Josh Whelchel wrote to inform me that you guys helped raise over $800 for his cancer drive. That’s wonderful news!
And there’s more: The Spirit Engine 2, the long-waited sequel to Mark Pay’s much-loved RPG, is slated for a July 30th release, as revealed by the teaser above. There are also two older videos (1|2) that demonstrate the game’s combat system.
TSE2 will not be freeware, like its predecessor, but the final price is unknown. For more info, head to the official website.
Tonight is GAME NIGHT. On the cards are the usual staples of Jet Set Willy Online, iScribble, and no doubt Trackmania too. And apparently Team Fortress 2 is free this weekend, so there’ll probably be a game or two of that…
If you’re up for it, make your way to tigIRC as soon as you can! Things are about to start!
Jets n’ Guns Gold is today’s Game Giveaway of the Day. This irreverent Euroshmup usually sells for $30 and is probably the best game you’ll ever get from GGOTD, so grab it now!
Once again, make sure you actually install the game before the giveaway runs out.
I know what you’re thinking… the Sims, Electronic Arts… is it the first of April again so soon? But no!
The Sims Carnival is a newish online community based on the Sims universe that allows users to make their own games and share them. At the heart of the community is the Game Creator (shown above), a simple Flash-based program that mimics the higher-level functionality of Game Maker and Multimedia Fusion. Users can use pre-made or original art and music assets, and define the “behaviors” of in-game objects using if-then statements provided by the software. Once you’ve made a game, you can upload it to the site after registering an account. Games made with Flash itself are also accepted.
I’m always excited by new tools that lower the barrier for people (especially non-developers) to make games and generally be creative. Even though the current games on The Sims Carnival are pretty primitive, I had a lot of fun browsing around – the enthusiasm of the community and its eagerness to improve is actually really inspiring! I especially enjoyed the games of Kid Akkade, like Akkade and MotorBike Mania, an Excitebike clone. Pick your own Adventure and IRON MAN VS THE HULK AND SUPERMAN also wrangled quite a few chuckles out of me.
The site was recommended to me by Rod Humble, who developed The Marriage and Stars Over Half-Moon Bay, and also works at EA. He also mentioned a competition they’re throwing where you can either win $1000 or a Nintendo DS (2nd and 3rd place). Both Game Creator and Flash entries are accepted.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s own Kieron Gillen has penned a hands-on preview of Multiwinia, the multiplayer version of Introversion’s hit real-time strategy game Darwinia. Hmmm, that sentence certainly sounds strange with all the “versions” and “winias” in it…
Anyway, in the preview Kieron plays a “King of the Hill” match against four computer opponents. From the preview and the comments following, the general consensus seems to be that the game’s mechanics are simple and relatively standard (which isn’t necessarily a slight). The game also continues to look quite good.
Multiwinia is slated for a PC release in September. It will also be included with the original game as part of Darwinia+ for the Xbox 360 – also due out in the Fall.
Not really a game, per se, but any excuse to post videos of TIGForums members singing and playing the guitar! Open Mic Hero is a neat program that lets you play sounds with an XBox 360 Guitar Hero USB guitar (or keyboard, alternatively). The program comes with two sound banks, “Acoustic Guitar” (shown in the video) and “Drum Kit,” but you could easily create and load your own sound banks. Can someone make one out of fart noises?
The project, which is still in early development, was created by Alexander Shen, who I am proud to say is also happily abusing a technical degree from Berkeley by working on comics and video games (and music).
If you’re in the Brooklyn, New York area on July 15th, you have an opportunity to head over to Light Industry and play the games of Mark “messhof” Essen, including two unreleased games:
Game artist Mark Essen, a.k.a. Messhof, will install five playable games at Light Industry, including two new titles: Stenography Hero, a competitive text-based stenography simulator in the spirit of Guitar Hero, and Rail War, a western-themed side-scroller projected in a Cinemascope aspect ratio.
Other games on dis-play include Flywrench, Punishment, and Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist. The show begins at 8pm and tickets are $6 at the door. No word on whether there will be free drinks!
Very cool, though. I imagine the installation will be similar to the one Mark set up at his university earlier this year.
Ladies and gentlemen, voting for the Procedural Generation Competition has begun! You can check out and download all the entries here.
There were 60 entries to this competition, which is by far the most we’ve ever had. Really, really incredible turn-out – I’m still making my way through all the games, which are about as varied as you can imagine. There’s obviously a lot you can do with this theme, and you guys didn’t disappoint!
So yeah, vote, vote! Start voting! Congratulations to all the competitors!
I trekked over to Jeff Lindsay’s place in sunny San Jose and we
gave a little more love to The Indie Game Database.
Browsing! Jeff put in all kinds of filters that you can now use for browsing! Everything from genre to game engine can now be searched by. Do you want to find all MacOSX platform games for under $20? Now you can! Or maybe you want to look for all the Game Maker games released in 2005 with a minimum community rating of 3? Here it is!
Most of the descriptive elements on a game’s page have been converted to links that use this feature. If you’re looking at a game, just click its release date, genre, platform, or whatever to find more of the same. From there you can make your search even more specific.
You can also sort these results by name, rating, price, or date of release.
Tags. A lot of little bugs with tags have been fixed, but more importantly, you can use them in conjunction with filters. Meaning it’s really easy to look for things like “all browser-based dinosaur games.” Other fun tags to try:
200+ Games! I added a bunch of games this week, from the front page, from your suggestions, and from the B-Game Competition. Check them out, rate them, tag them, enjoy them.
Now that these important browsing features have been added, the next step will be to beef up the community aspect of the site by implementing user reviews, user profiles, and very possibly also user submissions. I’m really looking forward to that.
As always, please give us your feedback and let us know how we could improve the db.
For the weekend, I leave you with the inaugural episode of RSVP, 1up’s new series of intimate game designer round-tables. Mark MacDonald chats with Valve’s Eric Wolpaw, Q-Games’ Dylan Cuthbert, and Everyday Shooter creator Jonathan Mak in the infamous “Sake Room” at Ozumo restaurant in San Francisco (I went there once and ate a cow with a name). It’s long, and I haven’t watched the whole thing. But I’m hoping for a makeout session at the end.
Okay, the forums should be okay for the time being, but we're moving to a new server soon. We'll keep the extension on the Bootleg Demakes Compo, and give you guys until September 7th!
