February 19, 2012
Inspired by a 2008 talk by Portal writer Erik Wolpaw and designer Kim Swift, Gus Mastrapa cuts through the ludology vs. narratology debate with a penchant observation: story is to videogames what music is to movies. [more inside]
February 17, 2012
Unmanned is a thing that is like a game but isn't really, sort of. You probably should give it a try online, or as a Mac or PC download.
Humble Bundle Mojam: While the Groupees folks still struggle to get their server situation in order (previously), MineCraft's Notch enters the bundling ring with a new sort of offering: for the next 60 hours or so, he and his Mojang compatriots will be livestreaming the creation of a brand new game and offering it to you for whatever donation to charity you choose to make. A public poll served as the mechanism by which the genre was picked, and the public picked "real-time strategy shoot 'em up with a steampunk ancient Egypt theme." [more inside]
February 15, 2012
Minesweeper + Tetris = TETRiSweeper. I had assumed this would be novel, but not particularly engaging. Or engaging, but not particularly engrossing. It looks like I was wrong.
Click to reveal a square. Shift-click to flag a square as unsafe. WASD to control the falling Tetris pieces as they add themselves to the Minesweeper board. The only way to clear a row is to reveal/flag all of that row's squares, assuming you didn't mess up your Tetris stacking and leave the row unfinished to begin with. The game ends when you accidentally uncover a mine or allow the Tetris pieces to reach the top. [more inside]
February 14, 2012
Maniac Tentacle Mindbenders: How ScummVM's unpaid coders kept adventure gaming alive. "ScummVM was born on September 17, 2001, at 5:57pm GMT+1. The program was meant as an interpreter that could play classic LucasArts point-and-click adventure games such as Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit the Road, and Day of the Tentacle in a virtual machine (VM)."
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Radiolab is one of the best radio shows/podcasts out there. If you haven't listened to their episode about Games from last year, you should! [podcast feed | iTunes]
With five hours left to go on the (excellent as usual) Humble Android Bundle, a day left for the (alright if you happen to like the selection) Indie Royale Valentine's Bundle, and likely weeks more of the (bizarrely uneven) Indie Gala 2, the most exciting bundle in town is probably the one that just launched: Groupee's Be Mine Bundle. If you have a PC, a $1 min. bid will get you The Ball (intriguing First Person Puzzler), BEEP (cute WALL-E-resemblant robot platformer), Sideways New York (2-d graffiti platformer mapped onto a 3-d world), Xotic (first-person alien shooter), and Wasteland Angel (arcade driving shooter). [more inside]
February 13, 2012
The Elder Strolls is an amusing wander through the world of Skyrim, written by friend-of-MefightClub Chris Livingston, the funny bastard behind Concerned and other good gamery things. The latest in the series is Part 10.
Being a criminal psychopath sucks - but what did you expect?
February 11, 2012
Turn based strategy game Relive history in this free online multiplayer turn based strategy war game, it is also a text based game. Lead some of histories most famous civilizations of medieval times into war, all from the safety of your web browser.
The object of the game is to lead a medieval civilization from a small empire to the top of the leaderboard.You can win two ways by attacking your opponents into submission or exploring past them in this text based game.
You can build alliances, declare wars, produce an economy based around wood, iron, food and gold. Build your army to other empires or send your explorers on missions to gain land. Production of goods, buildings and army are the keys to being the best and top ranked empire. Control your population, aid your friends goods in time of need, defence o
February 10, 2012
Super Mario Brothers Crossover 2.0 is finished. That is all you need to know.
Moral Psychopaths: Blizzard's community policy is a sense-free zone In which it is proposed that lazy bowdlerizing can lead to a lethally toxic environment for LGBT people.
RAGE and the Circular Design Dilemma "RAGE is a game where the very mechanics and structure of the game exist not necessarily because they're fun, or because they make sense, but solely because they depend upon and reinforce each other."
February 8, 2012
Hot on the heels of newfound hope for Psychonauts 2, Double Fine announces a new project led by Tim Schafer, a point-and-click adventure game being funded via Kickstarter. A list of "premium" pledge rewards has also been posted, including, at the $150,000 level, one of the last four remaining Triangle Boxed Day of the Tentacles in original shrink-wrap, from Tim's personal collection. [more inside]
MIRRORMOON (windows, mac) is a brief first-person puzzle-exploration game that might last 5 to 15 minutes, depending on how quickly you figure things out. You are given very little context for how to proceed. You are on a mostly barren red planet. Another planet is visible in the sky. Perhaps it's blocking your view of the sun, perhaps not. Text on screen tells you to use WASD to move. Later the mouse will start working as well, but not in the way you're used to.
February 7, 2012
Blocky Earth turns Google Maps terrain into Minecraft-like blocks [via] [more inside]
Minecraft developer Notch makes a 'serious' offer to fund Psychonauts 2. Tim Schafer (creator of the much-beloved Psychonauts) has pitched the idea of a sequel to publishers "several times" without any interest. "I'd love to do that game, but I'd have to convince someone to just give me a few million dollars, that's all."
Enter Minecraft gazillionaire Markus "Notch" Persson, and the hearts of PC gamers everywhere suddenly swell to 5 times their normal size.
January 10, 2012
The case for Richard Hofmeier's Cart Life as game of the year.
How well do you remember the level layouts of your favorite games? Mapstalgia is a blog showing people's attempts to draw video game level maps from memory. [more inside]
January 3, 2012
A review of the level design for the first Legend of Zelda game. A review of the level design for the first Legend of Zelda game.
January 1, 2012
So you want to know what the best things in the gaming world were in 2011? Gamasutra has a roundup of everything
Best game? A.V. Club, Rock Paper Shotgun, Giant Bomb, PC Gamer, The Guardian, [more inside]
December 27, 2011
Kotaku's Best Video Game Music of 2011. Well thought out reasons as to why they are good pieces. Kirk Hamilton's choices for the best video game music of 2011 with short, but well-thought and well-given explanations as to why. It's still ongoing as far as I know.
December 22, 2011
After playing through the brief first person puzzler Soliloquy (browser plugin: Unity) my vision still seems a bit out of focus. The goal is to get from start to exit, but towards the end of the third level you gain the ability to split your consciousness into two, each perspective displaying on half the 'pixels' of the screen, the two interleaved in a checkerboard pattern. A few of the puzzles rely on maneuvering your two selves back into unity. At times there are obstacles only one half of you can see.
December 15, 2011
Portraits of Online Gamers Next to Their Alter Egos. For his project Alter Ego, photographer Robbie Cooper traveled around the world to shoot portraits of online gamers. He then combined his portraits with screenshots of the gamers’ avatars in the various games they play, showing an interesting side-by-side comparison of what the people look like in the real world compared to what they choose to look like in their fantasy worlds.
December 8, 2011
Skyrim and the Problem of Audience It's huge. It's unending. It's the blockbuster, millions-selling, open-world RPG, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. And sometimes it's just downright absurd.
December 5, 2011
Snake on a Plane (adobe flash, free) shares some elements with classic Snake. But by adding gravity, we end up with a surprisingly brilliant puzzle game. You can stretch upward (or wriggle around in any formation) as long as part of your snakebody is still on solid ground. Eating a pellet will extend your body one square further, thus allowing you to access portions of the screen that were previously inaccessible. A few environmental elements are introduced throughout the meager 10 levels currently on display. Perhaps you could convince the developer to make more.
November 18, 2011
Four employees of Telltale Games were found to have submitted perfect reviews of their new Jurassic Park game to Metacritic.
November 10, 2011
Nitronic looks like an awful lot of fun. Best part? It's free on PC and out today.
November 8, 2011
POLERIDERS is a new game by Bennet Foddy, creator of earlier fan-favorites GIRP and QWOP. [more inside]
November 7, 2011
How Games Saved My Life is a blog, run by Ashly Burch, that catalogs stories of how games have helped make a positive influence in people's lives, whether it's with helping someone come out, helping someone cope with the death of a parent, or helping someone deal with depression.
October 31, 2011
What if every video game was narrated like Bastion, the fun isometric platformer with its great old-timey dynamic voice over?
Introducing the Humble Voxatron Bundle, featuring the Robotron 2084-meets-Minecraft voxel shooter Voxatron.
From the people that brought you the Humble Indie Bundles 1-3, the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle, and the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle, the proceeds again go towards a split of your choosing between Voxatron maker Lexaloffle, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Child's Play charity, and the Humble site itself.
Against the Wall (in-browser through Unity, download also available) is a 3-D, first-person perspective game current in Alpha in which you are tasked with traversing a sheer wall-face. Clicking the mouse will cause the blocks that make up the wall to protrude or retract, allowing you to puzzle your way through a path that will lead you (presumably) higher and higher. Some small touches make this utterly compelling: the blocks have momentum and can push you off your footing; if you're standing on a block as you command it to protrude, you'll be carried along with it, away from the wall. There also appears to be at least one civilization built up along the wall. In this Alpha build, there are at least three events/surprises for you to discover. The final release (date unspecifies) promises much more. [more inside]
Timelapse videos of massive construction projects in Minecraft: Dwarven City and Waterfall City.
October 27, 2011
Phoenix Wright is getting his own movie. Though, much like Ace Attorney Investigations 2, there's no word about whether it will ever be released in the US.
October 24, 2011
WoW's new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, has been announced, and an old April Fool's joke is now a playable race.
And you can't have a post about pandas without this.
