LET’S START ANOTHER MEME: THE GAME DESIGNER’S PUB GAME
Now that the #backgames meme is going quite well, actually, via comments and its twitter equivalent, let’s work on the second.
Via the Guardian’s games blog, Sony Online designer Sheri Graner Ray and Metaplace’s Raph Koster have set the wheels in motion on The Pub Game, which asks you to create a hypothetical pub/restaurant as created by any given game designer.
Examples:
If Sid Meier created this restaurant, first we’d have to invent the Chinese, and the Koreans and all the other Asian cultures before we could invent the food that would then be served in the restaurant…
If Will Wright created this restaurant, we’d have to continually monitor what each employee was doing, instructing them when to cook, when to clean and when to go to the bathroom, but eventually, it would burn down anyway.. and if it didn’t a natural disaster would occur to make sure it was destroyed.
If Richard Garriott created this restaurant, it would have been started by him and a number of his friends. At the restaurant, the customers could harvest the grain, mill it into flour, mix it and bake it into bread… which of course would have nothing to do with anything on the menu.
Maybe kick things off in #gamedevpubgame?
Game designer archetypes feed fun [guardian.co.uk]
Previously:
Let’s start a new meme: #backgames from finish to start – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
TEEN ANGST: INDIE GAMES ARE THE NEW PUNK IN DOMESTIC CITY
Very much enjoyed this latest entry in Duncan Fyfe’s “Domestic City” series, which imagines a not too distant future in which Spelunky still rules, OK and Cactus is the new Malkmus:
Emily’s posters were affixed by thumb tacks to her dorm room drywall. The posters, collected by Emily and her roommate, had been free — sort of, they had stolen them — and promoted the release dates of games like Castle Crashers and PixelJunk Eden.
When Emily left for class every day, she always threw on her white, faded and hand screened Minotaur China Shop t-shirt. It was the only game shirt that she owned and so she wore it as much as possible.
Domestic City, Part Three [Hitselfdestruct]
Previously:
Center of Gravity: Duncan Fyfe does Gravity Bone justice – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
GIMME INDIE GAME: YOSHIO ISHI’S CURSOR*10 2ND SESSION
The most interesting thing about Yoshio Ishi’s Cursor*10 games isn’t its multi-single-player conceit that sees you playing cooperatively with the ghosts of all of your previous nine lives, though it’s hard to deny that that is a wickedly mind-bending concept.
It’s that Ishi’s managed to counter-balance all of the would-be help from those failed attempts (reminding you where not to move your mouse) with increasingly difficult or coordinated actions as you progress futher up its levels that make even your mistakes not good enough mistakes.
Ishi’s just done the second in the series and I’ll be frank and say I might just not ever have the gumption to get past that four-switch floor, but still think 2nd will likely be one of the smartest Flash games of the year.
If this is your first exposure to Ishi, don’t miss his much older monochromatic set of more literally Neko (cat) games.
cursor*10 2nd [NEKOGAMES]
See more posts about: Gimme Indie Game, Offworld Originals
TOUCH ME I’M SLICK: THE IPHONE’S TOP LITE VERSIONS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS
Late last night, the second chapter of Infinite Interactive’s PuzzleQuest landed on the App Store as a free update to those who bought the original edition, and is now available as a Chapter 1&2 package at the same price. That reminded me that there were a number of games that I’d either recommended earlier or hadn’t written about yet that’d since seen free Lite versions released, or had dropped to free downloads.
Since I don’t normally do straight up “buyer’s guides”, let this be a quick update to catalog all some of the best games you should be trying risk-free. Full descriptions are after the jump, and let us know what Lite/free gems you’ve stumbled upon lately yourself via the comments. (more…)
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Touch Me I'm Slick
MUSHROOM KINGDOM GETS UNREAL: UT3’S MARIO BROS. DEATHMATCH MOD
Fortuitously spotted trying to search for an image for the last post: Joe Bates’ Unreal Tournament 3 Mushroom Kingdom sidescrolling deathmatch mod is at least half a year old, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it and I only spy one post on it from my last year of RSS feed archives, so let’s give it another round of love.
See it in motion here, and download it for both PlayStation 3 and PC here.
UT2D 1.1 PC and PS3 [forums.epicgames]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
EXPERIMENTAL OVERLOAD: MORE ‘BLANK & BLANK’ GAMES TEES
What hath Experimental Jetset wrought: The Names Brand is a new shop dedicated entirely to furthering the Netherlands design group’s original Fab Four meme, and, of course, comes stocked with a wide variety of classic games franchise Tees.
Can you name the inspiration for all without cheating? And does someone want to buy me this unrelated one (and explain why it’s not ‘Dale’)?
The Names Brand games section [thanks, Gabe!]
Previously:
Louis & Bill & Zoey & Francis: the real fab four – Offworld
Only on Offworld: your first look at Panic's Noby Noby Boy T …
Get the Diablo III shirt that makes the hardcore weep – Offworld
Screaming for Hitekkai: Meat Bun's new T-shirt designs – Offworld
Polygraph's Kakuna T-shirt casts harden – Offworld
A new Hanes Beefy-T awaits – Offworld
Losing my edge: 'Battle Fungale' evades all my art-nerd …
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
LET’S START A NEW MEME: #BACKGAMES FROM FINISH TO START
Mr_Staypuft sends in this post riffing on of the current #backflicks meme of describing a film from the end to the beginning, hoping to start a games version at #backgames.
The cream of ‘puft’s current crop:
Doom:
A space marine brings demons to life, locking colour-coded doors behind him before falling asleep, as his colleagues close a portal to hell.Katamari Damacy:
A prince must hide the stars, by rolling them across the earth’s surface, until they break into small everyday objects.Deus Ex:
JC Denton overthrows one of 3 new world orders, travels the globe, then waits for terrorists to rebuild the statue of liberty.Pacman:
Pacman fills mazes with dots, pausing only to regurgitate fruit & ghosts.
He adds that he’s not quite sure where the meme started, but I’m fairly confident it grew out of this self-linking weekend Reddit thread entitled, “If you watch the movie ‘Jaws’ backwards, it’s a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach.”
BackGames = Videogame plots in reverse [Just One More Game]
See more posts about: Meta, Offworld Originals
SERPENTINE, SERPENTINE! NEIL GREGORY’S SIMPLE PLAN T-SHIRT
Also filed under classy games Tees I’d wear: Neil Gregory’s new Threadless design, A Simple Plan, which needs no explanation.
A Simple Plan [Threadless, via Infinite Lives]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
I’M SWINGIN’ SO HIGH: READYFIREAIM’S WACKY IPHONE WALLWALKER SWAY
Officially now joining the Offworld ranks of most promising iPhone publishers alongside ngmoco and Flashbang is Illusion Labs. After storming the charts with the more traditional Labyrinth and cult fave fingerboarder Touch Grind, they’re hitting back with upstart Swedish developer ReadyFireAim‘s Sway.
Designed in collaboration with fellow Swedish design studio Picky and illustrator Amelie ‘Krawatt‘ Jacobsson, Sway looks very promisingly like underdog GBA/DS Donkey Kong title King of Swing by way of LittleBigPlanet‘s ragdoll felt and corrugated cardboard aesthetic, and rests itself on a dual-thumbed grip-and-flip mechanic to move throughout its free-form levels.
There is, of course, no precise release date as yet, but, according to the YouTube comments, the game was submitted to Apple just under a week ago, and should appear in the very near future.
Sway [ReadyFireAim, via PocketGamer, who’re reporting that it might actually be quite good]
Previously:
Touch me I'm slick: ngmoco/Hand Circus's Rolando – OffworldNgmoco: Rolando sequel coming, Touch Pets Dogs announced – Offworld
Riding the iPhone's Raptor Copter – Offworld
Things We Lost In The Snow, pt 4: Raptor Copter hit the iPhone …
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
LOAD “*”,8,1: COMMODORE 64 COMES TO U.S. VIRTUAL CONSOLE
If you were following last week’s hints you won’t be surprised: this morning’s Virtual Console update has brought the U.S. debut of downloadable Commodore 64 games, each at $5 a pop. In this first outing, Nintendo has most notably released The Last Ninja, still counted amongst the top games for the C64 that have stood the test of time.
Also included are Archer MacLean’s International Karate, and Pole Position-esque two-player racer Pit Stop II, from Epyx’s Dennis ‘Impossible Mission‘ Caswell and Stephen Landrum, programmer on classic titles like Summer Games.
Wii Virtual Console [Nintendo]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
