I ended up picking the game up in the Steam flash sale today because of your article.

@ Tormod Haugen:

Wow, nice. I did not know these existed. Thanks. It’s kinda amazing that he had a #1 best selling game in the country at age 17 in pre-internet 80’s.

Vaguely related. I recommend reading the dev diaries of Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia + Karateka). http://jordanmechner.com/ebook/

@ Dr. Azrael Tod:

Very good point. Now that you mention it I recall an excellent blog post by Shamus Young (of DM of the Rigns, Escpapist, Spoiler Warning) from a while ago about playing the original Quake. He really tried to analyze the way the low and high skill players approached the game, and found out exactly this: high skill players would notice the subtle environment cues and extrapolate enemy position, direction and trajectory based on that. He did not call it by name, but it was exactly this concept of Yomi.

For example, a skilled player would hear the sound of a teleport or elevator and instinctively know that if he shoots a rocket at a specific point in the map the enemy will run straight into it. Or for example the player will notice that the ever re-spawning rocket ammo has been picked up, and be able to approximately figure out where the enemy is based on their knowledge of how often the ammo spawns, when was the last time they passed through this location and how long ago the enemy would have had to pick it up so that it still did not respawn.

@ Karthik:

Nice. I haven’t heard of Eggnogg. I will check it out. The Nidhogg sword throwing is little less rewarding because it will be deflected by enemy in middle or high stance automatically and it only has a single trajectory. So tossing it is a high risk move, though it may pay off a big time. Especially if you bait the enemy into lowering their stance by trying to disarm them by flicking their blade up from middle stance repeatedly.

Some friends and I tried playing Nidhogg for a while, but it didn’t “click”. Something about the motion and platforming felt too sticky.

Then we found Eggnogg, a free jam game inspired by Nidhogg and released well before it. Eggnogg has the same concept, fewer options and a single arena, but a skill ceiling that’s still just as high. It handles better, and left us in stitches more often than Nid.

In both of these games, it’s fun to come up with custom game modes enforced by an honor system. My favorite is one where one sword is discarded (dropped into a pit) and the other one is kept at the center. The duelists then scramble for possession of the lone sword from opposite ends.

And then there’s the duel, pistols-at-dawn style. The duelists face away from each other and walk to the ends of the screen before turning and throwing their swords at each other. Eggnogg lets you throw up/down depending on your sword stance, and you can creatively ricochet the sword into your opponent off walls, ceilings and even floors.

The sword throw in Eggnogg is amazing high risk/reward stuff. It is blocked automatically if the target has the right stance, but this requires finesse and trajectory reading. And likely as it is to succeed, it leaves you without a sword for your next encounter.

seems nice…
guess i have another game on my to-play-list

That experience of ‘yomi’ is something i had pretty often in fast-paced FPS (UT2K4 or Urban Terror in most cases). It didn’t help me to think of the right reaction in time, execute the right move or just hit my opponent and not just the wall behind him though…
Then again those were mostly cases where reaching one point first, firing a weapon in the right second or something similar would lead to the instant death of the opponent.
So it’s not that different. (As opposed to say: chess, i suck at such games)