The best games news I’ve heard out of CES thus far? Via Crispy Gamer, Harmonix’s Alex Rigopolus bucking the sequel trend and maintaining development focus on Rock Band as a pure platform, very much as it should be:
“We’ve actually made a choice to break out of the annual release cycle for Rock Band this year,” Rigopolous told the assembled press and industry members. “[This is] partly because the annual cycle places limits on the choices you can make as a developer. We’re trying to take a long term view.”
That doesn’t mean Harmonix hasn’t given up on standalone releases — in October the company announced a new deal with The Beatles to provide a custom one-off Rock Band-esque exploration of the band’s back catalog, slated for release later this year.
I think it’s been entirely too long since I last checked on Spore‘s creature scene — Shacknews points out these two curated Sporecasts featuring nothing more than massive doses of reconstructed classic pixel art, which honestly would be a delightful surprise to run across in the middle of an otherwise dark galaxy.
MMO news outlet Massively points out a growing controversy with a number of Wikipedia entries on various classic MUDs coming up for deletion and disappearing despite majority votes to save them, and the support of MUD creators and supporters like Richard Bartle, Raph Koster, and Scott “Lum the Mad” Jennings:
What makes this whole discussion so frustrating lies in how the MUD community has preserved their own history. Many of the facts and tales of the games comes through something akin to the oral tradition — many users who have written about, blogged, or related their thoughts to others via community sites. Because of this, there is no main verifiable source to connect these MUDs with. Without a verifiable source, one of the main tenets of Wikipedia, all of these articles can come under fire. With the MUD community in decline, many of the older articles can’t even be linked to or referenced — providing only more problems with keeping these entries in the system.
Today’s best scientific news: playing Tetris could alleviate traumatic memories, provided (and in the highly unlikely case that) you play immediately following a painful event:
The researchers who published their findings in the Public Library of Science One journal showed 40 healthy volunteers that included traumatic images of injury from a variety of sources, including adverts highlighting the dangers of drink driving.
After waiting for 30 minutes, 20 of the volunteers played “Tetris” for 10 minutes while the other half did nothing. Those who had played the computer game experienced significantly fewer flashbacks over the next week.
Dr Holmes and her team believe that the computer game helps block the brain from storing painful memories as long as it is played immediately after the event…
The Oxford team chose “Tetris” because it involves moving coloured building blocks around and uses a large part of the mind. They are unsure whether other computer games would be as effective.
No word from the team on what to do when the trauma itself is the nightmare of inescapable re-occuring Tetris dreams.
Tomorrow’s PlayStation Network exclusive puzzler Cuboid looks as though it’s shaped up well, and fits in nicely with a recent spate of spatial block puzzles (or, at least, with the recent release of the iPhone’s excellent platformer Edge [more on that soon]).
GameSetWatch’s early morning link-dump pointed me innocuously to news that adventure game Darkstar is “content complete” with just “testing and QA” left to finish before a Christmas 2009 release. That in itself didn’t stir much interest until I realized (re-remembered?) the game stars a who’s-who of former Mystery Science Theater 3000 glory (Joel’s Cinematic Titanic half, anyway, as opposed to Mike’s later Rifftrax cohorts).
A bit of research later (from what appears to be a since-deleted copy of an ancient Wikipedia article), I realize the game’s been in production since late 2000 (long enough for me to wonder if it’d ever been on and subsequently dropped off my radar), and, to be honest, looks the part with a pre-rendered and composited style that instantly dates it considerably.
Comments on the original news seem to carry a healthy dose of skepticism, and, after watching a snippet, I’m curious as to just how straight the game will play itself, despite Joel, Trace, Frank, J.Elvis and Mary Jo’s all-star involvement, but for now I’m filing it under cautiously optimistic.
Inspired by Lovecraftian themes, I had the idea of an enormous creature from beneath the waves discovering the world above. When I think of the deep ocean, I imagine darkness and a lack of color. When I think of color at its simplest, balloons come to mind: floating spheres in primary shades.
Contrary to what many players have guessed, the game was not actually based on a dream I had. I was aiming for a dream-like atmosphere, but the concepts came from a more prosaic source: brainstorming. My actual dreams are typically much weirder than “Majesty.”
Check the link for more from Weir on how the game developed, how the monster lost one of his tentacles, and more business minded thoughts about indie Flash development.
The Independent Games Festival has announced its list of finalists for this year’s competition, culminating with this year’s awards show on March 25th. Topping the list of nominations is Q-Games’ fantastic PixelJunk Eden, which nabbed Visual Art, Audio and Technical Excellence spots, as well as Hemisphere Games’ cellular puzzle game Osmos, which earned Technical and Design nominations, as well as a nomination for the overall Seumas McNally Grand Prize.
Other notable entrants include Amanita’s Machinarium, the latest point and click adventure from the maker of the brilliant Samorost series, Between, the Esquire-curated game from Passage creator Jason Rohrer, and high-concept fan-favorite You Have To Burn The Rope from Mazapan.
Hit the jump for the full list of nominations. (more…)
I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for Bovinedragon’s free iPhone platformer Trace [AppStore] and its mix of MS Paint naivete with frankly excellently done draw-your-own stick-figure action/puzzling, so I was pleased to note this morning that they’ve updated their site with new details of their upcoming title Gomi. (Japanese for ‘trash’), the game finds its hook in an environmental motif that sees you reclaiming the world from, so far as I can tell, polluters, industrialization, and… baby seal clubbers?
Though critics will now truly have a game to lambast as the iPhone’s low budget Loco Roco (Rolando having proven itself sufficiently self-standing), the clearly unabashed lifting and downgrading of its style, along with its dash of Katamari and even just a hint of Mario Galaxy‘s island-hopping reassures me that they know precisely what they’re doing, and could end up creating something quite nice.
Filed under tremendous pity with some glimmer of hope that exposure might bring it back to life, oeFun founder Ian Dunlop — former programmer on games like Thief: Deadly Shadows and now head of his own Austin based indie that’s focused on the DS and iPhone — has released video of his now-abandoned original Wii production.
Known then as RetroShooter 2050, Dunlop has described the game’s hook as so:
The game was a simple point-and-shoot game with a twist. Each level represents a decade in our history starting in 1940 and ending in 2050. The concept was that people in the future (2050) made this game and it is their interpretation of historical events that represent the levels features and enemies. This rosy / filtered look on the past by some future historian is what gave the game it’s unique ideas and look.
The game supported two simultaneous players and featured music synced to the games action. The demo features one level from the year 2000 and ends with a boss.
I recall when Dunlop was touting Wii development as “a direction in gaming that I’ve been wanting things to go now for a long time” and ideally suited for indies, so the sting is sharp to see a game that, even for as clearly Rez inspired as it is, had a strong vision and would have been a boon for the platform.
