Just as he did with Machinarium, Mr. Brandon Boyer gives us a peek of the art direction behind Capybara’s gorgeous Critter Crunch, a ridiculously cute puzzle game that nonetheless involves a lot of puking into someone else’s mouth. This is 2 critters and NO cup, ladies and germs.
The game started off on the iPhone, where it won the IGF Mobile Best Game award and the Audio Achievement award, but it’s now available on PSN for $6.99.
Fig. 8 is a new browser game from Intuition Games (Dinowaurs, Effing Hail) where you control a bicycle through a city displayed as a technical diagram. I really enjoyed it – it gave me a great reminder of how relaxing it is to ride a bike through a suburban neighborhood (something I haven’t done in a long time). Somehow this wouldn’t have worked without the graphics, audio (great music), and the way the bicycle’s wheels leave tracks.
I’m not sure if it was the right idea to add highscores and combos to this game, however – it’s a lot more fun to do loops and draw pictures on the ground than to maintain a straight line or “grind” edges. Similarly, I think the checkpoints put too much emphasis on finishing rather than simply enjoying the biking.
In the end, I guess I’m uncertain whether it should have been a race at all. I got more enjoyment out of the game once I dropped that pretense. Otherwise, it’s a really wonderful experience.
Today I Die is the last in a trilogy of art-games designed by Daniel Benmergui that deals with causality and human relationships. In each of the three games – Storyteller, I Wish I Were the Moon, and Today I Die – he gives the player a unique mechanic with which to play with these themes. In Storyteller, the mechanic is dragging and dropping, in I Wish I Were the Moon it’s photography, and in Today I Die, it’s poetry. I enjoyed all the games very much, but I appreciate them even more as a kind of gaming triptych.
Today I Die is definitely the most “gamey” of the three, and involves some action and puzzle-solving. But like all art-games the value doesn’t come from the challenge so much as the way players can explore a concept through simple interaction and possibly find tender or revelatory moments inside. Causality, in particular, is a rich concept that’s been important in philosophy as far back as Aristotle, who defined four types of causes that can all be seen in these games. It’s also the central theme of Gregory Weir’s I Fell in Love with the Majesty of Colors, which was inspired by Daniel’s work.
Daniel is trying out an interesting business model to support his games (i.e. keep them ad-free) – sponsors who donate a certain amount can receive prizes like custom characters or custom endings.
Tom Sennett Appreciation Week continues: It’s amazing what Tom Sennett can do with stick figures and some old timey music! In WarioWare the humor revolved around figuring out how to win in each microgame – When the Bomb Goes Off adds a very humanist touch to the basic concept.
Somehow I imagine that when the bomb does go off, I’ll be trying to finish a post for TIGSource!
Intuition Games, the creators of the multiplayer strategy game Dinowaurs, have released a nifty new browser game called Effing Hail. Apparently hail is actually formed the way it is in the game, starting as frozen rain drops that get bigger as updrafts keep them afloat. Thankfully, the largest hailstone ever recorded IRL is still only (!) the size of a volleyball.
I wonder if, when that volleyball-sized hailstone hit the ground, some deity somewhere was like “FUCK, I could have made that so much BIGGER!“
A slightly offbeat recommendation, but my friend and game developer Andy “astrospoon” Hull is starting something cool that I think is very much in the indie spirit – he’s creating interactive storybooks for kids through his new company, Story Fort (who would have thought that he once created a game called Nun n’ Gun?). Andy single-handedly wrote, illustrated, coded, narrated, and wrote music for his first book, What’s Bothering Carl?, which features lots of interactive bits on each page as well as a card-matching game and two full-length, animated music videos (!), which are a riot. I dunno, it’s a really nifty and inspiring thing, and brought back all kinds of good memories of when I was a kid, playing with educational stuff like The Manhole and Kid Pix, which had a big impact on me. I would have killed to have a book like this. Maybe you guys have or know of some younglings that might likewise appreciate it.
Okay, probably not what you were expecting to see, but hear me out.
Brass Restoration is a Visual Novel by Japanese based Twincle Drop and translated by Yandere Translations. Unlike a lot of Visual Novels however this was released as a free game, so the translation installer actually includes the full game in its entirety.
The story surrounds a young musician who suffers a cruel accident that robs him of his arm. This leaves you making the occasional choice which slowly affect his life after the accident. Will he be able to mend the connection he had with music now that he can’t create as he used to, or will he instead forge new relationships as a result?
You’ve already left haven’t you? Bugger…
Well if you are still reading, here’s why you should care.
If you are looking for a computer game that is indie to the core, look no farther than “GUBS: Pixel Edition.”
What makes this an indie-game of indie-games is the past of the project. “GUBS” started around 1992 as a series of doodles in the margins of a child’s homework. That child, a young Cole Medeiros, went on to make a home-made deck of cards created with pencil on squares of index-card. The cards depicted small creatures that would take the title ‘Gubs,’ and other cards depicted the world of these creatures.
Through the game that took shape over the following years, with cards being added and scraped, a story began to take shape, of Gubs and the timeless wars fought between them. With each new version, Cole would play GUBS with his brother Alex and their friends, trying to find a balanced game.
As the years passed and the game developed, Cole looked into printing a professional deck of his cards. After years of trying different processes and even sending sample decks to publishing companies, Medeiros decided to self-publish the game, and in 2007, the “GUBS: A Game of Wit and Luck” went on sale as a finished project.
The website of the 2BeeGames competition takes a slight dig at the IGF by saying “unlike some events where every judge plays only a few games, our judges will play each and every game to determine the finalists (up to 10).” However, developers that are interested in the compo should be more mindful of this part of the official rules:
5. Ownership/Use of Entries: Entrants retain ownership of the Games they submit, however, by entering you, on behalf of yourself and any Third Party Creators, grant Contest Entities the perpetual, fully-paid, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to reproduce, prepare derivate [sic] works of (including modification to allow game play on different platforms), distribute, display, exhibit, transmit, broadcast, televise, digitize, otherwise use, and permit others to use and perform throughout the world the Games in any manner, form, or format now or hereinafter created, including on the internet, and for any purpose, including, but not limited to, advertising or promotion of Contest Entities and Contest Entities’ goods and/or services, all without further consent from or payment to you, Third Party Creators or any other third parties.
It goes on to say that the “Contest Entities” do not waive any “rights to use similar or related ideas without any restriction whatsoever.” In other words, if you enter the competition (just enter, not necessarily win), you are giving the casual games publisher Zoo Games a license to not only market and sell your game all over the world, but also make knock-off games using your ideas.
Classy stuff!
(Thanks to the various folks that pointed this out.)
