Things the NES original Boy and His Blob did not include: an oversized, super-punching blob-mech-fighter, a eerily rendered blob-boy-clone, and, of course, hugs, but ahead of the game’s October 13th retail release, Majesco’s just-released ‘final trailer’ for WayForward’s update lets you see all three in action.

ONE SHOT: THE VISIBLE WII-MOTE

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9.6.2009

Brandon Boyer

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What it looks like inside, from freelance art director Angela Moramarco‘s proposed ‘anatoWii’ site that would help explain the health and physical therapy benefits of the Wii. [via Super Punch]

Stick with the first 19 seconds of awkward silence: though the subsequent teaser video only lasts long enough to show you the basic season shifting/hurricane summoning mechanics of Frontier’s upcoming LostWinds sequel Winter of the Melodias, it’s enough to make you ache to return to its world.

As predicted, Dean Dodrill has taken home the $40,000 grand prize in Microsoft’s XNA/IndieGames competition Dream Build Play for his previously mentioned beat-em-up Dust: An Elysian Tail.

The oft blogged CoinApp and their tiny-planet shooter Max Blastronaut has come in at second place, for a $20,000 prize.

The third place $10,000 prize went to Nivel21’s Rotor’scope:

And finally, ‘kong fu’ action game HurricaneX2 Evolution took home the $5,000 fourth place prize:

This year’s winners, according to the press release, will again be supported with the “opportunity to publish their games on the Xbox LIVE Indie Games Channel” and the extra promotional push the contest will give them — as with last year, there doesn’t seem to be a channel to promote the winner to a full Live Arcade release as Microsoft did with 2007’s Ska Studios winner The Dishwasher.

After a long gestation period and a number of rotated codenames, ngmoco have officially announced Eliminate (nee KillTest nee LiveFire), their WiFi-enabled online arena shooter, and, in so doing, have also officially solidified their microtransactional stance.

As you can see from the video above, the studio’s taken a page from the social-app/My Brute-ish playbook and set up a system in which players can only participate for ‘credits’ — the in-game currency which allows you to upgrade your player’s abilities — a certain number of times per day.

That is, unless they prefer to purchase additional “energy” via microtransactions to continue their credit earning — otherwise, you can play for as long/as many times as you’d like, but not earn any credit rewards.

It’s a more graceful and smarter solution than allowing for the rote real-money purchasing of upgrades — giving those more financially-abled a performance-enhancing edge — though no where have they outright backed down on their previous plans to do just that.

Either way, the addition of the trailer’s super-dryly ironic and slightly Portal-ish corporate backdrop humor is very welcome from what’s otherwise seemed like a fairly staid setup.

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]

I haven’t had a chance yet here to give Twisted Pixel’s latest Xbox Live Arcade release ‘Splosion Man the full respect it genuinely deserves, but before I even can, the developer goes and makes an announcement for its latest game, Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley.

The Penny Arcade Expo-revealed trailer above doesn’t give you much of a sense of its eventual mechanics apart from promising ‘a new style of gameplay’ beyond what they admit lies beneath a core of ‘run, jump and shoot’, and the more obvious stylistic underpinning where each comic Smiley jumps to will alter the look of the game from what appears to range from PowerPuff Girls to Sin City.

Twisted Pixel have yet to announce target platforms or release dates, but I’m going to go ahead and assume at very least a continuation on Xbox Live Arcade, for now.

VECTOR’S SPOILS: WINDOSILL DEV BRINGS LEVERS, ACROBOTS TO IPHONE

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9.4.2009

Brandon Boyer

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If you even briefly touched, let alone played through, Patrick Smith’s recent point-and-click hyper-surreal puzzler Windosill, you will have instantly realized the effortless ease with which he’s able to turn little vector objects into living, breathing digital things (this is especially true for a certain turning-point scene in Windo).

As I noted at the time, Windosill was just the latest in a long line of these digital toys and distractions, which Smith has just begun porting to the iPhone, including one of his best, Levers [App Store link]. Levers is as subtle and atmospheric as they come: as you’d gather from the screenshot above it’s a succession of increasingly difficult balancing acts.

Each perfect balance tosses a new object into the ocean below that has to be carefully counter-weighted with all the things before it, while its livelier objects (see: the blackbirds above) obliviously confound your progress just by nature of their self-animate presence.

Also added to the App Store is Smith’s Acrobots [App Store link], even more of a simple digital distraction, but also more of exactly what he does best: rendering ’emotion’ in characters even as abstracted as the ‘bots above.

There are no goals in Acrobots, simply a series of variables and controls which the ‘bots must obey, as they either actively flip and spring off one another (the Acro– part), or simply try to build themselves into a stable structure, which is where their carefully seeking feet (thrown off by their tri-pedal-ness) reach out for one another in a way that’s honestly kind of heartbreaking when they can’t find a mate/wall to match.

Of the two, Levers will obviously provide you with the better game experience, and it’s worth noting there’s a Lite version of Acrobots that’s just gone live. Both of the toys are also previewable/playable on the web (Levers / Acrobots), but both are perfectly suited for the iPhone as it lets them be exactly what they should be: diversions that let you directly touch a realistic but otherwise fantastic world.

Levers, Acrobots, Acrobots Lite [Vectorpark]

You’ve had enough with the words and the photos already and you want to see DeathSpank — Hothead’s action RPG/adventure from Monkey Island/Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert now officially announced for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 — in glorious motion, and glorious it is.

And below the fold, a full high-res gallery of the currently released DeathSpank screenshots, for your added enjoyment.

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When BioShock 2‘s multiplayer segment — a separate narrative that explores the fall of underwater u-/dys-topia Rapture via test subject trials for plasmid manufacturer Sinclair — was first announced, I noted that I was glad co-developer Digital Extremes wasn’t simply giving us Big Daddy Arena.

Then, watching this first video footage (prepared for the Penny Arcade Expo) of its online deathmatch exploits, right about 1:45 when the hollow whale-moan struck, I went 100% full reverse on that sentiment.

Only one question remains: exactly what manner of soul-stealing devilry is she performing with that camera at 1:26?