TIGSource

Assemblee Competition: Results!

Derek Yu — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:27:00 +0000

The results of the Assemblee Competition are in! The winner of Part Two is Ivan Safrin for Bitworld, a really slick action-oriented roguelike that was made in Ivan’s own development framework, Substance (still under-wraps). He made use of a number of people’s work from Part One: Oddball, Oryx, Rynen10k, Blot, Stian Stark, Saros, BigLon. A hearty congrats, dude!

As you can see here, it was a pretty close competition, with a lot of great entries. I noticed quite a few entries made it on to 1up’s 101 Free Games of 2010, among other places. Here are the top ten finishers (with brief and inadequate synopses):

1. Bitworld 72 votes (7.9%) – slick 2d/3d roguelike
2. Dungeons of Fayte 63 votes (6.9%) – co-op action/RPG
3. Realm of the Mad God 57 votes (6.2%) – massively multiplayer fantasy
4. Mr. Kitty’s Quest 51 votes (5.6%) – explorey action adventure game
5. BirdyWorld 38 votes (4.2%) – Zelda-like where players create the world as they explore
6. Backworld 33 votes (3.6%) – platformer about painting
7. Tiny Crawl 33 votes (3.6%) – streamlined room-based RPG
8. s h i n e 32 votes (3.5%) – survival horror
9. The King, the Queen and the Jester 29 votes (3.2%) – first person dungeon crawl
10. Great Dungeon in the Sky 27 votes (3%) – platform game with many characters

Please check out the full list of Assemblee games if you haven’t already. Lots of gems in there.

The winner of Part One was Oryx, for his Lo-Fi Fantasy Tileset, which was used in many a game (including Bitworld). As stated before, all of the art and music for Part One is now available (image-heavy) for you to use in your own (non-commercial) projects. They have been released by their creators under a Creative Commons license.

TIGForums mod and Pokemans-lover extraordinaire Melly also held a Box Art Competition after Part Two, which turned out some more cool stuff.

I loved this competition. I think it definitely proved that a two-part competition can be very successful. Logistically, I’m going to have to do more planning for large volumes of entries. I was really unprepared for all the awesome that was going to come in, and that led to some delays. Thanks to everyone who participated, and congratulations to everyone who finished artwork, music, or a game!

Umbrella Adventure: The Castle of Cake

Paul Eres — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:45:00 +0000

Q: Umbrella Adventure? Is that the super-secret unique new game project I hear you have in the works? Is there anything you’d like to share with us about it? Please?

A: Oh, it’s not super-secret, it’s just that no-one asks. It’s called Umbrella Adventure: The Castle of Cake, and centres around a gopher, his umbrella, a very talented but slightly insane unicycling weasel, an emotionally fragile talking fairground hook-headed rubber ducky, and the heinous theft of several hundred very delicious cakes. Before I lose the entire audience I should probably add that the musical score is performed by a friend of mine on acoustic guitar and is superb, and that all the graphics are hand-drawn. [...] It’s every bit as serious as it sounds.

(From an Abandonia: Reloaded interview of Srehpog conducted in 2006.)

Umbrella Adventure has a huge world; you collect new abilities and cakes. My own experiences with the game were pleasant but not entirely pleasant. I liked the soundscape, the stylistic hand-drawn art, the size of the world, the basic structure of the game, and much else. I didn’t like the controls, that there was no way to quickly travel across the huge world (that I ever found – there actually was a way), that you often had to get past the same obstacles and enemies again and again, and that there was no real motivation to collect the cakes other than that they could be collected. I make a habit to finish every game before I review it, and so far this game has taken me the longest time to finish (by far)—about three months, as much because of frustration and difficulty (and my own poor platforming skills) as game length.

The game goes like this: you play, die a bunch of times, see a bunch of cakes you can’t reach, finally after much difficulty get a new ability, and then either backtrack to get the cakes you missed or just continue on; I usually just continued on, because there there is no functional use of collecting the cakes. Occasionally a puzzle appears which you either get stuck at forever, figure out, or ask for help on. And the world just keeps getting bigger: this is definitely a game for the people who felt VVVVVV wasn’t worth the $15 (and this one’s free). It’s much more of a world that you leave and return to occasionally over time, each time seeing a new part of it, or getting a new cake.

Srehpog, of HiVE, is also the developer of Ark 22 and Sushi! Waxy’s Sushi Party. Trivia: Ark 22’s characters were originally all gophers, like the main character in Umbrella Adventure.

You see, the feeling I felt playing this game at first… not a very good feeling. The deaths that occur with blind jumps, not being able to attack in mid-air… and shortly dying afterwards, … it was punishment. Very unintuitive. And you know what, fuck that shit… but then I felt like I wasn’t being fair and gave it another go. And that is when I discovered magic, no… not magic, but something close to it, or maybe a bit far, you get the idea. Because you see, magic is very special, and there is only one magic, and I already possess it. rediscovering magic would be pointless! like giving birth to the child you already gave birth to… why two of the same child? Are they twins? Or maybe two-headed… no… this is scary.

(From an eva-jolli review of Umbrella Adventure.)

Mod DB's Indie Games of 2009

Derek Yu — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:08:00 +0000

Natural Selection 2 was voted Indie Game of the Year by the members of Mod DB. According to developer Unknown Worlds, the above video reveals “the first game footage of the skulk, marine, gorge, command station, the sentry and a marine base chock full of marine toys”.

The other games honored are Wolfire’s Overgrowth, 0 A.D. (an open-source ancient history RTS), FOnline: 2238 (a pretty amazing-looking free-to-play Fallout MMORPG), and Platinum Arts Sandbox, a free, open-source 3D game creation program. Really cool stuff. I need to pay closer attention to Mod DB, apparently!

By the way, for those of you who were curious about the results of the NS2/Overgrowth Preorder Promo that happened last month, Wolfire’s provided a postmortem. And for those of you who were curious about Wolfire’s John Graham, Wolfire’s John Graham’s beard, and more importantly, Wolfire’s John Graham’s beard’s color, check out this video. Warning: it’s hot!

GunFu Deadlands

Derek Yu — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:49:00 +0000

GunFu Deadlands is a fun and challenging action game that does a good job of capturing the spirit of the Old West showdowns we’ve all admired on the silver screen. The player aims with the mouse and can do a John Woo-style bullet-time dive by pressing the right mouse button. This is an essential move for getting the jump on bad guys, who fire on sight and from long distances.

It’s extremely gratifying to kill enemy cowboys in both bullet-time and real-time when the bullets are flying so fast and deadly. Somehow creator Christiaan Janssen figured out all the necessary ingredients for a Western shoot-out and distilled them into a tight little package. GunFu Deadlands even comes with a level editor to make your own OK Corral to share with friends.

Strangers

Alex Macqueen — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:58:00 +0000

Strangers, by Jan Willem Nijman (a.k.a. Jwaap or JW) and Jonathan Barbosa Dijkstra, is a short platformer set in a traditional sci-fi world. Jan Willem excels graphically here, as always, but what really makes this worth the download is the story, which has an interesting twist that you may or may not see coming. Gameplay-wise, it’s fairly standard platforming fare with movement that feels great, due in part to its FPS style controls. The jagged edges and interweaving colors of the art resemble a bizarre watercolour, and this effect is enhanced by the unintentionally blurry fullscreen mode. Each setpiece and character is made up of a number of large boxes, which creates a fascinating visual effect that plays on our tendency to gravitate to geometric shapes. There’s no music in-game, but according to the topic in which it was announced, this song is intended to be listened to during play, which is quite suitable to the overall style of Strangers. In the game, the unnamed main character is accompanied by his dog, Columbus, and he encounters quite a few slimy, one-eyed monsters in his exploration of a rather small alien planet. To say more would give away the best part, but once you’re done playing, hit the jump for my thoughts on it.

Again, you can download Strangers here.

Strangers is one of a rare few games that implement moral choices in a meaningful way. Sure, you have games ranging from Fable to Infamous touting their merits as a representation of life and the difficult decisions that must be made in it, but nothing I’ve heard of so far has ever gone beyond bland and obvious story-based choices. Jwaap has mentioned several times how game designers should not be playing games, and this exemplifies that notion: because he tries to approach his games from an outsider perspective, he’s able to criticize their established tropes, and in the end create a more gameplay-based storytelling formula.

I saw the twist coming from the beginning. When I realized that the aliens weren’t shooting at me, I tried walking through them, expecting them to hurt me. They didn’t, which is when I realized that while I was playing the game, the reverse was also true. The “kill or be killed” motif present in so many games is here removed, but since it’s packaged in all the trappings of a traditional 2D platformer, there’s no expectation or curiosity on the player’s part that this might not be the case. At first, I thought it a fault that only one ending is present, no matter whether you shoot the alien’s children or not, but it appears that his reaction can act literally as well as euphemistically; perhaps his children are playing hide-and-seek when you choose not to brutally murder them. This versatility of meaning works towards the game’s advantage in that it allows Strangers to act as vignette rather than anything more. Jan Willem has made several “art games” before this one, but this seems to be one of his first non-parody ones, and it’s all the more effective for it.

Here’s JW’s initial mockup for the game, if you’re into that sort of thing; also check out his article on proper violence in games.

Songs for the Cure '10 Release Date

Guest Reviewer — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:40:00 +0000

[This is a guest post by ChevyRay.]

The Indie Music Cancer Drive has announced March 1st, 2010 as the release date for Songs for the Cure ‘10. A new website has been launched for the campaign at www.cancerdrive.org, where you can already pre-order the CD.

Songs for the Cure ‘10 is the 3rd compilation by the Indie Music Cancer Drive, an organization that coordinates the efforts and talents of performers and composers from across the world in order to raise money to fight cancer and give support to victims and their families. All of the music for each album is composed specifically or exclusively appears on its compilation, with the primary goal of raising money for the cause.

With the drive’s past success (it has raised over $6000 since it began in 2008) organizer Josh Whelchel has gotten even more ambitious this year, setting a $10000 goal, of which all proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society! While this seems quite high, a glance at the CD itself shows that Whelchel is dead serious. This year’s album features over THIRTY talented indie artists, all who have contributed music exclusive to the CD, and includes a wide range of music ranging from ”...Pop, Jazz, Instrumental, Orchestral, Fusion, Alternative, Rock, Chiptunes, Musique Concrète, and even video-game-arrangements.”

Some names you might recognize that will be appearing on the album:

Alec Holowka (Infinite Ammo / Aquaria)
Inverse Phase (organizer of MAGFest)
David Saulesco (Eternal Daughter)
Craig Stern (Sinister Design)
Rob Westwood (Magi)
Jay Tholen
J.W. Hendricks

GNILLEY

Derek Yu — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:37:00 +0000

The Global Game Jam 2010 is going on right now. I just had to share GNILLEY, which was made by Radix for the Sydney GGJ. It’s probably one of the few games where being a loud angry drunk works in your favor. You can download the game from here (requires a microphone).

Walker & Silhouette

Guest Reviewer — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:53:00 +0000

[This is a guest review by William Broom. If you’re interested in writing an article for TIGSource, please go here.]

Walker & Silhouette is an interactive fiction by Pacian, creator of Dead Like Ants and Gun Mute, among others. His latest game is set in a fantastical steampunk world and follows the two titular characters on a brief but enjoyable adventure.

In Gun Mute, Pacian made his game more accessible to those unfamiliar with Interactive Fiction by removing most of the directional keywords: Instead of east, west, north and south, the player only had to deal with forward and back. In Walker & Silhouette, he has taken this one step further by highlighting all the keywords within the text. Although you can still type them in if you want to, it’s easier to simply click on the highlighted word. This system (which Pacian acknowledges as being derived from Blue Lacuna) makes the game very accessible and fluid. Moreover, when you’re stuck on a puzzle, it’s nice to know that you have all the pieces in front of you, not hidden away somewhere.

Ultimately, though, this kind of neat gimmick would mean nothing if the story itself were not up to scratch, and fortunately Pacian delivers on this front. His writing is frequently witty and amusing, with the banter between the two characters being his greatest strength. On the other hand, telling the story from both characters’ perspectives gives them a little more depth than your standard comedy duo. The puzzles, though few in number, are enjoyable and intuitive. You’re unlikely to feel frustrated at any point in the game, but IF veterans may find it a little too easy.

The only criticism that I could level against the game is that it’s too short – about 20-30 minutes playtime at the most. This isn’t really a problem in itself, especially as Pacian has said that he is considering extending the story with a series of episodic sequels. However, the story in this first ‘episode’ is a bit too big to fit into the small space provided, resulting in a slightly rushed feeling toward the end. But this is only a small blot on an otherwise charming and memorable little game.

Gnop

Alex Macqueen — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:01:00 +0000

Gnop is a clever reinvention of the similarly named arcade classic, in which the player’s role is inversed. Instead of playing as the traditional Ping-Pong paddle, here you play as the ball. Since the game is so short, not a great many applications of this gameplay mechanic are explored, but what is here makes for a surprisingly fun and challenging game. To account for the ball’s horizontal movement, Bit Battalion has moved the game space from a single room to a collection of interconnected rooms that can be progressed through by consistently avoiding the right paddle. In each room, a different strategy must be used in order to continue successfully. Any description of these puzzles would prove to be a bit spoilerish, so do go and play the game yourself. It’s very much worth the five minutes it takes to complete.

Play Gnop in your web browser here.

Previews: Flotilla and Frozen Synapse

Derek Yu — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:57:00 +0000

Flotilla is a new space strategy game from Brendon Chung, who’s best known for his stylish spy game Gravity Bone. Even if it ends up being a more awesome version of Weird Worlds, I’m sold. Coming soon to PC and Xbox Live Indie Games.

Also, Mode 7 Games is working on Frozen Synapse, a tactical squad combat game for PC. That’s really all I know about it. But it looks neat, too, doesn’t it?

(Source: Kieron Gillen, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)