Posted by Brandon "BMcC" McCartin
Tue, 12 May 2009 17:52:00 GMT
Results from the 14th “tri-annual 48 hour solo game development competition” Ludum Dare are in. This time around there were a whopping (sweet, I seldom get to write “whopping”) 123, wait, 132 entries—all of which you can find here, with nice little thumbnails of each and the top games neatly divided into categories. This round’s theme was “The Advancing Wall of Doom.”
Let’s get a torrent up, people! I would seed that all kinds of generously.
Once again, the entries and results can be found here. Also, time-lapse development footage of a handful of the games can be found here. (Nice desktop, agj!)
The next Ludum Dare (15) will begin in August. Be ready.
Posted by Brandon "BMcC" McCartin
Tue, 12 May 2009 16:30:00 GMT
Moving on, then! Here is a trailer of the latest in the PS3 PixelJunk series from Q-Games, tentatively titled 1-4. It looks floaty and physicsy and fun! Think Solar Jetman (one of my favourites), or Oids or something, but with impressive liquid physics, destroyable terrain, and slick, modern visuals. I dunno if the music in the trailer is from the game, but it seems cool too!
There was a contest going on to pick the name of 1-4, but it looks like the entry period is now over. (Sorry, folks!) Anyway, you can still find more about the game here.
Posted by Leigh Christian Ashton
Mon, 11 May 2009 14:18:00 GMT
I’d find it hard to believe anyone visiting these pages would need an introduction to Jonathan Blow, the amazingly talented game developer/guru seems to be everywhere at the moment, his game Braid being the darling hit on Xbox Live and having recently stormed onto the PC. I took the opportunity to fire some questions over so that he could pour some honey into my ears in reply (except, being an email interview, i guess it would be my eyes? and metaphorically at that?)
Anyway, without further ado, please read on..
Leigh: Jon, hello, thanks for taking the time to answer some of my questions. Could you please introduce yourself to the crowd?
Jon: Hi, my name is Jonathan Blow. I make games! I started out in games as mainly a technical guy, but recently I have been thinking ever-more about design, and on Braid I cared much more about the game design than the technical parts.
Posted by Lorne Whiting
Mon, 11 May 2009 06:20:00 GMT
Pioneer is one of them space shooter games. Like, uh, well, all those space shooter games from Asteroids onward.
The game has some charm, with interesting characters and some nice art, but it’s kinda held back by little flaws.
The game is hit-or-miss, the ships look good, as you can see in the screenshot, but everything sort of lacks impact, the lasers don’t feel so much like weapons as pea-shooters, and the game is very slow paced, which makes playing it feel kind of like a chore, which is a shame because it seems like there’s an interesting narrative behind the game. Speaking of narrative, the characters, from what I saw in the demo, are kinda two-dimensional, but their portraits are interesting, with a unique pixelly style. So the gameplay is kinda slow and not as good as games like Moonpod’s Starscape (but what is, huh?) it’s got a stronger plot than most of these space shooters.
Anyway, try it out, as I said, it’s hit or miss, so I’m sure some people will like it, and some won’t, but either way it’s a small download at 60MB.
All Of Our Friends Are Dead is an atmospheric run and gun platformer. It’s pretty short (I finished it in under two hours), and what’s going on isn’t very clear, but it does a good job at immersing the player into a strange alien world and has nice and stylized visuals. To me it felt like a cross between Glum Buster and the final alien levels of Contra and Super C.
Though it’s not just a “zen platformer” as moi in the forums described a particular type of game, which I took to mean games like Knytt and Seiklus: there’s too many shooting enemies, precise platform jumps, bosses, and deaths from spikes for the player to zone out while playing it. But it shares their emphasis on carefully building up a strong sense of the game’s world and atmosphere with little interesting touches.
My only minor complaint is that the movement is a bit too slippery, causing me to fall into spikes unless I’m precise about it. But thankfully the emulator-style quicksave/quickload feature means that’s not a big problem. That and I wish the game were longer, as is often the case with games I like.
EDIT: Here’s a mirror for those who are annoyed by RapidShare. Also this is the willhostforfood download. Don’t download the first download in that forum thread, it’s v0.9, instead get v1.1 at one of the above links.
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.
Newgrounds creator Tom Fulp announced last month that the site would be extending its ad revenue sharing program to all users. I_smell mentioned this one the forums when it was first announced, but I missed it. He wrote:
If you make browser games, you know the Flash portal Newgrounds. They’ve had their own embedded ads service since about May 2008, but now they’ve kicked it up a notch. Newgrounds now automatically share their ad revenue whether you sign up for the ads or not.
For example- I made a game recently and got it sponsored by a third party. The terms were that I wasn’t allowed to embed any ads in the game. So I didn’t, there are no ads in the game. Now Newgrounds will pay me regardless just because my game’s on their site. Not just games either, ad impressions come from audio submissions, animations and even my damn userpage. I made 3 cents for having a blog. Thanks!
The site has a nice interface for tracking your earnings here. You can see an example of it here. Thanks, I_smell!
It’s cool that Newgrounds (still my favorite Flash portal) is doing this. Since this program’s been up for a month now, has anyone had or heard of any success with it? How does it compare to, say, Kongregate’s service and similar programs?
There’s a new version of the multiplayer Team Fortress 2 demake Gang Garrison. It’s feature-packed:
We’ve added the Control Point gamemode and a bunch of new maps. We’ve given the Healer the ability to Ubercharge (although we call it a Superburst), and the Overweight now has a Manvich to munch on and gain HP. The game now has a timer, a killcam, an afk kicker, and a humiliation round. There are also new sound effects, HUDs, and all sorts of other features.
And here’s a bit more good news: the Team Fortress 2 guys have nothing but good things to say about this latest release (probably to the chagrin of many lawyers)! Faucet and its community are also hard at work other open-source projects, like Left 4 Dead, Garry’s Mod, and Portal demakes (Magenta Box?). Hit up the first link for more information on how to participate.
Spewer is the latest release from Edmund McMillen, and in my opinion, his most mature… design-wise! Thematically, it’s a puzzle platform game about a lab animal that pukes and eats its own puke, which can easily serve as a metaphor for the way game designers are forced to consume and regurgitate each other’s ideas to get ahead, or how players are simply animals subjected to cruel experiments created by game developers. Or maybe it’s just gross and funny. Either way, the mechanic is fresh and is stretched very well across the game’s 50-odd levels. Big props to the game’s programmer, Eli Piilonen, who did some impressive work with the physics. It handles great.
The game runs in a browser and is also available as a standalone executable and Flash file.
