FROND OF THE DEAD: THE FIRST LOOK AT POPCAP’S PLANTS VS. ZOMBIES
Sometimes if you ask, ye really shall receive: after digging up some first details of casual powerhouse PopCap’s long rumored (but still widely unseen) tower defense/strategy game Plants vs. Zombies, my subsequent google-fu came up embarrassingly short in trying to find the first image of the game that PC Gamer procured in late 2007.
But then! A little bird — more specifically, PC Gamer executive editor bird Logan Decker — dropped in with this, that self-same image, adding, “I recall having had to beg for that screen, so I’d like to get as much mileage out of the indignity as possible.” (click the image for the full screen fruits of that indignity)
And even though I’ve only got a quarter of an idea as to what’s going on, it’s as wonderful as I’d imagined: the swirly-eyed psychedelia of its rainbow mushrooms, the otherwise fungal Mario nods, what-I’m-presuming-is the makeshift screen-door shield, and the potential promise of those left-hand lawnmowers.
All signs are pointing to a gloriously outlandish Peggle-esque take on a traditionally reserved genre (PixelJunk Monsters withstanding), and, from what I’m gathering, this time the signs are right on.
PopCap home [thanks much, Logan!]
Previously:
Details emerge on PopCap's tower defense/strategy game Plants vs …
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NGMOCO’S WORD FU, TOPPLE TOO GETTING ASYNCHRONOUS MULTIPLAYER
I’ve been working my way up the belt-ladder on ngmoco and Demiurge’s spelling battler Word Fu since its release late last week, and it’s quickly beat out the letter-press competition with a much more compelling power-up system and arcade-like reflexive pace. What I haven’t been able to do, though, is properly test its multiplayer, which is limited to local ad-hoc networks.
That may soon change, though (at least, in part), as ngmoco announce via twitter, that a forthcoming Word Fu patch will bring the asynchronous multiplayer capabilities of its upcoming Topple sequel (Topple Too) to Fu as well.
Just what that means for either isn’t fully clear — whether it’ll simply be score challenges, ala competitive Facebook games — but, as I’ve said a few times, any moves toward socializing the iPhone (especially in light of the collapse of the Onyx project) are greatly appreciated.
Word Fu home [ngmoco, twitter feed]
Previously:
Ngmoco promise Word-Fu, more Topple by mid-February – Offworld
Touch me I'm slick: the iPhone's top Lite versions you shouldn't …
Ngmoco: Rolando sequel coming, Touch Pets Dogs announced – Offworld
ngmoco shows off iPhone's Dr. Awesome, Dropship – Offworld
Touch me I'm slick: ngmoco/Hand Circus's Rolando – Offworld
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LISTEN: DB SOUNDWORKS’ BLUSH SOUNDTRACK
It might only be three tracks, but it’s three tracks good: dB soundworks (the same previously mentioned studio behind Edmund McMillen’s WiiWare Super Meat Boy) are giving away their soundtrack for Flashbang’s just-released deep sea tentacle-whipper Blush, my favorite being the skittering and clicking ambiance of its “mellow” track.
The three songs can be downloaded or played via the site’s still inexplicably entertaining built in pixel-arena-rock header.
Blush soundtrack [dB soundworks]
Previously:
Gimme Indie Game: the flails and flagellations of Flashbang's …
Super Meat Boy gets musical, and Nintendo gets forward – Offworld
Flashbang let loose a little Blush – Offworld
Flashbang Relentless-ly tease new game – Offworld
See more posts about: Listen, Music, Offworld Originals
INDIE GAMES FEST OPENS PUBLIC VOTING FOR AUDIENCE AWARD
The Independent Games Festival has opened its voting for this year’s Audience Award with a list of all main competition finalists who have submitted a playable public demo of their game.
This year, the finalists are CarneyVale Showtime, Between, The Graveyard, Retro/Grade, Dyson, Cortex Command, Brainpipe, Osmos, Mightier (above), You Have To Burn The Rope, Musaic Box, The Maw, PixelJunk Eden and Coil, representing a nicely diverse group of PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 titles.
To refresh yourself, you can have another look at our Offworld Guide to the IGF, or see the IGF’s own summaries with links for each participating downloadable game.
2009 Independent Games Festival Games: Main Competition Audience Award [IGF]
Previously:
The Offworld Guide to the 2009 Independent Games Festival – Offworld
Pixeljunk Eden, Osmos top 2009 IGF nominations – Offworld
Unfinished Swan, Feist make IGF Student Showcase finals – Offworld
Crate digging through IGF Mobile 2009 – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
GSC RELEASES FREE EARLY BUILD OF ITS POST-APOCALYPTIC STALKER
Even with my main PC being the epitome of mid-level 2003 tech — hardly strong enough to power through most current indie games — the one game I’ve done my best to struggle through in the past few years is GSC’s post-apocalyptic wanderer Stalker, and it’s always responded in kind with some of my most compelling in-game anecdotes (particularly that corker where I was desperately low on health and managed to lure a group of alert soldiers to my version of a giant red X, where I silently rolled a live grenade directly behind the lot).
While GSC isn’t quite to the point of giving the game away for free (though it is offered at a bargain price on Steam), they have seen fit to give away an early 2004 build of the game.
As I make my own way through the download, RockPaperShotgun (my leading source for All Things Stalker), are reporting that the build is considerably larger and more free-ranging than the eventual release, truer to promises the developer was touting in press rounds at the time, and includes vehicles — which would be eventually stripped as it reigned in its scope — to better navigate the terrain, and significantly more difficult.
Grab the direct download here (or, alternately, the torrent here) and let us know how it feels to you.
‘xrCore’ build 1935, Oct 18 2004. [GSC, via ShackNews]
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DETAILS EMERGE ON POPCAP’S TOWER DEFENSE/STRATEGY GAME PLANTS VS. ZOMBIES
As PopCap recently made the rounds to promote Peggle: Dual Shot, the DS version of its inexplicably excellent pachinko/pinball game due in the U.S. this week (along with the bonus levels designed by Lumines/Every Extend Extra dev Q Entertainment), it saved its best secrets for a recent interview with Forbes.
There, they promised many more handheld versions of popular franchises this year, including long-time word game favorite Bookworm (which hasn’t been seen off PCs since the Game Boy Advance) and Bejeweled Twist, and vowed to continue support for its bread and butter PC audience.
On the last note, PopCap teased a project called, erm, Plants vs. Zombies, which VP Greg Canessa called a mashup of “the real-time strategy genre, tower defense games and collectible card games–but in a casual context.”
That should be enough to pique anybody’s interest, but that’s apparently not quite the full story. QuarterToThree forum user (and Peggle Nights level designer) Hiro_Antagonist has braved the vicious dual-headed beast of ‘PR and Marketing’ and offered to clarify some details on the game based on his experience as beta testing admin. Says Hiro:
I’ve been playing internal builds of Plants vs Zombies for about a year and a half now, and was the administrator of its beta testing. And if you ask me, Canessa did the game a real disservice saying anything about CCG’s in relation to it. I literally winced when I read him saying that because I knew people would get the wrong idea.
The extent of CCG influence on this game is that the plants/towers you buy are denoted by little card-like UI widgets at the top of the screen. And there’s a splash of ‘deckbuilding’ as you get to choose 5-8 or so of your plants arsenal to use on any given level.
Nobody is trying to sell booster packs for extra cash, or anything of the sort. In fact, Plants vs. Zombies is one of the best values (in terms of amount of fresh gameplay and replayability) that PopCap has ever offered. IIRC, it takes about 8 hours to beat the core game, with lots more stuff to do after that. And damn, it really is fun.
I don’t want to reveal too much about gameplay because I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say, but any enterprising souls can go dig up a screenshot from an old PC gamer. And what that screenshot will show is a grid-based game board with the player’s house on the left with zombies coming from the right. Plants can be planted in the squares on the grid, and there are a number of things those plants can do: shoot zombies, act as walls, generate sun (to build more plants), light up the darkness, repel zombies, etc. IIRC there are 48 (or so) plant types to use.
No luck yet digging out the January 2008 PC Gamer screenshot, though it was indeed noted at the time by friend of Offworld RockPaperShotgun, and Hiro was also popping up on various other forums with tiny tidbits of information, including the fact that the game is being designed by the creator of early PopCap casual hit Insaniquarium (not mentioned by name, but presumably former Flying Bear George Fan).
For now, all we have left is this last unfortunate bit of information, and a healthy hunger to hear more:
BTW, an interesting point of trivia: This game has been known publicly as “Untitled Zombie Game” ever since the afforementioned PC Gamer screenshot. But internally it has gone through a number of names, including Bloom & Doom, Zom-botony, and my favorite, Lawn of the Dead. We have a list of literally hundreds of other suggestions, some of them great. But many of them having trademark/registration issues.
(Also, please note, the image above is from an entirely unrelated ZombiePhiles poll, but was too perfect not to repurpose.)
PopCap home [thanks for the heads up, Alex!]
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TRISM DEV CANCELS PLANS FOR IPHONE MULTIPLAYER PLATFORM
As mentioned earlier this month, Steve Demeter — head of Trism developer Demiforce — announced plans last November for a new initiative called Onyx Online. The service was meant to be a new multiplayer platform for iPhone developers, hoping to bring as much Xbox Live-type functionality as possible to the App Store, and is still something that the iPhone unfortunately lacks.
But, Demeter says, the service has hit a brick wall in Apple approval:
Apple recently told us they couldn’t guarantee Onyx-enabled games would be approvable in the AppStore. They pointed us to certain areas of the terms agreement contract, but declined to elaborate further as to whether or not Onyx would comply with those guidelines. Ultimately, this presented a business risk that neither I nor my potential investors wanted to challenge. Although much of my own time, energy, and money has been poured into getting Onyx off the ground, eventually I backed away from our would-be investors, and threw in the towel.
Demeter says he’s heard of “at least six” other companies working on similar initiatives, including the previously mentioned Aurora Feint, so hope still springs eternal for anyone up to turning the iPhone into the more social platform it so richly deserves to be.
Onyx RIP [Steve’s Blog @ Demiforce]
Previously:
Aurora Feint makers unveil social platform for iPhone indie devs …
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LINE GRINDER: FLASHGIRL’S THE LINEAR RPG
Created for RPGDX’s just-ended 48 hour RPG Jam which saw indie devs creating a “lo-fi” themed role-player over this past weekend, Sophie ‘GirlFlash‘ Houlden’s The Linear RPG is precisely what it says on the tin, and all the better for it.
With no interaction other than moving forward or back between checkpoints, Linear lays bare and celebrates what most console RPGs spend all their time trying to conceal with side quests and false alternatives: the underlying point A to point Z gauntlet that you’re forced to run.
All the story’s told in the background as you grind the line, and similarly scrolls from trope to trope, straight from its first “boy hero rises from bed, oblivious to his calling” opener.
Houlden’s a regular in time-limited competitions: see also her 48 hour Ludum Dare entry ULTIMATE VENGANCE POWER 4: The Lemon of Justice!, which is full of surprises.
The Linear RPG [deviantart, via TIGSource]
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RESTORE YOUR YELLOWED CONSOLES WITH RETR0BRITE
If you’re still a hanger-on to your retro consoles, the SNES in particular, chances are it looks a bit like the one on the right by now — VintageComputing did a wonderful little article consulting a chemist on the exact reason why.
As I neglected to mention yesterday, but now you can see via this Mother Boing writeup, a DIY project has kickstarted a solution with the Retr0brite project, a set of instructions to concoct your own hydrogen peroxide formula to restore your plastic to its original purple-grey hue, with what appears to be great success.
Retr0Bright » home [Merlin of AmiBay]
Previously:
Open source computer polish: Retr0Brite – Boing Boing
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WELCOME TO VIOLENCE: HORRORWOOD’S PAPERCRAFT ARCADE
Illustrator and papercraft creator Jack ‘Horrorwood‘ Hankins has just debuted the second in his ‘snake-eyes’ series of DIY paper models — paper shells with a 6-sided cube of faces to fit any mood. Of relevance here: his 1 Up model (pdf), a ‘Mega Arcade 6-in-1″ featuring sprite-ripped beat-em-up “Violence Fight.”
If you dig his style, also roll back to his earlier Paper Demon diorama, based on some vaguely Chris-Ware-does-horror retro illustrations which aren’t part of a game, but very well should be.
Snake Eyes Series 2 [Horrorwood]
Previously:
Getting crafty with Foldskool and Cubecraft – Offworld
Life-size papercraft Link hat (and hair) – Offworld
Getting crafty: Hattori's Kid Icarus diorama papercraft – Offworld
Get physical with new Super Meat Boy cinematic trailer, papercraft …
ACME's Mushroom Kingdom Novelty Toys: the paper Paper Mario …
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