So they did have a master plan after all, and it’s all been leading up to this, hasn’t it? A day before Noby Noby Boy‘s long-awaited PlayStation Network release, Namco have taken a sharp turn and — rather than give us sparse, 30 second single-camera blips of the game — lead us instead on a three minute montage tour through its universe.
Not to say that there’s anything particularly revealing or surprising that we haven’t seen before (apart from the giant flailing Noby and the brilliant square-wheeled carrot car), but what strikes me more than anything, especially as the Boy knots himself through that lattice structure at 1:55, is how consistently the game fits in with what designer Keita Takahashi has been dreaming of all along.
As I mentioned in my first attempt at explaining the game, since first finding his audience with Katamari Damacy Takahashi has famously been saying that while making games has been a fun ride, his heart has got more ‘physical’ designs, particularly constructing playgrounds for children.
Like he told Edge magazine in 2007 as he toured the Nottingham, UK site that has been cordoned off for him to do just that: “I just want to make a park where a child will feel like taking off his shoes and start to run.”
Everything we’ve seen of Noby Noby Boy looks like a universe constructed to do just that, and I can honestly say there hasn’t been a world I’ve been so excited to ditch my sneakers and just play in in quite some time.
Spotted via a not-so-subtle tweet from indie dev Mark ‘Doomlaser‘ Johns, part of the TIGSource massiv. All we know about the above is that filename’s called ThePlumberIsDead, that it was correctly guessed to be a 2D/3D gameplay mix, and that Mark’s definitely got our attention.
I met Johns briefly at the 2007 Gamma 256 party (the same Kokoromi showcase where Jason Rohrer’s Passage made its debut), and, amongst more legitimate accomplishments, he holds the distinct honor of being one of only two people I know who had even more trouble crossing the border into Canada that year than I did (the other being Fl0w/Flower creator Jenova Chen, who was barred from crossing altogether).
For more on what doomlaser’s about, see the Gamma256 entry Johns had submitted that year, stdbits, which plays something like a psychotropic, corrupted retro-futurist Adventure.
Of all the games that came out of this year’s Nordic Game Jam — the inspiration for and held concurrently with the Global Game Jam — “4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness” seems to have captivated the indie set the most, a surprise, because while fantastically high concept, it’s probably the least traditionally game like.
4m33s comes from Crayon Physics creator Petri Purho (with the assistance of Kokoromi’s Heather Kelley and Jonatan ‘Cactus’ Söderström), and admittedly probably did the best job of interpreting the game jam’s theme, ‘As long as we have each other, we’ll never run out of problems.’
The premise is simple: all you have to do to win is run the game for that 4:33, represented by what is essentially a game-screen loading bar. The obstacle: if anyone else in the world tries to play at the same time, your game is instantly cut off and shut down.
At the get-go, it was almost impossible to tell a shutdown from any given crash, but Jonathan Basseri has created what might be the most essential mod for the least essential game with this Google Maps visualization of exactly who’s stolen your crown.
Seen above: my glorious 45 or seconds of uniqueness before some bastard Finn took it all away from me. The surprise? For a game that isn’t a game (is it actually an abstract ARG?), it is actually surprisingly compelling.
UPDATE: Commenter oboy puts me deeply, deeply, to shame with his observation below: “It sounds like it was created specifically as an existential examination of what exactly a game is. In 1952, John Cage composed 4’33”, a three-movement piece where no notes are played. Is it music? I think the same question is being asked here–the player is asked to do nothing for 4’33”. Is that a game? Well played. Well played indeed.”
Proof that this week has got the best of me: I couldn’t even see the Cage connection when the numbers were staring me straight in the face. Well played right back at you.
Jon Blow’s Braid probably doesn’t need much introduction as one of Xbox Live Arcade’s flagship puzzlers which (deservedly) set every art-game-braniac’s heart a-flutter on its release earlier last year (if you do need an introduction, I included a relatively spoiler-y preview video in my Offworld 20 writeup).
Now, though, the deviously complex time-shifting platformer is officially set for a PC release via Stardock’s Impulse platform, with a tentative release date of March 31st and a price of $19.95 $14.95.
A Steam version seems likely as well: Blow talked with Gamasutra in late January and said of their continuing relationship:
A long time ago, I was talking to them, and it didn’t really work out. Since then, they’ve come back and contacted me, and they are interested in putting the game up. So it’s just a matter of me having a PC version ready that I feel is good to go with.
This, presumably, will be that version (unless he’s continuing to add Steam-exclusive achievements) and the cross-platform domination can begin in full, but for now it seems Impulse has one of its highest profile indie exclusives.
UPDATE: As noted via the official Braid blog, the game has already dropped to $14.95 to match Xbox Live Arcade pricing, and will be coming to two more yet-undisclosed portal services.
As you may have seen, Mother/Earthbound translation head Tomato was kind enough to elaborate on some points of my last post on Earthbound quite likely never making it to the Wii’s Virtual Console.
The curious musical confusion highlighted in his Earthbound Central post (oddball Rick Ocasek and Little Rascals samples in the game’s soundtrack?) wasn’t, as I’d mentioned, the bits he thought Nintendo of America would be worried about, but promised to start collecting the bits he figured they would in a separate page in the near future.
Well, that came sooner than I expected: this post starts that cataloging with an extensive breakdown of some of the thornier legal issues in the cult hit game.
Some have been well documented since the game first garnered its underground master-work status: Red Cross, Blues Brothers, and Coke-alikes were all modified on its initial release, but some other things might not fly so easily today: the Mr. T likeness, and especially some of the more blatant Beatles influences and outright drum-loop samples. On closer listen, those and the Who-alikes remind me: the Earthbound soundtrack really was fantastic, wasn’t it?
It’s always a special time when Valve starts the process of updating one of its Team Fortress 2 characters, because their new abilities are always so gloriously ludicrous.
Case in point, phase 1 of The New Scout — coming to the game next week — and his first new move, ‘The Sandman.’ Valve explain:
You Scouts are gonna love this highly collectible bat that smacks baseballs at the other team, stunning the living crap outta anybody dumb, slow, drunk, mute or Australian enough to get in the way. The farther the ball flies before ricocheting offa some chucklehead’s skull, the longer he’s gonna be stunned. And guys who think they’re tough because they’re invulnerable? It works on them too. Now the bad news: You can’t double jump when you’re carrying this little beauty. On the other hand, double jumping never put anybody in a coma.
New updates to the Scout’s repertoire will be coming daily up until the official launch of the patch.
It’s no great secret that the iPhone’s game selection has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past few months, but we are a bit lonely out there, aren’t we? Maybe not so much any more, though, as Aurora Feint, makers of the iPhone puzzler/RPG, um, Aurora Feint, have sent word that they’ve launched OpenFeint, a new social platform specifically geared toward indie iPhone devs.
Now available for private beta, Feint will host the server (which they say is “compatible with Google’s OpenSocial REST API and is accessible through the OpenFeint Client code library and sample UI code”), and are planning to keep the platform free for developers up to an unspecified “limited” number of concurrent clients, with a pricing tier beyond that expected in March when the product goes live.
Here’s what you get:
— Profiles: Players can upload any avatar photo or one from their phone’s camera
— Walls: Each player gets a wall where other players can leave comments and view wall-to-wall conversations
— Asynchronous Real-Time Chat: Game-specific chat rooms for meeting other players, sharing tips, strategies and experiences within each game community
— Friends List: Players can friend other players within their game community or across the gaming community
— Newsfeeds: Players can keep in touch with all of their friends’ activities (wall comments, actions in games, befriending people)
— Global Community Chat: Game-independent rooms for players to discuss recommendations, tips, and experiences on other games
The platform comes nipping at the heels of Trism dev Steve Demeter’s plans for Onyx Online (aka his plan to “save the App Store“), though Demeter’s plans go beyond providing chat and friend links and have their sights set on recreating as much Xbox Live functionality as possible over the device (see more about this via his PowerPoint presentation), and more sociability versus less is always a good thing.
Here’s my shameful admission of the month: I’ve never got past the first 20 minutes or so (not counting initial map generation) with Bay12’s unbelievably epic ASCII RPG Dwarf Fortress. I am fully convinced it’s brilliant — quite possibly one of the most deeply rewarding open-world games in recent memory — and I am fully convinced that given more of a chance I would probably have a transcendent experience with it, but I am instantly stricken with crippling anxiety just sitting at its opening play-screen.
I suspect I’m not the only one, too, and for us, there’s now a similarly epic video tutorial set from ‘captain_duck’ that will guide you through all of both its basic and advanced mechanics (and by epic I mean a full 10 minute video simply on mining and making beds). In the last of his original series, duck even showcases a 3D map visualization that might help get your head a bit more into the game.
I hate to say it, though, but I really do think that until someone comes up with a tileset as pixel perfect as the proof of concept above (via SpriteAttack via RockPaperShotgun) (why can’t we make it so?) there’s not much chance of me getting much further into the game, though this set is a massive leap in the right direction.
Disappointing news comes from Lego’s direction this morning with the announcement that Netdevil’s forthcoming MMO Lego Universe won’t be making it to us for at least another year.
Lego lead Mark Hansen told MTV’s games blog the decision was less about tuning the game and “more strategic in relation to product launches that we have within Lego… [We have] new product lines that are coming out… We don’t want to make a big splash [with ‘LEGO Universe‘] in the market where its success could take focus away from [the other products].”
The company softened the blow with new media of the game including the err.. castle-swash-buckling image above, an extra minifig-meets-monsters shot, and, via MTV, an exclusive shot rife with ninjas, which just about covers all of the basic Lego food groups.
The announcement follows recent news which reverses the Lego -> games stream: toy sets based on Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia, or rather, Mechner via Ubisoft via Jerry Bruckheimer’s upcoming film adaptation, should be hitting shelves in spring 2010, on time with the release of the film.
As before, my best recommendation to counter-remedy all this waiting: the online collaborative builder/demolisher indie MMO Blockland. Squint your eyes and you’ll almost be able to see the little divets on each block.
After announcing that Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima would be keynoting the 2009 Game Developer’s Conference, organizers have sent word that the developer will also be the recipient of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony.
The award has previously gone to strategy game maker Sid Meier, Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto, Ultima creator Richard Garriott, Defender/Robotron creator Eugene Jarvis, Marble Madness designer and now wide-ranging consultant Mark Cerny, Game Boy creator Gunpei Yokoi, Sonic designer Yuji Naka and Sim-everything creator Will Wright.
Organizers say Kojima was chosen because his “contributions to game development have broken new ground and inspired the community to think about creating games in never-before-imagined ways… from giving birth to the stealth action game genre to showing game makers how to interact with their players by breaking the ‘fourth wall.'”
