Hi! I'm Paul.

Indie Alley is all about the indie game scene, where games are made based on their merit and less on their marketing.

Gravitron360 is a pretty simple space shooter.  As a space ship, you fly around saving people, blowing up planet generators, and then getting out before the planet becomes too unstable.  It’s available on XBLIG for 80MSP ($1).

When I first picked up Gravitron360, I immediately identified it as similar to PixelJunk Shooter for the Playstation.  Oh, how wrong I really was.  While the idea, graphics, and mechanics may be similar, navigating the game is incredibly painful.  I found myself crashing into things far too often, merely because the controls for the game made little sense, and I often got confused which button did what.

As I played through it, multiple people watching said “This game doesn’t look very fun” and “What is the point of this game?”  My responses?  It’s not very fun, and while I know the point of the game, it’s not worth enough to me to actually keep playing…  Sure, the game was only $1, but just because an Indie game is cheap doesn’t mean it’s allowed to be bad.

I was disappointed with the game itself. I feel like the developers should have played the game more before releasing it, so they could find out firsthand that their potentially fun game was ruined by a bad control scheme.

1 star.

I haven't actually told many people about this. In fact, I've been purposelly keeping it to myself.  The only people that actually knew were people in the room when I chatted with the doctor or that I felt really needed to know.  It should be obvious why, and I'm only blogging about it now so that I can share some insights.

Two weeks ago I went to the ER thinking I had appendicitis. After a full series of tests, the doctor's found that my colon was inflamed, and that there were anomalies that could indicate Crohn's disease and/or cancer.

Today, I found out that I indeed don't have cancer. I wept like a child.

The last few weeks have been rather difficult.  It's hard not to think about the worst case scenarios, especially when you aren't getting any better (I am, by the way; I started eating food again a few days ago, and am probably at 60% now).  Colon cancer does not sound pleasant at all, and though I don't fear death, I am concerned about what the aftermath of my death would mean.

I can't imagine what happens to people who find out they actually do have cancer.  Maybe someday I will.  I do know now what it feels like to wait to find out.  It's terrible.  Shoot, in a way, I guess I'd rather know I have cancer than wait for test results.

In the end, my body has fought off most what was making me ill.  I've gained back 5 lbs of the 20 lbs I lost this last two weeks.  I'm eating again, but not regularly yet, and I've changed my diet drastically.  All I can say is that my personal health is very much at the forefront of my mind now.

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...it would be that we would stop propagating the lie that DRM is for your benefit. I just saw this on Lulu's ebook page.

If I had a second wish, I might wish for world peace or something. Eliminating DRM comes first (it might even be a pre-requisite).