Rune's Lost Head

Rune Classic Screenshot. Taken from Steam.

A few months after Raven Software was purchased by Activision, a group of developers decided to leave and form their own company known as Human Head Studios. Their first release ended up being a game called Rune: an interesting third person action-adventure title based on Norse mythology. They definitely had a lot of experience with fantasy genre as all six original members of Human Head worked on so-called "Serpent Rider Trilogy": Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders, Hexen: Beyond Heretic & Hexen 2.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Shane Gurno, Human Head's artist and part of its founding group, talked about the interesting origins of the game. Even though they had ideas for the Rune as they thought about leaving Raven Software, at first Human Head had other project in mind. Their first release was initially going to be a sequel to Daikatana on Unreal Engine after they contacted John Romero, but that was never meant to be. Despite this, Epic Games allowed Human Head to keep using their engine while they were searching for the publisher. They still had to pay Epic for it, obviously.

For a new studio full of talented people, Human Head Studios seemed to have a perfect start with Rune. This is one of many games that peaked my interest in recent years, so I figured that it's finally time to take a proper look at it.

Systematization of Minecraft Games

Basic Visual Representation of Minecraft Gaming Releases. Logos taken from Minecraft Wiki.

Depending on how popular game is, there's a chance it might get a few ports to new platforms. The most famous example of it is obviously going to be original DOOM with plethora of official and everlasting stream of ports made by enthusiasts. Minecraft appeared in time when gaming industry was moving away from the era of different platforms having their own unique features or even different games entirely. Because of that, you can say that all existing editions of Minecraft that were released are more or less the same.

Of course, that's oversimplification on my part: there has to be a lot of technical differences between all of them that might not be obvious to average player. This is not the topic of this post, I'm not that smart and there has to be a decently detailed explanation somewhere out there. What I was kind of interested in lately is creating a list of all Minecraft's currently existing official editions and video games (including spin-offs) with logical categorization.

February 2023 Update

"Monthly Update" Thumbnail.

This blog somehow reached its second anniversary and I don't really know what to say. Again, I don't really have anything specific planned for this Update in particular. I'll try to follow the example of February 2022's post by highlighting some notable moments in blog's existence over the last twelve months, and then I'll talk about a bit of everything. Although I suppose that some recent updates to blog in the last couple of months make up for what might be considered as "underwhelming post".

Well, you can say that about Ilko's Hall as a whole. After all, I'm the one who writes all this mess. And really the only one who reads it as well, which is fine by me. I have no idea why you, silent readers, are coming here and open up posts of this blog. That's probably the best way for "going out of my comfortable zone" could've worked out for me, so I guess I should be glad my luck keeps working in its own weird way. No idea what are you seeking here, but I hope you were able to find it.

Ken's Innocent Labyrinth

Ken's Labyrinth Title Screen. Taken from MobyGames.

A lot of influential first-person shooters were released in 90s. While people would like talk about popular titles like Quake and Blood, I would like to dedicate this post to a lesser known game that ended up being more important to that time period and genre than you would think. The release of Wolfenstein 3D inspired many developers around the globe, including young Ken Silverman. CuteFloor's "The History of Ken Silverman's Build Engine" mentions that he decided to make his own engine after seeing his brother Alan play Wolfenstein 3D, and it took me some time to confirm it by opening a certain page on Ken's website that's still available in its retro glory.

Despite some impressive features at the time, Ken's Labyrinth doesn't get nearly as much attention as it deserves. While my silly "article" definitely won't change that, I'll use this opportunity to dive deeper into this curious little game's story and what it left behind in gaming industry, perhaps encouraging someone to actually play and leaving a note for myself to do so in the future as well since I'm following my shameful tradition of writing about video games I haven't personally touched for whatever reason.

Neglected Flaws of Gaming Legacy

DOOM Eternal - Soundtrack Behind the Scenes Thumbnail. Taken from YouTube.

While I'm determined to stay away from negative subjects, my continuous self-reflections from the last few months slowly led me towards more conclusions. It's no secret that nowadays a lot of people on Internet are bitter. No matter what kind of community you're looking to, chances are you'll stumble upon exceeding amount of various negative emotions. However, players aren't the only group who is susceptible to such condition. Gaming industry saw many examples of creators and leaders doing some pretty terrible things. Some of these situations remained secret for a substantial amount of time and/or were ultimately "forgiven" (i.e. forgotten) due to legacy of specific person and/or a group.

I think this post might end up getting all over the place and I apologize in advance for that. As I was thinking more certain scandals involving some well-known people & companies (both recent and earlier), I kept coming back to harmful nature of legacy within gaming industry. It's not as much about games and franchises, as it's about people, companies and brands. From preservation of video game history to treatment of young talent starting their career in this sphere. I guess you can consider this an impromptu follow-up to "Two Older Kinds of Gaming Brands", considering some themes of this post and how messy it likely ends up being. I just need to get all of this out of my system for my own good.