In this latest installment of Fantastic Video, we’re joined by Dennis Wedin & Cactus — the duo now better known as Dennaton, for a thirty minute look behind the scenes of the creation of their 2012 ultra-violent & ultra-sytlish Hotline Miami — a game that now sports its own bonus level based on Fantastic Arcade itself.
Not only do you get a look at the prototyping process that spans back to versions Cactus had created nearly a decade ago, but also the real-world cultural touchstones that inspired the game’s neon-lit and blood-drenched scenery.
As a bonus, below you’ll find the post-mortem aftershow in its entirety: the Catline Meowmi Megamix, about which there is little more to say than ‘just watch’.
Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.
In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are presented here on Venus Patrol for your reference, each fully-annotated, -linked, and off-the-cuff blurbed, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.
[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!]
Of course worms can’t actually reproduce with themselves – they have a defence mechanisim which prevents it.
Slugs & snails can – but they just don’t fit into a grid-based-puzzler as nicely (take note of this when you start development, Gamenauts xxx).
I should probably slow down a bit with the Big Announcements, but there’s just too much to get through before everything explodes next week, so here’s One More Big One: in addition to the debut of Tenya Wanya Teens, our March 27th GDC party will also see the release of a new T-shirt designed by Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi.
The ‘Videogame Romantics’ shirt, inspired by Takahashi’s speech featured on Venus Patrol a few months back, will be released at the party in the ‘Sunset’ colorway pictured above, in a very limited edition that will be exclusive to that one night.
Following the party, the shirt will be the first item available worldwide on the Venus Patrol Shop — long teased in that top bar, but now actually coming soon in partnership with our superpals at Fangamer — in two new colorways, and probably even more colorways after those sell through, and then, hopefully, branching out into many more new designs after this.
Until then, if you want to fly your fellow Videogame Romantic freak flag in those colors above, I would suggest literally like bee-lining to the Fangamer booth at our party on March 27th as soon as possible, because I honestly don’t think they’re going to last long.
You’ve no doubt spotted our various teasers for the game across the web, but with just a week until its debut at our upcoming GDC party, it’s time to pull back the curtain just a bit more: introducing Tenya Wanya Teens, a co-production of Venus Patrol, Wild Rumpus, and Uvula, the husband & wife indie team of Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi & former Namco composer Asuka Sakai.
What is Tenya Wanya Teens? It’s “a coming-of-age tale about love, hygiene, monsters and finding discarded erotic magazines in the woods”. It’s a game about trying desperately to not say or do the wrong thing at the wrong time — that universal struggle to maintain the façade of normality during the awkward transition from child- to adulthood.
But, more than anything, really, it’s a silly party game for two players armed with sixteen buttons each, as demonstrated on prototype box-file controllers by Wild Rumpus’s Marie Foulston & Dick Hogg above, as we put the final touches on the real deluxe custom joysticks that will make their debut alongside the game.
After that? Stay tuned for news about release to the wider world: we’re already thinking about how we can bring the game to your home, even granted its poly-button insanity — we’ll have more about that in the future both here and at the official Tenya Wanya Teens website & twitter account.
[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!]
This one showcases my inability to draw famous faces quite nicely, I think. My alternative title for it was “Dean Stockwell Says,” which is probably less catchy.
With just two weeks to go until the full Game Developers Conference madness officially kicks in, Wild Rumpus & Venus Patrol have just released the first wave of lineup announcements for our 2013 party, with both some familiar faces and some brand new additions.
Sound Shapes co-creator & star I Am Robot And Proud will be performing a live set including his own brand-new reactive visuals (get a little sneak peek of that here), and Super Hexagon‘s own Chipzel (above) will be part of a lineup that also includes Dyad/Proteus musician David Kanaga, and Gun Godz & Luftrausers‘ Kozilek.
Also returning will be Anticon superstar Dose One, now with his Themselves, 13&God & Subtle bandmate Jel (see why he’s the “MPC emperor” in the video above). After the performances, Fez‘s Phil Fish & former Uncharted designer Rich Lemarchand will be playing out the night with their usual fantastic dance set as Phillipe Lemarchand.
If you’ll be around the Bay Area on March 27th & haven’t yet purchased tickets, we’ve just opened up another round which can be purchased by clicking right over here. We’ll have more info coming soon as the date draws even more dangerously near!
[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!]
My original post for this one looked like a toddler’s drawing of an Echochrome level – but I then lost it on the train.
Also missing from the above is ‘J*Bert’, which is, of course, the J-pop remix with shitloads of kittens & a banging Morning Musume soundtrack.
[This post is re-blogged from Venus Patrol sister-organization JUEGOS RANCHEROS, our local Austin indie game collective.]
LittleBigPlanet and the upcoming Tearaway are among the most creative & beautiful games to land on the PlayStation platform, and their creators, Media Molecule, will be right here in Austin Thursday, March 7th, at 7:00PM at the North Door.
Flying in all the way from Guildford, UK, the Media Molecule team will be presenting — for the first time ever — the results of its own first-ever internal game jam, with, says the company, “photos and videos of things we made — games yes, but a whole load of weirdness, too.”
The team will talk through the process of running a game jam and the weird stuff they did alongside it, and then “a bit about how we applied it to our real dev process.”
Before that, the night will open with the first look at the upcoming SoundSelf, a game that “combines your own voice with evolving fractal graphics and mind-altering auditory feedback” being created by local sound designer Robin Arnott, with live musical accompaniment by Austin electronic guitarist Michael Garfield.
Following the presentations, the night will conclude with more music by JUEGOS RANCHEROS’ own resident Cosmic DJ, and more! Everything will be kicking off Thursday, March 7th, at 7:00PM at North Door, 501 Brushy Street, Austin, TX 78702! The show is free and open to all the public — come drink, dance, and meet the people changing the way you think about videogames!
[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!]
There are looooads of games/apps designed for autistic children, but not enough for the parents of said kids – and so that’s where this one comes from.
When I pester my youngest, who has recently received his official ASD badge-of-honour, about what he thinks he should be playing, he plumps for “Pac-Man! With Guns!” So that’s next week’s sorted then.
