Joining the lineup of The Behemoth’s extensive collection of vinyl figures: Castle Crashers‘ King, quite possibly my favorite if only because I’ve always been a big believer in the “one big tooth” (or three, if you’ve got them to spare) theory of character design.
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Capcom’s brought to the Tokyo Game Show its most complete trailer for downsized DS sequel Okamiden to date, showing a wider range of stylus-brush interactions, more combat mode demos, and 100% more nature-restoring landscape-wide scampering.
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For its Tokyo Game Show appearance, Sony’s put together a short behind the scenes look with Ico and Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda explaining that the fantastical mix of creatures that make up his Last Guardian actually increases the gryphon’s realism.
Watching the subsequent new two minute trailer, with every talon stretch and head-scratch, it’s very hard to deny.
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Coming soon to iPhone from former Lionhead and Sony programmer Tak ‘Mr. Fung Fung’ Fung (who the eagle-eyed will remember as the ‘Master’ in Rag Doll Kung Fu‘s live-action intros): Mini Squadron, an online playable multiplayer 2D dogfighter where you take down “enemy planes, bombers, UFOs, and ducks” with over 50 unlockable aircraft and “a plethora of power-ups.”
See the trailer above for a quick-burst of just why this could be a recipe for fantastic success, and follow the game’s progress via Fung’s official blog.
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From the creator of low-bit Id demakes QQUAK and BOOM (get it?), Jan Willem Nijman‘s upcoming game — teased here simply as EXTREME — lives up to its name via: chili peppers, cheap booze, smokin’ los Muertos skulls, bikini girls, what appears to be uzi-wielding lucha libre, Bigfoot stunt-jumpin’ and massive, fiery explosions, all set to a Ratatat score.
At this point, I don’t know anything more, and at this point, I really quite honestly don’t need to know anything more, and at this point, I’d be surprised if you weren’t already reflexively screaming the game’s name at your monitor.
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San Francisco at night becomes a neon-lit real-life version of a Tetris well (well, -ish, a bit more Pent-tris, actually). Music by E*rock, thanks to .tiff!
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Academia has thrown up a bunch of interesting game projects over the past few years. As more gamers get into positions of academic usefulness, so that trend grows. Of course university and research groups have long been creating games with educational purposes in mind, but they’re now handling increasingly hefty budgets.
One of the most high-profile projects (and most obvious recent failures) was Indiana University’s Arden: The World Of William Shakespeare, which reportedly had a grant of $250,000. It was an experimental MMO which came about via the work of Professor Ed Castronova, author of Synthetic Worlds. Castronova wondered whether the creation of a genuinely educational MMO was possible, and set up the student development project to find out. Having spent thousands of dollars on Arden it was shut down. Castronova cited “a lack of fun”.
But I don’t suppose that was the only reason. Games don’t necessarily have to be fun to be engaging. Indeed “fun” seems like a trite expression in the face of some contemporary projects: games can provoke more than simple enjoyment. Look at the terrifying crypts of Stalker, or the strange sadness of Shadow of the Colossus. To realise that games ride on more than fun only takes a quick glance at the bigger picture.
One game researcher for whom “fun” seems inappropriate is the academically oriented team The Chinese Room, who are games researchers working for the University Of Portsmouth in the UK. Their medium, for now at least, is the Half-Life 2 mod, and the experiences they’ve created are peculiar investigations into the emotive possibilities of game design. They’ve realised that 3D games, with their claustrophobia and their immersive properties, can be spooky, scary and deeply evocative. (more…)
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There are few things in life that bring me joy more than doing my best, making new friends, trying new things, triumphing over adversity, and running real fast, and I get the strong sense that Matt Thorson and Tom Sennett’s RunMan — coming to PC October 1st — just might satiate every one of those desires.
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I knew Time Fcuk was after my one true heart on hearing the first few melancholic melodica triplets in its title screen theme, which are nothing if not lovingly lifted from Carter Burwell’s score for the Coen Bros.’ Fargo, and perfectly peg the pathos that begins to unfold as you start your cyclical descent into the game’s world.
Created by No Quarter, Super Meat Boy, and Aether designer Edmund McMillen, programmer William Good and musician Justin Karpel — and described only via cryptically impenetrable blurbs — at its core, Time Fcuk is a fairly straightforward game to describe: it’s a block/switch/key puzzler with a twist of inter-dimensional-spatial-chronological tearing that rips you through layers of the same room you occupy.
What sets it apart, though, is the tone McMillen has set via an in-game one-way communicator that sees an unidentified narrator constantly interrupting your thought processes with ranting inanities, cries for help, and, eventually, more deeply unsettling and I.D.-confusing asides. And there’s this matter of the small growth coming from the back of your head…
The effect, if that narrator is you — and it certainly looks like you — echoes movies like the previously big-upped Timecrimes or basically pick any of your favorite schizo-persona David Lynch movies from Twin Peaks to Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive.
By being forced into “the box” from which you spend the game trying to escape (which you were pushed into by someone who claims to be you from some 20 minutes in the future) you come to realize that the interruptions more likely are echoes of every iteration of a loop in which you’re stuck: ‘you’s that have been through multiple times and no longer fear your surroundings, newer ‘you’s that haven’t yet figured out what’s happening. In the meantime, you — the you that’s playing — are acting out that transition from confusion to confidence by learning the puzzle-tricks that get you from one room to the next.
All of this is subtle subtext, and that’s precisely what makes Time Fcuk so affecting. Add to that its expertly devised level editor — which takes a page from Echochome‘s book and gives players a 20-level loop of random player-creations to rate for difficulty and fun, so that essentially no puzzle goes un-played — and the gang of three have created what is easily one of the best Flash games of the year thus far.
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Double Fine art director Lee Petty takes you on a slightly more consumer-focused — and very much more condensed — version of the tour he gave at this year’s GDC through the basically jaw-dropping sights and sounds of the world of Brütal Legend.
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