There’s sort of no better way to spend an hour or so of your Wednesday than with Exotworking‘s just-released game, The Visit, which, finally, fully considers — to all of its various logical conclusions — the ethics of retro-platformer sociopathy.
It’s a brief, perfect short-story of a game which initially formed out of a 48 hour jam, by Irina Gross, Benedikt Hummel, and Majus Fietzek, who you may recognize as the developer who landed himself a Double Fine internship by putting together a fully playable adventure game “application”.
Just as funny (if not as anarchist & severe) as TheCatamites’ Murder Dog, you’ll be finished with The Visit when you’ve branched out on all six punchline paths, only the three most obvious of which I’ve yet found, each as satisfying as the last — the best kind of mid-week distraction. [The Visit, via Tim Schafer]
[UPDATE: both of these wallpapers have been updated further to fit properly on the iPhone 5 — click here for the newer versions and one additional wallpaper!]
As if I didn’t have enough latent guilt about impulse-upgrading to an iPhone 5 I didn’t necessarily really need, the first thing I realized on activation was that the extra row of icons had unceremoniously broken my favorite part of the phone: my original Noby Noby Boy wallpaper, which saw BOY playfully looped around each of your icons, and surprises hidden under each which only revealed themselves as you opened an adjacent folder.
And so, I registered my complaint with Katamari Damacy & Noby creator Keita Takahashi, who, even though he hadn’t yet upgraded himself, offered to alleviate the situation by creating an newer, longer version, and even threw in a brand new GIRL version for our troubles.
And so, presented below the fold, both of the wallpapers to adorn your own device, in wistful memory of the game that very shortly will be leaving the mortal coil of the App Store itself. If you’re still working the iPhone 4/4S, you can find the original BOY version here, with the shortened GIRL version promised to appear in the near future.
Super interesting news from Robin Hunicke — formerly designer and producer on games like Boom Blox, Journey and Glitch — and Martin ‘Pizzacity‘ Middleton, who joined thatgamecompany in 2006 to work on the PS3 port of flOw before creating much of the underlying technology of both Flower and Journey, as both have announced the foundation of Funomena, a new San Francisco based indie studio.
The duo have also announced that they’ll be collaborating with a number of TGC alum & friends including Journey and Monaco composer Austin Wintory, former thatgamecompany art director Matt Nava, and SuperBetter design director and San Francisco Global Game Jam organizer Chelsea Howe for their upcoming projects.
While there’s no formal announcement of their first project, Hunicke has hinted that they’ll be working with a non-profit on a game involving the use of pedometers, in an effort to tackle issues like childhood obesity — keep an eye on the Funomena blog to see more as the project takes shape.
The game that first put VVVVVV & Super Hexagon creator Terry Cavanagh on many peoples’ radars, for its mix of twitch platforming & narrative twists, Don’t Look Back — first released to the web in 2009 — has just been released as a free download for iOS and Android devices.
It’s a clever short story of a game that you’ll wrap up before you know it, but it’s a stepping-stone type journey in a couple different senses, serving first, it seems, as a stop along the way not just to Cavanagh’s own development path to VVVVVV — if you’ve played the latter, you’ll feel it on your way through here.
This mobile release also seems to been a proving grounds which provided him with the knowledge that VVVVVV just might work on mobile devices as well, with it now being teased as an upcoming game on his Distractionware site.
And then, without warning, the wonderful news I have been waiting for quite literally since the launch of the PlayStation Vita itself: Sony’s stateside blog has just announced that Frobisher Says, the minigame collection from Hohokum & Passing Time developers Honeyslug will finally be released in U.S. as a free download on October 23rd.
Though often compared to games like WarioWare for its fast-paced & fractured play, Frobisher‘s less a frenetic exercise in reaction time and more a petulant and self-aware tour through the Vita hardware itself, guided by the titular narrator, played — pitch perfectly — by Kevin Eldon, who you almost certainly know, even if you don’t know you know (or, at least, you should know), from appearances in British comedies like Spaced, Black Books, Brass Eye, Jam & I’m Alan Partridge.
Long story short, it’s an essential download and the best reason to get re-acquainted with your Vita since Sound Shapes — expect to hear more here on it closer to its release.
If you haven’t been following its development as closely as most, there’s no better place to start than Pocketwatch head Andy Schatz’s own directors-commentary-enhanced playthrough of its Monte Carlo Casino level above, giving you the best sense of its fantastically dynamic line-of-sight system overlaid on its blueprint basics. Much more information is also available at Pocketwatch’s official site, where you can keep abreast of its eventual release date.
