[Fridays on Venus Patrol are designer Dominique 'Dom2D' Ferland's day to present TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we'll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back on Fridays for the latest picks!]
This week’s selection shows some love for pixel art, with fourteen games in development showing true skill with the pixel brush! We have Chasm in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign, Tale of the Stolen Rainbow creating an epic Zelda-like adventure with minimalist black and white pixels, and then there’s The Bitter End.. oh wait, it seems to have been made in Hexels!
After well over a year of build-up and preparation, the day has finally come: Austin indie collective JUEGOS RANCHEROS has officially given the first of its TEXATRON machines a permanent home at Guzu, Austin’s new best designer toy/art/comic shop & gallery.
What this means for you is that now you can go play Messhof’s still-unbelievably-highly-anticipated Nidhogg, for free, whenever you want, during Guzu’s operating hours — as well as a slew of other games on the Winnitron network, including special 2-player builds of Canabalt & Super Crate Box, and much more.
The installation is just the first of what we hope will be many more to come, as well as the prelude to many enhancements to the Winnitron’s front- and back-ends to make machines like the TEXATRON perfect cultural-outreach machines to bring interesting, beautiful videogames to a wider and cross-cultural audience.
If you’re in Austin, drop by Guzu at 5000 N Lamar Blvd — just next door to Austin Books & Comics — and be sure to browse around for a legitimately amazing selection of books & toys while you’re there. Keep your eyes on the TEXATRON site for more news about upcoming locations, and investigate the Winnitron site if you’d like to bring machines like this to your own town.
[Wednesdays on Venus Patrol are GameToilet Days, where we feature new installments of the brilliant comic series from artist & game dev Jerry ‘King Baggot‘ Carpenter. You can find hundreds more entries in the series at the comic's new permanent home, gametoilet.venuspatrol.com!]
Apologies to anyone expecting a game based around Richie’s dad in ‘Happy Days’ — I’ll get round to that one in good time.
Good news for those across the pond, as UK supergroup Wild Rumpus have officially announced the date, time & nautical location of their next multiplayer games event.
The group will be taking to the high seas, sort of, for a party aboard the MS Stubnitz that will not only include a live set from Super Hexagon composer Chipzel, but the UK debut of Keita Takahashi’s Tenya Wanya Teens, its first appearance abroad following our GDC party & most recent JUEGOS RANCHEROS meetup.
The Rumpus is happening Saturday, May 11th, just one day after the UK indie conference Bit of Alright, which will also be aboard the Stubnitz and will include talks from Thomas Was Alone‘s Mike Bithell, Hide & Seek’s Holly Gramazio, Wild Rumpus’s own George Buckenham, writer & game designer Cara Ellison, Redshirt creator Mitu Khandaker and many more.
The album features a who’s-who of indie game musicians, including Luftrausers & Gun Godz composer Kozilek, Souleye — the musician behind Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVVV, Reckahdam — composer, programmer, and the drummer you’ve seen supporting any given live Disasterpeace performance, and, notably, Anticon’s Doseone, who you’ll no doubt recognize as the artist behind Gun Godz‘ title theme.
The first of two new album drops worth noting today: Proteus & Dyad musician David Kanaga has just let loose a small flurry of EPs, including Dinosaur Planet Remixes, a downloadable version of the set he performed live at our Venus Patrol / Wild Rumpus GDC party.
If the name Dinosaur Planet only half-rings a bell, you may know it better by its eventual commercial release: Starfox Adventures, the GameCube title eventually Rare re-branded and released it as, after its long lead as a Nintendo 64 original IP.
The source material comes from effects gleaned from leaked video of the original Planet footage (an hour of which is below the fold), as well as the actual score from superstar composer Grant Kirkhope, famous for his work on basically every great Rare franchise including GoldenEye, Perfect Dark & Banjo-Kazooie.
In this latest installment of Fantastic Video, we’re joined by a slightly inebriated Rob Lach (in the true spirit of Fantastic Arcade), for a forty minute look behind the scenes of POP – Methodology Experiment One (the trailer for which is below).
In it, Lach explains how the game is both an attempt to both “extend the definition of what a game is” (POP standing for the “philosophy of play”), and to flip the script of the standard methodology of creating a game — working from concept to asset creation to music to technology to final product — by here beginning with the music and working forward from there.
In the interim, Lach also lays his books wide open, showing the results of his “pay what you want” sales, and comparing the breakdown between those that came in from game sites versus those that discovered the game from art & design blogs (hint: the favor’s not in the game-fan’s court)… and gives you more information than you ever knew you wanted about firearms.
[Wednesdays on Venus Patrol are GameToilet Days, where we feature new installments of the brilliant comic series from artist & game dev Jerry ‘King Baggot‘ Carpenter. You can find hundreds more entries in the series at the comic's new permanent home, gametoilet.venuspatrol.com!]
I’m actually making this one, because I like sliced sausage SO MUCH.
Stay tuned to my accursed twitter for its inevitable feature-free posting this Friday!
[Wednesdays on Venus Patrol are GameToilet Days, where we feature new installments of the brilliant comic series from artist & game dev Jerry ‘King Baggot‘ Carpenter. You can find hundreds more entries in the series at the comic's new permanent home, gametoilet.venuspatrol.com!]
Drawn drunk in honour of all the good jammy gits rockin’ the joypads at GDC!
[This post is re-blogged from Venus Patrol sister-organization JUEGOS RANCHEROS, our local Austin indie game collective.]
It’s been years since we’ve last seen a new game from Keita Takahashi — most famous for his Namco cult classic Katamari Damacy and the even cultier PS3/iPhone game Noby Noby Boy — but this Thursday, April 4th, at 7:00PM, JUEGOS RANCHEROS will be showing not one but two brand new works from the esteemed designer at the North Door.
The first will be Tenya Wanya Teens — the co-production of Takahashi’s indie studio Uvula, UK-based multiplayer event group Wild Rumpus, and Venus Patrol — which just made its world debut to greatacclaim at last week’s Game Developers Conference.
Tenya Wanya Teens, which we describe as “a coming-of-age tale about love, hygiene, monsters and finding discarded erotic magazines in the woods”, is also maybe also best described as “a very silly party game for two players armed with sixteen buttons each.” This will be its first showing outside the conference as it starts to make its way around the globe playing in various multiplayer arenas.
But Austin will also be the first place anywhere in the world that gets to see another new game from Takahashi, this one titled A͈L͈P͈H͈A͈B͈E͈T͈ (those little marks are important) — a co-production of Takahashi and JUEGOS’ own Adam Saltsman, creator of iPhone superhit Canabalt — being put together for the recently-Kickstarted LA Game Space.
Everything will be kicking off Thursday, April 4th, at 7:00PM at North Door, 501 Brushy Street, Austin, TX 78702! The show is free and open to all the public — come drink, play, and meet the people changing the way you think about videogames!
