Zack Black visits SHFF

For the first time, Zack Black (Return to Dark Castle co-creator) meets Mark Steven Pierce (Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle co-creator) for the first time in person. Not sure on what exchange went on between them, other than it was positive. Here's to 2 decent men, and progress.

Link to Zscuplt

Mark Steven Pierce talks about gaming in the 80s, and gaming now

He makes some good points too.

Play almost anything from the 80's and it is a challenge. There was a macho competition between player and the game.

When I played the original games (in RTDC) for the first time in a decade or so I couldn't believe how hard I had tuned the original game. As Chris states this has softened a bit with each game but the play mechanic is still very demmanding.

Today's casual market is way simpler.

After many discussions we agreed to keep the original format (which the Zack's) mastered in the new levels.

After playing for a while I remembered how the game rides the edge of being just hard enough to make you want to come back until you clear a room.

All the same I do think there should be some softening here and there but the core shouldl be kept faithful to the original because a.) that is what the game is about and b.) no other game out there today is similar.

Sounds about right to me.

Important News From la Porta:

Hey guys, Paul Pratt (the guy who made and maintains Mini vMac) has added a new page on the Mini vMac site for donations to the project in general, or towards new features. The page is located here:

LINK

I thought it would be nice if we sent in whatever we can to keep the development of Mini vMac up (especially with it being around christmas). We don't want Mini vMac to someday go to dust...then we couldn't play DC or BDC anymore! I think it is a good idea since Paul has kept the project going for the past few years. Without him, we would be pretty lost.

UPDATE: The link is fixed.

Beyond Dark Castle Wiki updated more.

I am still getting time to work on the Dark Castle Wiki, occasionally, I finally added the Beyond Dark Castle section though, let me know what you think.

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New stuff!

I wrote a review for Beyond Dark Castle, which can be found here:

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I did something interesting with photoshop, and Fireball 1 here:

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The almost complete catalog of DC3 Demos/Betas:

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Also, I added new emoticons from the forum, go check them out here:

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