There’s not much more to add than I’ve previously said over here, but, as promised, Terry Cavanagh’s super vital space-disco arcade game Super Hexagon has officially landed on PC & Mac following its iPhone debut, and can now be found on Steam at a discounted price, with a special dual-pack option so you can instantly start a leaderboard rivalry with a friend.

Well, actually, there is the good news that Cavanagh’s seen fit to include the game’s “arcade mode” as an option — which adds local leaderboard entries so you can use the build for exhibitions and your own public tournaments — and that he’s gotten away with one of the best tongue-in-cheek game descriptions on Steam, which you can spot here on your way to purchasing your copy.

Great news for all the iPhone-less: creator Terry Cavanagh has just announced that his super essential & frequently-featured arcade game Super Hexagon will be releasing for Windows & Mac on Steam next Tuesday.

The home computer builds won’t be ones you’ve potentially played at festivals and parties in the past: Cavanagh explains that he’s re-written the entire game from the ground up, with the added benefit of running “at a higher resolution than the iOS version, and runs fast and silky smooth on every machine I’ve been able to get my hands on – a very important thing for a game like this.”

Newcomers can prepare for the release with the still-available original Flash version or by picking up the iOS counterpart here — my short ode to the “27th century space-disco teen-laser-punk arcade hit” also exists back here.

The game that first put VVVVVV & Super Hexagon creator Terry Cavanagh on many peoples’ radars, for its mix of twitch platforming & narrative twists, Don’t Look Back — first released to the web in 2009 — has just been released as a free download for iOS and Android devices.

Though it came across the momentary and slightly cynical hitch above in its journey to the App Store, you can grab the iPhone/iPad app here, or find it for your Android either on the Google Play store, or as a direct download to install to your device.

It’s a clever short story of a game that you’ll wrap up before you know it, but it’s a stepping-stone type journey in a couple different senses, serving first, it seems, as a stop along the way not just to Cavanagh’s own development path to VVVVVV — if you’ve played the latter, you’ll feel it on your way through here.

This mobile release also seems to been a proving grounds which provided him with the knowledge that VVVVVV just might work on mobile devices as well, with it now being teased as an upcoming game on his Distractionware site.

Following her similar Shadow of the Colossus piece, Berlin-based designer Natalie ‘coffeemakescreative‘ Hanke pays tribute to Terry Cavanagh’s Super Hexagon with this illustration created in Hexels, a new pixel-plus type art tool soon to be released by Ken Kopecky & Ted Martens. Best viewed in super massive full-res to truly appreciate its RGB CRT-ish subtlety.

“Didn’t the original come together in like four hours one morning?”, I ask. “Sometimes it just works like that,” Terry Cavanagh demures.

Having launched just days before this site opened its doors, a super-strong recommendation of Cavanagh’s updated and fantastically feature-complete Super Hexagon for iPhone & iPad is long overdue, and in the intervening time, the game’s gone on to be as well received as it richly deserves.

Sometimes it just happens that a game pops into the universe and makes you wonder how it’s possible that something so simple hadn’t materialized yet in all of videogaming’s past, at the same time as you wonder how it’s possible it’s not a time-travelling relic from videogaming’s future.

I’ve described the game probably ad nauseum as a “27th century space-disco teen-laser-punk arcade hit”, but it’s still how I see the game, and having run it at a few live events over the past few months, it’s amazing at how perfect a portable party it is. Providing its own ultra-hypnotic visuals and blasting its own fantastically forward-focused beats courtesy Chipzel (grab her soundtrack EP here), it’d nearly be danceable were it not stop/starting every 15 seconds in unskilled hands.

If you haven’t played it yet, do not hesitate a moment longer: your hands will initially be even exponentially more unskilled, but patience and zen-training (borrow my mantra & embrace the negative space) will pay off, and you may find yourself in as much an ultra zone as the nearly unbelievable player above. [Super Hexagon (App Store), coming to PC/Mac soon]

Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month — both local and global, and both indie and occasionally a bit-bigger-budget — for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are be presented here on Venus Patrol for your reference, each fully-annotated, -linked, and off-the-cuff blurbed, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

(more…)

Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month — both local and global, and both indie and occasionally a bit-bigger-budget — for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are be presented here on Venus Patrol for your reference, each fully-annotated, -linked, and off-the-cuff blurbed, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

(more…)

GIMME INDIE GAME: TERRY CAVANAGH & STEPHEN LAVELLE’S JUDITH

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4.13.2009

Brandon Boyer

2 Replies

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]