UNFINISHED SWAN, FEIST MAKE IGF STUDENT SHOWCASE FINALS
Ian Dallas’s Unfinished Swan video enraptured blogs everywhere before Offworld had a chance to leave the launch pad, but now the game’s been named one of this year’s ten finalists in the Independent Games Festival’s Student Showcase, so I’ve got a great excuse to run the video again.
Elsewhere, the finalists included Feist, also a finalist in the main IGF competition (see my writeup of that in the Offworld Guide to the 2009 IGF), the environmentally minded “Tetris meets Sim City” City Rain, the “exploration of familial relationships” game Where is my Heart?, and, errr… the “funkalicious first person dish washing wonder” Dish Washington, created as… a Half-Life 2 mod?
Expect more in-depth looks at the games soon, and hit the jump for the full list of entrants and links to their respective IGF pages. (more…)
See more posts about: IGF, Offworld Originals
THE HUMANITY OF LUCASARTS’ VIRTUAL WORLD FORERUNNER HABITAT
As if I needed another excuse to get my hands on Rogue Leaders, the visual history book on the golden age of Lucasarts I mentioned in December, Gamasutra has run a great excerpt not on any of the usual Monkey Island or Grim Fandango suspects, but rather Habitat, the late-80s Commodore 64 virtual world forerunner which ultimately failed for its beta trial’s overwhelming success.
The article explains of its creation:
Development began in 1985 and sketched out a virtual world where each player had an in-game “avatar” — a word defining a player’s online representation (and still used today). These characters could interact with other players, connected in a massive online world composed of 20,000 “regions” — essentially individual screens connected to as many as four additional regions…
Despite the apparent advantage of not having to program artificial intelligence for in-game characters, given that all the players were real people, creating rules for player interactions required the developers to broach subjects never before considered in game design.
Remarked Chip Morningstar in a long treatise on Habitat’s creative process: “A special circle of living Hell awaits the implementers of systems involving that most important category of autonomous computational agents: groups of interacting human beings.”
Book Extract: ‘Rogue Leaders’ On Lucasfilm Games’ Habitat [Gamasutra]
Previously:
Chronicle holding LucasArts book signing – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
THERE GOES MY GUN: APERTURE SCIENCE HANDHELD PORTAL DEVICE IN REAL LIFE
Easily the most incredible cosplay accessory ever created, ’emilyskeith’s real world Portal gun does everything just about perfect, and is so meticulously constructed I — no lie — can’t tell how it was made by anyone other than Aperture Science themselves.
Update: You can see many more pictures detailing its creation via the constructor himself, ‘Volpin’, at his cosplay.com gallery.
Portal Gun [Flickr, via N’gai]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Portal, Xbox 360
OBAMA: FAMICOM-ANIAC
How does our commander in chief relax after a long inaugural day? Surely, as with Gamu-Toys’ celebratory DiD action figure spread, with a quiet night in eating oranges with his trusty original Famicom never more than a few feet away (presumably with Namco’s classic Pac).
DiD US Presidential Election 2008 [Gamu-Toys, via Jean Snow, DiD site]
Previously:
Barack is Mac, and Pac? – Boing Boing
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
HEY MR. LSDJ: BLEEPBLOOP’S CUSTOM USB-TRANSFER GAME BOY CARTS
Would-be Game Boy musicians take note: Jose ‘BleepBloop‘ Torres has completed his run of 16Mbit custom Game Boy cartridges with built-in USB transfer capabilities, specifically created for budding Little Sound DJs.
The classiest part, though, is the on-board “I love my Gameboy” message, which I hope everyone will have the good sense not to cover with the included LSDJ stickers.
Available via Gameboydev.org and Kitsch-bent.
Previously:
BBtv: Jellica, Mr. Spastic, and Nullsleep at Blip Festival 2008 …
BBtv: Bubblyfish at Blip Festival 2008 – Offworld
Octoroc releases the full 8-bit Jesus – Offworld
Listen: Pixelmod Records' Merry Pixmas Compilation – Offworld
Listen: Leeni's 8-bit kabuki 'Underworld' – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
HERE WE GROW AGAIN: EYEZMAZE RETURNS WITH GROW TOWER
The mark of true game-making talent: pseudonymous Eyezmaze head ‘On’ has been an always reliable source of quality Flash gaming for going on five years now, and even if you swapped in new graphics, you can recognize his style from the mechanics themselves.
His newest, after nearly a year in hiatus, is Grow Tower and again consists of his signature fractal-array of possible item combinations that result in ever more bizarre reactions unique to each specific sequence. This one, On says, has only one solution for the truely maxed tower.
My best effort thus far: this 15 meter high contraption: I seem to have got the robot and the button working properly, but I’ve obviously underutilized that crank and gears…
Attention iPhone developers: commercializing these games is an absolute no-brainer (at 99 cents a pop, or as a higher priced collection?). I’m surely not the first to think of it though, On’s FAQ says he’s currently considering incorporating and heading down a monetized path.
GROW TOWER [Eyezmaze]
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EDMUND MCMILLEN’S MEAT BOY GETTING REVAMPED FOR WII, PC
Happy news for fans of Gish, Blast Miner, Tri-achnid, Aether and the just-IGF-nominated Coil: Edmund McMillen has announced via his blog that this year will see the release of a deluxe version of his Newgrounds hit Meat Boy on PC and Mac.
McMillen also teases a third “secret release platform,” but a quick jog over to the game’s new home site reveals that the game will also see a port to the Wii, presumably Nintendo’s downloadable service WiiWare.
The deluxe version will be programmed by Pillowfort dev Tommy Refenes, who was behind last year’s excellent Goo! (not to be confused with 2D Boy’s
World of…), and original Meat Boy developer Jon McEntee.
You can play the original Meat Boy here, and its recently released 70 level fan-submitted expansion pack here — it’s fun and sadistically brutal stuff, something akin to a more visceral take on N+‘s super-jump platforming set in an auto-scrolling world.
The beautiful smell of raw meat. [Edmund McMillen, via Indiegames]
Previously:
Edmund McMillen gives us No Quarter – Offworld
The dynamic fluids of Chronic Logic's Gish – Offworld
The Offworld Guide to the 2009 Independent Games Festival – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
SIX WEEKS TO LAUNCH: AUSTRALIA’S STUDIO GAMEON CHALLENGE
Already three weeks in but just spotted today: Studio GameOn is a project in association with the Barbican Art Gallery’s traveling games history exhibit Game On — currently resting in Australia’s State Library of Queensland — to put together a development team and create a debut title in just six weeks.
The team’s lo-fi prototype for its B-movie stuntman simulator was just revealed on Monday — you can follow the group’s progress, as we will be, via its Flickr or YouTube channels.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
ESRB RATES SQUARE ENIX PUZZLER YOSUMIN FOR PC RELEASE
Very well spotted via Tiny Cartridge, the ESRB — everyone’s new favorite source of pre-release information — has rated a Windows PC version of Square Enix’s excellent puzzler Yosumin. Originally released as an import-only DS title, you may recall rumors spreading several weeks ago of an imminent Xbox Live Arcade port, but this is the first public indication that Square Enix is considering stateside release — though, it should be said, not a guarantee.
Either way, I now have a very good excuse to say here, you can prep yourself for the release by training on Square Enix’s Flash version (hosted grey-ly by thelostmd, click the first of the three menu options to start the game), but — fair warning from personal experience — it’s frighteningly easy to lose hours to the charms of its virus-esque polygons.
The gameplay itself is simple enough: your only task is to find any rectangle amongst the field where the same color shapes make up each of its four corners, at which point all the shapes inside will be converted to that color, collected, and replaced with a new set of randoms. While your score will be boosted by by finding ever wider rectangles within the field, each level ends when you’ve collected the requisite number of each color.
The ESRB notes, as the Xbox Live Arcade rumors did, that the official release will include both high score challenges and multiplayer modes — here’s to looking forward to updating more on that later this year.
Previously:
Atlus PR manager defies genetic programming, exhibits sense of …
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
CHANGE I CAN BELIEVE IN: THE PRESIDENTIAL MECH-WARS OF METAL WOLF CHAOS
Offered as a counterpoint to 1UP Retro Blog’s timely “worst presidents of gaming” article (a list including, of course, Bad Dudes‘ own burger-loving Mr. President), I submit gaming’s greatest commander in chief, the hard-boiled, dual-wielding mech-pilot Michael Wilson of From Software’s 2004 import-only Xbox title Metal Wolf Chaos.
Wilson not only soldiered bravely against the rebel army of his vice president, Richard Hawk, but commanded one of gaming’s most fantastically ridiculous entrances, exploding through the West Wing walls.
Microsoft, if you’re listening, now that we’ve ushered in a new era: now’s the time to correct your prior error and bring this to the States as a special Xbox Originals download.
The worst presidents in gaming [1UP.com]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
