TIME LORD: PC VERSION OF BRAID CONTAINS FULL LEVEL EDITOR
The final blow that could get all of the Xbox 360 early adopters to re-purchase Jon Blow’s time-warping platformer Braid for the PC/Mac? Spurred on by a recent Steam forum questioner, Jon Blow has admitted that there is indeed a hidden level editor inside the recently released port.
Currently accessible by staring the game with an “-editor parameter” and pressing F11, Blow has said that full editor documentation will be published in coming weeks, followed by “a tool will be released that lets you take Photoshop files and import them into the game, if you want to put new graphics in your levels,” and added that the editor will be coming to the Mac version, as well.
Artist David Hellman actually showed the editor at work during his GDC session — you can see a quick rundown of its features via his Art of Braid blog series.
Head over to the original Steam thread for more explanation from Blow, and then do whatever task exists for wrapping your mind around the seemingly insurmountable challenge of designing for time as much as space.
Map editor for Braid? [Steam forums, via Shacknews]
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SEA CHANGE: PATRICK MORGAN’S WHALEBOY GETS TRADEMARKED FOR GAMES
And so it spreads further: following DGPH’s first light foray, Nathan J’s full on fantastic web work, and — if you can more or less count it in the same way — Rolito’s jump in with Patapon, the latest vinyl toy artist making the video game leap appears to be Patrick Morgan and his effortlessly lovable character Whaleboy.
The anonymous overseer of the superannuation blog — he’s the one that tirelessly digs up pre-release trademark information and scours resumes for hints at un-announced games past and future — has stumbled across a new trademark filing for Morgan’s character to be used in games.
Presumably this’ll be in conjunction with the cartoon deal Nickelodeon signed back in 2006 (though little more has been said about the show since).
Superannuation’s work usually thanklessly goes uncredited by the mainstream games blogs, but since he dedicated this find specifically to me and my ‘purportedly hipster‘ ways, I obviously can’t help but give him his full due in reverse.
Found: Whaleboy trademark [superannuation]
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HOW ARE GAME DEVELOPERS LIKE PORN STARS?
A cute meditation from Kill Ten Rats:
In those early years, they are worked hard. As much as you can get out of them, as soon as you can get it, before they realize this is not as glamorous as they thought. Yes, even the ones who heard about the working conditions were still being a bit optimistic. Make sure to have the appropriate chemical stimulants on hand to let them keep going to the limits of youthful endurance. Until they get burned out, these are the best years to work them until they are dry.
They will get burned out soon. The disillusionment process can be traumatic, and many try to hide it because they cannot admit it was a losing decision. They will keep going, pushing those hours, hitting those stimulants hard. If you look back in a few years, you will see how their bodies have changed, not from aging, but from the work itself.
Game Developers and Porn Stars [Kill Ten Rats, via Josh Lee, image via The Cubes line of toys]
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GIMME INDIE GAME: TOUCH MY PIXEL/NATHAN J’S SCARYGIRL
I’ve been anxiously awaiting this one since the above trailer first appeared the week of GDC, but now it’s here: Melbourne studio Touch My Pixel and illustrator/vinyl toy producer Nathan Jurevicius have officially unveiled their collaborative Scarygirl game.
As it turns out, it’s a far more intricately constructed game than you’d normally imagine springing from a promotional web campaign (see: DGPH’s similar, but mechanically far less complex Molestown).
Fit in amongst its indie-developed brethren, it’s somewhere quite near Amanita’s Samorost games (and his previously blogged Machinarium), only, obviously strip away the point and click scheme for more traditional platforming, and replace Dvorský’s signature gnarled organic photoshoppery for Nathan J’s already well-established style.
What it retains from games like Samorost, though, is that sense of wonder that you get from exploring a world (and Scarygirl‘s world is rife with nooks and crannies to be explored) entirely unlike the worlds games have given us before — exactly the kind of magic I’ve been talking about since founding Offworld that comes when an outside artist brings their fresh perspective into games.
It might not be quite as tightly built as the best of the past several decades of platformers, and makes some cute and easily forgivable minor mistakes along the way (see: my reticence to jump on the spiky-headed enemies in the first level before accidentally realizing it wouldn’t hurt), but with its iconographic narration, richly constructed environments and collectible diversions (provided by a series of console cartridges that unlock minigames), it’s a fantastic experiment and addition to the year’s indie output.
Scarygirl game home [Nathan J, Touch My Pixel home]
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BOY CRAZY: A TRIP DOWN THE GAME BOY RABBIT HOLE
Vintage Computing’s Benj Edwards has put together a wonderful slideshow of the weird and wonderful underbelly of Game Boy lore throughout the years, with some cute and classic stuff you probably remember since childhood.
More importantly, though, I call attention to it mostly because I’d honestly never seen the frankly sort of horrifying Pedisedate solution at above left, and — at right — the unbelievable quasi-Basil Wolverton-ish blister pack put together for Japanese print mag Famitsu’s exclusive version of the Game Boy Light (hi-res version here).
Game Boy Oddities [Technologizer]
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THE ‘FEVERISH BAD CRAZY’ AT THE HEART OF EVE ONLINE
Our Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol has already done a fantastic job of documenting the depth of insular and near-inexplicable tactics that take place in the world of EVE Online, but Ten Ton Hammer has updated with a wonderful look into the “jagged fissure of insanity which runs through the heart of the EVE playerbase, a kind of feverish bad crazy that you simply don’t find in other online games.”
The money quote? Right here:
I was approached by one of the leaders of Red Alliance… but almost immediately we were down the rabbit hole. Much to my surprise, the RA director didn’t want in-game information from me; he wanted us to use the forensic resources of our intelligence agency to trace down The Enslaver’s home address. At a coordinated time, armed with this information, a RA member would apparently cut the power to The Enslaver’s house in the real world, and in EVE a RA capital fleet would assault the abruptly pilotless Titan. Yikes.
Bad Crazy in Internet Space [Ten Ton Hammer, via Margaret and Tom]
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PIXEL JUNK: ALEX BOND’S DEDICATED PIXELSTYLE BLOG
Joining Simon Parkin’s excellently single-minded Box Art tumblr (which has ever so slightly slipped in the past week [but ended on a high note] — everything ok, Simon?) as my new favorite follow is pixelstyle, a new tumblr devoted solely to “showcase and celebrate the aesthetic of pixels, whether from games, demos, original artwork, or anything else.”
The site is being run by Alex ‘enso‘ Bond, a fantastic pixel magician in his own right (see: his animated portrait of previously mentioned NES hacker/musician No Carrier and similarly excellent VJ visuals).
There are some slightly NSFW pixels currently roaming around the front page, but for the most part enso’s stuck to inspiring game landscapes, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing where he takes us next.
pixelstyle [tumblr, enso tumblr]
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IT BEGINS: SONY TESTS DOWNLOAD-ONLY PSP GAMES WITH PATAPON 2
I suppose it couldn’t have started at a better place: a long series of rumors and follow-ups yesterday has rewarded Ars Technica with confirmation that Sony will be using the upcoming release of its Rolito-art-directed strategy game Patapon 2 as a test bed for pure digital downloads for the PSP.
Soon to be available on the PlayStation Network for $15 alongside the other recently converted digital download releases, Sony will continue to support retail with an empty UMD case that simply contains a slip with a download code (and a demo version, if you reserve at select retailers, that — like the original game — will give you a special item that carries over into the full release) for $5 more.
This is a bold first step in the new direction for the device that Joel contemplated over at Gadgets earlier this year (which I thought of as even closer than he imagined over here) and hopefully something that will continue en masse later this year.
Or imagine it playing out this way: games are the ephemeral experience, the ones that — especially now — we don’t need to purchase in a box. Why not go a step further and sell us some other companion piece to keep retail in the loop (a toy? a shirt? a print?) and let the game exist purely in byte form?
[Correction: As Metanet‘s Raigan Burns has very correctly pointed out, this isn’t the first purely digital PSP game: Queasygames‘ excellent handheld port of Everyday Shooter and, more recently, Realtech VR’s No Gravity are more obvious examples, but this is the first time Sony’s tried to run both digital and retail routes stateside.]
Confirmed: Retail Patapon 2 to be UMD-free [Ars Technica, Patapon 2 home]
Previously:
- Boing Boing Gadgets ponders the PSP2 – Offworld
- Offworld: PlayStation Portable Archives
- Praise from Patapon and a passionate plea – Offworld
- Rolito unleashes new Patapon toy – Offworld
- New Rolito toy: Patapon X our one true heart – Offworld
- Patapon: the tattoo – Offworld
- LittleBigWatch, part 2: Patapon Sackboys in-bound – Offworld
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CLASSIC MAC GAME THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS LANDS ON IPHONE
If you’re not a dedicated Mac fiend it may not ring a bell, but Through the Looking Glass holds a distinct honor in Apple’s history.
Folklore.org tells the history in better detail than I will here, but the gist is this: what started as a side-project demo created by Steve Capps on the company’s ill-fated Lisa (Capps would soon leave the Lisa team for the Mac and contribute to the first version of the Finder) became Apple’s only first-party developed and published game.
(Side note: true to the company’s values, it came as gorgeously packaged as any Apple product you might buy today, in a mock cloth-bound-storybook-like case.)
While it never quite got its due on its original platform, history has now wrapped around on itself, as Capps himself has brought the game to the iPhone as AliceX [iTunes link].
The game plays essentially like an arcade version of chess: Alice takes on the movement properties of particular pieces and hops around the board attempting to capture a full slate of CPU-controlled opposing pieces that advance toward you in real time. The iPhone version can be played at its original four different speeds and, on very quick trial, has adapted itself perfectly to the touchscreen.
Even curiouser, AliceX comes with new game skins including a reworked board of hip-hop pieces and — true, I suppose, to the anarcho-cynicalist roots of a game which included a hidden Dead Kennedys logo on its cover — a ‘Bush Memorial’ skin which turns the chess pieces into jester/pope/jockey-hatted Bush administration officials and color-coded Homeland Security alerts being taken out by a clip-art Obama.
Find out more about the game and play a lite Javascript version via Capps’ official AliceX home, and follow future developments by reading the Fake Steve Capps blog.
AliceX — The original Macintosh game now for iPhone [Onedoto, iTunes link]
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ITS-A MATE: THE CURIOUS CHARACTER ASSIGNMENTS OF SUPER MARIO CHESS
It’s true: Nintendo has granted board-game/pop-culture mash-up artists USAopoly — the same company behind the frankly kind of wicked Donkey Kong Jenga and Nintendo-themed Monopoly — the rights to produce a Super Mario Bros version of chess.
Which is nice, particularly if it helps ease the youths into the game, but I’m still puzzling over how the designers came to their character assigning conclusions. Luigi as Mario’s queen over Peach herself? Granted, she is just a princess (and needed that Princess Daisy counterpart), but.. Luigi? And no one could think of a better mate for Bowser than his own son?
Maybe I’m approaching this too literally. Kudos, though, for the cute pawn selections on both ends.
Super Mario Chess Collector’s Edition [via crunchgear]
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