Feel a little slighted for not having your fill of fresh content this month? Then how would you like a sample from next month’s offerings?

What juicy information will Mike Willis share about “Too Much Information?” Will he share too much? Maybe this excerpt will entice you to ask for more:

I: METHODS OF GIVING INFORMATION Before deciding what's too much or too little, it may be helpful to think about how, exactly, information is given to players.  On a very broad level, it might be best to distinguish between two types of communication: textual and non-textual.  Textual sources of information are fairly easy to understand.  There's 'in-game' text, like messages from NPCs, or numbers indicating the damage of an attack.  There's also 'meta-game' text, for lack of a better word.  By this I mean text within the game but 'outside' of the live game world, like item-descriptions.  And then there's the oft-forgotten 'out-of-game' text, the manual. Non-textual information can mean many different things.  To clarify the concept, let us use graphics as an example.  On the simplest level, a graphic easily distinguishable as a wall tells the player that he or she cannot walk there.  This is a very 'direct' form of non-textual communication.  On the other hand, an odd looking spot on a wall, or a crack, may tell a player that they should at least get up to it for a closer look (ie, a click of the space bar).  The result may be textual giving of information, but the odd wall-graphic was an 'indirect' form of non-textual communication.  Other examples might include the coloring of an enemy indicating a possible weakness, or the soundeffect of a floorboard creaking when a player steps on a certain tile. Using all of these methods in some kind of balance is a subject that could very well be an article unto itself, and we will not elaborate further on the various methods of giving information.  Instead we will focus on how much information to give, and when.  Our goal will be to have a somewhat systematic approach to making this choice.

And where will the heroes of Okédoké end up next month? Let's sample Pepsi Ranger’s journal as they travel from the city of Wrongside, Texas to the city of New Hamster, Pennsylvania:

Last month we embarked on an adventure with El Garbanzo, Señor Death, and Señor Rialgo (whom I mistakenly referred to as “Sir” the entire article) across the border of Mexico and into the United States. Along the way we fought sombrero-clad lizards, scorpions with lightning-fast agility, pickpockets, F-15s, and the Mighty Racist Border Rangers, but our journey was far from over. El Garbanzo’s father was missing, the heat was still scorching, and the worst of our opponents was yet to come.   Trouble didn’t take long to find us in the streets of Wrongside. Rats dashed out of the shadows and ambushed us, baring their rabid teeth. Cockroaches hexed us with pestilence and their superior skills of reproduction. But most heinous of all, the villain “Mofey” was staring at us with his googly eyes and his Rockwell song of paranoia (with backup music by the late Michael Jackson), threatening to become the money we saved by switching to Geico. Dastardly, indeed. Crap, can’t seem to get that money I saved. Socialism must be creeping into Texas.  But some residents tried to help. Some warned us of the dangers lurking in the alleys, of rival gangs trying to kill hapless travelers in the crossfire of wars they raged among each other. But in such a steamy town, we were destined to ignore those warnings to search every nook, cranny, and garbage can we could find to uncover the whereabouts of the elder El Garbanzo.   Okay, but what if I find a stack of money with googly eyes wandering into those alleys? We knocked on some doors to see if anyone could put us up for the night—we had, after all, not slept since our donkey ride and needed some rest. But all we found were no answers and ghetto clubs. So we resolved to search for a hotel. More to come... From Chapter 3:   The house stood on a haunted hill below a crescent moon. Cliffs flanked the rising field and a graveyard died to the west. And upon the ledges, random treasure boxes hid within the clusters of trees, begging us to abandon them with all hope. And we journeyed up the shadowed hill, searched the ledges for life (and found Señor Death’s “Vampire Blade”), and questioned the epitaphs on the forgotten tombstones of things lost to history. But in the end we were just procrastinating. We knew that to find our answers, we had to enter the house. And we were fine with that, because we were badass. Inside the house, wandering spirits told us of things we already knew, things like “this is a haunted house,” and “we’re dead.” But one ghost informed us of something different, something relevant: there was a resident who wasn’t dead, and that if we kept searching, we might find her.  Well, we searched the ground floor and found nothing but energy barriers blocking doorways into rooms we would’ve liked to visit, like the bedroom and its savory beds for sleeping in and replenishing strength. No, we were stuck munching on our tacos as we wandered up the stairway onto the second floor, into the main hall where we found our adversary....  Schnee McBoobs.    Selling Avon, maybe?  More to come...  From Chapter 4: When we arrived to New Hamster, Schnee’s brother told us that we couldn’t just drive up to the prison without getting the windshield and tires shot out. So he wanted us to find some Titanium, Machine Guns, a Rocket Launcher, a Satellite Dish, and some Mountain Dew to jazz up the vehicle. He also needed Heavy Duty Wheels to protect them from puncture. So we took his advice and entered the city to search for these mythical parts.    A Word from Our Sponsor: Unfortunately, due to the confidentiality of sensitive materials previously recorded, we’re afraid that the U.S. Government prohibits the publishing of contents related to the events transpiring in New Hamster, Pennsylvania, and we must therefore pull our original report from this article. However, the government is too busy trying to control our access to healthcare to check whether or not we complied, so we’ll attempt to include snippets from that original 320-page report.  Excerpts from the Restricted Journal: We entered the borders of New Hamster, Pennsylvania and found a man sleeping in his bed. Stole a Coca-Cola from his fridge; it seemed that New Hamster provided some variety in its soft drinks. Later on, we discovered that certain fast food restaurants provided us with Mountain Dew, which not only helped us in battle, but also helped lubricate our van for the journey into the prison.   You keep your bulletproof vests in the refrigerator? Don’t you think the freezer would be better?  We found that, unlike Wrongside, the city of New Hamster had open access to the sewer system. And we found a lot of our missing junk down there. But not every section connected to the other, so we had to find multiple entrances, including a couple that weren’t in such obvious places. And the creatures that dwelled down there were hideous. More to come... Will El Garbanzo finally unlock a grand piece of the puzzle to his father’s disappearance? Or will the big city of New Hamster swallow him whole? Find out next month and catch a glimpse of what the US government doesn’t want you to see.

 
And what of the long-awaited sequel to the Covered With Dust series? Can it be true? Yes, next month the 2009 edition will finally be underway. Here is the full review of the 10th place game (without pictures—something needs to be fresh next month, after all) to whet your appetite:

-10th Place- The Grim By Scython Reaper Released: February 11, 2008  Death applies with job services for a position to become the Grim Reaper. The nasally job coordinator asks him what he’s good at, as any good nasally job coordinator would do. Death, in his perfect shadowy demeanor, explains that his special skill is to kill people (by touching them). The recruiter, Bob, then tells him that he’s qualified, but that he must first kill a kid in a “lazily done room” for him to actually get the job.  This, of course, is all told in a series of painted cut scenes. So far, so good. Death enters the room made of red squares and confronts the nerd Melvin. But Melvin is actually a demon in disguise and the Grim Reaper thinks that he’s in a pickle. But he attacks Melvin anyway, because that’s his job, and basically annihilates him. And that’s it. That’s the game. A 2.5 MB download for two minutes of gameplay. And we don’t even get a game over screen. Death is stuck in a room with nowhere to go, and that jerk job coordinator—what was his name? Bob?—won’t even come to bail him out. And that proves Melvin, the nerd demon’s masterstroke. Though he sacrificed his scaly little life, he was victorious in the end. He captured Death. All because...well, I’m speculating here. The story is too short without my embellishment. Oh well, let’s review, shall we? The Grim reminds me in many ways of Gizmog’s late 2009 Terrible Games Contest entry Too Terrible!, in that several cut scenes tell something of a story but the actual gameplay comes down to a single battle. And while I’ll admit that The Grim qualifies as a game more so than Too Terrible!, as The Grim offers one level where the player can move freely (though the only place he can go is down the hall toward Melvin) the battle itself takes that one shred of gameplay and tosses it out the window when Death slices Melvin with 9,999 points a hit and Melvin fails to retaliate. So the differences balance each other out, and in the end, The Grim proves that some authors still prefer lame jokes to good games.  In the author’s defense, he does warn the potential downloader that the game is supposed to be a satire. And if I were giving it additional thought, I might’ve realized ahead of time that that meant walking through a single room and fighting a single battle. But the file was so large for something so small. For what, I don’t know. The music didn’t sound expensive. And there were only a handful of imported screens. My assumption is that the game was loaded with a bunch of hidden crap that the player is never treated to.  Actually, after opening the game in CUSTOM I saw the problem. It seems the music was expensive. Four OGG tracks to be precise. At least they sound pretty good. If nothing else, this game has a nice soundtrack; couldn’t tell you if the songs are original or not, though. Story Potential: 4 Presentation: 2 Completion Level: 4  Verdict: Despite the game’s reasonably high numbers, don’t let the score fool you; this is not worth your time. The story could’ve been neat had the author developed it. Instead, he elected to go the joke game route and ruined what could’ve been cool. And he didn’t even bother to “draw” Melvin’s room. He created one red square and used it to lay the walls. Pretty lame. Parting Words: The only reason this beat out the eleventh and twelfth place games is because it’s technically “complete.” Plus, I can’t honestly claim that I found bugs. In a word, everything that’s supposed to work does, so I can’t gripe about anything other than the gimmick. Tenth Place Comparison: Bubble (Sept. 2008) Vs. The Grim (Sept. 2009) Bubble had a lot more content than The Grim had, but it was also ugly, broken, and atrocious. Personally, I think even the eleventh place game on this year’s list is better than last year’s tenth place game. So the victorious one in this battle should be clear.

What two games could possibly be worse than this one? Find out next month.

Finally, many of you know this is coming. But still, it’s a mystery. Perhaps we will shed a little light on the upcoming Get to Know Your Community feature:

From “The Community Mixer”

-LIVING ROOM- In the middle of the room you see him: The “Life of the Party,” the father of the OHR subculture sitting there in his blue smoking jacket, one leg crossed, arms splayed across the back of the couch, and a small hamster resting on his shoulders blowing some bubbles. People surround him as he recounts the story of the day he found his beloved pet fighting off a group of “Plips” with a hammer.  >examine James Paige He sits on the couch recounting tales of forgotten journeys. Someone asks him about a can of SPAM and he merely laughs. There’s a hamster on his shoulder blowing bubbles.  >get hamster  The “Life of the Party” shakes his head as you reach out for the hamster. You politely retreat. Clearly this hamster belongs to him.  >ask James question You pull out your list of random questions and highlight “number five.” You feel awkward bringing up the question, but then you remember everyone at the party is entitled to one, so you ask anyway.  5. You were just informed that boxers and briefs no longer exist. What will you wear now and why? The “Life of the Party” ponders the question a moment. Then he answers: “Profound. The question, ‘Boxers or Briefs’ presumes that those are the only two choices. indeed, to the modern man who goes shopping for undergarments, those do really seem to be the only two available choices. Even less common variations such as long johns or speedos are really just variations on either the boxer or brief model. However, both Boxers and Briefs are actually products of the 20th century. If you lived in the middle ages, you might have been asked whether you prefer ‘Braies or Codpieces?’. But the most fundamental unit of undergarments is the Loincloth. Various versions of the Loincloth have been in use throughout all of recorded history. The oldest Loincloths known to archeology are some 7000 years old.”

To find out the rest of James’s answer, and ultimately the conclusion of this tale, come back next month to the “Community Mixer” and to HamsterSpeak Volume 30. 

And surely there will be other articles waiting for your eyes to see.