Archives: Offworld Originals

SEE THROUGH: X-RAY VISION APPLIED TO GAMES HARDWARE

5.5.2009

A lovely photoset on Flickr from “Reintji”, in which he combines his work – as an X-Ray technician – with his love of games. The results are fascinating, and, in places beautiful. (It’s been around a bit, but still worth a look if you’ve not already seen it.)

X-Ray Funnies [Flickr]

AGE OF EMPIRES DEVS, METAL GEAR COMIC ARTIST PARTNER FOR IPHONE GAME WORLD WAR ROBOTS

5.4.2009

Brandon Boyer

1 Reply

In a frankly legitimately exciting announcement that seems to have gone almost entirely unnoticed, studio CEO Paul Bettner has written with news that Newtoy, the iPhone developer behind the cult hit free multiplayer game Chess with Friends, has teamed up with artist Ashley Wood, the illustrator behind the PSP’s Metal Gear Solid digital comic, to create a new game based on Wood’s graphic novel World War Robot.

Bettner and his brother David cut their teeth at Ensemble Studios, where they worked on games ranging from the original Age of Empires series to Halo Wars — the last game Ensemble produced before shuttering the studio — before going on to found Newtoy, where they’ve got a happily Offworld-ian sounding “new dream” charter to bring in outside talent not normally found in games to collaborate on new projects.

Newtoy hasn’t released many details of the World War Robot game quite yet, apart from a selection of Wood’s artwork and this synopsis:

In World War Robot, the human race is split by religion and politics as they wage a savage war between Earth and Mars. Giant robots augment the destruction with incredible battles, intense human/robot drama, a little black humor and some political intrigue thrown into the mix in this epic story.

Coming from a real-time strategy pedigree and creators of one of the most seamless online iPhone multiplayer experiences, though, hopes are high for something along the lines of a stylized portable Front Mission.

Volume one of World War Robot is currently available at Amazon (and rightfully already ordered), and Wood’s just published some previews of WWR2. Hong Kong vinyl toy producer 3A has also recently released these first images of apparently quite big (!) WWR figures (above), who want to roll up all our happiness and smoke it.

World War Robot home [Newtoy, Ashley Wood]

ONE SHOT: DAVID MAURO’S DEUS EX MACHINA PUNIAT ARKOUSEUS

5.4.2009

Brandon Boyer

1 Reply

David Mauro‘s Deus Ex Machina Puniat Arkouseus, via pixelstyle.

INTERESTED IN CHIPTUNE MUSIC AND PIXEL ART? PLAY GDC: THE GAME

5.4.2009

Brandon Boyer

1 Reply

Officially sanctioned by the GDC powers that be, Toronto author, game maker and founder of the local Artsy Game Incubator Jim Munroe took his experience at the conference this year and channeled it into GDC: The Game, an Interactive Fiction game (read: text adventure) that manages to capture quite accurately the collaborative, socially supportive and intellectually curious aspects of what it’s like to actually be there.

Rather than wandering the halls and finding hidden stores of swag, though, the object of the game is to foster relationships based on your own interests and the harmonious interests of others enough to put together a dream team of designers, coders, and promoters and make the next indie hit.

Play GDC: The Game online here, and remember to REMEMBER the advice your conference vets gave you before you left.

GDC: The Game [GameSetWatch]

Previously:

GARDEN OF THE DEAD: POPCAP RELEASE PLANTS VS. ZOMBIES DEMO

5.4.2009

Brandon Boyer

2 Replies

The time is now: after a long procession of teases and trailers, there’s less than 24 hours left until PopCap officially unleashes the zombie throngs on your unsuspecting plants, and the company has opened downloads for the demo version of the game, alongside a discount code for those that order directly through PopCap themselves.

Sign up for the demo download location through PopCap’s official game home for the Mac/PC demo and code.

Plants vs. Zombies home [PopCap]

Previously:

ROLLING ZEN: ANNA JOHN’S WINNING ROLANDO HAIKU

5.4.2009

Brandon Boyer

SOFT HARDWARE: MARINE BELOIR’S DS LITE, GAME BOY HUGGABLE HANDHELDS

5.4.2009

Tiff Chow

1 Reply

There comes a time and a place when we feel the need to give a little affection to our handhelds. But while glass plated touchscreens and rounded hardware corners are a little tough to love, the hand-made plush consoles of French crafter Marine Beloir are made for embracing.

To choose a favorite between the colorfully embroidered New Super Mario Bros. scene on her DS plush and the tiny stitched green Tetris blocks falling across her Game Boy is difficult at best, and naturally it would be hard to imagine any Apple fan not wanting to dotingly push the felt app buttons of her iPhone.

But beyond the soft hardware, Marine’s plush works are quirky, adorable, and deserved of attention, regardless of whether or not Zombie Cat actually actually sneaks a debut mutant appearance into House of the Dead: Overkill.

Les doudoux [Marine Beloir]

Previously:

PROGRAMMING BY CARRIER PIGEON: LLAMASOFT’S FOUND CESIL WORKBOOK

5.3.2009

Brandon Boyer

STEPH THIRION’S IPHONE DEBUT ELISS NOW BIGGER, SMOOTHER, AND A LITTLE LESS ABUSIVE

5.3.2009

Brandon Boyer

3 Replies

Though I was unabashed in professing my love for Steph Thirion’s iPhone debut, Eliss, there’s no getting around the fact that our relationship (and the one she had with most others) was — to put it frankly — an abusive one.

As Thirion would go on to tell me at GDC, and has now explained fully via his new blog, a startlingly small number of people made it even halfway through the game, and a micro-percentage managed to finish it (and then, in one case, not for some 40 odd hours for its 20 ‘short’ levels).

After a period of post-conference reflection, then, he’s settled on a way to ease players in a bit more gently, and in the process, added a quarter more levels to the game. He explains:

On the original group of sectors, there was a serious jump after sector 2. Too many new things were introduced on sector 3, there was no time to get prepared for them. To fill up that missing space, four new sectors were added in between those. None of these sectors brings anything truly new compared to version 1.0, but they allow a better pacing. I also moved quite a few sectors around, to make a more logical difficulty progression, and did some tweaking in specific sectors. In the process I also added a little bonus, sector 14, which is a new thing. Also, the suns’ appearance has been modified to be spotted earlier, making the much dreaded sector 10 (which has been moved to sector 20 by the way) easier to beat.

Progress on your original game has for the most part been saved and adjusted for but in general, says Thirion, the game is “better balanced, less jumpy, more user friendly,” and therefore comes even more universally recommended than it did at last mention.

As a bonus, Thirion’s written a lovely letter to his audience here, which doubles as an illuminating look at a creator struggling with the “Fairy of Reason.”

The 1.1 update for Eliss is currently live on the App Store, or can be purchased, now at a reduced price, via this iTunes link.

The Shadow Over Eliss [Cloud Fields, Eliss home, App Store link]

Previously:

Touch me I'm slick: the shape and the sound of Steph Thirion's …

GIMME INDIE GAME: THE DEPTH-DEFYING PLANAR-PLATFORMING OF PAPER MOON

5.3.2009

Brandon Boyer

8 Replies

There was always a certain — but gentle — cloud that hung over the announcement that Infinite Ammo and Adam Saltsman‘s multi-planar fruit collecting platformer Paper Moon would be brought to Flashbang’s online portal Blurst.

Not one of quality, mind — as players had already been able to get their hands on the game after its Gamma 3D debut — but one of how properly a platformer would fit into the Blurst framework, which relies on three to five minute quick burst arcade play and generally is targeted toward high score competition and achievements.

The subsequent announcement that the game would come with a timer, I will admit, struck a little pang of fear, as I’m not generally one for having my exploration curbed by arbitrary time limits (it’s a cardinal sin up far in the ranks alongside auto-scrolling levels). But, it turns out, that fear was entirely misplaced, and, freshly released at the tail end of last week, Paper Moon is a fantastic addition to the service.

How do you morph a short platformer into a necessarily replayable experience then? The answer is branches: a few handfuls of varied paths that can be taken at several points in the game and require repeat performances to see, and a combo-meter collection system that amplifies your score as you gain the experience to better judge how best to maximize your time in an unbroken line throughout its world.

And it is a game you’ll want to play again back to back, not least because you likely won’t finish it on your first or second or even third go, and even if you do, the tantalizingly missed paths on your map screen will beckon you immediately back through.

If there are any frustrations with the game, it’s only in losing the original’s stereoscopic hook and having to rely on shading to re-orient your next potential leap with the proper paper plane (a few test-run pops also help), but again, repeat plays acclimate you to the process and reduce that end-level/nearly-out-of-time stress.

But what we gained in losing the red-blue shift and going full monochrome, and what’s underscored by Infinite Ammo co-founder Alec Holowka’s new score, is a game that’s roughly and wonderfully the stylistic equivalent of an early silent movie: an easily consumable little tale of derring-do and intrigue that’s essentially peerless in the indie scene today.

Paper Moon home [Blurst, Infinite Ammo]

Previously:

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