4K-IN’ GOOD STUFF: THE CREAM OF THE 2009 JAVA4K COMPETITION
You’ve seen Left 4K Dead already (and it’s still probably the most accomplished), but if you haven’t dug through the other entrants in the latest Java4K contest, you’ve missed quite a bit.
Currently the most popular download, there’s the remake of the infamously cruel Desert Bus sequence from Penn and Teller’s never-released Sega CD game, a Pontifex/Bridge Builder/World of Goo-alike, a decent enough Megaman clone (from the Left 4K creator), an actually quite beautiful underwater light-collector called 4bsolution (vaguely Blush-ish), and, as above and from that last dev, 4bidden Fruit, a game that captures the spirit if not the letter of PS3 downloadable PixelJunk Eden.
Java4K – Minimum Games, Maximum Fun!
Previously:
Left 4k Dead: Left 4 Dead in 4KB of Java – Offworld
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TINY TETRIS IN A WIDE, WIDE WELL
This might be the tiniest game of Tetris ever created, if it wasn’t also the biggest. It’s going to take me ages to fix that hole.
If you manage to actually score a Tetris, be sure to let us know your total time played.
Tetoris [sovietrussia.org for now — it’s moving around a bit, via Tom and Margaret]
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UNIQLO UNVEILS MASSIVE UT×JAPAN GAME T-SHIRT CAMPAIGN
As promised in January, Japan’s UNIQLO has unveiled the first in their amazingly wide-ranging new series of games related T-shirts, starting with a line-up of brilliant looking Pac-Man, Bomberman, Dig-Dug, Arkanoid, Galaxian, Mappy, Ape Escape and Resident Evil fineries, all of which will be released on the 16th of this month (no word yet how soon/if they’ll be brought to the stateside SoHo outlet).
Early April will then see the release of a Phoenix Wright, Rally-X and train sim Densha de Go! set, followed by Monster Hunter, Xevious, Street Fighter II, Mega Man, Sonic The Hedgehog, Family Tennis, Tekken and Puyo Pop.
Finally, throughout the end of April through June, we’ll see shirts for Hot Shot’s Golf, The Tower of Druaga, Parappa The Rapper, LittleBigPlanet, Doko Demo Issyo, Ghosts’n Goblins, Ridge Racer, Virtua Fighter, and both Japanese folk-tale related Momotaro Densetsu and Dentetsu.
Check the site for preview images of all the shirts through mid-April, and descriptions of all of the games represented — they’re certainly giving boutique label King of Games a retail-chain run for their money.
ユニクロ UT: UT×Japan Game [Uniqlo]
Previously:
UNIQLO teases new games finery – Offworld
Look a little bit like Little Mac – Offworld
Offworld: Fashion Archives
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FOR ADVENTUREGAMEGLORY! MONOCHROM’S SOVIET UNTERZOEGERSDORF SECTOR II
It seems like forever since I last wrote about Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, and apparently that’s not far off: I selected the first volume of Monochrom‘s “retro-sov-kitsch” [(c)(tm) Cory] game as Edge magazine’s Internet Game of the Month in November of 2005, and now, finally, as you may have seen via the Mother Boing, the second volume has arrived.
The official description:
The computer game is a tribute to the proud yet imperiled republic of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (pronounced «oon-taa-tsee-gars-doorf»), the last existing appendage republic of the USSR. The tiny enclave maintains no diplomatic relationship with the surrounding “Republic of Austria” or with the Fortress “European Union”.
The downfall of her motherland — the Soviet Union — in the early 1990s had a particularly bad effect on the country’s economic situation. Now the picturesque communist state is facing a serious lack of resources, lack of space, and lack of population. To make matters worse, party secretary Wladislav Gomulka was kidnapped and brought to US-Oberzoegersdorf. We must use every tool at our disposal to rescue Gomulka! Including plenty of classified soviet technology, a proud tradition of bureaucracy, the recognition of North Korea, and a pond full of radioactive byproduct.
The hook: it’s got guest stars like Jello Biafra, Bruce Sterling, and BB’s own Cory Doctorow, and — I’ll go ahead and declare this now — will tie with Stalin Vs. Martians as the motherland’s best this year.
See also, Boing Boing Video’s ongoing security bulletins from the long-lost Communist enclave.
Soviet Unterzoegersdorf sector II [Monochrom, via BB]
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SUBMISSIONS OPEN FOR INDIECADE 2009
Independently run indie games showcase Indiecade (whew) has announced that it is seeking submissions for its 2009 tour, for “all styles and genres of games, including PC, browser-based, casual, puzzle, mobile, ARGs, Big Games and installation-based games, mods, serious games, activist games, art games, virtual worlds and ‘sandbox’ style games, and more!”
Their only caveat: “to be eligible for IndieCade, your game must not have funding from a major publisher. You can have other deals with these publishers; your game just can’t.”
Currently their international lineup of 2009 events includes:
IndieCade @ E3, Los Angeles (June 2-5)
IndieCade Asia TBA
IndieCade @ SIGGRAPH, New Orleans (Aug 5-7)
IndieCade 2009 (Oct 1-10)
IndieCade Europe, GameCity, UK (Oct 26-29)
And the deadline for submissions is April 30, 2009 at Midnight PST.
I’ve taken the tour through their showcase a number of times throughout the past two years, and the games included are always both smartly selected and smartly represented and discussed. See the lineup for their 2007/2008 showcases here, and find out more about the submission process here.
IndieCade: The International Festival of Independent Games 09
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BOARD GAME LEGEND REINER KNIZIA SEEKS IPHONE DEVS
One of board gaming’s most prolific and revered designers, Reiner Knizia, is actively searching for iPhone devs to help bring his games to the device, says industry site boardgamenews.
Knizia’s seen a slow but growing uptake in the videogame sphere over the past year: Sierra Online brought his Lost Cities to Xbox Live Arcade, and — though the North American release stripped his name from the title — Eidos packaged a set of his puzzles as the Brain Age-esque DS game Brain Voyager.
If you’re willing and able, check the boardgamenews post for contact details.
Knizia Games for the iPhone? [boardgamenews, via Gus, pic via boardgamegeek]
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TOUCH ME I’M SLICK: THE SHAPE AND THE SOUND OF STEPH THIRION’S ELISS
It was exactly one week ago last night that I fell in love, and to be quite honest I’m still at a little bit of a loss for words. The new object of my desire? She’s Eliss, an iPhone game, and I say that only slightly facetiously, because I’m not entirely exaggerating when I admit to getting goosebumps every time I even just see her in the video above.
If her name rings half a bell, it’s because Eliss, from Barcelona/NY designer Steph Thirion, is up for this year’s design innovation award in the Independent Games Festival’s mobile division. I’d known that, but, even after posting about the entrants in this year’s awards, didn’t even pay it much mind: its preview shot was so abstract and frankly fairly ugly, stretched and muddied with jpeg compression that it didn’t make a lasting impression, like trying to size up a new Facebook/MySpace crush on poor photos alone.
But as soon as I’d laid hands on the playable code, it clicked. Like I said: I’m still not sure exactly what it is in me that Eliss laser-targets and tweaks, but for as many games as pass my eyes and hands in any given week, it’s a connection that’s rare. Part of it’s the music, surely, the tender electronic loops somewhere in the neighborhood of I am Robot and Proud or E*vax, but it’s also the game’s design itself.
Because there isn’t another game like Eliss — she’s one in a million. Thirion describes it most poetically:
Your job is to keep up harmony in an odd universe made of blendable planets. Touch-control multiple planets at once, join them together into giant orbs or split them up into countless dwarf planets, and match their size with the squeesars. Wipe off the stardust, resist the attraction of the vortex and other space phenomena, and slow down the passage of time. Each of the 20 levels will require creative ways and strategies in using your fingers. Warm up your hands, you’re up for some serious finger gymnastics in the bizarro galaxy.
But you don’t really needs words — and the game actually offers you precious few, just the iconic instructions seen in the video above — because for as abstract as it is, it appeals to exactly that innate sense of order and accomplishment as Tetris. Keep like colors together, join and split shapes to fill the vibrating ‘squeesar’ frames, and at all costs don’t let mis-matched colors touch.
Eliss gets all its vitality out of the economy of those three simple rules, multi-tasking them on a second by second basis, and is only made more difficult over time by overcrowding the field more quickly and introducing elements like those vortexes which slowly draw the objects together.
The game is currently undergoing the gauntlet of Apple’s approval process, but Thirion expects it to be released by the end of the month, is now available on the App Store [iTunes link] and I’m excited for you all to meet her, because there’s a lot to her that typifies precisely what good gaming should be about.
Eliss home [Steph Thirion, iTunes link]
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UNBORN CHICKEN (AND DOG AND CAT) VOICES: RADIOHEAD’S PARANOID ANDROID IN MARIO PAINT
You’d imagine Thom Yorke via Koji Kondo would be completely ridiculous, and it is, but then you keep listening and it’s actually kind of completely wicked.
YouTube user Adolfobaez has many more of these, done presumably during his downtime when he’s not playing guitar for Mexico’s CUTECATS.
Adolfobaez YouTube channel [thanks to Cody, of the awesomely named takingtigermountain!]
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SCREAM REAL LOUD: THE PLAYABLE ORIGINS OF WORLD OF GOO
World of Goo creators 2D Boy are taking us all on a time traveling journey through the process in which Kyle Gabler’s Experimental Gameplay Project original became the studio’s WiiWare/PC indie hit as we now know it.
For the initial entry in their apparently seven part series (“before all the levels, before all the polish”), 2D programmer Ron Carmel revisits the game’s first week baby steps:
the date is august 20, 2006. the game is about one week old. basic rendering, collision detection, and physics are in place. no sound, music, or animations. it feels like you’re dragging balls inside a jar of honey and the connection logic for the strands is non-intuitive and often results in odd, unstable structures. the player is also able to grab the structure itself and swing it around like the wet towel that it is. and there are intellectual property issues, to boot :)
the world (of goo) wasn’t built in a day — part 1 of 7 [2D Boy]
Previously:
2D Boy's World of Goo: The community updates – Offworld
At the core of the World of Goo – Offworld
Listen: 2D Boy's free World of Goo soundtrack – Offworld
Tarballs: World of Goo released for Linux – Offworld
World of Goo's Kyle Gabler gives top 7 Global Game Jam tips – Offworld
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DANCE, DICTATOR, DANCE: THE FIRST FOOTAGE OF DREAMLORE’S STALIN VS. MARTIANS
If you thought our original coverage of Dreamlore/Mezmer’s upcoming PC arcade/real-time-strategy game Stalin Vs. Martians sounded too good to be true — Stalin as a 200 foot tall playable unit against Lucky-Charms-colored otherworldly invaders? With a Cantopop techno score? — christ, man, you ain’t seen nothin’.
Let’s not even bother trying to put it further into words: just watch.
Stalin vs. Martians home [Dreamlore Games, Mezmer game home]
Previously:
Ideas are more powerful than ray-guns: Stalin vs. Martians gets a …
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