Part of the main attraction of LA Game Space’s recently-launched Kickstarter campaign is that enticing entry level donation which nets you some thirty new experimental games from a massive lineup of excellent indie names, but to date, they’ve been just that: a list of names.

To start remedying that, then, we present the first look at one of the games included in the bunch, Steve Swink‘s Inputting. Long-time readers around these parts might recognize Swink’s name from his earlier work as part of indie-group Flashbang, where he helmed games like Time Donkey, as well as later revelations like the unfortunately still-iced Shadow Physics.

You may have heard it said in design discussions that the best controls in games are those you don’t notice at all, that, ideally, designers strive to eliminate the conscious thought of manipulating an input device to create fluid in-game output, but, with Inputting, Swink’s flipped that on its head.

Somewhere in between the finger-twisting of Foddy’s GIRP blended with the primitive shape ambience of Cactus’s Tuning, Inputting is, put simply, a game about your keyboard — a collection of challenges that make you play directly with the device so ubiquitous that it’s basically entirely faded from your frontal lobes.

Even in its current early-alpha state, it’s a mix of wildly creative ideas, from basic wood-block labyrinths, to third person scrollers, to first person platforming that gives you pause about why you’ve been so comfortable with ‘WASD’ this entire time.

If all of the games from the LA Game Space campaign maintain this level of curiosity & intrigue (& we’ll hopefully be able to bring you longer looks at more of its lineup, as it continues), it might prove to have been one of art/game’s best bundles of the past several years — head over to the Kickstarter to make a contribution and ensure that you’re in on the ground floor.

Here’s how this all went down: QWOP & GIRP creator Bennett Foddy wrote up a lengthy post for the official PlayStation Blog, detailing his plans for updating Pole Riders for the Sportsfriends campaign, and, watching the above teaser video for about the millionth time, the 4/4 beat got my head bobbing just enough to think that there was an amazing full-length dance mix aching to come out of it.

And so, I said as much on Twitter, and then, just hours later, fellow Soulwax superfan Mark “Tole Cover” Hinog took up the challenge, and thus the mix below was born:

I basically couldn’t be happier with it, especially the bit where Frobisher Says artist Dick Hogg provides its percussive vocals, and it makes me wonder if we shouldn’t start doing remix contests more regularly… If anyone else feels like taking up the mantle, drop me a note!

Never one to miss a Nintendo launch — his World of Goo being one of the first high-profile downloadable indie releases for the Wii — 2D Boy’s Kyle Gabler along with Henry Hatsworth designer Kyle Gray and their Experimental Gameplay Project cohort Allan Blomquist have just revealed the first gameplay of their Little Inferno, due out this Sunday for PC & Wii U.

And that is actual gameplay: while I’ll save the deeper look for a full writeup in the near future, as previously-hinted at, the bulk of Little Inferno does concern itself with igniting your precious possessions in a fantastically simulated fireplace, to (no surprise, for those that’ve fully experienced the darker tones of Goo) deeply sardonic ends.

But!

If you’re already convinced: you can download Inferno for PC straight from the Tomorrow Corporation boys right now, right over here — which will also net you a Steam key (and eventual Mac & Linux versions) when the game unlocks there on Sunday — which suffice it to say for now that I highly suggest that you do.

As PixelJunk Eden & PixelJunk 4AM designer & DJ extraordinaire Baiyon galavants around Mexico following a recent performance which also featured Silent Hill musician Akira Yamaoka & Fez composer Disasterpeace (!), here’s a new hour-long mix of his, just released by London’s Greyhound, and featured here mostly because it’s super excellent and has been in heavy rotation for the better part of a few days now.

If you like what you hear here, a subtle reminder that there’s 90 more minutes where that came from by becoming a member of this here site at both the monthly & yearly levels, which also includes some bonus Sword & Sworcery EP beats. This podcast is also available for download directly from Greyhound, and keep an eye on Baiyon’s own site for much more mixes & original releases.

More good news (on top of the recently featured Chasing Aurora) for indie-loving fans counting down the days until the Wii U launch this Sunday, as Denmark’s KnapNok Games announces Spin the Bottle, a collection of minigames requiring “tight coordination, daring trust, body contact or extreme flexibility” due in spring of 2013.

KnapNok might not (yet) be the most familiar name, but you’ll recognize their lineage: along with Joust creator Doug Wilson, they formed the Copenhagen Game Collective, best known for their one-button tousle-em-up B.U.T.T.O.N., first revealed at Kokoromi’s Gamma IV party.

That same sensibility carries forward to Spin the Bottle, which, as you’d expect, sees up to 8 players spinning a virtual bottle to pair off for one of its challenges which, interestingly (and similar to Joust), don’t require a TV at all, instead using only the Wii U’s Game Pad and standard Wii remotes to take part in its — honest! — “innocent game for innocent kids”.

KnapNok have more information and screenshots of its fantastic Simon Gustafsson illustrations over at their new Spin the Bottle site.

Today’s best fashion-news: Ashley ‘oddlookingbird‘ Davis — best known for her amazing No Marios Allowed art-blog, where she awesomely documents lesser-known Nintendo heros — has just released a wave of wearables to the Fangamer store, none better than this more or less perfect Banjo-Kazooie T-shirt.

The shirt can best be complimented with these NoMarios All-Stars badges featuring Pikmin, Bubble Bobble, Ice Climbers and most obscure-dly, Treasure’s underdog Nintendo 64 action game Mischief Makers. Find more Animal Crossing, Kirby & Pac-Man tributes (as well as Davis’s Once Upon A Pixel DVD) via Fangamer.

One more Hotline Miami tribute to round out the morning: a super ominously quiet version of the hare-headed Graham, by deviantart member Pa-go (see also: his entirely unrelated Breaking Bad tribute and his slightly more related mockup of a 8-bit NES 28 Days Later game).

While I’m still patiently awaiting the Mac version to fully tuck into Dennaton’s Hotline Miami (not least so I can finally reach the Fantastic Arcade bonus level, Highballer), its release is already paying off with the amazing fan-art starting to trickle in, like Jouste‘s tribute to its resident drill-killer, Carl.

Writer Tevis Thompson’s “Saving Zelda” essay — published earlier in the year, shortly after the release of the Wii’s latest Zelda installment, Skyward Sword — seemed to solidify that everyone else was also thinking the same thing: with rare exception, there’s been something missing in the franchise, a sense of diminishing returns, a growing and distinctive lack of the mystery and magic that made the series beloved in the first place.

And so, partnering with David Hellman, most notably the artist behind Jon Blow’s Braid, the two took to Kickstarter to help restore that sense of wonder as best they could with Second Quest, an upcoming, hard-bound graphic novella “for those who love videogames but want more compelling worlds and a sense of real discovery” and “anyone who’s felt the pull of distant landscapes and longed to explore a world full of mystery.”

While the project has already exceeded its Kickstarter goal, with just two days remaining, the pair have prepared a new bonus for backers with ‘Side Quest’, a six-page digital mini-comic companion story to the main Second Quest that they’ll be sending to everyone who’s supported the campaign.

And so, presented below is the first two pages of Side Quest — which you can dive further into by supporting their Kickstarter campaign at any level here — and a short note from Hellman as the project draws to a close.

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While some of his older titles are finding new life on new platforms — see, specifically, the excellent 3DS conversion of his Night Game, also quietly being prepped for an iPhone port — creator Nicklas ‘Nifflas‘ Nygren has relatively quietly been gearing up for something even greater, Knytt Underground, announced this past summer for a launch on PC & Mac, as well as PlayStation 3 & Vita.

The original freeware version of Knytt has already made its mark as a lo-fi ambient masterwork (and, with Knytt Stories, one that players themselves could extend), but Nifflas has made it clear that Underground represents the magnum-opus-type culmination of everything he’s learned about storytelling through games, claiming that this latest will be “about the big questions; trying to understand life and our place in it – and failing completely.”

Stylistically, it’s another sort of aesthetic mash-up, working with a similar photo-surreal style as his 2010 game Saira, and with some of the same characterization as some of his earliest work like Within a Deep Forest.

Still due for a PlayStation Network launch later this year, consider this your first peek into something that we’ll be exploring here further. Below the fold you’ll find four more PS3 screenshots of the game, with more coming soon via Nifflas’s official Underground site.

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