Author: Sarah Northway

  • Sakura House Asakusa Iriya


    Japan
    Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

    We flew in to Haneda airport in midafternoon, but it could have been 2am for all we knew after 30-some hours since our heads had touched pillow. We bought Passmo pay cards which work on all the trains and subways now, and also vending machines and even restaurants around the city. Finally, a kind of debit card for hopelessly cash-driven Tokyo! We ate tempura udon (and paid via vending machine, naturally) and headed for the Sakura House offices in Shinjuku.

    I’d been prepared for hot weather but the humidity (32C feels like 36) was hard to take in our travel clothes and backpacks. I noticed women daintily dabbing the sweat from their faces with tiny lace-trimmed towels and stopped to buy one for myself – it’s been a lifesaver. We now understand why there are drink vending machines on every second block in this city. These are record high temperatures for September, but August often gets up to a sweltering 35C/95F.

    Sakura House dominates the long-term foreiner housing market here, offering reasonably priced rooms with shared bathrooms and kitchens. Most importantly, they don’t charge “reikin” which is the standard moving-in fee. Also known as “key money”, it’s considered a gift to the landlord, equivalent to up to three month’s rent. I guess people don’t move very often around here!

    At their office we signed reams and reams of documents, promising to follow proper garbage separation rules, agreeing not to share files on the local lan, and itemizing everything in the apartment down to the number of spoons – 2. We took the refreshingly air conditioned Yamanote line back to our room in Asakusa Iriya house. Look, they’re so organized our room even has a video on Youtube.

    It’s actually a bit of a dump. Not surprising given the low price, but with all the crap they made us sign you’d have thought we were moving into a palace. The furniture’s cheap and mismatched, the windows are a meter from neighboring buildings, the garbage hasn’t been taken out in a month (remember the heat…) and the door doesn’t lock. Not that we’re worried about crime here. However, it’s quiet and our room is relatively big with its own kitchen and working aircon, tatami floors and two Japanese style futons that joined together are bigger than a king-sized bed! We have only one ghostly housemate who may not even speak English, and as I mentioned doesn’t like to take the garbage out.

    I chose this place for the location in Taito-ku, between the bustling street markets and pleasant parks of Ueno to the east, and the traditional temple district of Asakusa to the west. It’s an older part of the city with two and three story buildings, and seemingly no local zoning laws. Next door is a tiny slacklining gym, and at the end of the street trucks are loaded with sheets of glass during the day. There are restaurants and combinis dotted around every block, yet it maintains the feel of a quiet residential neighborhood, lined with potted plants and filled with children playing. Our walk to Ueno takes us through the household shrine shopping district, where store after identical store blasts cool air onto the street, inticing people to browse through their shiny wooden cabinets.

    Next up: the Tokyo Game Show!

  • Summer in the Pacific Northwest


    Sarah and Mrs Mooberry
    Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

    As usual the weather in BC was totally perfect this summer. For July and August we stayed with and generally mooched off our awesome families (although I did try to do some cooking). We went snorkeling in the almost-don’t-need-a-wetsuit ocean around Nanaimo, toured local farms and wineries in Cowichan Bay and Saltspring Island, and searched for frogs at Ammonite Falls. I worked hard to finish Rebuild 2 which is now in sponsor bidding.

    Labor Day weekend found us once again in Seattle for PAX which was nearly overrun with indies this year, many of them our friends. We spent the usual nights drinking and playing board games with our friends from San Francisco and Vancouver. We stayed to help pack up, affording us a behind-the-scenes peek at the incredible ballet that is the expo hall tear down.

    We stayed a couple extra days and went to a Mariner’s game with our cousins Pete and Leah, which was my first baseball game. We had incredible seats – the first two rows right behind the LA Angels, who lost even though Pete says they were the better team. It was the most fun I’ve ever had at any sporting event.

    Our plan was to stay in BC until the end of Septebmer but Colin heard quite suddenly that he’d been accepted to present his new game at Sense of Wonder Night at the Tokyo Game Show. Unfortunately we had to miss OrcaJam and IndieCADE this year but we squeezed in Beerfest with Colin’s parents where the theme was decidedly British style cask ales.

    Then it was off to catch our 3am Air China flight to Japan…

  • Rebuild 2: Playtest and Playtomic

    The Rebuild 2 main menu
    The Rebuild 2 main menu may be the creepiest art in the game.

    The Rebuild 2 playtest is over and was a huge success. I sent the test out to 63 applicants, and of those 45 played at least once and 21 sent me some sort of useful feedback (and get their names in the credits – thanks guys!). A couple shared their access despite being explicitly asked not to, but it was worth the risk and I had some security to impede ne’er do wells. So far my faith in humanity is intact!

    Some testers were above-and-beyond awesome, playing lengthy games on multiple difficulties, finding all the endings and rooting out my many grammatical errors. They found dozens of bugs I’d missed, and helped me make Nightmare difficulty (now called Impossible) harder than ever.

    Being fans of Rebuild 1, they weren’t as good at finding noob issues, so I did some extra tests with people who’d never seen the original. In person is best for this, although I find it nerve racking to watch people play my games. Like every other aspect of the game, the tutorial got an overhaul.

    Stats broken down by day and difficulty
    Playtest stats broken down by day and difficulty

    I collected stats using Playtomic (formerly SWFStats), including the fact that a few games went 300, 500, even 800 days. That’s dedication!

    Playtomic wasn’t ideal for such a small test. I broke down the survivors, squares, and food by day and difficulty, but when I added map size it all got out of order and became a wall of numbers. I needed more options to sort and filter, or download the data in an xls. I also logged any errors as custom metrics, but without room for stack traces all I knew was how often each error happened. Again, not what Playtomic was designed for, but it would have been useful.

    What Playtomic does do well is analytics for published games, like Google Analytics but simpler and more game-centric. I wish I’d put something like it in Rebuild 1 so I could at least know how many plays that game has. 6 million confirmed on the big portals… maybe another 2 or 3 from the hundreds of smaller sites?

    Anyway, with help from my army of volunteer playtesters, Rebuild 2 is now (just about) finished, and is off to sponsors for bidding. The process usually takes a month, so you’ll finally all be able to play the new game in September!

    Until then, here’s a very brief Rebuild 2 trailer I cut together:

  • Rebuild 2: Guess who

    The Dream Team
    The Dream Team: Derek Yu, David Hellman, Tiff Chow, Steph Thirion

    You really may have to guess, as the face modelling doesn’t always produce a perfect match. But I’ve been having fun putting my friend’s faces into the game with the FaceGen Modeller, then mix-and-matching their hair and facial hair.

    Terrifying new art from EvilKris
    Terrifying new art from EvilKris

    The major components are all in, and I’m starting to slog through balancing now. In the end, some stuff still didn’t make it in, but Rebuild 2 is closer to what I imagined the original should have been. I hope you’ll agree!

    I’ll probably do some private testing soon so if you’d like to be considered for test duty, please leave a comment on this post.

    Edit: the playest is over, thanks everyone for helping out!

  • Rebuild 2: Progress Continues

    EvilKris and I have been working hard on Rebuild 2. Skills and plots are in with about 30 other changes, and there’s another 20 to go. Recent additions include renaming survivors, saving in multiple slots, shotguns, helicopters, prostitution, and more kittens.

    There are also new buildings and I tweaked the map art to use more gradients and textures. I’m still working on the blood bar; need to make room for more information up there. It’s still pretty similar but here’s how it looks today:

    New buildings in Rebuild 2
    New buildings in Rebuild 2

    EvilKris is nearly done the new attack screen art, small illustrations to go with various events and possible outcomes. These will be in a kind of a comic book style, hopefully not too gruesome for the squeamish but showing a more realistic depiction of life in the land of the dead. He has more art on his blog.

    EvilKris's attack screen vignettes
    EvilKris's attack screen vignettes