ABOUT TIME: FANGAMER RESTOCKS CHRONO TRIGGER TRIBUTE T-SHIRTS
Kudos to Tiny Cartridge for noticing that Fangamer — the company behind the staggering range of Earthbound/Mother-themed fashion & merch, as well as the newly established Metal Gear line — have reprinted and restocked these ‘Chronometer’ T-shirts based on Square’s 16-bit classic RPG Chrono Trigger, which also come with a separate chrono-themed 1″ pin (extra themed pin packs sold separately).
Previously:
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WOW, PEGGLE, WOW: POPCAP’S WARCRAFT-THEMED PACK NOW FREE
Remember in April when PopCap and Blizzard partnered to bring you exclusive Peggle levels playable inside World of Warcraft? This is a simple note to say that if you’re on a PC, you can now download the 10-level-pack as a free standalone game. And one to say that you should do so.
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RAGDOLL METAPHYSICS: ARMA II, AN ODE TO THE SURREALISM OF SIMULATION
There are times when the obscure corners of gaming seem to fade away and leave us with nothing but mainstream titles to chomp our way through. But not this month, and certainly not with the arrival of the awkwardly shambling simulatory behemoth that is Arma II. This is a soldier sim that pretty much defines how far the combat simulation end of gaming now is from the shooter roots of Doom.
Layers of controls, and clunky contextual UI, vast AI systems fighting across hundreds of miles of terrain: it’s about as close as we’ve come to modeling real war. And as a consequence it should come with a sticker on the box that says “this probably isn’t for you”. Arma II is as independently crafted as anything else out there, but your typical indie game it is not.
Bohemia Interactive Software, the Czech developer behind Operation Flashpoint, Arma, and the recently released Arma II, are one of the most singular and driven development studios you could name. Their energy and enthusiasm for creating an all-encompassing soldier sim – a game type that is barely imagined by other studios – seems to defy sense.
Why would you even begin a project of this scale, unless you were richer than Bill Gates? Understand this, and you’ll understand that their project is valuable simply by its uniqueness. In fact, I’d go further than that, and say that they are arguably one of the most important developers in the world today. Not because of accomplishment, because that always seems to fall short in their games. Rather, what is significant is their ambition. (more…)
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INDIE DEVS TO THE READY: SUBMISSIONS OPEN FOR 2010 INDIE GAMES FESTIVAL
Organizers of the Independent Games Festival have announced that submissions are now open for 2010’s main and student showcases, with a deadline of November 1st and 15th, respectively. Finalists will be announced on January 4th and 11th of 2010, and, as usual, the IGF will be awarding some $50,000 in cash prizes spread across its visual art, audio, design, technical, ‘nuovo’ (formerly ‘innovation’), and audience categories, alongside the Seumas McNally grand prize.
On a personal note, I’ll be returning as a judge in both categories, alongside some excellent first-time compatriots, and am very much looking forward to spending time with (and subsequently exhaustively covering) everyone’s submissions.
Submit Your Game [IGF]
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ONE SHOT: CASTLE CRASHERS, IN LEGO
One more game-toy crossover, via Simon Parkin: an anonymously Tumbl’d Castle Crashers knight, expertly given the full Lego treatment.
Previously:
- Knight folds: Crzisme's Castle Crashers papercraft
- How Castle Crashers was almost a Muttpop/Lucha Libre game
- More details on Castle Crashers dev's cutely chaotic Game #3 …
- Video: 8-bit arcade classics are back, in Lego form
- One shot: ORRANGE™'s Half Life Nova Prospekt, Lego edition
- NoVVember: A month of Gradius' Vic Vipers in LEGO
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ONE SHOT: L4D, VIA LBP
Harmonix staffer Milo shows Kotaku his crocheted collection of the cast of Left 4 Dead rendered as LittleBigPlanet sack-horde.
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GIMME INDIE GAME: WORLD OF GOO, HENRY HATSWORTH DEVS DEBUT NEW GAMES AT EXPERIMENTAL GAMEPLAY PROJECT
Back in the hazy days of my stint at Edge Online — before indie gaming had truly become a movement, certainly one fought over by console manufacturers, a time when Cave Story was still just a twinkle in Pixel’s eye — there was only one place I knew I could trust to feed me reliably worthwhile new games: Carnegie Mellon’s Experimental Gameplay Project.
It was there that the dual Kyles (co-founders Gabler and Gray, of World of Goo and Henry Hatsworth renown, respectively) and their classmates laid the rapid prototyping foundation that would influence the indie scene at large (notably Petri Purho, who credits the technique for spawning his Crayon Physics).
Now, with Gabler still spinning up for 2D Boy’s sophomore effort, and Gray recently departing EA for indie work, the two have relaunched the site and will be serving new, monthly seven-day challenges, with the first three games of the debut challenge just premiered.
The first, seen at top, is Gray’s Frobot: Fueled by Dancing: a Robotron/Smash TV-esque keyboard/mouse-controlled shooter in which the titular ‘bot is tasked with conquering salarymen with the power of funk, morphing them instantly into a series of ‘solid-gold dancers’, with a nicely unfolding power-up structure.
The second, above right, is Proto Shooter, an entirely mouse controlled classic 8-bit pixel shooter from EGP newcomer and World of Goo Wii programmer Allan Blomquist, and finally, below, is Gabler’s Egg Worm Generator.
Technically not at all a game (and apparently salvaged from a failed attempt at a Karl Sims-inspired evolutionary shooter), Egg Worm is a generative Darwinian simulation in which creatures are given one minute to live and crawl to the right toward a green pixel. Any creature that doesn’t make it is scrapped, any survivors breed their traits further and slowly grow more adept at walking rightward, a transformation surprisingly compelling to observe over time, for as entirely uninteractive as it is.
Purho and Shalin Shodan — another former EGP co-founder and participant and later Spore API developer — are listed as additional eventual participants in forthcoming challenges: watch the new EGP space for more information, and don’t miss the archives for original EGP works, including the towering roots of World of Goo.
Previously:
- Gimme Indie Tools: 2D Boy unleash open-source rapid prototyping …
- Concept Album: Evil Ben Franklin and the art of Henry Hatsworth …
- Scream real loud: the playable origins of World of Goo
- World of Goo's Kyle Gabler gives top 7 Global Game Jam tips
- Little monsters: Crayon Physics dev's creature creator prototype …
- PlayPower turning NES/Famicom clones into learning tools for the …
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