Not to be outdone by Hondune’s recently mentioned and essentially similar ragdoll injurer Ouch!, Zen Bound creators Secret Exit have playfully dis-announced via the Touch Arcade forums that their original ragdoll brutality sim Stair Dismount will be coming to the iPhone.
Like Ouch, Secret Exit say Dismount will allow players to map custom faces onto the ragdoll’s head, and will include that large photo icon for capturing in-game shots of the resulting mangled bodies.
The developer has kept an archive of the PC/Mac/Linux version of Stair Dismount, and the rest of their physics-based lineup (Truck Dismount is even more awesomely wince-worthy) for you to try out in advance. While it looks like it’ll be more limited in scope to Hondune’s game, from their previous iPhone output it’s clear that Secret Exit have a leg up on visual finesse and polish that could put this in its own league.
They are made from actual archaic technology that was once cutting-edge. Most of these examples were discovered in the United States, although the various species are represented all over the world. It is sad, but most of these units lived very short lives. Most people attribute the shortened lifespan to aggressive predators or accelerated evolution, but this is not necessarily true. It has been shown recently that the true demise of most of these specimens came from runaway consumerism and wastefulness at the high end of the food chain.
In a special process, these items are reproduced in a proprietary blend of concrete and other secret ingredients, giving them the look and feel of real stone fossils. Each fossil is made one at a time, by hand, in an individual mold. Because of the hand-made nature of the item, there will be variations in pigmentation, and small imperfections in the surface. While you can choose a general color range, please keep in mind that each fossil is unique, and color variations are inevitable.
Each “species” of modern fossil has a Latin name marked on the bottom or back, and can be shipped straight to your door.
Shown above, “Dominaludus nintendicus (burnt),” but also see Dexteludicrum repuerasco, and his various other non-explicitly gaming fossils. My only quibble, even though Ludustatarium temperosony does show its age with the wired plug, he should’ve gone with the all-digital original, which is already even deader.
Tasked with rejuvenating the Dr. Dobb’s brand a year ago, my old colleague Simon Carless put together an ace plan to involve the indie games community with the original Dr. Dobb’s Challenge — a remix contest that let developers mod a barebones Windows/Windows Mobile platformer originally created by Professor Fizzwizzle developers Grubby Games and mobile studio b3team.
Now they’ve upped the ante with the Dr. Dobbs Challenge Deuce, with the help of Gravity Hook creator Adam Saltsman, and the results so far are actually surprisingly wicked.
Saltsman’s new pixel-heavy Silverlight version takes the four characters from the original and gives each unique powers — the mummy gains a hat-tip to Mario 3 with an invulnerable sarcophagus move, the lizard can wall jump, the pirate can super jump off his peg-leg. The game also has some other subtle nods to the hardcore, like Dobb’s ability to use oversize soccer balls as weapons ala Treasure’s Bangai-O Spirits et al.
As the name implies, this is all built on top of a contest, of course, but it’s entirely enjoyable on its own. The in-game level editor and browser lets you page through custom built levels and share them with unique URLs, making it one of the most robust and enjoyable indie web creations in recent memory.
What’s next from the creator of understated indie fave I Wish I Were The Moon? Daniel Benmergui has teased his latest game, Today I Die — currently in the process of finding a sponsor for its eventual release — with only three elements.
In his latest blog post he’s added the image to the right, a single sentence describing it as being about “the daily choice of waking up in the morning,” and an mp3 preview of its soundtrack by Hernán Rozenwasser (who was also behind the audio in Benmergui’s 2008 Java heartbreaker Night Raveler).
There’s not too much we can glean from the audio, other than a similar deep-sea sonar and slow-drip motif that’s echoed in the preview image: here’s hoping for a Kongregate or similar portal release soon.
Continuing his terrific work fully archiving — in diary and video form — the process that led to the release of his landmark original Prince of Persia game, Jordan Mechner has remixed the entirety of his later, less well known, CD-ROM adventure The Last Express as a 75 minute cartoon.
A couple of years ago, for a fun weekend project, I captured a dozen hours of gameplay footage from my 1997 adventure game The Last Express and edited it down into a single, 75-minute linear narrative.
Other than a walk down memory lane, I’m not sure what it’s good for. It doesn’t work as a movie — the demands of game vs. film storytelling are too different — and the low-res, dissolve-between-still-frames animation looks awfully clunky now. But for anyone who’s interested, here it is (in eight 10-minute segments).
You’ve seen Left 4K Dead already (and it’s still probably the most accomplished), but if you haven’t dug through the other entrants in the latest Java4K contest, you’ve missed quite a bit.
As promised in January, Japan’s UNIQLO has unveiled the first in their amazingly wide-ranging new series of games related T-shirts, starting with a line-up of brilliant looking Pac-Man, Bomberman, Dig-Dug, Arkanoid, Galaxian, Mappy, Ape Escape and Resident Evil fineries, all of which will be released on the 16th of this month (no word yet how soon/if they’ll be brought to the stateside SoHo outlet).
Early April will then see the release of a Phoenix Wright, Rally-X and train sim Densha de Go! set, followed by Monster Hunter, Xevious, Street Fighter II, Mega Man, Sonic The Hedgehog, Family Tennis, Tekken and Puyo Pop.
Finally, throughout the end of April through June, we’ll see shirts for Hot Shot’s Golf, The Tower of Druaga, Parappa The Rapper, LittleBigPlanet, Doko Demo Issyo, Ghosts’n Goblins, Ridge Racer, Virtua Fighter, and both Japanese folk-tale related Momotaro Densetsu and Dentetsu.
Check the site for preview images of all the shirts through mid-April, and descriptions of all of the games represented — they’re certainly giving boutique label King of Games a retail-chain run for their money.
The computer game is a tribute to the proud yet imperiled republic of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (pronounced «oon-taa-tsee-gars-doorf»), the last existing appendage republic of the USSR. The tiny enclave maintains no diplomatic relationship with the surrounding “Republic of Austria” or with the Fortress “European Union”.
The downfall of her motherland — the Soviet Union — in the early 1990s had a particularly bad effect on the country’s economic situation. Now the picturesque communist state is facing a serious lack of resources, lack of space, and lack of population. To make matters worse, party secretary Wladislav Gomulka was kidnapped and brought to US-Oberzoegersdorf. We must use every tool at our disposal to rescue Gomulka! Including plenty of classified soviet technology, a proud tradition of bureaucracy, the recognition of North Korea, and a pond full of radioactive byproduct.
The hook: it’s got guest stars like Jello Biafra, Bruce Sterling, and BB’s own Cory Doctorow, and — I’ll go ahead and declare this now — will tie with Stalin Vs. Martians as the motherland’s best this year.
Independently run indie games showcase Indiecade (whew) has announced that it is seeking submissions for its 2009 tour, for “all styles and genres of games, including PC, browser-based, casual, puzzle, mobile, ARGs, Big Games and installation-based games, mods, serious games, activist games, art games, virtual worlds and ‘sandbox’ style games, and more!”
Their only caveat: “to be eligible for IndieCade, your game must not have funding from a major publisher. You can have other deals with these publishers; your game just can’t.”
Currently their international lineup of 2009 events includes:
IndieCade @ E3, Los Angeles (June 2-5)
IndieCade Asia TBA
IndieCade @ SIGGRAPH, New Orleans (Aug 5-7)
IndieCade 2009 (Oct 1-10)
IndieCade Europe, GameCity, UK (Oct 26-29)
And the deadline for submissions is April 30, 2009 at Midnight PST.
I’ve taken the tour through their showcase a number of times throughout the past two years, and the games included are always both smartly selected and smartly represented and discussed. See the lineup for their 2007/2008 showcases here, and find out more about the submission process here.
