T w e n t y S i d e d

Here is a strip about Velvet Assassin. Or about the History Channel. Or both. Sort of.

I am not crazy about how it turned out, particularly panel #2. “Old guy talking” turned out to be harder to pull off than I thought. Most stock photo sites are designed around the idea that you’re building advertisements, and so 90% of the pictures are of young women smiling. I couldn’t find anything in the “old and dull” end of the spectrum. And no degree of photoshopping could get rid of that “ask your doctor about Viagra” vibe the picture has going.

Ah well.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This one is on my longing to see more elegant 2D games.

Below is some blather that didn’t fit in the article:

Velvet Assassin is the perfect example of the “hard to learn, easy to master”. Well, it’s not really hard to learn, but there are a lot of gameplay elements. You’re a swiss army knife, but there’s usually only one proper tool for the job. Gameplay consists of choosing that tool and using it. This is very different from (say) Mario, where you have one verb (jump) that can be used to accomplish many different things. It’s also different from a game like Thief, where the game presents you with a single obstacle but gives you a half dozen tools for the job:

A guard, standing in the open on a tile floor in a lit room:

1) Make a sound to lure him away and then sneak by.
2) Use a regular arrow to kill him.
3) Find another route.
4) Use water arrow to put out a light, and when he goes to investigate or re-light it, sneak by
5) Use a moss arrow to soften the floor, then sneak behind him and bop on head
6) If you’re an idiot, swordfight him.

Super Mario has one tool used in a half dozen ways. Thief gives you a half dozen tools and lets you weigh the trade-offs in using each of them. Velvet Assassin gives you six different things to do, and then makes you choose (or sometimes guess) the one and only tool that works on the given obstacle. Velvet Assassin is a three-dimensional game with one dimensional gameplay.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I wonder how many people will read the title of this comic and immediately assume it’s about Team Fortress 2. I would.

It’s amazing. Those shorts featuring the TF2 characters aren’t even part of the game proper. You never see them while playing. Yet their effects permeate the game. In particular the Spy movie is quoted at near “the cake is a lie” levels.

Oh. The comic. Right, right. It’s about a completely different game with spies in it. Velvet Assassin has guards with behavior that should look familiar to anyone who just got done playing a ten year old stealth game.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.