If it’s been a while since you last dropped in on QCF’s fantastic rogue-like puzzler Desktop Dungeons, or you haven’t yet been initiated, look no further than the video above. Leagues beyond where the devs made the move away from their still-freely-available alpha version, the clip gives you the best example of what to expect from its full release, with newly added music by Super Meat Boy and Canabalt composer Danny B & GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and Banjo-Kazooie composer Grant Kirkhope.
If you’re still a little in the dark on what’s happening, the Rogue meets Minesweeper premise of the game is deceptively simple: each dungeon is tackled as a slow-ramp from your entrance as a low-level adventurer to the slaying of the stage-boss, carried out by thoughtful planned attacks on lower monsters to level up & strengthen yourself to the final encounter.
The key twist? The fog of war: revealing each black tile by approaching it also refills an amount of your health and magic, meaning your least effective strategy is zipping through each dungeon to reveal its contents, instead requiring carefully metered out treks down side-paths, primarily after battles, when you need it the most.
One of the rare indie games voted in by the public, conductor Andrew Skeet and the London Philharmonic Orchestra have teased this snippet of their fully orchestrated version of Disasterpeace’s Adventure, a key track from the soundtrack to Polytron’s Fez.
The arrangement will be featured alongside pieces from games like Skyrim, Castlevania, Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Metroid, as well as tracks from Portal and Little Big Planet, on the full ‘Greatest Video Game Music 2’ compilation, due for release in just a few short weeks on November 6th. Keep your eyes on the compilation’s twitter feed for information on the release.
Local favorite game/fashion design house King of Games has just announced the re-availability of four classic and long out of print parka designs, now available for order via the official King of Games site. Above, a new version of their “Mario College” design, and below, the reprinted Zelda 20th Anniversary design featuring “the Evolution of Link’s shield (Famicom, Super Famicom, N64, Gamecube), crossed Master Swords, and Hyrulian text.”
Also available are two slightly more austere zip-up designs featuring Super Mario Bros. and Excitebike, each variously dotted with cross-stitched sprites from both games in strategic positions.
As with all King of Games designs, their ultra-limited availability and official license means you’ll pay a premium (especially for overseas shipping), but as it’s the first time many of these designs have been available worldwide, it’s more or less now or never.
Think you’ve got what it takes? A Monday reminder that this Saturday will see the opening of the Venus Patrol Training Facility at the GameCity7 festival in Nottingham, featuring two trampoline games by Bennett Foddy, Doug Wilson, Ed Key & George Buckenham, as well as Honeyslug’s Passing Time and all the games of the Sportsfriends Quadrathalon.
As a bonus, the first 200 plus-ish attendees to run the gamut will come away with these smart Dick Hogg-designed commemorative badges. People called up for duty elsewhere might even receive an additional memento of their own…
The whole felt family of characters assembled from Simogo‘s hat-trick of iPhone game excellence — including all the stars of Kosmo Spin, Bumpy Road, and Beat Sneak Bandit — by stitch-wizard & superfan Emma Lindberg.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d love to see these offered up for sale, though it remains to be seen whether any of the lineup from Simogo’s upcoming fairy tale horror Year Walk would be as adorable & displayable or better suited for stuffing out of sight/mind beneath the bed. [via Simogo]
[Every Friday on Venus Patrol, designer Dominique ‘Dom2D‘ Ferland presents TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we’ll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back each Friday for the latest picks!]
In this issue, a bunch of new games have been added to the forums, including Gesundheit‘s creator Matt Hammill’s new project, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. We also see the release of Snayke and Droqen’s four-game collection Probability 0 + Friends!
Closing out the week with one final & strangely metallic taste of Dennaton‘s upcoming Hotline Miami, as its new cinematic trailer — originally shown during the duo’s talk at the recent Fantastic Arcade — is finally revealed to all, for better or worse.
The video largely speaks for itself — I’ll only add that it’s my favorite trailer title-reveal since the similarly goosebump-inducing & stomach-churning knockout punch of Giorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth.
Keeping on the 8-bit tip, newly released as a freely downloadable NES rom file is Streemerz, a game with a somewhat twisted history by indie dev Arthur ‘Mr. Podunkian’ Lee (previously noted here for 8bitar Hero, an experimental game which generated Rock Band note charts based on someone playing an NES game, all in real time).
Originally created as Flash game “inspired” by (in the least reverential sense) a long forgotten minigame on the infamously shabby unlicensed NES cart Action 52 (seen in the video above), Streemerz became a Bionic Commando meets VVVVVV-ish platformer that was remarkably compelling, considering its source material.
While that original version’s still available to play in-browser or as a PC download, Lee’s closed the loop entirely and worked with Finnish developer Kalle Immonen to release the for-real 8-bit version via the latter’s Fauxgame site, playable in your favorite emulator or on actual hardware (for those with the will and the way to shell out for a USB NES flashcart), and now joining Zooming Secretary and Track & Feel II as the best NES games of the 21st century. [via Lamar Abrams]
A little Friday afternoon art interlude: Starting in early 2011, illustrator Campbell Whyte set himself up for a gargantuan task: taking all of the nearly 800 games released for the NES and doing a watercolor sketch a day based on each, more or less in alphabetical order. Surprisingly, it’s a pace he’s actually kept quite well, and the results are an awesomely stylized take on each, giving even the duds a fantastic facelift.
Exciting news long hinted at that can finally be revealed: AdamAtomic’s Capsule Capsule won’t be the only Venus Patrol related activity that this year’s GameCity7 festival. As announced on the festival blog this morning, the site will be taking over a large chunk of Nottingham’s Old Market Square for an entire week, and converting it into The Venus Patrol Training Facility (featuring an amazing remixed logo by Dick Hogg).
The Training Facility, open October 20th through the 27th from 10am to 5pm, will house a number of games loosely bound together with a quasi-athletic theme from a handful of local favorites including QWOP & GIRP developer Bennett Foddy, Frobisher Says & Hohokum creators Honeyslug, and all of the games included in the recent Sportsfriends Quadrathalon.
Most excitingly, the Training Facility will house the public premiere of two games recently developed during a Danish countryside retreat controlled by trampoline jumps. The first will be The Proteus Frog God Mod, in which players instead experience Ed Key & David Kanaga’s Proteus from the perspective of the magical twinkling frogs, co-created with George Buckenham.
We’ll also be showcasing Get On Top, a new competitive trampoline game by Foddy & Joust creator Doug Wilson, where players take on the role of two sumo champs locking hands and trying to leap into the air and pin their opponent.
Videos of all of the games that will be available (and GameCity’s pithy commentary on each) are below the fold, and more details can be found on GameCity7’s website (see also: the full schedule of all other activities coming to the festival). Looking forward to seeing everyone there!
