(Updated 2020/12/04) Hi! I’m Melos Han-Tani. This is my old blog for game design and music critique. WordPress has becoming nearly and clunky in recent years (I have no idea who this block editor is intended for and it’s almost impossible to use) so I quit in favor for a Zonelet over at neocities!
- New Blog (From 2020/11 onwards): https://melodicambient.neocities.org/
- Here is my personal webpage, with links to more writing of mine as well as my music and games I’ve worked on.
- I do have a little writing on Medium and Tumblr, but I’ve moved most or all of the bigger posts here.
I am a Tokyo-based game developer (Anodyne, Anodyne 2, Even the Ocean, All Our Asias). My specialty is in music, programming, writing and game design. I taught game design/critique and game music composition from 2016-2019 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Contact me on Twitter or at hello@analgesic.productions.
Past Posts
2020
July – Pitching for the Future
June – Semicontinuity (Framework for analyzing game space)
May – Home office ergonomics
Jan – Changing my name
Jan – Anodyne 2 Nominated for IGF
2019
(December) – Games of the 2010s Decade
(November) – Anodyne 2’s Musical Influences
(October) – Interview with Ludica Mag about Anodyne 2
(September) – Yu-No, Yooka-Laylee, Control review
(August) – Why Anodyne 2 is not a Niche Game
(July) “Oh no! Sparseness in 3D games”
(April) “Persona/Splitting myself in two on Twitter”[[[[
2018
(Dec 2018) Thinking about sequels + Anodyne 2
What makes a game “complex” to make?
What’s a “Weird” game?
(June 2018) The Traversable Image (Imagery in games)
On Oikospiel + Difficulty – “Sean Han Tani’s Game of the Years 1”
(Jan 2018) Making Even the Ocean’s OST and using “Organizational Forces” to design it
2017
Difficulty and Gameplay Options in Even the Ocean
Tokyo Lo-fi – SMT Nocturne
Banjo Kazooie – 8 Ways to Not Spatially Organize Your Game
Title Screens and Menus: Peritextual Game Music
3D Space and Banjo Kazooie, Spyro, Mario 64
My Music: Perfect OST – Song Descriptions
9 Hot E3 Observations
Notes on my art project Walk Geometry and abandoned game Perfect
Towers and Navigation in Breath of the Wild
Deios II : Deidia (Game Music Review)
Detention’s Resolution of Taiwanese Martial Law
4 Good Songs of 2016
SAIC’s Experimental Game Lab, Fall 2016
2016
Dec – Time and Eternity / 42 Metacritic
Dec – OST Review of “Hamster” by rio8
Dec – On knowing the fate of FF15’s world on a second playthrough
Nov – https://medium.com/@han_tani/even-the-ocean-designing-a-game-s-world-map-f26edf282d99
Sep – https://www.hantani.com/writing/twineDQB.html
June – https://medium.com/@han_tani/an-in-depth-q-a-with-sean-htch-han-tani-chen-hogan-the-co-designer-composer-and-programmer-of-89647d0ffe1b
April – https://medium.com/@han_tani/digital-space-photography-video-game-photography-1bf794d4d6d6
Feb – The meaning of The Witness (Destructoid)
2015
Dec – Anxious Mobile Photography and its Alternate Modes of Vision
Dec – Xmas 2015 thoughts on consumption – https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/135944637515/xmas-2015
Dec – Dec 16 – https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/135328649020/otaku-japans-database-animals
Dec 5 – https://medium.com/@han_tani/three-types-of-game-state-in-even-the-ocean-c64c9d9fc2ac
Nov – The artist Alexandre Ouairy, his “Tao Hongjing Project” (MEDIUM)
June – Even the Ocean is/isn’t an FPS – https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/121112474355/even-the-ocean-isisnt-an-fps
June – Even the Ocean – an unpublished interview https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/121023975515/even-the-ocean-an-unpublished-kotaku-interview
May 19 – https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/119329823965/considerations-on-making-game-music
April – Full Time Indie Out Of College – https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/116733259115/full-time-indie-out-of-college
April 10 – Walk Souls (Dark Souls 2 – Episode 9) https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/116029808090/walk-souls-dark-souls-ii-edition-episode-9
Mar 27 – Demon’s Souls 3-1 review – https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/114721397225/demons-souls-tower-of-latria-3-1-first-part
Mar 24 – Bloodborne predictions https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/114492346845/seans-bloodborn-e-predictions
Mar 20 – Thoughts on Souls games https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/114139903025/souls-games-rambling-pt-1
Feb 28 – Journey vs Dark Souls’s Co-op https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/112323631845/journey-vs-dark-souls
Jan 27 – On Irony and The Internet https://seagaia.tumblr.com/post/109314349135/on-irony-and-the-internet
2014
May – https://medium.com/@han_tani/the-failings-of-the-game-anodyne-and-moving-on-to-even-the-ocean-1b6fde915b02
April – Thinking about “Morning Coffee”
2013
2013 had a lot of minor journal-like posts. I bolded the more interesting ones.
November – Even the Ocean Ramble
November – 11/4/2013 Update
October – 10/27/2013 Update
October – 10/20/2013 Update (Android Anodyne, Humble Bundle, Music)
October – 10/8/2013 Creative control in games
October – Anodyne 1 postmortem (v. 0.1)
October – 10/3/2013 (Nothing to report)
September – Notes on Even the Ocean geysers
September – ETO train stations and rewards
July – Celebrity-ification/phil fish in games
July – Getting Japanese fonts working in an Adobe AIR game
July – We need personally-curated Indie Game Stores for lesser known titles
July – Hopes for GAMELOADING, the next big indie game movie
June – Anodyne iOS update
May – Interview with Toby Fox about Undertale
May – Human Nature and Binding of Isaac (by marina kittaka)
May – Why Nintendo’s LP crackdown might make sense (2019/10 note: wow. I am sorry for this post)
May – Anodyne, by Lines of Code
May – Game Dev Tycoon’s DRM, Piracy
2012
December – My First Year of Game Development
November – How I ported Anodyne, my Zelda-like game, to Android from Flixel (AS3), FlashDevelop, and Adobe AIR – in a few days, and for free!
November – Joys in writing game music, frustrations of the place of games in society, and the potential of games that convey experiences
October – Making a Flixel game work cross-platform
August – Getting sprites and maps into Anodyne
August – Old Zelda-like Dungeon Design in Anodyne, part 1 of ?
July – AN GATE (Anodyne Dungeon Design)
July – BUGS (Anodyne, pt. 1 in an infinite series)
July – Anodyne status update #2. overall structure, dungeon design, and effin’ health
June – wait a minute (health, post on Anodyne #2)
June – Anodyne status update #1
May – 8 takeaways from inspiration dave
May – Inspiration Dave, finally finally done.
May – Well, this is embarrassing. (Memory Management in AS3)
April – Ludum Dare 23 – “Naos”, a postmortem
April – “In An Aeroplane Over The Mystery” Molyjam 2012 & IIT Spring Hackathon (HTML5 (Canvas + EaselJS))
April – A short blurb on Dustforce (Hitbox Team)
March – Scripting and managing state of events in a Flixel game.
March – sprite placement in new game.
March – inspiration dave: platformer movement
March – Screen transitions, legend of zelda gbc games
February – project vgm
February – levels (In Inspiration Dave, a platformer)
January – Some neat screen transition effects
January – World maps and my platformer
ambient-melodic 