Jeff Grubb and friends make a meal out of today's top stories in video games.
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Blight Club
Game Mess Mornings 05/15/24
GrubbSnax
Rat cube (Diamond is Unbreakable 08)
JeffJeff's Bizarre Adventure
The Community Spotlight 2024.05.11
The Community Spotlight 2024.05.04
The Community Spotlight 2024.04.27
Game » consists of 2 releases. Released Oct 01, 2015
In video games, breaking the fourth wall occurs when a game becomes aware of its nature as a game, or when a character directly acknowledges the player.
The act of removing dirt, dust, or other unwanted matter from a surface.
Darkness is used in games to restrict access, increase tension, or just to set a mood. Often the player has access to a light source that can mitigate its effect.
When a prominent character is voiced by a member of the development team. The authors Clive Barker and Harlan Ellison are good examples of this.
Dialogue trees are a feature through which the player selects responses from a list of choices, eliciting reactions from NPCs and determining the path of the conversation and story.
When the main character at some point has to escape from a confined area, be it a dungeon, a prison cell, or a penal colony.
First-Person is a vantage point that attempts to simulate looking through a game character's eyes. It is most commonly found in first-person shooters, racing games, and visual novels, and to a lesser extent in other genres, such as RPGs, 3D platformers, and adventure games.
The concept of a game referencing another game through mockery, parody or even directly. A game reference to the same franchise does not count.
A digital storefront which donates some of its profits to charity.
Games that allow the player to choose which level to play next, rather than a fixed linear order.
Somebody wrote or drew a message on the wall, maybe it was in blood, maybe they had a marker handy; but now here you are, reading it.
A single game may use multiple art styles. For example, Comic Jumper switches its levels between art styles inspired by comics, and Rock of Ages has its stages take on the style of various art periods.
Players are presented with what appears to be a consequential choice, yet no matter what the player selects, the outcome is the same.
A common type of bug where players can leave the intended confines of the game world or map. Exploited in many multiplayer games for easy kills.
Who needs 2D when we've got 3D? 3D, or 3 dimensions, is what we're used to seeing in almost every game these days, letting us do all sorts of awesome stuff like run in circles!
Swearing, cursing, call it what you want. It is an expression of anger or frustration, in most cases.
Puzzles may need to be solved before the player can progress to the next section of the game. Often it may not be clear to players exactly what the puzzle is, or whether the an in-game items needs to be attained before it is even possible to solve it.
Games that feature this concept require the player to wait for a certain amount of real time.
Valve Corporation's proprietary game engine that debuted in summer 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source and later that same year with Half-Life 2. It may be worth noting that the first Source game released a full 2 weeks ahead of Counter-Strike, and that was Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
A digital distribution service owned by Valve Corporation. Originally created to distribute Valve's own games, Steam has since become the de facto standard for digital distribution of PC games.
Subtitled Silence is when a character remains silent in a section of dialogue and a subtitle box appears usually having an ellipsis (...) or nothing at all. Most common in J-RPGs and dating sims. The character can also make a small moan or grunt.
It's the designer's go-to guy. If they want to steer a player in a given direction they'll lock an in game door and force the player to find a way to either unlock it or find an alternate route.
A distinctive song associated with the game (often played during the introduction/end credits). Note: This concept deals just with songs with lyrics, as opposed to instrumental pieces.
Don't believe anyone. There's more going on here than is immediately apparent.
Supporting characters who are heard throughout the course of the game, but are never seen physically by the player.
Voice Acting is the art of providing voices for characters in games, television shows, films, radio programs, and other forms of media.
WASD, or WADS, is the most common and often the default setting to move the player character in computer games with a first or third person perspective.
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