Posts tagged games

Visual novels are a medium, like literature, film, or games. It is a recent medium, a hybrid of games and literature, but does not stand apart from either one.

Dating sims are a genre, like first person shooters, romantic comedies, or military thrillers. Dating sims can be games, or visual novels. If someone writes a CYOA book on romance, it could probably exist under the medium of literature as well.

Please note that genres and media are orthogonal — that is, they vary independently from each other. The medium is the form that something takes. The genre is the style (or styles) of the content of that something.

Just so we’re clear, visual novels are not necessarily dating sims. In fact, most VNs involving relationships aren’t, seeing as the criteria for a dating sim includes management of relationship statistics. So please, journalists, stop confusing the two.

Back in 2006, I attended an event called TOJam (Toronto Indie Games Jam) and as a result of that, I created this odd little game, where you abduct aliens and blow up the giant goats on poles defending them. I called it Alien Abduction (not realizing that another game would take the name) and it was odd yet fun (when you got around the technical issues).

Fast forward to now. I am reworking the game in XNA, and making various changes to it, such as a newer, better name, better graphics, etc. You know, the usual upgrade crap. In the meantime, I fixed some of the bugs with the old version, and tossed the repaired version on MediaFire.

Here’s a breakdown of controls:

• WASD/arrow keys: move the ship around
• Mouse pointer: aim your bolts and beams
• Left mouse button: fire laser bolts
• Right mouse button: fire abductor wave
• Esc: quit (clicking the quit button doesn’t work still)

Buildings spawn additional aliens, and the occasional polegoat. You can blow the buildings up, but you lose points for that, and there’s a good chance you’ll have to face another polegoat as well.

Anyway, try it out. It’s pretty derpy, but who knows? You might be amused by it.

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