???: The Movie

Posted by Tim Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:16:00 GMT

Posted in Competitions | 15 comments

Becherovka Game 2006 - A Summary

Posted by Derek Yu Tue, 23 Jan 2007 19:40:00 GMT

I hadn’t even heard of Becherovka Game until Tomus e-mailed me recently. It’s a Czech gaming competition that’s sponsored by a liqueur. I know, you learn something new every day, right?

Anyway, in the effort of expanding our horizons and making the world a smaller place, check out Tomus’s summary of the competition (in English). There are some gems in there. I tried out Faux Pa (pictured) based on his recommendation and it was a pretty fun little puzzle game!

Posted in Community, Competitions | 2 comments

Four Elements V Results

Posted by Tim Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:12:00 GMT

Four Elements V compo results are out – Mop of Destiny emerges as the overall winner.

There’s a lot of good comments about this platformer, and it has been patched thoroughly so the game should work on most PCs regardless of the specs.

Posted in Competitions | 6 comments

Ludum Dare Compo

Posted by Tim Sun, 21 Jan 2007 17:24:00 GMT

A new Ludum Dare compo is set to happen soon (Jan 26 to 28th), with active discussions to be held in the competition IRC channel #ludumdare on irc.afternet.org.

An accompanying wiki page should be up shortly. The theme will be nominated and voted on Jan 26th. More info posted here .

Previous competition entry Galcon has since graduated into a full-fledged indie game, but toosh is still the champion of Swarm Racer.

Posted in Competitions | 4 comments

Flash Game Design Competition

Posted by Tim Sun, 21 Jan 2007 16:32:00 GMT

Winding down nicely now. Theme for this competition is ‘Grow’, and there are some nice prizes in store. Final submission date is February 23rd. More details here.

Had planned to use a larger image, but then it’ll cause some massive text spillage.

Posted in Competitions | no comments

Open Letter to All Fourteen Slamdance Finalists

Posted by Tim Wed, 10 Jan 2007 20:39:00 GMT

Here’s an absolutely different take on the issue, the approach adopted by one of the Slamdance Finalists. As a participant of the event, Jason has first-hand experience from the entire situation and there’s no better place to keep up yourself updated besides this link.

Plus, if you scroll all the way down there’s a note from the Slamdance Games organizer himself. Click here to read the interview with Danny Ledonne, the creator of SCMRPG. Conducted by Jason Rohrer.

Posted in Social Impact, Community, Competitions | 4 comments

Metro4K

Posted by Tim Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:23:00 GMT

Essentially a SimCity remake, but with most of the boring features removed to facilitate city infrastructure planning and growth. Metro4K is a Java application that was written for the J4K 2007 Competition, with a file size measuring a measly 4096 bytes.

Click on the map to view a different section, or on the main window to start zoning some areas. Use basic building blocks to mould your city – divided into residental, commercial and industrial plots, then connect them by laying down some roads. Power supplies are still required, though utilites have been combined to simplify matters.

There’s no save/load option, and the author did note that it wasn’t possible with the size limitation. You could leave the window running for the entire night, of course…

Posted in Remakes, Competitions | no comments

Weapons of MASS DESTRUCTION FOUND

Posted by Tim Mon, 08 Jan 2007 15:26:00 GMT

(Force Majeure, Discord, other Shmup-Dev Autofire 2007 Compo entries)

Posted in Shoot-em-ups, Competitions, Previews | 14 comments

Columbine RPG Slammed

Posted by Derek Yu Sun, 07 Jan 2007 14:48:00 GMT

“Slamdance finalist Super Columbine Massacre RPG has been officially kicked from the festival due to mounting pressure from protesters and the loss of sponsorship, the game’s creator told Kotaku Thursday night.

This is the first time in the Slamdance Festival’s 13-year history that a game or film has been removed from the festival due to criticism or outside pressure.” (Read More)

This rather mediocre (as a game, at least) RPG continues to stir up controversy. I won’t bother to discuss my own opinion of the situation. It’s easy to understand why every side is doing what they’re doing.

Of note is that Braid, the innovative time-altering game from last year’s IGF has dropped out of the competition in protest of Slamdance’s decision.

Update: A bunch more games have bowed out and an official letter of protest has been issued. And other crap you can read about here. (Thanks, Shih Tzu!)

Posted in RPG, Social Impact, Community, Competitions | Tags DannyLedonne | 39 comments

3 Minute Games

Posted by ithamore Mon, 11 Dec 2006 04:29:00 GMT

Now that the 10th iteration of the 3 Minute Game Contest (a.k.a. 3 Punge) has been declared complete, its results have finally been given an official page (roughly translated from Japanese to English by Google’s Language Tools). Each game is suppose to be based on a 3 minute theme, but longer mini-games have also been accepted. The winner is suppose to be "3 hours" worth of play and, from what I read, pretty funny, but it was created with RPG Maker. I usually don’t bother with any of the games requiring RPGM’s RTPs.

As for the non-RPGM games, Crostar released another cute platformer, Sky-Whirling Geo, which didn’t fare as well as his entry for the previous contest, Supakingurato. I prefer the gameplay of Supakingurato, and it’s more forgiving than its successor.

Granspope Frial is TERU-soach’s best effort in most ways. The graphics have a clean, interesting style, and the design’s concept has some good potential. You race as a bird against the clock by pressing a single key (‘Z’ or ‘Space’) to fly through a course covered with acceleration bars, which boosts you at the angle at which you touch them as long as your momentum is increasing. The problem is that the timing is quite tricky and that there is little room for error when it comes to hitting the 90˚ direction switching boosters. Course 0 took about 10 tries before I got the hang of it and unlocked the next. Although it might have been because I’m a bit rhythmical challenged, it took me much longer to get past Course 1. I tried 20 or 30 times at first and several times more since September, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I was able to shave off those last 10 seconds I needed loose in order to progress. Course 2 was a good change of pace with new layout elements, but Course 3 is currently frustrating me. Still, I want to get into that sweet spot of the game’s flow, which makes Granspope Frial so mumy favorite of the entries for the 10th contest. But it’s not recommended for those low in patience.

Probably the easiest entry to get into, however, is Y. ABE’s Whirlwind. Its semi-auto-lock aim and invincibility probably made it seem too easy to most voters and earned it a shared rank of 11th place. As a 360˚ turret-like mini-STG, however, it’s rather decent.

Back in October, Tim posted Sky-Whirling Geo, Whirlwind, and a couple more 3 Punge games at Independent Gaming. You can head over there to get more details on them and his opinion.

Recently, the number of decent games submitted to 3 Punge has been improving. There still haven’t been any gems to match the sparkle and shine of Omega’s Every Extend and Dan! Da! Dan! from the 2nd and 5th contests, and there still are several disappointing submissions. However, one of the best things about the site is it also serves as a portal to other games made by its contestants.

The newcomer who took 3rd place, nemu90kWw, has created several Flash games. The best is a remake of Flixx, FliFlixx, which originally appeared on the wonderful PC98. He also made a Parodius inspired STG and a cat bouncing game, but you can read about those and his 3 Punge entry in Tim’s posts. Then there’s Disorder Island: a simple platformer during stage 1 and 2, but stage 3 is infuriating. (Controls: hold ‘Shift’ to run with the arrows, up jumps, down crouches or drops through the platform, ‘Z’ swings the sword, and ‘X’ throws a bomb once you’ve defeated enough enemies.)

Y. ABE, for whom the 10th contest was also a first, has 2 other STGs on his site. Electrical Bird, which Tim found disappointing, offers more play and challenge than Whirlwind, so I prefer it. But I also have a soft spot for graphics and music that have a computerized or electronic aesthetic, which makes me a bit biased. The new 1.0 version is even better than 0.9 was. Scene1 hasn’t changed much and Scene3 has been tweaked, but Scene2 has had 4 elevator columns added to it, which can raise both the player and the enemies. And the best change is the lightening attack has been replaced with jets of plasma that shoot out like wings. It works very well with the new energy chain scoring system.

On the other hand, Marsenary (direct download) is different from his other 2 games. The environment is a 3D sim, and it has arena play (which has been abandoned), a story/mission mode, an online high score mode for each area, and ship customization. Even with all that, though, I found it less enjoyable than Electrical Bird.

Last week, the deadline for the 11th 3 Minute Game Contest was announced for December 24. A prize won’t be awarded to a winner outside of Japan, but that doesn’t exclude any of us from entering for bragging rights. Just be sure to follow the rules as well as you can to keep your entry from being disqualified. As for myself, I’m looking forward to more 3 Punge gaming in January.

Posted in Platformers, Remakes, Browser Games, Shoot-em-ups, Competitions | 7 comments