MORE IPHONE INDIE CROSSOVERS: MINIGORE STAR COMING TO ILLUSION LABS’ SWAY
Mountain Sheep’s indie-iPhone crossovers work both ways, as they bring their Minigore star John Gore to Offworld fave ragdoll-physics swinger Sway.
Since last noting the Indie Spirit inherent in these cross-promoting ventures, I realized I neglected to mention the latest biggest of them all: Braid star Tim, Bit.Trip‘s Commander Video, and more coming to WiiWare’s Super Meat Boy.
Previously:
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BRAID BOUND FOR PS3, CREATOR TEASES ‘PHILOSOPHICAL, QUIET’ GAME THE WITNESS
Braid trailer from David Hellman on Vimeo.
And speaking of Braid, a neglected update from weekend news: after a German ratings board leak confirmed suspicion, IGN got confirmation that Hothead Games will be porting the game to the PlayStation 3, with no tentative release date yet given. The Vancouver studio behind Penny Arcade Adventures and Ron ‘Monkey Island/Maniac Mansion‘ Gilbert’s forthcoming DeathSpank is also, as you might recall, the same that brought Braid to the Mac.
At the same time, Braid creator Jon Blow has also confirmed and teased his next game, The Witness, described, as above, as “an exploration-puzzle game on an uninhabited island.” The Tao Te Ching-dropping game will be released, Blow says, “on multiple platforms — whatever makes sense in late 2011, when the game will hopefully be finished.”
The only other hints at what the game might entail come from an earlier help-wanted blog post by Blow, in which he sought a 3D modeler with indoor/outdoor environment skills (no monster/weapon experience required) to join his “small team [for] a puzzle-exploration game that is philosophical, and quiet, and is being made for reasons other than crass profit motive.”
“This game places a heavy emphasis on the way things look,” the post read, “and will be a refreshing project for those who value nuance.”
Previously:
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: BUILDING A BETTER MARIO, WITH SCIENCE
I suppose this might be a bit of a tease bringing it up this close to the deadline, but I’ve only just spotted Julian Togelius and Sergey Karakovskiy’s Mario AI Competition 2009, a contest in association with the IEEE, to build an algorithm capable of controlling Mario in a modified, endless, randomly generated Java version of Super Mario World.
Explain the coordinators:
One of the main purposes of this competition is to be able to compare different controller development methodologies against each other, both those based on learning techniques such as artificial evolution and those that are completely hand-coded. So we hope to get submissions based on evolutionary neural networks, genetic programming, fuzzy logic, temporal difference learning, human ingenuity, hybrids of the above, etc. The more the merrier! (And better for science.)
There’s two upcoming deadlines, August 18 and September 3, so it may be a bit more feasible to hit that second: check the official site for the full details and source code to enter yourself, and please, please let us know if and when you create something.
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TOUCH ME I’M SLICK: FIENDING ON WORDS WITH FRIENDS
This isn’t the iPhone game recommendation I intended to write today. Weeks have gone by and I haven’t even been able to carve out time to adequately write at any considerable length on Rolando 2 or Space Invaders: Infinity Gene (both of which are, indeed, must-buy games), and here I find myself writing about the last thing I expected to overtake my weekend: NewToy’s Words With Friends.
There’s not much explanation you’ll need to understand the Words experience. It’s ultimate-Facebook-time-waster Scrabulous, on your iPhone. And it works. That’s all you really need to know: you can start multiple games with random players, or search for your friends across the network via your contact list (if you’ve ever played their earlier Chess with Friends, you’ll recognize the setup), get dropped into a new room with no more frills than your board, a chatroom, and occasionally the haunting google-eye notifier of your opponent checking in.
Granted, this isn’t the only way to get an iPhone word-fix: EA has its own version of Scrabble, and the Scrabulous devs themselves have their own mobile version of Lexulous, the post-cease-and-desist version of the game they brought back to Facebook. And indeed, both of those games use Facebook Connect to broaden your opponent-base, which Words With Friends does not.
But the key? Words With Friends — both the paid version, and its ad-supported free sibling — is lean, streamlined, and does nothing more than what it’s meant to do: give you a quick-burst next move in the minute and a half you have to fiddle with your iPhone in between life’s everything else. Push notifications are coming in an imminent update to make that compulsion even more inescapable.
And the real reason it’s caught my attention: NewToy are, of course, the former Age of Empires devs who recently announced a partnership with Metal Gear Solid comic artist Ashley Wood, which will see the two collaborate on an iPhone game based on Wood’s soviet-mech series World War Robot.
When they announced the partnership — considering their pedigree — I mentioned that my hopes were high for an online turn-based strategy along the lines of a stylized portable Front Mission. After spending the weekend obsessively checking in with Words with Friends and experiencing just how solid their online infrastructure is, that hope has triple-scored.
[Feel free to start a new game with me there as ‘brand0nnn’ (with a zero)!]
Words With Friends [NewToy, App Store link, Free version App Store link]
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ONE SHOT: KEITA TAKAHASHI, SHOELESS AND AMUSED
Above, French games-as-arts/fashion mag Amusement proves its bold direction: putting people front and center of its features (to a degree that only Edge also does) and its covers (which almost no one does). Keita Takahashi remains, as is his usual wont, shoeless.
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FAKE PLASTIC MESS: THE OFFICIAL HARMONIX INSTRUMENT COMPATIBILITY LIST
Somebody had to do it, I guess it may as well have been Harmonix themselves: the official Rock Band site has just updated with this new pan-console compatibility list that lets you know which of the gajillion technicolor instruments piling up maddeningly in your bed/living-room over the past five years will work with which games. Mentioned here mostly because it’s really, really time for me to cull the lot.
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SPORE, FATHOM DEVS JOIN EXPERIMENTAL GAMEPLAY COMPETITION
Well, now it’s really hotting up: as the Experimental Gameplay Project announces its new ‘friendly competition’ for August, they’ve also noted a number of official newcomers, including 2D Boy’s Ron Carmel, molleindustria‘s Paolo Pedercini (he of McDonalds Videogame and the hot-button Faith Fighter), Toronto indie Michael Todd, original EGP member Matt Kucic, Adam Saltsman (who you’ll remember from Fathom, flixel, and Paper Moon), and Chaim Gingold, the original prototyper and creator of what we now know as Spore‘s Creature Creator.
Their theme this month, which contenders will have seven days to create a game around: Bare Minimum, about which they say “could be anything – graphics, sound, gameplay – some have even been so crass as to suggest clothing!”
To tide you over until the first prototypes come rolling in, they’ve also updated with a number of July’s Unexperimental Shooter games prototyped by EGP readers and cohorts (including Pedercini).
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CIRCULAR SWEEP, CRESCENDOING SWELL: NEWFORESTAR’S 8-BIT IPHONE NESSYNTH
Due very, very soon on the App Store: NESSynth, which, as you’ll immediately guess, is an 8-bit iPhone synth from Japan’s NewForestar. Though it lacks built-in tracking/sequencing, it does have a ‘P2P’ mode for two-phone collaborating, and you basically can’t really deny that tilt-sweep in the video above. Or its Konami-esque title screen. Or the “super geek” controller mode interface. [via TCTD]
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