Dev Links: Inside the Box

In today’s Developer Links , learn about strategy gameplay from Skulls of the Shogun , about stealth from Mark of the Ninja , and about the problems with Linux development from Braid developer Jonathan Blow.

Accessible Strategy Is Not An Oxymoron: Design Pillars For Skulls of the Shogun (Gamasutra)
“ Skulls of the Shogun is 17-Bit’s first game as an independent developer, just launched on Xbox Live Arcade, Windows Phone, and Windows 8 (including the Surface tablet). When we left our jobs working at EA over three and a half years ago, we set out to revitalize one of our favorite genres, the turn-based strategy game (and specifically squad-based strategy games).”

Stealth in 2D: Design Lessons From Mark of the Ninja (Gamasutra)
“How do you make a 2D stealth game? In the postmortem for the February 2013 issue of Game Developer magazine, Klei devs explain how they adapted core stealth principles to work in a new environment — and some of the design challenges that came up in the process.”

Good Morning Gato # 108 – Soft Kitty(Ska Studios)
“It’s February…Whaaattt!? When did it get to be the second month of the year already?! It appears this year is rushing by as quickly as the last. It has already worn poor little Gato clean out.”

The Video Game Kickstarter Report – Week of February 1(Zeboyd Games)
“A kickstarter that is rather relevant to our interests went up soon after I posted last week’s kickstarter report. Cryamoreis an Action/RPG featuring beautiful hand drawn art & wonderful music. They did a good job setting their kickstarter up with a well designed page, a nice variety of reward tiers, and a good buildup among their fanbase before the kickstarter started so it should come as little surprise that it’s already passed its goal of $60k with $98k raised and 24 days to go.”

Interview About The Witness And Related Design Topics(The Witness)
“On January 31, 2013, Tom McShea of Gamespot interviewed me as part of their Break Room Interview series. It was an interesting conversation!”

Mew-Genics Teaser Week 15, STEAM!(Team Meat Blog)
“We announced a few weeks back that Mew-Genics would be released on iPad and other platforms as well. Well one of those other platforms is going to be Steam, obviously! And now a bit of history on this project…”

OUYA Developers Sound Off: Successes and Failures of the Dev Kit, One Month Out(Engadget)
“You still can’t touch an OUYA. Not until March, at the earliest, and that’s only if you’re a Kickstarter backer. However, one lucky group of folks already has access: game developers. Those among us who shelled out $700 — as well as the 10 lucky studios who won that contest— got an early jump on a pre-rooted OUYA dev kit, while those of us who dropped $95 (or more) are left in the lurch. Of course, those early units aren’t exactly the couch-friendly consoles we expect to arrive in a few months, but they are representative of the final hardware.”

Jonathan Blow Criticizes Linux Dev Tools(Develop)
“Linux as a games platform is being held back by chronic shortcomings with IDEs and debuggers, says Braid developer Jonathan Blow. The award-winning developer of the time-bending platformer has tried Linux development in the past, but said he found the experience frustrating.”