Bert Vandecasteele

Month: September 2015

  • Mia on TV

    Mia on TV

    It’s been a bit quiet on the Mia front – which is normal, seeing how a) we’ve been hard at work at our next project and b) it’s been two years since the short was released.

    (Jesus? Has it really been that long?)

    (You’re growing old, man.)

    Mia, however, is not dead and buried. A while ago, we were surprised to see the short pop up on Belgian on-demand television. And now, I’m proud to announce that Mia will be screening on actually, non-demand TV next Sunday!

    So check your TV guides, get a tiny bag of potato chips and enjoy those nine minutes.

    In the meantime, here’s the trailer:

  • Hack ‘n’ slash

    Hack ‘n’ slash

    Here’s a familiar feeling:

    You want to like something, but you’re unable to. The stars should be aligned, but somehow, they’re not – instead, you get a nagging feeling of frustration. A feeling that says: Have fun, damnit!

    So why aren’t you?

    Sometimes, you know the answer. I, for instance, know precisely why I don’t like Game of Thrones (but that’s a post for a different day). Often, however, the reason for disliking something is more subtle, and while you can point in the general direction of a possible cause, you can’t really nail it down. I’ve never liked Discworld, and I’ve never understood why. It’s funny. It’s creative. It’s good. All the stars should be aligned – why aren’t they?

    Enter: Double Fine’s “Hack ‘n’ slash“.

    Hack ‘n’ slash is, in essence, a Zelda clone with a twist: Instead of a sword, you wield a USB stick that enables you to plug into objects and change their code. This way, you can move boulders, burn bushes, and manipulate enemies in ways that bend the game on your knee and makes it cry for mommy.

    Manipulate their health? Their damage? Their faction? Go hog wild.

    It can all be done at the flick of your stick. It’s one of the best videogame ideas I’ve heard in a while, and it’s done with great consistency. Hack ‘n’ slash features sets of increasingly complex puzzles that at first feel impossible, but always have a way out.

    So here we have a creative game that does something truly different. I can feel the stars aligning.

    They’re so close.

    But I’m not having fun.

    Ugh.

    So which one is it, Bert, I can hear you ask? Is it the “I know what’s wrong” kind or the “I have no clue” kind?

    Well, dear reader, it’s a bit of both, I think. Hack ‘n’ Slash has real obvious problems that bring the coding party to a sudden stop. The puzzles can be agonizingly hard. The movement feels a bit sluggish. The story feels like it knows it’s terrible, yet it insists on interrupting you constantly.

    But are those dealbreakers? I turn that question around in my head. Maybe Hack ‘n’ slash isn’t the problem. Maybe I am. Am I being too harsh? That must be it, right? Just me being a dick?

    So I boot Hack ‘n’ Slash, play a bit. I find myself wanting to check a walkthrough. I’m looking away from the screen as wait for the character to finally run all the way over to the next map. And I’m rolling my eyes at the (skippable!) story in the most disdained way possible.

    Nope. I’m not having any fun.

    Sorry, Hack ‘n’ Slash. I love that you exist. But I guess your stars are all a tiny bit misaligned.

  • (Smells Like) Teen Fiction

    I’m working on something. It features these two snippets:

    “Penny wanted to reply she would take Adele’s word for it, but before she could, a microphone screeched, and a crackling voice that sounded like it came from a can of peas echoed all around the pool.
    “Good afternoon! And welcome to the start of the new polo season.”
    The crowd burst into cheers. Penny smiled as she heard Marco’s familiar voice. Marco was a former Arndt student. He was twenty-one, studied radio at the free university and commented small-time sports events his free time. He felt as much a part of the team as any of the girls, and half the team had at some point had a secret (or not so secret) crush on him. Penny was ashamed to say she had been one of them. Marco had been charming and respectful as he let her down. Penny had never felt her heart break so gracefully. “

    And

    The girl knelt down in front of the wheel chair. Penny watched her wet hair drip all over the table. Drip, drip, drip. “I’m Freddie”, said the girl.
    Freddie. Penny would remember Freddie. She would find out where Freddie lived. She would come over to Freddie’s house. Pour acid on Freddie’s face while she was asleep. She would watch as Freddie screamed, her freckled skin smoldering to leather, her flaming red hair curling up and withering. Freddie would be beautiful no more. No more and never again.
    “Pleased to meet you”, Penny said.

    So yeah. Basic teenage fiction.

  • I made a thing.

    Lately, I’ve been wanting to learn something.

    Anything. Well, not anything. Nothing to do with writing.

    I tried learning how to draw or how to play the guitar, but those two creative activities are too similar to writing. I also considered learning Russian or Chinese, but living abroad and speaking a non-native language on a daily basis really sucks the fun out of language acquisition.

    Then, I stumbled on game development.

    Now, it should be no secret that I love me some videogames. So why not learn how to make them?

    So yeah. I’m doing some tutorial stuff with Unity. For instance this dumb little game I made myself. At the moment, I’m blindly following the tutorials on the Unity website, trying to wrap my head around the logic of writing C#.

    So yeah, to summarize: Writer wanted to do something different and ended up writing code.

    You can play the game by clicking the above link or by downloading the windows build here.