Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are presented here on Venus Patrol for your reference, each fully-annotated, -linked, and off-the-cuff blurbed, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

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HEY MONTREAL: GO SEE THE DEBUT OF POLYTRON/INFINITE AMMO’S POWER PILL SEPT. 30TH

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9.24.2009

Brandon Boyer

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As part of Montreal’s latest Pecha Kucha Night, coming Wednesday, September 30th to the SAT (1195 Saint-Laurent), Fez creators Polytron will be on hand to talk about the “highs and lows of designing a multi-touch game for fun and profit”: specifically, their long-teased Infinite Ammo collaboration Power Pill. If you go, take lots of photos and forward them kindly to brandon@offworld.com, please.

Aquaria co-creator and Paper Moon designer Alec Holowka used his delightfully thought-provoking Indie Games Summit session on the interplay of story, character and player to also reveal the first footage of Marian, his upcoming 2D opus under wraps since it was first teased at the beginning of the year.

Holowka adds that he plans to create Marian out of pocket, but you can support its ongoing development by donating $10 to the cause via the Infinite Ammo blog.

TO INFINITRON: THE LATEST WIP LOOK AT POLYTRON/INFINITE AMMO’S IPHONE POWER PILL

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9.5.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Part 1
One Pill Is For Power

Act 1

FADE IN ON:
EXTERIOR: INFINITRON POLYPHARMA HEADQUARTERS

THE CAMERA cranes in on the 808TH FLOOR WINDOW of INFINITRON POLYPHARMA‘S monolithic and möbius-twisted corporate HQ, where we find POLYTRON’S PHIL FISH and INFINITE AMMO’S ALEC HOLOWKA at a BOARD ROOM TABLE, quietly conferring under a DENSE CLOUD OF CIGAR SMOKE on plans to dominate the iPHONE APP STORE via their jointly developed game POWER PILL. [via Phil Fish]

For a while there, the updates on Heroes & Villains — the superhero iPhone puzzler from Paper Moon creators Infinite Ammo — were coming thick and fast, only to drop off suddenly in the weeks surrounding this year’s GDC.

So, wha-happen? As you can see by the latest video above, the game’s caught in flux between tantalizingly near-complete, but struggling to make that last jump, as Infinite Ammo co-founder Alec Holowka explains:

The main stumbling block with releasing the game is that there are some interface problems. Right now its too hard for most people to pick up and play – which is a required aspect of iPhone games.

There’s also the question of being able to produce enough level content to make the game worthwhile. I wanted to aim for about 50 levels. There’s a fair amount of work involved in that, and I want to be sure that it’ll be worth the effort.

To whit, I’m employing the aide of some of my indie game developer friends – to have them assess, praise or destroy what I have in the game now, and hear how much potential they think it has. I think it’ll at the very least be educational; hopefully it’ll lead to the game improving and eventually being released.

The main reason for Holowka’s dilemma: he’s also putting the majority of his development efforts into the previously teased Marian, the tale of a re-animated puppet who’s “caught in the dream world between life and death,” and a game that was only spoken about in hushed, reverent tones by the Ammos during GDC.

The Ammos are actually taking a community poll to see what players would prefer them to focus on, and I’ve made my own vote, but will also publicly say that for as much as I’d like to see the Marian magnum opus come to life as soon as possible, I’ve been hangin’ on so long for the Heroes that I’d be devastated to see it get the premature axe. Knock that one out of the park and then go full-tilt heads down on Marian from there, please!

ONE SHOT: POPPING THE CHILD-PROOF LID ON INFINITRON POLYPHARMA

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6.4.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Fez co-creator Phil Fish unveils a new logo for ‘Infinitron Polypharma’, with the tagline “curing diseases as we invent them”, which can only mean one thing: work steadily continues on Power Pill, Polytron’s iPhone collaboration with Paper Moon creators Infinite Ammo.

GIMME INDIE GAME: THE DEPTH-DEFYING PLANAR-PLATFORMING OF PAPER MOON

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5.3.2009

Brandon Boyer

8 Replies

There was always a certain — but gentle — cloud that hung over the announcement that Infinite Ammo and Adam Saltsman‘s multi-planar fruit collecting platformer Paper Moon would be brought to Flashbang’s online portal Blurst.

Not one of quality, mind — as players had already been able to get their hands on the game after its Gamma 3D debut — but one of how properly a platformer would fit into the Blurst framework, which relies on three to five minute quick burst arcade play and generally is targeted toward high score competition and achievements.

The subsequent announcement that the game would come with a timer, I will admit, struck a little pang of fear, as I’m not generally one for having my exploration curbed by arbitrary time limits (it’s a cardinal sin up far in the ranks alongside auto-scrolling levels). But, it turns out, that fear was entirely misplaced, and, freshly released at the tail end of last week, Paper Moon is a fantastic addition to the service.

How do you morph a short platformer into a necessarily replayable experience then? The answer is branches: a few handfuls of varied paths that can be taken at several points in the game and require repeat performances to see, and a combo-meter collection system that amplifies your score as you gain the experience to better judge how best to maximize your time in an unbroken line throughout its world.

And it is a game you’ll want to play again back to back, not least because you likely won’t finish it on your first or second or even third go, and even if you do, the tantalizingly missed paths on your map screen will beckon you immediately back through.

If there are any frustrations with the game, it’s only in losing the original’s stereoscopic hook and having to rely on shading to re-orient your next potential leap with the proper paper plane (a few test-run pops also help), but again, repeat plays acclimate you to the process and reduce that end-level/nearly-out-of-time stress.

But what we gained in losing the red-blue shift and going full monochrome, and what’s underscored by Infinite Ammo co-founder Alec Holowka’s new score, is a game that’s roughly and wonderfully the stylistic equivalent of an early silent movie: an easily consumable little tale of derring-do and intrigue that’s essentially peerless in the indie scene today.

Paper Moon home [Blurst, Infinite Ammo]

With just a single short day to go before its new web-embedded release via Blurst, Infinite Ammo are showing off their updated Paper Moon in motion, giving you the full effect of how its various paper-cut planes will operate (if you’re one of the few that recall Wario’s foray onto the Virtual Boy, you should feel basically at home).

Designer Alec Holowka has said that like the short-burst arcade games that make up the majority of Flashbang’s own Blurst output, Paper Moon will have a time limit, but promises it’ll be “more flexible” than you might expect.

No word yet, though, whether it’ll retain an overt or hidden option for the original’s stereoscopic rendering.

New Paper Moon Trailer [Infinite Ammo]

STAR POWER: INFINITE AMMO, FLASHBANG BRINGING PAPER MOON TO BLURST

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4.28.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Like the Offworld equivalent of a rock and roll supergroup, Heroes and Villains developer Infinite Ammo and Minotaur China Shop developer Flashbang have joined forces to bring a new version of the former’s planar-platformer Paper Moon to the latter’s online game service Blurst.

If Paper Moon sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen it here many moons ago, when Infinite Ammo originally created a stereoscopic version of the game for Kokoromi’s Gamma3D last November.

Like Flashbang’s other Blurst output, though, the game has been updated to include “a combo-based scoring system, new levels, improved visuals, musical score, sound effects, greater replay value and online leaderboards/achievements/bonuses,” says Ammo.

The game is set to go live this Friday, the 1st — in the meantime, you can get a taste of the original via Gamma3D.

A Collaboration: Paper Moon Launching May 1st [Blurst, Infinite Ammo announcement]

WHAT HAVE WE HERE: ANOTHER TEASER FOR FEZ/AQUARIA DEVS’ IPHONE GAME?

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3.18.2009

Brandon Boyer

7 Replies

Sometimes I wonder if they do it just to torture me: former Aquaria devs Infinite Ammo, currently at work on the iPhone’s Heroes & Villains, have posted a new image to flickr simply labeled ‘??? modeling.’

I’ll take a wild stab now and presume the image is a full level map of Power Pill, their iPhone collaboration with Fez developer Polytron that was just teased yesterday — it certainly looks the part of a twisted cavern without the layered-paper rendering.

I wouldn’t hazard many more guesses, but on a night’s reflection on that first teaser and combined with the above image, I’m wondering how much the game might have in common with under-rated Game Boy Advance/GameCube import Kuru Kuru Kururin (YouTube gameplay): I certainly wouldn’t mind a touch enabled version done up in Polytron’s signature retro-futurist styling.

??? modeling [Flickr, Infinite Ammo]

Previously:
Happy pills: Fez, Aquaria devs collaborating on new iPhone game – Offworld
Polytron affirm essential awesomeness – Offworld
Happiness is a warm Fez: prepare for wonderful – Offworld
The latest look at Infinite Ammo's iPhone puzzler Heroes …
We could be thrilled: in-depth with Infinite Ammo iPhone puzzler …