The follow-up to their low-bit styled BIT.TRIP RUNNER, Runner 2 has, as is clear by even a cursory glance at the above, been given a massive aesthetic overhaul, showing the full extent of what the team are capable of when not working through their 8-bit mythology.
But what’s also clear is that the team’s visual/kinetic-overload hasn’t lessened a bit: even that world-1 playthrough at top is a non-stop frenetic series of hair-trigger interactions from start to finish. That continues in the world two and three videos included below the fold, which you should watch before heading over to Gaijin’s Runner 2 blog for more.
One more hit of Patrick Smith awesomeness for the day, this time his Caterpillar, another fractured creature that should be right at home to anyone that’s been following his Vectorpark work.
If you’ve only played Windosill, you also need to stop what you’re doing and pick up his similarly amazing iPad app Feed the Head (also available in miniature iPhone form), and then Levers and smaller toys Acrobots and Carousel, at which point all your iOS devices will be at maximum (read: proper) wonder-levels.
Following a conversation earlier today about the enduring brilliance of Patrick Smith, best known as Vectorpark, I thought it was long past due to feature some of his non-interactive work, here with a 2007 painting called Cabin, which, along with this Citadel pencil drawing, should look somewhat familiar to anyone that’s played through his fantastically enchanting Windosill.
Part of the main attraction of LA Game Space’s recently-launched Kickstarter campaign is that enticing entry level donation which nets you some thirty new experimental games from a massive lineup of excellent indie names, but to date, they’ve been just that: a list of names.
To start remedying that, then, we present the first look at one of the games included in the bunch, Steve Swink‘s Inputting. Long-time readers around these parts might recognize Swink’s name from his earlier work as part of indie-group Flashbang, where he helmed games like Time Donkey, as well as later revelations like the unfortunately still-iced Shadow Physics.
You may have heard it said in design discussions that the best controls in games are those you don’t notice at all, that, ideally, designers strive to eliminate the conscious thought of manipulating an input device to create fluid in-game output, but, with Inputting, Swink’s flipped that on its head.
Somewhere in between the finger-twisting of Foddy’s GIRP blended with the primitive shape ambience of Cactus’s Tuning, Inputting is, put simply, a game about your keyboard — a collection of challenges that make you play directly with the device so ubiquitous that it’s basically entirely faded from your frontal lobes.
Even in its current early-alpha state, it’s a mix of wildly creative ideas, from basic wood-block labyrinths, to third person scrollers, to first person platforming that gives you pause about why you’ve been so comfortable with ‘WASD’ this entire time.
If all of the games from the LA Game Space campaign maintain this level of curiosity & intrigue (& we’ll hopefully be able to bring you longer looks at more of its lineup, as it continues), it might prove to have been one of art/game’s best bundles of the past several years — head over to the Kickstarter to make a contribution and ensure that you’re in on the ground floor.
And so, I said as much on Twitter, and then, just hours later, fellow Soulwax superfan Mark “Tole Cover” Hinog took up the challenge, and thus the mix below was born:
I basically couldn’t be happier with it, especially the bit where Frobisher Says artist Dick Hogg provides its percussive vocals, and it makes me wonder if we shouldn’t start doing remix contests more regularly… If anyone else feels like taking up the mantle, drop me a note!
Never one to miss a Nintendo launch — his World of Goo being one of the first high-profile downloadable indie releases for the Wii — 2D Boy’s Kyle Gabler along with Henry Hatsworth designer Kyle Gray and their Experimental Gameplay Project cohort Allan Blomquist have just revealed the first gameplay of their Little Inferno, due out this Sunday for PC & Wii U.
And that is actual gameplay: while I’ll save the deeper look for a full writeup in the near future, as previously-hinted at, the bulk of Little Inferno does concern itself with igniting your precious possessions in a fantastically simulated fireplace, to (no surprise, for those that’ve fully experienced the darker tones of Goo) deeply sardonic ends.
But!
If you’re already convinced: you can download Inferno for PC straight from the Tomorrow Corporation boys right now, right over here — which will also net you a Steam key (and eventual Mac & Linux versions) when the game unlocks there on Sunday — which suffice it to say for now that I highly suggest that you do.
If you like what you hear here, a subtle reminder that there’s 90 more minutes where that came from by becoming a member of this here site at both the monthly & yearly levels, which also includes some bonus Sword & Sworcery EP beats. This podcast is also available for download directly from Greyhound, and keep an eye on Baiyon’s own site for much more mixes & original releases.
More good news (on top of the recently featured Chasing Aurora) for indie-loving fans counting down the days until the Wii U launch this Sunday, as Denmark’s KnapNok Games announces Spin the Bottle, a collection of minigames requiring “tight coordination, daring trust, body contact or extreme flexibility” due in spring of 2013.
That same sensibility carries forward to Spin the Bottle, which, as you’d expect, sees up to 8 players spinning a virtual bottle to pair off for one of its challenges which, interestingly (and similar to Joust), don’t require a TV at all, instead using only the Wii U’s Game Pad and standard Wii remotes to take part in its — honest! — “innocent game for innocent kids”.
KnapNok have more information and screenshots of its fantastic Simon Gustafsson illustrations over at their new Spin the Bottle site.
The shirt can best be complimented with these NoMarios All-Stars badges featuring Pikmin, Bubble Bobble, Ice Climbers and most obscure-dly, Treasure’s underdog Nintendo 64 action game Mischief Makers. Find more Animal Crossing, Kirby & Pac-Man tributes (as well as Davis’s Once Upon A Pixel DVD) via Fangamer.
