HELV-DOUKEN: OLIVER BARRETT’S RETRO-GAME RETRO-DESIGNS
This is several months old, but I’ve just run across and was very taken with this Volkswagen-esque Street Fighter image by Cleveland based illustrator and designer Oliver Barrett.
It was designed for flickr-favorite-meme Make Something Cool Every Day, the same undertaking that has brought us the game-covers-as-Penguin-Classics-books of Olly Moss, and the I Can Read Movies artwork of Mitch ‘Spacesick’ Ansara (as well as Mz. Kat’s engrish children’s book illustrations).
Coincidentally, Barrett’s also the designer behind the excellently nostalgic illo at left, which I’d neglected to mention here at the time.
oliveroliverbarrett [flickr, via Augusto Daniele]
Previously:
Moss gets modern: GTA's most wanted America – Offworld
The meme in motion: Spacesick's It's a Dig, Dig, Dig, Dig Dug …
Engrish.com t-shirts re-imagined as Mary Blair-style children’s book illos – Boing Boing
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SHAPE OF THE FUTURE: THE GORGEOUS CUBES OF WIIWARE PUZZLER KIMI TO BOKU TO RITTAI
Right, well, there’s my week made: every once in a while there’s a game that seems to know exactly which of your buttons to press and before you know it you’re smitten. This time it’s Kimi to Boku to Rittai (You, Me and the Shapes), a new WiiWare game from former D2 creator and Newtonica collaborator Kenji Eno.
The gameplay? Deceptively simple: drop helpless and unpredictable people onto a series of ever-more-complex interconnected cubes and attempt to maintain some semblance of balance and harmony.
The hook? God, just look at that retro-future shiny vector style that sits so perfectly next to Newtonica‘s star-spheres. The game is expected to hit stateside WiiWare in coming months, and appears that it’ll give Nintendo and Skip’s own ArtStyle series a serious run for their money.
Kimi to Boku to Rittai home [Nintendo]
Previously:
The Offworld 20: 2008's Best Indie & Overlooked (pg. 3)
Touch me I'm slick: the iPhone's top Lite versions you shouldn't …
DSi getting more downloadable Art Style, Tetris Attack – Offworld
DSiWare getting double cubic Art Style games, Animal Crossing …
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
WHAT CONVEYER BELT SUSHI AND TOWER DEFENSE GAMES HAVE IN COMMON
Last month I pointed to a fantastic “true stories” promotional video showing the curious inspiration for Hudson’s iPhone tower defense game Elemental Monster TD [iTunes link], in which a low-poly company director Takahashi Meijin berated underlings for not being able to top the success of competitor Fieldrunners.
Now, the studio has created a brilliant second episode that genuinely makes you wonder why you never noticed the mechanical similarities between ‘sushi-go-round‘ restaurants and the unceasing onslaught of tower defense enemies.
ElementalMonster TD home [DoTheHudson!, iTunes link]
Previously:
Tower defense mechanisms: Hudson call out Fieldrunners in …
Watermelons beware: Hudson's Shooting Watch comes to the iPhone …
New towers loom: Fieldrunners update imminent – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
GOTTA FOLLOW ’EM ALL: YOUR GUIDE TO ALL POKéMON ON TWITTER
It’s not clear how or when the meme started, but I’m happy it did: DarkZero has stumbled across San Francisco designer David Cole’s TwitéDex, a complete guide to all Pokemon currently utilizing Twitter, with “privilege given to accounts written in-character.”
For better or worse, I suppose, the majority of the conversational traffic is about on the level of your average 4chan post, but Cole (who appears to run the appropriate Professor Oak account) does find the occasional gem.
Chart detailing Pokémon presence on Twitter with privilege given to accounts written in-character [David Cole, via DarkZero]
Previously:
Left 4 Dead: the twits don't stand a chance – Offworld
Call of Duty creators Infinity Ward launch their Twitter …
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
THE UNREAL-TIME STRATEGY OF EXPERIMENTAL GAMEPLAY DARLING ACHRON
The game that’s getting the biggest buzz from this year’s GDC Experimental Gameplay Sessions? Christopher Hazard and Michael Resnick’s Achron, which — contrary to (my) first impression — isn’t a typo of the classic EA board/strategy game, but is instead a “meta-time strategy game.”
That is to say it makes Braid‘s back-and-forth-scrubbing time manipulations look like baby business next to its own essentially asynchronous (in every respect) multiplayer strategy. The video above gives a general idea how a multiplayer game might operate — with the ability to manipulate your troops within a window of each time-wave and erase potential mistakes — and is the only gameplay instruction in which you’ll hear a developer refer to “when your enemy is” without skipping a beat.
More info on and more videos of the game are available at the official Achron site.
Achron – Time Travel is Coming [Hazardous Software]
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IBOY: THE AWESOME GAME BOY IPHONE CASE
Lazy web request time: thatgirlssite doesn’t know where the above iPhone case comes from, but it’s out there in the wilds of Japan somewhere, and would go so perfectly with Rob Sheridan’s iGameboy Springboard theme that we need to put our collective heads together to find a source to buy it.
Cool Iphone Case [thatgirlssite, roundabout via LuciferJackass]
Previously:
iGameboy: Gameboy custom theme for iPhone – Boing Boing Gadgets
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
INDIE GAMES SUMMIT: PLAY CACTUS’S LESSONS ON THE ART OF 4 HOUR GAME DESIGN
Cactus is a name I haven’t mentioned nearly enough on Offworld (in fact, the last time I gave him his due was in 2007 when his Clean Asia and Protoganda: Strings topped my top 5 freeware games list).
Apart from being one-eighth of last week’s Game Over/Continue indie dev/art crossover team, he’s one of the indie scene’s… well, prolific is too tame a word, and attention deficient sounds far too pejorative: let’s just say that Crayon Physics creator Petri Purho’s PC desktop is a photo of Cactus saying “while you were slacking off I made three more games,” and realize that it’s funny because it’s true.
From the grain-filtered 8mm stylings of his shooters to the terrifying Lynch-ian void of his Mondo series to the candy striped sunburst pixels of his upcoming games, he possesses one of the most singular and distinct visions in the scene, and manages to keep that consistent despite the jackrabbit pace with which he takes on new projects.
That’s why I was so disappointed to have missed the first half of his over-capacity Indie Games Summit session (until I convinced a volunteer I’d just stepped out for a bathroom break), though what I did see was every bit as uniquely him as I’d expected. Managing to make all the sweat and tears of game creation look like melodramatic trifles, his dual underlying message of keeping-it-simple and going-with-instinct was one of the most inspiring of the two days.
And now, though it doesn’t have the narration to match (there is a bootleg video torrent making its way around the internet, however), you can play through his fantastic presentation slides (created, of course, in GameMaker software itself) by downloading his just-uploaded executable (.zip here) and get a taste of his flavor before moving on to tackling his prodigious back-library. Get more of a sense of the surrounding lecture by flipping through TIGSource’s write-up here.
[As a further bonus, at the end of the lecture Cactus played through a series of games he found inspiring, which indiegames has helpfully cataloged here — see especially I Was In The War.]
Cactus 4 Hour Game Presentation [zip, via CactusSquid]
Previously:
Indie Games Summit: 2D Boy/Polytron's top 10 ways to market your …
Indie Games Summit: Ron Carmel explains 2D Boy by the numbers …Indie Games Summit: Polytron debut new Fez trailer – Offworld
Giant Robot, artxgame announces Game Over/Continue? exhibit – Offworld
Only on Offworld: indie game and artist all-stars collide at Giant …
See more posts about: Cactus, Offworld Originals
GDC VIDEO: WATCH THE 2009 GAME DEVELOPER CHOICE AWARDS
Like its indie game counterpart, GameSpot is providing a full length version of last week’s Game Developer Choice Awards ceremony, capturing LittleBigPlanet‘s wide sweep of the awards, World of Goo representing the indies, Parappa creator Masaya Matsuura introducing Harmonix’s Pioneer Award, Hideo ‘Metal Gear‘ Kojima’s lifetime achievement award, Tim Schafer’s spot-on hilarious hosting, and Mega 64’s brilliant interstitials.
[via GameSpot]
Previously:
Game Dev Choice Awards topped by LittleBigPlanet, Braid, Left 4 …
Tim Schafer returns to GDC Choice Awards, Harmonix honored – OffworldMetal Gear's Kojima getting lifetime achievement award at GDC …
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
GDC: HOST MASTER, TIM SCHAFER’S FINEST POINT & CLICK IN A DECADE
Clearing out more of the didn’t-get-posted-in-the-GDC-frenzy archives: Double Fine has finally made good for the legions begging ex-LucasArts designer/DF founder Tim Schafer to make a new point-and-click adventure with Host Master & The Conquest of Humor.
In fantastic double-plus-meta fashion, video of the game — which takes place in the minutes leading up to the Game Developer Choice Awards as Schafer scrambles for jokes he hasn’t yet written — was used to lead in the actual Game Developer Choice Awards, as the real life Schafer was backstage basking in the glow of his own green room portrait.
Host Master and the Conquest of Humor [Double Fine, via Double Fine]
Previously:
Listen: Double Fine's Psychonauts soundtracks go 'e' – Offworld
Double Fine Open the Psycho-pedia – Offworld
Tim Schafer returns to GDC Choice Awards, Harmonix honored – Offworld
Countdown to Brütality – Offworld
Spike TV's game awards were a bit Brütal – Offworld
See more posts about: Double Fine, Offworld Originals
LAST.DS: DOWNLOADABLE APP TURNS DS INTO STREAMING BAND BROS. RADIO RECEIVER
Speaking of franchise potential Nintendo’s sternly neglected to bring stateside: most interesting of all the apps the company’s detailed in Japan’s latest downloadable DSiWare update is Band Bros. DX Radio, a receiver that will tune into a regularly-scheduled streaming audio station pumping out a variety of music from the DS game of the same name.
First released in late 2004, Daigasso! Band Brothers was Nintendo’s first and more group-play minded take on the burgeoning music game genre, with the d-pad and buttons mapped to distinct musical notes of particular instruments that you played along with a traditional musical staff, as well as the ability to compose your own songs.
For its 2008 sequel, Nintendo gave players the opportunity to upload those original compositions to a central server, where they’d be sorted and ranked and put up for download alongside regular Nintendo-made updates so others could play along.
It’s from that set of downloadables that the radio station will pull its material — Anoop Gantayat’s andriasang blog has translated the station’s program schedule, with shows dedicated to top 10 material, new material available from the online database, whole shows dedicated to one uploader, and more traditional rock, hiphop and game music programming.
With a similar downloadable WiiWare channel that turns your TV into a Band Bros. song player (see: Portal’s ‘Still Alive’, Band Bros style), it’s obviously a franchise Nintendo’s strongly supporting in the region, and it’s unclear whether simple copyright laws are stalling its move westward. With the DSi about to get a local slate of weekly DSiWare apps, it might (hopefully) be simply that the company was waiting until all its hardware cards were in place before introducing the concept stateside.
Band Bros. DX Radio home [Nintendo]
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