{"id":223,"date":"2005-12-09T10:51:53","date_gmt":"2005-12-09T08:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/?p=223"},"modified":"2005-12-09T10:52:47","modified_gmt":"2005-12-09T08:52:47","slug":"mark-healey-the-guy-who-pulls-the-strings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2005\/12\/09\/mark-healey-the-guy-who-pulls-the-strings\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Healey: The Guy who Pulls the Strings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t played <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ragdollkungfu.com\/\">Rag Doll Kung Fu<\/a>, you really should.<\/p>\n<p>Not that it&#8217;s the greatest game ever made, and the controls (dragging the rag doll character around) can be infuriating. Yet it has some strong things going for it: a unique lo-fi aesthetic with deliberately unconvincing cut-scenes, and low-budget but super-cool 2d graphics. And it&#8217;s being distributed online via Steam for $15. <\/p>\n<p>Gamasutra has an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/features\/20051206\/dugan_01.shtml\">interview with Mark Healey<\/a>, the Rag Doll Kung Fu developer. (Registration required.)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>GS: So we&#8217;re talking a zero budget for the cut scenes?<\/p>\n<p>MH: Yeah, basically. We ended up spending about fifty pounds for some plastic swords and headbands. We borrowed a video camera and just improvised. It was just a couple a friends who decided to make a stupid kung-fu film. There was never any plan. It&#8217;s amazing it came out as well as it did. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think the big news is that Rag Doll Kung Fu really hits the sweet spot as an indie game: It was developed on a small budget, it is cheap, and at the same time it has a specific feel, a lo-fi aesthetic that you can not get from big budget titles. This is the kind of indie game we have been waiting for for a long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t played Rag Doll Kung Fu, you really should. Not that it&#8217;s the greatest game ever made, and the controls (dragging the rag doll character around) can be infuriating. Yet it has some strong things going for it: a unique lo-fi aesthetic with deliberately unconvincing cut-scenes, and low-budget but super-cool 2d graphics. And &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2005\/12\/09\/mark-healey-the-guy-who-pulls-the-strings\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mark Healey: The Guy who Pulls the Strings&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}