In a late-night quiet push, Sony has just set its stateside PlayStation Mobile store live, giving Vita owners (as well as compatible mobile devices) a new catalog with a handful of games and music apps, most notably Vlambeer’s Super Crate Box, by far now the most essential version of the game (thumbs up for both mobility & real buttons).
To find the game, click the new third option on the Vita PSN Store’s top bar (next to ‘Game’ & ‘Video’), where you can also find games from PomPom, FuturLab, and Tikipod.
Originally known as Awkward Tarzan Grinding Game, before I had the dubious distinction of suggesting it should be renamed Edgar Rice Frotteur (to put it in line with Joust, obviously), the game was played — as so many of Wilson’s creations are — with the help of a slew of PlayStation Move controllers, all precariously hung with long rope from the ceiling.
The rules stipulated that all players must be hanging on to two like-colored “vines” at any given moment, and the object was to corner other players into tangled positions where it was impossible for them to do just that. Any player holding the button of just one of their colored “vine” had their health quickly drained until they managed to grab another, and any player not holding any vine at all was disqualified.
So far as I know, the game hasn’t been installed at any location since, though Wilson’s expressed interest in waterproofing the controllers and making it a swimming pool installation: any interested parties should probably contact him toot sweet to make that happen (& invite Adam and his camera along). [via Adam Henriksson]
Supermono Studios — the studio behind the Rexbox-illustrated task-manager iPhone app Epic Win & PSP/mobile dogfighter Minisquadron — have very quietly teased the first details of their latest game, Rescue Rush, an arcade maze game that uses real-world GPS data to generate levels based on your current location.
At least, that’s as best as I can tell: the game, another experiment in free-to-play following their super stylized racer Forever Drive, most interestingly appears to have been designed to take map data and transform it with a fresh coat of cutely angular illustration, where most GPS games have traditionally simply overlaid sprites and effects on top of a given device’s standard display. See, for example, the real map of downtown Reykjavík above, compared to the in-game representation at top.
Supermono also appear to be attempting to solve other GPS game problems, chiefly, that humans more or less are stuck in the same geographical location most always, by unlocking portals which allow the player to “jump to different continents… freeing animals that are native to different parts of the Earth” & “visit a number of instantly recognisable international landmarks from the Taj Mahal to the Empire State Building”.
A video & more details are promised soon, for now visit their forum thread to see more mockup screenshots. [via Supermono]
The series, originally meant to be a companion to another publication that subsequently fell through, will consist of 11 episodes looking at aspects of game culture including why we play, games as social activity, competition and women in games, and narratives & rituals of players, and will include appearances by a number of familiar faces including Double Fine’s Tim Schafer & Johann Sebastian Joust creator Doug Wilson, both of whom you can see in the trailer above.
Of particular note are a few of the limited rewards which are being snapped up quite quickly: the iPad version of Matt Parker’s body-posing party game Recurse, and the still-unreleased Miracle Adventures in 2113, the faux-Famicom-sequel shooting game above, from Noah Sasso, creator of competitive sports-brawler BaraBariBall.
All backers will also receive early beta access to Gameifesto, an indie-focused match-making site meant to better enable artists, coders & musicians to find and collaborate with each other on new games.
Interestingly, the Steam release of GameMaker also comes with its own list of achievements earned by creating games with the package, including the compiler error medals pictured above, which seems to be a dubious honor indeed.
If you’re one of the few remaining that still hasn’t made it out to one of the self-funded nationwide-tour screenings or otherwise picked up the film in its multitude of formats, Blinkworks’ Fez, Super Meat Boy & Braid-focused documentary ‘Indie Game: The Movie‘ has just been added to the instant-streaming section of Netflix & is viewable on any one of your compatible devices.
Speaking of Ted Martens, the Hexels creator has just announced that he’s partnering with Gun Godz & Super Crate Box artist Paul Veer, and illustrators Corey Lewis & Ashley Davis (see especially her ongoing No Marios site) to create the SEGAZINE, an art zine dedicated to the “games, characters and consoles” of the company.
The group have opened submissions to any interested artists, and are accepting “drawings, 3D renders, photos, written stories, comics & poetry” through November 1st, at which point they’ll curate the best for inclusion in the printed zine and feature the rest on the zine’s tumblr, where you can find more information about the submission process.
I’m not one given easily to bold hyperbole, but I’m about to let loose here: Samurai Gunn, the latest game from Beau ‘Teknopants‘ Blyth, is easily the best local-multiplayer game I’ve played since those halcyon days of our youth huddled around a Nintendo 64.
Like Fernando Ramallo and David Kanaga’s Panoramical, Gunn became an instant, unofficial favorite at this year’s Fantastic Arcade, brought to town and urgently pressed upon us by JW & Rami of Vlambeer, who ended up convincing Arcade coordinators to host the world’s first official tournament of the game.
0Space, Blyth’s freeware arena shooter (still available for download & purchase here) was met with similar high praise from most indie devs I came across in 2011, but it’d never fully clicked with me — something about its plodding zero-grav pace (admittedly key to keeping its battles more cerebral) left me slightly too impatient.
All that’s gone with Gunn, whose 2-4 player matches are as quick, clean and concise as the centuries of sword-play mastery that inspired it, as you can see for yourself in video of the tournament winning match below, between indie devs Evan Balster and Terry Cavanagh (be sure to switch to 720 or 1080p mode to better pick out pixel precision).
The gist is simply this: each player has a sword and (as you might’ve guessed) a gun, loaded with only three bullets per life. Bullets can be deflected with well-timed swings of the sword, and sword-strikes themselves can be parried, suddenly (and deeply satisfyingly) throwing both players quickly backwards. The rounds are battles to 10 kills, and any non-winning players who have a kill-count near 10 will trigger a lightning-round-type & gloriously-staged swords-only sunset showdown to determine the true victor.
Stages range from thick bamboo forests, all of which can be chopped down to reveal the rocky outcropping beneath and provide platforms for attack, to pure, barren, vertically-looping chasms of stone, all that of which can be sharpened with sword strikes to create sharp traps to catch and wound careless players.
And careful play is Samurai Gunn at its best: unlike Smash Bros‘ frenzied free-for-all brawls, the most memorable matches in Gunn are the ones where players more or less role-play as the Kurosawa characters that have defined what we think of as samurai — still, silent, allowing opponents to move in for the kill before throwing perfectly timed, razor-sharp moves that slice them down before they know what hit them.
Gunn is still a good distance out from final release, and thus far has only been publicly shown a very small handful of times, but keep a keen lookout for it as it draws nearer — it’s perfectly placed to go down as one of indie games’ greatest.
