spotto, you crazy bomb chucking duck! It’s like one of those old school 2D artillery simulators in which you aim and shoot, but feels more like shooting hoops as the bombs are thrown instead of shot, bounce and you’re expected to use ghost’s mouths for baskets. The cuteness is way off and as you play you unlock more difficulty levels. Kids love it. Not bad for 2 bucks.

I find it disappointing that I find myself playing the 200 point games more than the 500s, but maybe it was because of my specific choices? I definitely plan on buying more, I’ll keep you posted.