[Wednesdays on Venus Patrol are GameToilet Days, where we feature new installments of the brilliant comic series from artist & game dev Jerry ‘King Baggot‘ Carpenter. You can find hundreds more entries in the series at the comic’s new permanent home, gametoilet.venuspatrol.com!]
My original post for this one looked like a toddler’s drawing of an Echochrome level – but I then lost it on the train.
Also missing from the above is ‘J*Bert’, which is, of course, the J-pop remix with shitloads of kittens & a banging Morning Musume soundtrack.
[Wednesdays on Venus Patrol are GameToilet Days, where we feature new installments of the brilliant comic series from artist & game dev Jerry ‘King Baggot‘ Carpenter. You can find hundreds more entries in the series at the comic’s new permanent home, gametoilet.venuspatrol.com!]
There are looooads of games/apps designed for autistic children, but not enough for the parents of said kids – and so that’s where this one comes from.
When I pester my youngest, who has recently received his official ASD badge-of-honour, about what he thinks he should be playing, he plumps for “Pac-Man! With Guns!” So that’s next week’s sorted then.
[Fridays on Venus Patrol are designer Dominique ‘Dom2D‘ Ferland’s day to present 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 on Fridays for the latest picks!]
This week’s issue showcases a whopping sixteen new games in development, in all genres and styles. Catching up on the craziness I missed in the past couple weeks, I’ve been through a lot of emotions. I was amazed by the gloomy environment art of Aliceffekt’s iOS adventure game Hiversaires, intrigued by Red Rover‘s mysterious screenshots of looming space stations, excited by the thought of becoming a jousting knight in Pixelry… and strangely aroused by the pixelated sexual content of minimalist pulp adventure game After the Comet.
Also, the 16-bit style action adventure game Anodyne has finally been released – check out its 32 page long forum thread to know everything about its development, from early concept art to completion.
I’m only slightly late in recommending that everyone in the Toronto area investigate the goings-on at the weekend-long Vector festival, which will bring together a sort of staggering array of artists for exhibitions, screenings, workshops, performances and round table discussions.
Included in the lineup are a slew of familiar game & artworld names including: Bill Viola, Tracy Fullerton, Alex Myers, Ed Key & David Kanaga, Droqen, Damian Sommer, Dames Making Games, Eddo Stern, Jon Rafman, Jim Munroe, Cindy Poremba, and Austin’s own Party Time! Hexcellent!
Our upcoming party won’t be the only time you’ll be seeing UK multiplayer game party-collective The Wild Rumpus during March’s Game Developer’s Conference: the group have just announced Rumpus Royale MMXIII, a set of daily indie game tournaments that’ll be running throughout the entire week.
Included in the tournament lineup are Bennett Foddy’s keyboard-climber QWOP, Ramiro Corbetta’s SportsFriends entry Hokra, Terry Cavanagh’s Super Hexagon and, super excitingly, Teknopants’ upcoming local favorite, Samurai Gunn.
Find more information & sign up for more detailed tournament specifics on the official Rumpus Royale MMXIII site.
In this latest installment of Fantastic Video, we’re joined by Paolo ‘Molleindustria‘ Pedercini — the peerless leader of using games as socio-political commentary — and Jim Munroe, artist, novelist, filmmaker, indie game creator (who you may recall from his latest interactive fiction work, Guilded Youth) and co-founder of Toronto indie-collective Hand Eye Society.
The two discuss their latest game, Unmanned, an accessibly-light-hearted but ultimately sobering and prescient investigation of the life of drone pilots, which was in part an attempt to answer the question “how do you make a videogame about war, when war already has become so videogame-like?”
The hour long video also includes an in-depth discussion on Phone Story, Pedercini’s commentary on the practices and social repercussions of manufacturing the technology we use every day — specifically, our ubiquitous iPhones, which itself was presented as an iPhone minigame collection that was ultimately banned from the App Store, later resurfacing on the Android marketplace.
As a bonus, below the fold you’ll also find Pedercini’s “reverse propaganda” machinima film “Welcome to the desert of the real”, referenced in the video above and discussed at much greater length here by researcher Simon Ferrari.
Wondering why Mossmouth’s overhauled and entirely essential Xbox 360 game Spelunky has had a slot for DLC? Now we know for sure: while the world is twiddling its collective thumbs for today’s PlayStation reveal, the dev quietly dropped its first two new bits of content since the game was released last July, in the form of new characters & multiplayer arenas.
The “Explorers DLC” adds “the Eskimo, the Robot, the Viking, the Round Girl, the Round Boy, the Cyclops, the Ninja, and the Golden Monk” to your stock of avatars (all pictured at top), while the “Arenas DLC” drops in 24 new multiplayer stages.
Both can be found via the Marketplace links here: Explorers & Arenas, while the game itself can be found here.
[Wednesdays on Venus Patrol are GameToilet Days, where we feature new installments of the brilliant comic series from artist & game dev Jerry ‘King Baggot‘ Carpenter. You can find hundreds more entries in the series at the comic’s new permanent home, gametoilet.venuspatrol.com!]
The title for this comes from Johnny Depp’s most famous tattoo (see #3). All future Game Toilet titles will be named this way. I know for a fact that Hideki Kamiya gets his game names from Ryan Gosling’s bodyscrawls.
If you’re going to be in or around the Bay Area during this year’s Game Developers Conference and haven’t already picked up tickets for the Wednesday night Venus Patrol / Wild Rumpus party, you’re probably definitely going to want to now: we’re very excited to announce that the night will see the debut of a new multiplayer game created in collaboration with Katamari Damacy & Noby Noby Boy creator Keita Takahashi.
We’re keeping details pretty scarce for the moment, but will be showing more little teasers as the date draws near (expect another teaser from Keita directly in the next couple days) — the above two images (the latter also available in Vine form) are your first look at what the game holds in store.
Wild Rumpus & I will also soon be revealing more about the rest of the games & music lineup for the night, which is nearly complete and is looking very, very exciting.
It only took us like six or so months to get everything online, but the day’s finally come: Venus Patrol’s proud to present the first installment of Fantastic Video, a new, regular series showing off all the talks from last year’s Fantastic Arcade.
In this first video, Rami Ismail & JW Nijman of Vlambeer give an hour-long look into the genesis & evolution of their upcoming Supermarionation-inspired dog-fighting game Luftrausers, a game that can be traced all the way back to 2007’s Airhound, a 3-hour game-jam game that since seems to unfortunately have disappeared from the internet, but which you can see a bit more of here.
Enjoy the video above & the rare chance to peek into JW’s consistently amazing pitch-docs & sketchbooks, and stay tuned for the next Fantastic Video installment!
