Rocktober comes but once a year, giving me reason for a quick post to note that Double Fine, developer of Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, Costume Quest & all your other favorites have just announced their Mega-Action Mega-Sale, dropping prices by as much as 50% on basically pretty much every game they’ve ever made across Steam, XBLA and the Mac App Store.
Skyrim‘s otherwise fearsome tree spirit Spriggan bids his forest good morning before being wiped out by a lone marauder, a piece by Toronto illustrator Andreas Schuster for Skueruem, a site full of similarly wicked Skyrim fan art that appears to unfortunately have fallen into some disuse. [also via .tiff]
Bay-area artist Robert Iza’s tribute to what is indisputably one of the finest rhythm games of all time — iNiS’s Gitaroo Man — at the tip-top of my list for PSP downloadables that desperately need to come to the PlayStation Vita. See more of Iza’s game fan art here, and his portfolio of pieces for games he’s had a hand in here, all via .tiff.
Suddenly officially the Wii U game I’m looking forward to most, Capcom’s just released this ultra-adorable video explaining the cross-play features of its upcoming Monster Hunter Tri overhaul, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, which will allow players of both the 3DS and Wii U versions to use their same characters to play at home or away.
While 3DS play will be limited to local multiplayer only, the new hunting companions explain, 3DS users can use the platformer as controllers for the Wii U version, or play online with other Wii U owners.
If you’re still one of the way too many uninitiated Monster Hunter fanatics, March 2013 should probably be the date to wait for as it’s released for both platforms: longtime fans will otherwise be fully aware of just how incredible the series is at capturing both the essence of adventure and the minutiae of a drawn-out, exhausting hunt against an intelligent, brutal and ridiculously oversized foe.
Above and below the fold are new shots taken from the Wii U version — keep an eye on Capcom’s Monster Hunter site for an update to the new version. [via Capcom-Unity]
The duo add their hope that “through utter ignorance for conventions and hate for the established rules of a genre, beautiful things will happen”, which may seem naive and slightly cynical, until you remember that the last time someone tried to tackle a genre they despised — namely Bit Pilot creator Zach Gage — the resulting Spelltower near instantly became an iPhone & iPad smash success.
Originally designed as a local two-player game only (and most recently exhibited as such at the recent Joue le Jou show at Paris’s Gaite lyrique), the trailer above shows just how key perfectly synchronized play will be, as well as the game at its best, where both players dip in and out of each others’ gravity fields, describing super beautiful sine waves arcing across each others’ paths.
The video also highlights another of the game’s best features — its score, composed by renowned electronic artist Kettel. Read more about the history of the game and its long road to PSN at its official website.
One final Zelda tribute for no good reason other than they were all amazing: Zac ‘Magical Game Time‘ Gorman, best known as “the guy who does those amazing animated Nintendo fan comics” has just released the Seafarer Combo, a print/T-shirt/square-pin combo for Fangamer that pays tribute to classic GameCube entry, The Wind Waker.
Daniel Bressette masterfully mashes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry with Majora’s Mask, a combo we didn’t really know we really wanted until just now. See Bressette’s portfolio site for a whole load of more amazing games-related art.
Since 2005, TIGSource has hosted the largest forum dedicated to independent game development. Its devlog section, in particular — where developers show their work-in-progress and get feedback from the community — has proven to be a goldmine for amazing design, gorgeous art and constructive criticism. As a game designer and an artist myself, I find these quite inspiring and feel these projects deserve more attention.
Every week on Venus Patrol, using screenshots posted to the TIGSource threads, I’ll be building a visual map of the most inspiring projects of the past several days. Soon, this series will be a nice timeline of awesome games evolving from start to finish, and hopefully sharing them here will help get these games the exposure they deserve.
Click either the screenshot or the description on the map below to visit the forum thread for that game, and leave comments and cheers to the hard-working developers while you’re there!
[Dom2D is a game designer that spends way too much time designing, playing, reading about and thinking about video games. He currently works on cute mobile games, as well as his own indie games in progress.]
