Posted by Guest Reviewer
Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:45:00 GMT
[This is a guest article by
Thomas Maxwell-Smith. If you’d like to contribute a guest article to TIGSource, go here.]
Space Invaders: Art in the Computer Game Environment is a not-exactly-overdue attempt at moving on the debacle of a debate that is ‘are video games art’ – from whether the two should share a sentence to whether they should share a room.
Situated across the three New Media-focused gallery spaces of Liverpool’s Fact Cinema, the exhibition seeks to “[explore] the increasingly blurred boundaries between videogame spaces and real spaces”, and whilst utterly failing to make any sort of coherent comment on such a thing (what game doesn’t “explore space”), it’s still a pretty fun look at the benefit of experiencing games beyond the comfort of your living room.
Read more...
Posted in Games and Art?, Community | Tags Alexitron, messhof | 19 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:11:00 GMT
Pixeljam (Gamma Bros., Dino Run) and messhof (Flywrench, Punishment), have teamed up to create a new “8-bit Rejects” game for Adult Swim. It’s called Cream Wolf.
TIGdb: Entry for Cream Wolf
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Browser Games, Action / Arcade | Tags messhof, PixelJam | 19 comments
Posted by Brandon "BMcC" McCartin
Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:01:00 GMT
I should have seen this on either Heather or Renaud’s blog, but of course I saw it on Offworld.
Stimergy is a game by Kokoromi’s Heather Kelley and Polytron’s Renaud Bédard (Team EMERGENCY HAMMER), created in under 36 hours for the Bivouac Urbain game jam in Quebec. In the game you must guide ants toward a picnic blanket using attractive and repulsive pheromones. According to Renaud:
“The game was made from scratch in C# 3.0 using the Truevision3D engine with no prior design, graphics or sound work. All the graphics in the game are procedural, and the gameplay itself is based on AI rules, basically a cellular automaton plus the notion of “stigmergy” from the insect world.”
You can find Stimergy here, along with a postmortem and time-lapse video of the creation of the game. And on the forums Renaud was kind enough to post a link to the rest of the Bivouac Urbain games, which includes entries by Anna and Messhof, among others. Pictures of the event can be found here.
Posted in Strategy, Competitions, Abstract | Tags Kokoromi, messhof, Polycube, Polytron | 9 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:31:00 GMT
Messhof’s first shareware title, The Thrill of Combat, is a cooperative helicopter surgery simulator, where the goal is to incapacitate unwilling donors and harvest their organs to meet your quotas. I know, it sounds almost too good to be true.
The game is disorienting as hell, even more than Party Boat, which I now realize was the warm-up version for babies and little girly people. In TTOC there are more flashing lights, the controls are even more drunk, and the screen zooms in and out in a way that would make it hard to navigate even if you could fly straight in the first place. Meanwhile, you have to zap people and dodge missiles… and eventually drop the helicopter’s gunner so that he can harvest the organs in splitscreen. If you have a friend around, one person can control the helicopter while the other controls the gunner. (But I can’t imagine this makes it much easier.) Once the gunner has collected enough organs, the helicopter needs to pick him up and take him to the boat to offload them. Then land. And repeat.
Many of messhof’s games are a good fit for the gallery setting, and this one’s no different. It’s stylish, provocative, and made for two people to play while others watch. And everyone will be puking at the end of the night. $5 is a fair admission for this game, provided you are prepared for a physically demanding experience.
TIGdb: Entry for The Thrill of Combat
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Windows, Action / Arcade, Abstract | Tags messhof | 24 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Wed, 20 May 2009 21:34:00 GMT
Avoid the Missiles!!
Flip for Multipliers!!
In messhof’s Party Boat.
TIGdb: Entry for Party Boat
Posted in Browser Games, Action / Arcade | Tags messhof | 36 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:32:00 GMT
I’m making this 3d motorcycle racing game with
Cactus. We don’t have a name for it yet, but it’s looking pretty cool. It has a two player mode, split screen as well as online. The music in the trailer is John Marwin. -
messhof(Source: Tim, via the IndieGames.com blog)
Posted in Community, Videos, Previews | Tags cactus, messhof | 42 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:53:00 GMT
Here are a bunch of photos taken at messhof’s Light Industry premiere. Looks like a good turn out! But then again, they all look like they might be related to messhof. Hmmm…
Still, I wish I could have attended!
Posted in Games and Art?, Community | Tags messhof | 6 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:45:00 GMT
messhof’s latest game, Cowboyana, debuted last night at Light Industry in Brooklyn, New York. The game, which is set in the Old Pixelly West, is strictly a two-player same-computer kinda affair, so if you want to enjoy it you’d best find a friend to play with. Or perhaps an enemy? In Cowboyana you’ll be both – as the game moves from scene to scene, you’ll alternately find yourself fighting alongside your pal and trying to shoot him. Other times you’ll work together to pour whiskey shots. The game goes on indefinitely, but what happens in one scene can determine how later scenes play out. Get shot, and you may even end up as a horse!
As the game muses:
Hard to talk, drunk
Hard to walk
Hard to kill your buddy
Cowboyana oozes all kinds of Old West style and grit – I daresay more than any other cowboy game I’ve ever played. It also seems particularly well-tuned for same-room multiplay, although I’ll have to get my buddies over here before I can test that theory. In the meantime, you can read auntie pixelante’s thoughts on the game. She was at Light Industry last night playing it the way it was meant to be played!
TIGdb: Entry for Cowboyana
Posted in Platformers, Multiplayer, Windows, Freeware | Tags messhof | 18 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:59:00 GMT
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.
Posted in Games and Art?, Community | Tags messhof | 10 comments
Posted by Derek Yu
Sat, 24 May 2008 02:25:00 GMT
I went to Las Vegas with my parents one summer and they took me to an arcade there (I can’t remember which hotel). In the arcade they had this virtual reality headset with Wolfenstein 3d in it that was haphazardly constructed and extremely disorienting, and it made me want to vomit. I haven’t thought about that game in many, many years, but Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist brought the memories flooding back (out of my mouth).
I believe its creator, messhof, is genuinely trying to hurt us with his games.
Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Windows, Action / Arcade, Freeware | Tags messhof | 30 comments
