Part 1
One Pill Is For Power
Act 1
FADE IN ON:
EXTERIOR: INFINITRON POLYPHARMA HEADQUARTERS
THE CAMERA cranes in on the 808TH FLOOR WINDOW of INFINITRON POLYPHARMA‘S monolithic and möbius-twisted corporate HQ, where we find POLYTRON’S PHIL FISH and INFINITE AMMO’S ALEC HOLOWKA at a BOARD ROOM TABLE, quietly conferring under a DENSE CLOUD OF CIGAR SMOKE on plans to dominate the iPHONE APP STORE via their jointly developed game POWER PILL. [via Phil Fish]
I haven’t had a chance yet here to give Twisted Pixel’s latest Xbox Live Arcade release ‘Splosion Man the full respect it genuinely deserves, but before I even can, the developer goes and makes an announcement for its latest game, Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley.
The Penny Arcade Expo-revealed trailer above doesn’t give you much of a sense of its eventual mechanics apart from promising ‘a new style of gameplay’ beyond what they admit lies beneath a core of ‘run, jump and shoot’, and the more obvious stylistic underpinning where each comic Smiley jumps to will alter the look of the game from what appears to range from PowerPuff Girls to Sin City.
Twisted Pixel have yet to announce target platforms or release dates, but I’m going to go ahead and assume at very least a continuation on Xbox Live Arcade, for now.
If you even briefly touched, let alone played through, Patrick Smith’s recent point-and-click hyper-surreal puzzler Windosill, you will have instantly realized the effortless ease with which he’s able to turn little vector objects into living, breathing digital things (this is especially true for a certain turning-point scene in Windo).
As I noted at the time, Windosill was just the latest in a long line of these digital toys and distractions, which Smith has just begun porting to the iPhone, including one of his best, Levers [App Store link]. Levers is as subtle and atmospheric as they come: as you’d gather from the screenshot above it’s a succession of increasingly difficult balancing acts.
Each perfect balance tosses a new object into the ocean below that has to be carefully counter-weighted with all the things before it, while its livelier objects (see: the blackbirds above) obliviously confound your progress just by nature of their self-animate presence.
Also added to the App Store is Smith’s Acrobots [App Store link], even more of a simple digital distraction, but also more of exactly what he does best: rendering ’emotion’ in characters even as abstracted as the ‘bots above.
There are no goals in Acrobots, simply a series of variables and controls which the ‘bots must obey, as they either actively flip and spring off one another (the Acro– part), or simply try to build themselves into a stable structure, which is where their carefully seeking feet (thrown off by their tri-pedal-ness) reach out for one another in a way that’s honestly kind of heartbreaking when they can’t find a mate/wall to match.
Of the two, Levers will obviously provide you with the better game experience, and it’s worth noting there’s a Lite version of Acrobots that’s just gone live. Both of the toys are also previewable/playable on the web (Levers / Acrobots), but both are perfectly suited for the iPhone as it lets them be exactly what they should be: diversions that let you directly touch a realistic but otherwise fantastic world.
Levers, Acrobots, Acrobots Lite [Vectorpark]
You’ve had enough with the words and the photos already and you want to see DeathSpank — Hothead’s action RPG/adventure from Monkey Island/Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert now officially announced for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 — in glorious motion, and glorious it is.
And below the fold, a full high-res gallery of the currently released DeathSpank screenshots, for your added enjoyment.
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When BioShock 2‘s multiplayer segment — a separate narrative that explores the fall of underwater u-/dys-topia Rapture via test subject trials for plasmid manufacturer Sinclair — was first announced, I noted that I was glad co-developer Digital Extremes wasn’t simply giving us Big Daddy Arena.
Then, watching this first video footage (prepared for the Penny Arcade Expo) of its online deathmatch exploits, right about 1:45 when the hollow whale-moan struck, I went 100% full reverse on that sentiment.
Only one question remains: exactly what manner of soul-stealing devilry is she performing with that camera at 1:26?
Below the fold: a high-res look at the Dark Carnival, the latest Left 4 Dead 2 campaign being shown off at the ongoing Penny Arcade Expo, most notable (if not for its Pennywise-perfect Zombie Clowns) for the unveiling of The Jockey, a new grotesquely hunched Boss infected Valve says “lets you attack lone Survivors and wrestle control of their movement away from them-into fire, off ledges, or straight into the middle of a zombie horde.”
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Name the most unlikely scenario in which you’d ever imagine Splinter Cell‘s Sam Fisher, and Ubisoft will officially do you one better with this Keyboard Cat parody intro vid for their Penny Arcade Expo Conviction demo launch.
If you’ve played Capcom/Clover’s PS2/Wii original Okami, it’s not hard to imagine what form its newly announced DS diminutive sequel will take: just reduce all of the original’s gestural/analog-stick Celestial Brushed mechanics to direct stylus control, and you’ve got what could easily amount to a handheld epic, which, from the video above, seems to have lost none of its lush Ukiyo-e inspired design.
Capcom’s prepping the full reveal for Tokyo Game Show, but IGN has translated the bits and scraps from its Famitsu magazine reveal and said the sequel will directly follow the events of the original, and will follow Chibiterasu (the ‘chibi‘ [tiny] name a riff off Okami‘s star Amaterasu) and a yet-unnamed companion on a yet-undetailed quest.
I’d like to think that there’s some wonky translation afoot in this extended video with an increasingly iconic and self-aware Suda 51 introducing the new features in Wii sequel No More Heroes 2. The most interesting thing you’ll see within is that the new game’s part-time-job side-missions now take place in faux 8-bit NES style, which pseudo-Suda claims is “on purpose.”
I’d like to think what they meant is “deliberately”, because no one should have to basically apologize for a touch of nostalgia, especially when it looks as good as this. [via TinyCartridge]
Ask just about anyone in the indie underground know which upcoming game they’re most excited about and, after a lot of over-the-shoulder peeking for listeners-in, they’ll widen their eyes with sincerity and quietly hiss two words: Captain Forever.
Forever‘s just days away from proper pre-launch and while you haven’t heard much about it yet from creator Farbs (who you’ll remember as the dev behind 8-bit mashup ROM Check Fail or maybe Polychromatic Funk Monkey, or, for regular Offworld readers, as The Guy Who Quit His Job Via Super Mario Bros.), he’s just let slip the video above, giving you a full 15 minutes of play footage crammed into 15 seconds.
Watch this space (and his space, too) for much more of Forever‘s space soon.
