The essence: manipulate directional blocks in quasi-Chu Chu Rocket style (though more cerebrally to that game’s inherent chaos) to force an 8-bit executioner away from the bound princess and into the jaws of the patiently awaiting monster.
New in Shen Games’ latest version, a full level editor that lets you share custom levels via an exported file. Leave the URLs of your cleverest creations in the comments below!
Well, that came faster than expected: as promised, Braid creator Jon Blow has updated the official game site with a downloadable starter package and the first draft of documentation for the level editor included in the PC (and forthcoming Mac) version of the game.
From the good things in unexpected places dept.: academic journal Transformative Works has devoted its latest issue to the subject of games, and chief amongst its best pieces is MIT students Kevin Driscoll and Joshua Diaz’s exhaustive look at the history and rise of the chiptune genre.
From the earliest hardware hacking days of the Atari 2600, to the landmark creation of the SID chip (right, used most famously in the Commodore 64) to the concurrent Amiga cracking/tracking/demo scenes, Driscoll sets up the aesthetic roots of what would later be embraced by the likes of upstart (and still prolific) netlabel micromusic.net.
Driscoll also very adeptly covers the split between chiptune music for its own sake and its somewhat tenuous association with “videogame music” itself (a subject broached often in 2pp’s Reformat the Planet documentary), and the trend of covering formerly chipped music with live instruments (see: the Minibosses, et al).
It’s a fantastic and very readable primer to the scene, and an informative read even for old hats.
Outside of the bit Generations (or, as it’s now known, Art Style) series, the WarioWare franchise and its chaotic strings of one to two-second-long microgames remains one of Nintendo’s boldest experiments after decades of safer and more traditionalist design.
Though each subsequent iteration (from motion-sensitive twisting, to DS original touching, to Wii-mote smooth-moving) has seen the refreshingly belligerent streak of the Game Boy Advance original necessarily tamed as it asked for more motor skill precision, the latest volume, now fully detailed for the first time in Japan, has laid the series’ fate in your hands.
While still not officially announced for the U.S. (though a shoe-in to appear), the latest DS version, Made in Ore (roughly, Made In Me), has taken the series for a decidedly crowd-sourced turn and will let players fully design, share and remix their own microgames — as well as comics and music. (more…)
The best thing that’s landed in my mailbox so far this week: Alex Chen, half of pop-duo Boy In Static, submits the video (directed by Philip Stockton and himself) for his band’s latest single, Toy Baby Grand. Chen explains: “Footage for the video was captured like a performance, pasting text and GIF’s into Textedit in sync with the music.”
But! Then! Even better: after you’ve watched, you go play the video in game form to win MP3s, and, says Chen: “the twist is that we will unlock more MP3’s based on the number of hits.” So, go play, please.
Boy in Static (consisting of Chen and Kenji Ross) was originally signed to Alien Transistor, the label headed by Markus Acher of Offworld favorite band The Notwist (where their original web video Bellyfull was featured on the Mother Boing), before moving over to Mush and touring with the likes of Harmonix-related synth-pop mainstays Freezepop.
The final blow that could get all of the Xbox 360 early adopters to re-purchase Jon Blow’s time-warping platformer Braid for the PC/Mac? Spurred on by a recent Steam forum questioner, Jon Blow has admitted that there is indeed a hidden level editor inside the recently released port.
Currently accessible by staring the game with an “-editor parameter” and pressing F11, Blow has said that full editor documentation will be published in coming weeks, followed by “a tool will be released that lets you take Photoshop files and import them into the game, if you want to put new graphics in your levels,” and added that the editor will be coming to the Mac version, as well.
Artist David Hellman actually showed the editor at work during his GDC session — you can see a quick rundown of its features via his Art of Braid blog series.
Head over to the original Steam thread for more explanation from Blow, and then do whatever task exists for wrapping your mind around the seemingly insurmountable challenge of designing for time as much as space.
The anonymous overseer of the superannuation blog — he’s the one that tirelessly digs up pre-release trademark information and scours resumes for hints at un-announced games past and future — has stumbled across a new trademark filing for Morgan’s character to be used in games.
Presumably this’ll be in conjunction with the cartoon deal Nickelodeon signed back in 2006 (though little more has been said about the show since).
Superannuation’s work usually thanklessly goes uncredited by the mainstream games blogs, but since he dedicated this find specifically to me and my ‘purportedly hipster‘ ways, I obviously can’t help but give him his full due in reverse.
In those early years, they are worked hard. As much as you can get out of them, as soon as you can get it, before they realize this is not as glamorous as they thought. Yes, even the ones who heard about the working conditions were still being a bit optimistic. Make sure to have the appropriate chemical stimulants on hand to let them keep going to the limits of youthful endurance. Until they get burned out, these are the best years to work them until they are dry.
They will get burned out soon. The disillusionment process can be traumatic, and many try to hide it because they cannot admit it was a losing decision. They will keep going, pushing those hours, hitting those stimulants hard. If you look back in a few years, you will see how their bodies have changed, not from aging, but from the work itself.
I’ve been anxiously awaiting this one since the above trailer first appeared the week of GDC, but now it’s here: Melbourne studio Touch My Pixel and illustrator/vinyl toy producer Nathan Jurevicius have officially unveiled their collaborative Scarygirl game.
As it turns out, it’s a far more intricately constructed game than you’d normally imagine springing from a promotional web campaign (see: DGPH’s similar, but mechanically far less complex Molestown).
Fit in amongst its indie-developed brethren, it’s somewhere quite near Amanita’s Samorost games (and his previously blogged Machinarium), only, obviously strip away the point and click scheme for more traditional platforming, and replace Dvorský’s signature gnarled organic photoshoppery for Nathan J’s already well-established style.
What it retains from games like Samorost, though, is that sense of wonder that you get from exploring a world (and Scarygirl‘s world is rife with nooks and crannies to be explored) entirely unlike the worlds games have given us before — exactly the kind of magic I’ve been talking about since founding Offworld that comes when an outside artist brings their fresh perspective into games.
It might not be quite as tightly built as the best of the past several decades of platformers, and makes some cute and easily forgivable minor mistakes along the way (see: my reticence to jump on the spiky-headed enemies in the first level before accidentally realizing it wouldn’t hurt), but with its iconographic narration, richly constructed environments and collectible diversions (provided by a series of console cartridges that unlock minigames), it’s a fantastic experiment and addition to the year’s indie output.
Vintage Computing’s Benj Edwards has put together a wonderful slideshow of the weird and wonderful underbelly of Game Boy lore throughout the years, with some cute and classic stuff you probably remember since childhood.
