SEE Q-GAMES’ PIXELJUNK EDEN ENCORE EXPANSION IN MOTION
Q-games has finally let loose the trailer the studio showed at GDC for its upcoming expansion of Offworld 20 favorite PS3 downloadable Pixeljunk Eden, after detailing the included additions to the game.
Those additions? Along side the new Baiyon music for each level, Q-games has implemented a new “three-seed smart-bomb” powerup where every “prowler” on the screen will explode into pollen after jumping into three seeds in a row — which will also now work in the original game itself.
The expansion will also add a “zero-G” item that will let you float through the level for a limited time, with appropriately designed puzzles in that particular garden, plus a new “mirror” garden with portals in and out of its double, with subtle changes in between
And finally, Q-games is teasing at a new easter egg for the end of the expansion that “will enable you to play the entire game again in a completely different way.”
The expansion will be available with this Thursday’s regular PlayStation Network update.
PixelJunk Eden Encore Launching on PSN this Thursday [Playstation.blog, Pixeljunk Eden home]
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See more posts about: Baiyon, Offworld Originals, PixelJunk, Q-Games
4K WELL SPENT: RGBA & TBC CREATE GORGEOUS LANDSCAPES IN 4K OF CODE
The winner of the just-ended Breakpoint 2009 demoscene competition? For reasons that will become obvious as soon as you see the video (higher-res YouTube), RGBA and TBC’s Elevated, all the more impressive when you realize it was created with just 4K of code.
Head here for the pouet entry with the PC downloadable, and here for the rest of the Breakpoint entries.
elevated by Rgba & TBC [pouet, via Waxy]
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See more posts about: Offworld Originals
LISTEN: EVERYONE LOVES TOBIAH’S I LOVE YOUR MUSIC
A few years old but still as fresh and perfect for Tuesday morning listening as the day it was released, Tobiah‘s I Love Your Music is looping, twisted house for lonely computer pen pals.
The clip was animated by E-Rock, the same as behind the previously blogged ‘Bad Cartridge’ video he and Paper Rad did for Beck.
Hear and download more Tobiah via his official site, including I Love Your Music and my other favorite, I Don’t Really Exist, which comes from that same tragically isolated virtual dance house.
tobiah.se [also: 2biah MySpace]
See more posts about: Listen, Music, Offworld Originals
VIVA LA REVOLUCION: SEAN MORT’S GAMING REVOLUTION T-SHIRT
Available now via threadless, Sean Mort’s new T-shirt speaks truth to gaming’s power.
The Gaming Revolution by Sean Mort [Threadless, via DarkZero]
Previously:
See more posts about: Fashion, Offworld Originals
INTELLIGENT DESIGNER: CHRIS HECKER’S LINER NOTES FOR SPORE
Every bit as mile a minute and ponderously technical as talking or listening to the man himself, Chris Hecker — one of the chief technologists and animation team lead behind Maxis/EA’s Spore — has begun documenting the five year process that lead to the final release, and, despite the technicality, it’s a fascinating and revealing read.
Hecker covers everything from his very first efforts in late 2003 nailing down how skin would hang over an infinite variety of creations (at left, a 3D print of Hecker’s first created creature) to the process of dynamically texturing that skin, to early prototypes of the animation system (along with test videos), and how “Bugs + Player Creativity = Features”.
As a companion piece, Hecker also notes that art director Ocean Quigley has been keeping his own records on the process behind the game’s visual design at his blog both technical and more philosophical.
For further reading, there’s also my feature-length snapshot in time of the larger team’s mindset and goals in 2006 reprinted over at RockPaperShotgun.
My Liner Notes For Spore [Chris Hecker, Ocean Quigley’s blog]
Previously:
- Data-mashers at the ready: Maxis opens the Spore API – Offworld
- Skeletons alive: Aaron Meyers’ Spore creatures now in augmented reality – Offworld
- Fragile things: Aaron Meyers' API-driven Spore skeletons – Offworld
- Nobody's poisson: Maxis's Spore rogue-like – Offworld
- EA details Spore's 2009 PC, Wii, DS expansions – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
GIMME INDIE GAME: TERRY CAVANAGH & STEPHEN LAVELLE’S JUDITH
If you’ve only got one hour for an indie game this week, make that game Terry Cavanagh and Stephen “increpare” Lavelle’s Judith.
Like Gravity Bone, it’s a game where less up-front explanation is better, but I’ll give away this much: imagine a parallel universe where Id had used its cutting edge 1992 technology not to create a game about escaping a Nazi prison and hunting down a robotic Hitler, but instead to tell a simple story through shifting narratives and timelines, each shift peeling away one more narrative layer and giving you subtle hints about where you’ll be headed in the next.
It’s heady, atmospheric stuff, and, like last week’s Enviro-bear 2000, probably a very early winner of the week’s best indie development.
Judith [distractionware, PC download, Mac download, Linux download, via TIGSource]
Previously:
See more posts about: Gimme Indie Game, Offworld Originals, Stephen Lavelle, Terry Cavanagh
LITTLEBIGDADDY: SUPMAN098’S CUSTOM BIOSHOCK 2 BIG DADDY DOLL
And one last fantastic Monday morning custom toy: ‘supman098’s Big Daddy Dolly, as spotted in the teaser trailer for 2K Games’ forthcoming Bioshock 2 might just trump Harrison Krix’s Little Sister syringe as the best fan made tribute to the series.
Big Daddy Dolly by supman098 [deviantart, via technabob]
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See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Toys
REFILL YOUR 8-BIT HEART METERS WITH MATCHING PROXIMITY-AWARE SHIRTS
A cheap gimmick to be sure, but also undeniably kind of awesomely charming. Also available, a bit more sadly, as a single shirt and transmitter pack that can be placed near a more inanimate love.
8-Bit Dynamic Life Shirt [thinkgeek, spotted by m,appeal via oddee]
Previously:
See more posts about: Fashion, Offworld Originals
POST-GDC: ROBIN HUNICKE’S 6 EASY IDEAS TO FIX PLAYSTATION HOME
Richard Lemarchand’s microtalks turned out to be one of the finest and most inspiring sessions of GDC, and the one session archetype I hope will turn into a new long-lasting tradition. Taking its cues from the Pecha Kucha tradition of ’20 slides auto-advancing every 20 seconds’, it was a rapidfire series of speakers giving rapidfire ideas on the concept of “play.”
Of all the speeches, perhaps the most practically focused was Boom Blox producer Robin Hunicke’s series on “Simple Game Mechanics for Real and Virtual Play Spaces,” or, put more simply (and reduced maybe a bit unfairly), what Sony can do to fix their PS3 virtual world Home.
Hunicke was disappointed to learn, she said, that her assumptions about the space — that, coming from a game publisher, this virtual world would “blend the best of free expression, openess and structured activity” — were quickly stymied when she found that by and large the most prevalent pastime in Home was “dudes… harassing any female avatar,” and attempting to create their own emergent “fun” by exploiting collision physics to do things like standing on benches and sitting on railings and other avatar’s shoulders.
So, imagining herself as queen of Home for a day, she came up with easy ideas to bring her overarching “4 C’s” of game design — Creativity, Collection, Competition, Community — to the space and imagined new ways for people to interact. (more…)
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
LISTEN: RUTGER MULLER DOMINATES KORG DS-10 WITH CHEAP DIRT
Following the previously blogged LSDJ/LGPT dub ep from Simon Mattison, the latest album from netlabel mp3death is Cheap Dirt from Rutger ‘DS-10 Dominator’ Muller.
As you might expect from his alias, Muller’s album was composed entirely on a single copy of Korg’s DS-10 synthesizer, and, he adds:
No post-processing of the audio has been done. All sounds are synthesized, there’s no sampling involved. Genres covered are: minimal, techno, electro, acid, dubstep, uk garage, drum n bass, ambient, etc.
mp3death add, in their own typical quasi-poetical fashion:
Enchanted with drum & A computer on
and jupiter is cut everything else,
turn the Most synthesizer preset
bass and then boost that notoriously famoussessions by soundsystems
no midi control so your beat can offer
that paradoxically mix primitivistic
lo-fi and comfortable again.
Listen to the stream below, particularly the standout downtempo track “Sea Son” (skip to track six) or download the entire album via archive.org.
cheap dirt by ds-10 dominator [archive.org, mp3death label, rutgermuller.nl, via disquiet]
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See more posts about: Listen, Music, Offworld Originals
