Posted by Derek Yu Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:48:00 GMT
Be forewarned, listening to John Graham’s voice has been known to cause wombs to spontaneously fill up with babies. Wolfire’s Overgrowth is a physics-based ninja rabbit fighting game that’s currently in development.
Posted by Guest Reviewer Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:29:00 GMT
[This is a guest review by Guert.]
What if you could jump off a skyscraper, plummet down toward the ground at incredible speed, caress the buildings, and live to tell the tale? What if, while diving, you could give thumbs up to fans and flip off protestors? AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, the latest title from Dejobaan, is a skydiving stunt game staged in a futuristic universe. You step off the ledge of a skyscraper and, as you plunge through the floating buildings, you try to earn points by falling close to the structures, earning “kiss” and “hugs” bonuses. For extra points, you can crash through bonus plates, give thumbs up to your fans watching you jump and flip off those who don’t like the show.
The experience is fun and it’s quite satisfying to avoid the buildings and occasionally crash head first into them for a nice excruciating death. The game controls are difficult to get into but once you do, you can start performing some high-paying stunts. The game has a good dose of humor and doesn’t take itself too seriously. For example, the “grab” screen, where you can purchase the full version, has a funny narration that explains the role of pixies in the development of the game. However, some jokes seem funnier on paper. For instance, the game features a meditation video that allows you to meditate in front of your screen. It sounds funny when it’s said out loud but when you experience it in game, it just feels out of place. The visuals are good but sometimes feel amateurish, mostly because it features generic fonts and a few simple “photoshopped” pictures. The audio is also good and fits the game very well. The ergonomics, most notably the menu flow, could have been a bit more polished, but it’s not troublesome.
Aaaaa!!! is a fun game that would benefit of an extra layer of polish. The concept is fun and the experience is entertaining. You can grab the demo, as well as the full game, on Dejobaan’s official website. The demo features 9 levels, the meditation video, and a bunch of hint boxes that tell you fun facts about the game and skydiving. And for those wondering where they may have seen this game before, it’s one of this year’s IGF contestants.
TIGdb: Entry for Aaaaa!!!
Posted by Derek Yu Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:40:00 GMT
Now this is a dream coming true right here! Stonesense (alpha) is an open source isometric visualizer for Dwarf Fortress, created by jonask and Solifuge. It can run side-by-side with the venerable roguelike/sim to provide a graphical view of the game. The sprites are being contributed by various members of the DF community.
Here’a video of the mod in action:
Thanks, Michael Komalarajun, for the heads-up!
Posted by Derek Yu Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:03:00 GMT
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.
TIGdb: Entry for Critter Crunch PSN
Posted by Derek Yu Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:27:00 GMT
Here are a couple of good-looking old-school 2d games coming from teams known for FPS’s:
Capsized is a platform game that’s reminiscent of Exile. Coming in 2010 to Steam and XBLA, from the creators of the multiplayer FPS Nexuiz.
Locomalito, best known for their chunky FPS 8-bit Killer, are working on Hydorah, a Gradius-style shmup. It will be released as freeware at some indeterminate date.
Thanks to Pixel Prospector for the news!
Posted by Derek Yu Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:18:00 GMT
The first ever IGF China wrapped up last week in Shanghai, and our friend Farbs took the top honors with Captain Forever! Congrats, man.
According to Simon Carless, the finalists “came from multiple different Chinese provinces, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia, and over 15 countries were represented in the over 100 entries in the first-ever year of Independent Games Festival China.” You can see all the finalists here. The winners were:
Best Game: Captain Forever, by Farbs (Australia)
Excellence In Art Direction: Donovo, by Magic Day Studio (China)
Technical Excellence: HurricaneX2, by You Yun Tech (China)
Excellence In Audio: Armor Valley by Protege Production (Singapore)
IGF Best Student Game: Autumn Dynasty: Paper Generals, by students from National University of Singapore (Singapore)
IGF Excellent Student Winner: INK, by students from Singapore Polytechnic (Singapore)
IGF Excellent Student Winner: Bumper Halloween, by students from Beijing University (China)
A lot of the other winners look pretty cool, but unfortunately, there’s not a lot of information about many of them. I could only find videos for HurricaneX2, Armor Valley, and Autumn Dynasty. They’re after the jump:
Read more...Posted by Xander Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:30:00 GMT
So it’s not quite the season yet, but what would an MGS game be without a little bit of hype? Arthur Lee will be once again providing a swish parody of the famous series, featuring a suprising amount of gadgets/weapons which seem to mix functionality and the funnies quite nicely.
Release date should be fairly obvious, which hopefully will give some time to improving the music which isn’t quite as accomplished as the rest of the game’s presentation appears to be. The puns however are fantastic enough that I will completely ignore that this isn’t ‘The Underside’.
Posted by Xander Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:09:00 GMT
Charlie Brooker is a not-quite-well-enough-known-as-he-should-be british writer/telly person in the employ of ‘The Guardian’ paper. He also produces some brilliantly wry programs acting as commentary to society’s relationship with TV, the news media and most recently games.
Embedded is the first part of the 50-minute episode which covers everything from Street Fighter II to Perfect Cherry Blossom. The rest of the program is also online on youtube as well as on the UK-Accessible BBC iPlayer. Similar to the ‘Rev Rants’ of Destructoid’s Anthony Burch, only with a somewhat bigger budget, it’s an interesting and entertaining deconstruction of videogame culture. Whether viewed from the mind of an indie games developer, a general enthusiast or simply someone fed up with half-hour, half-arsed sensationalist pieces on gaming addiction featuring at least one fat guy who has customised his chair to double as a toilet, I cannot recommend it enough.
Posted by Derek Yu Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:39:00 GMT
This caught my eye. It’s an old workshop (2007) led by Steph Thirion, who created the iPhone game Eliss. In the workshop, Steph gave students the source code for a simple Breakout game (made with Processing) and had them modify the code to create something new. Most of the students were graphic design majors and not game developers, but they managed to make some cool mods during the workshop.
Now, when you edit animated shapes into a music video, of course they look great, especially if Steph Thirion is the editor. Also, this isn’t really a new concept, considering mods, hacks, and open source have been around since the dawn of games. Still, it’s an interesting idea to create a game that’s made made specifically to be deconstructed and reconstructed like so…
The source is Marie Foulston, via Tigers Hungry.
Posted by Derek Yu Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:22:00 GMT
I’ve been meaning to mention that the Gratuitous Space Battles beta is open for people who pre-order the game for $19.95. You can follow the development of the game at Cliffski’s blog.
I thought this was neat:
