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).
I considered writing a two-word review for this game: “fart jetpack.”
But hey, there’s a lot more I’d like to say about Puzzle Farter, like how I enjoy how deep and rich the farts in the game sound, how much they made me chuckle, and how great the character designs are. How easily Pet Tomato (another great company name, by the way) could have made the main character a fat guy with a beer gut rather than a cute, nerdy fish-head boy with a Hawaiian T-shirt on. Fun game.
Click here for an interview with one of the creators.
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.
Touch My Pixel sent me this preview of a Scarygirl Flash game they’re working on. It looks like fairly standard platforming action, but boy, is it pretty! Love those underwater levels, natch.
Posted by Jordan Magnuson
Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:06:00 GMT
Triumph War 2099 is up there with Gladiator as one of the best cooperative multiplayer on one keyboard games ever made. You and up to three other players take control of 1-4 commandos with legions of troops at your disposal, and one goal in mind: retrieve the Plasma Cannon Energy Crystal from the clutches of an infestation of alien bugs! Easier said than done.
Basically what we have here is a top-down shoot-’em-up/strategy hybrid with a fantastic cooperative element. Pick up a machine gun, flame thrower, plasma cannon and a few grenades, call in some air support, let your troops know what you want from them, and head into the swarm guns blazing with your friends at your sides.
Sounds epic? It is. Do yourself a favor, and download this free gem now from Home of the Underdogs (sadly-or fortunately-one of the few sites still hosting the game).
Edit:
This game is only good when played multiplayer. I should have mentioned that before.
Also, if you’d like to check out another game in this vein, take a look at Planet Wars: http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?21000000036522. Poor graphics, and full of bugs, the game can, nonetheless, be more fun than Triumph at times. Again, only multiplayer.
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!
Solar Vengeance kicks it Old-School with a capital “O.” Everything from the name, to the graphics, to the website design, is decidedly from a bygone era of PC computing, and that’s fine with me. SV debuted in 1995 as a turn-based strategy game with 3 unit types – 13 years later you can command 24 types of units in real-time, against human or AI opponents, on or offline, in a number of different customizable scenarios. The game has also gone from shareware to freeware.
Like many good strategy games, the basic rules are relatively simple, but open up complex gameplay. The goal of the game is to take over the Capital StarSystems of your opponents while protecting your own. To do this, you must create StarShips and expand your empire by conquering neighboring StarSystems, which will then develop resources and allow you to create more StarShips.
In any game you can create 6 types of StarShips, chosen beforehand out of a possible 24. Each StarShip has two ratings – an Engine rating and a Primary rating – that determine how effective the ship is. For WarShips, the most basic “soldier” unit, the Primary rating is Weapons, and determines how strong the ship is. A WarShip with a higher Weapons rating will always prevail over a weaker one.
Each Scenario in SV is randomly generated based on a few set parameters like “Number of Star Systems” and “Cluster Density,” making this a fitting game to mention as we wrap up our Procedural Generation Competition. But what’s really awesome is that most of the Scenarios and AIs available with the game are developed in C# by the small, but enthusiastic, Solar Vengeance community. And as creator Dion Kurczek continues to work dedicatedly on the game, who knows what we’ll see next?
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.
