‘Brought down’s obviously an overstatement, but the Occam’s Razor trouble with creating a game in which players can do “anything” is that they’ll use that anything to skirt the obstacles you place in their way.

In Scribblenauts‘s case, it’s an innocuous pair of handcuffs and a vending machine, the former of which can be attached to the level-goal collectible Starites, stuffed wholesale into the machine, and then dragged back wholesale to wherever you stand, where it will handily dispense your win-condition free of charge.

Luckily, with no online ranking or competitive aspect to speak of, the exploit does nothing but defeat and deflate your own pleasure with the game, should you choose to use it, but it’ll be interesting to see if developer 5th Cell respond with more than a smirking shrug over the coming weeks.

The best news I’ve heard in quite some time: Eskil Steenberg’s abstract painterly MMO Love is prepping a beta release possibly “just a matter of days” away, and has let loose a test client to gauge performance on various machines. While the client tantalizingly won’t let you connect to a server, it is the first opportunity to see the game running, finally, on your own hardware.

At the same time, Steenberg’s just released a batch of new screenshots that show, for the first time (so far as I’ve seen), the procedurally generated characters that will populate its world. More of those below the fold. (more…)

IGF grand prize nominated strategy game Dyson has just partnered with digi-distro Digital2Drive to open preorders for the game ahead of its October 20th release, and at the same time are announcing a new contest to let fans give it a new title.

The devs say the game — originally titled in tribute to “the work of theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson” — will be re-titled to whichever entry “best encompasses the mood and themes of the game,” and the winner will receive both a copy of the game and two additional Direct2Drive downloads.

See the contest page to enter, and visit the dev’s official home page for more information on the game.

Less than a week away from announcing their first game, a little introduction to Hello Games: you may have spotted — especially if you were on the GDC Austin show floor — Hello’s recent appearance in Edge Magazine, where they talked about their decision to leave gainful employment elsewhere to set up shop for themselves and prepare their debut PC-, 360- and PS3-bound title.

If so, you may also have spotted (though only in print) the accompanying concept sketches by Hello artist Grant Duncan, which was basically all I needed to see to realize that the team was laser-targeting my one true heart (particularly with the cube-head at top) with whatever they had in store.

The dev team at Hello is made up of (from L to R) creative director David Ream (formerly of Kuju, where he helped expand the Geometry Wars universe with Galaxies), managing director Sean Murray (former Criterion tech lead on Burnout 3 and Black), artist Duncan (formerly artist on Sega/Sumo’s Virtua Tennis 3 and Sega Superstars Tennis), and programmer Ryan Doyle (also of Kuju, where he was lead programmer on the aforementioned Galaxies), and while none of the art sketches give too much away on the group’s debut game, it does give a distinct (and ultra-sweet) flavor of the direction they’re heading.

Below the fold then, four pages from Duncan’s sketchbook to let you get to know Hello. After you’ve taken it in, visit Hello’s website to read more (see esp.: this post, in which each of the team have been morphed into collectible diorama characters of their respective top games). (more…)

WHY I’M GOING TO INDIECADE (AND YOU PROBABLY SHOULD, TOO): PT. 3

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9.24.2009

Brandon Boyer

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For my final entry this week on why I’ve decided to go to LA for the Oct. 1-4th Indiecade conference/festival (and why you should come, too): a quick and dirty run down of all the games that have been selected as finalists for this year’s show runs below, and continues below the fold.

All of these games will be playable every day from 10am to 7pm at three Culver City locations: Wonderful World of Art Gallery, Culver Hotel Mezzanine and Gregg Fleishman Gallery.

See my earlier entries (pt. 1 and pt. 2) for more information on the star-studded keynotes and sessions that will make up the main Indiecade conference, and see the official Indiecade site for information on attending.

On to the list:

(more…)

HEY MONTREAL: GO SEE THE DEBUT OF POLYTRON/INFINITE AMMO’S POWER PILL SEPT. 30TH

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9.24.2009

Brandon Boyer

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As part of Montreal’s latest Pecha Kucha Night, coming Wednesday, September 30th to the SAT (1195 Saint-Laurent), Fez creators Polytron will be on hand to talk about the “highs and lows of designing a multi-touch game for fun and profit”: specifically, their long-teased Infinite Ammo collaboration Power Pill. If you go, take lots of photos and forward them kindly to brandon@offworld.com, please.

Bit of late notice with this one, but there’s still time for Big Applians to make it to the No Malice Palace at 197 E 3rd St (between Ave A & B) for tonight’s late night Nullsleep, Bit Shifter, and Minusbaby show, featuring the always dependable No Carrier on (all new) visualizations. [via Zen Albatross and Minusbaby]

The new best Beatles game that isn’t the other one: Montreal’s No Fun Games has created Norwegian Wood, the world’s first fab-four bullet-hell dodge ’em up.

The point? Escape the synchronized notes escaping from each corner’s guitar/bass/sitar/mic as the disembodied head of John Lennon, gaining multipliers the longer you can manage to outwit the notes.

The catch? You’ll have to supply your own original MP3, for obvious reasons (and beware the internet’s false positives), but once you do, it’s a surprisingly engaging experience, complete with an online high score table (of which I’ve been completely pushed off, after pegging #18 on my first go).

Download the game for PC, Mac and Linux here.

SQUARE PUSHER: FORMER SPORE DEV GIVES BARE MINIMUM WITH IPHONE’S MINME

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9.24.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Created as part of last month’s Experimental Gameplay Project (that would also spawn Adam Saltsman’s Canabalt), Chaim Gingold’s MinMe [App Store] adheres strictly to the Project’s “bare minimum” theme: the user has to “minimize the board,” has a bare minimum of graphics, was made in 1.5 days, and costs the App Store’s bare minimum of zero dollars.

The kicker: Gingold (best known as the original prototype developer of what would become Spore‘s Creature Creator) only had time enough to include a bare minimum 10 levels, and so it ends precisely at the point where it’s just getting good.

Consider this an open plea, then, for an expansion of at least another, say, like, 60 levels. Download the game via iTunes here.

WHY I’M GOING TO INDIECADE (AND YOU PROBABLY SHOULD, TOO): PT. 2

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9.24.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Continuing on from my last post on why I’ve decided to spend October 1st through 4th at Indiecade, and expect you should as well, conference organizers have revealed more of what to expect from the four days, including highlights of its keynote from none less than former Maxis head Will Wright.

Wright, you’ll remember, recently departed the company to head his long-time incubator side-project the Stupid Fun Club, and — given Day 2’s theme of “art and innovation” — Wright will be focusing on what he’s cooking up in the Fun Club.

Apart from Wright, day two will also see talks from Avaloop, the indie virtual world company behind their “self-expression, communication, environmental awareness” focused Papermint, Arts Game Innovation Lab director Tracy Fullerton on working with video artist Bill Viola on The Night Journey, an iPhone panel by the RadioFlare, Ruben and Lullaby, and Eliss teams, and Uncharted designer Richard Lemarchand talking with Giant Sparrow designer Ian Dallas, creator of void-painting game The Unfinished Swan.

Indiecade has also sent Offworld more information on the Day One conversation between Katamari Damacy‘s Keita Takahashi, Flower‘s Jenova Chen and thatgamecompany’s Robin Hunicke, who have clarified that their talk will be a brainstorming session on “Fresh Ideas for First and Third-Person Shooters”. Takahashi will discuss his theoretical FPS/TPS “where characters grow as they succeed,” Chen will “brainstorm ways to make an FPS/TPS where the players have to be nice to each other,” and Hunicke will talk about her own game where “shooting created things instead of destroying them.”

The full conference schedule has been posted to the Indiecade site, which will also see Sunday sessions themed around “opportunities for aspiring young gamers, including a special workshop on colleges and universities that offer degrees in gaming, and a special pitch session where young designers can get feedback on their game ideas, as well as a series of sessions dedicated to adults interested in entering the game industry. Sunday’s program will include a premiere of a soon-to-be-published indie game.”

I’ll do a final post wrapping up all the games to be exhibited at Indiecade in the very near future, and might have more surprises in store, as well.