darkRun

By: ithamore

On: December 29th, 2008

darkRun, about which you can read more in the Feedback forum, is a stylish, arcade, music game by JLJac where the player collect dots while avoiding circles that sing and dance as they pull the player toward them with their localized gravity. The synergy of its neon graphics, music, and audio is delectable, and its use of gravity gives it that nice extra touch of flavor. It has even been compared to Blast Arena Advanced.

There are framerate issues, which has already been discussed a bit, and an ugly version has been released to help out slower computers. However, when darkRun slows down, it actually makes it a little easier to get a higher score on an older computer than a newer one. Also, this is JLJac’s first game in Flash, which seems quite impressive for a first try. Lastly, you might have to adjust you monitor to be able to read the in-game instructions.

With that said, have any of you already looked into JLJac’s mockups for Dog Street? If no one out there with more programming experience than me (especailly AGS experience) doesn’t want to help, I do. However, I’m not calling dibs on it. That means, I’m lending myself to the editing of the English text at the least. If no one else steps up to the programming plate, I’m even thinking of doing a crash course on AGS.

Additionally, for those who like unique controls or difficult games, JLJac’s school project game is also worth checking out. There is no current promise of stretching out or finishing the game, but it might be good enough for you as is.

Auditorium (Demo)

By: Derek Yu

On: December 17th, 2008

I think Cipher Prime’s Auditorium is a rather perfect little game. The goal of each level is to fill each of the Audio Containers by directing “The Flow” toward them with Controls that can manipulate it in various ways. To successfully fill a Container you have to make sure The Flow is the same color.

What I really like about the game is how it sort of evokes this kind of harmony between… well, harmony and disorder. Succeeding at the game doesn’t require any kind of real precision – as long as enough of the right color of Flow is touching an Audio Container, it will fill up. As the website states: “Auditorium is about the process of discovery and play. There are no right or wrong answers; there are many ways to solve every puzzle.” By the third Act (Spring, my favorite), you’ll see that it becomes less about pointing The Flow as it is giving it room to dance.

But as the Audio Containers fill up, they start to play their music, and putting it all together there is a real feeling of orderly creation. Despite the fairly cold, minimalist graphical style of Auditorium, it feels like a pretty naturalistic game. Is this what Steve Jobs’ brain looks like?

Three Acts in the demo, but there plans to do 20 Acts for the full game. The creators are currently reviewing their options to put the game on a console, or on iPhone.

TIGdb: Entry for Auditorium

Tap Tap Dance

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: December 4th, 2008

TIGSource’s own Mark “Golds” Johns has been crunching hard for a while now— during Gamma, even!— on Tap Tap Dance, the sequel to Tap Tap Revenge, the number one most downloaded free game for the iPhone (or so I’m told). And now his hard work has paid off.

I applaud Mark for the extra effort he gave in turning what would have been another Guitar Hero Cash-In with a ridiculous title into what is now a Legitimately Cool Game with a ridiculous title.* Ten thousand TIGS Points to you, sir!

Apart from the improved graphics and gameplay, Tap Tap Dance features exclusive tracks and custom Boss Stages for select songs. Kind of, like, interactive music videos. For example, Daft Punk’s Technologic takes you through a History of Technology as you play and Justice’s Phantom Pt II gives you a 2001-inspired laser light show. (Oh, and did I mention Cactus himself contributed a characteristically trippy stage?) Check it out.

* Seriously, though, there must have been better contenders than “Tap Tap Dance.” C’mon, now!

EDIT: Oops, I neglected to mention Kevin “Greater Beast” Coulton’s involvement in the project as well, because I am a big jerk. Go Kevin, go!

DrPetter’s musagi

By: Derek Yu

On: August 18th, 2008

DrPetter, the creator of sfxr and 116 unfinished games (and some pretty cool finished ones), put out a free music app that’s been floating around in an incomplete (but functional) state for awhile. musagi is a sophisticated music editor and synthesizer that I warrant could compete with commercial music editors should DP decide to rub out a version 1.0. It certainly feels intuitive and easy-to-use for even a newb composer like myself.

There are a few rough spots in the program, but most can be worked around. For example, I had problems loading songs until I realized that it was the “Parts Window” that was screwing it up and making it crash. Once I made sure to close that before loading songs, I was gold. Diamond Rider “remixes” flowed from me like fine brandy.

Anyway, I’m hoping that this post will help inspire DrPetter to clean musagi up, because it would most certainly be a boon to all of mankind. Also check out his article repository, where you can find some learnin’ words about sfxr, musagi, and sound/music in general!

Plus – Free Indie Soundtracks

By: Derek Yu

On: August 7th, 2008

II (“Pause”), the retro/chiptune music label and community, has launched a new section to their website called Plus, which is specifically devoted to free indie/doujin game soundtracks. So far there are only two albums available, the Rescue: The Beagles OST, composed by Disasterpeace, and the Another Bound Neo (doujin FPS) OST. Label co-founder and artist Phlogiston says more are on the way, but he’d love to see developers contact II and release their soundtracks. You might recall that Phlogiston is the musician behind cactus and VilleK’s Brain Damaged Toon Underworld, among other things. He’s also collaborated with the chiptune music collective 8bitpeoples.

Great idea! Developers, submit your music – I hope to see many more games on there in the future. And definitely poke around the rest of the II catalog, too.

(The Rescue: The Beagles album art displayed above is by the very talented Annabelle Kennedy. Full version of the artwork can be seen here!)

TIGdb: Entry for Rescue the Beagles

Open Mic Hero (v0.002a)

By: Derek Yu

On: June 19th, 2008

Not really a game, per se, but any excuse to post videos of TIGForums members singing and playing the guitar! Open Mic Hero is a neat program that lets you play sounds with an XBox 360 Guitar Hero USB guitar (or keyboard, alternatively). The program comes with two sound banks, “Acoustic Guitar” (shown in the video) and “Drum Kit,” but you could easily create and load your own sound banks. Can someone make one out of fart noises?

The project, which is still in early development, was created by Alexander Shen, who I am proud to say is also happily abusing a technical degree from Berkeley by working on comics and video games (and music).

Noitu Love 2 OST

By: Derek Yu

On: May 21st, 2008

Did you guys love the music from Noitu Love 2 as much as I did? If so, be sure to check out Joakim’s website for the original soundtrack! It includes all the songs that were in the game, plus 8 bonus tracks that didn’t make the cut.

In case you were wondering, Joakim composed the songs himself, because, like all good Swedes, he drank magic Swedish elf water when he was growing up. It makes you incredibly talented at developing video games. (Although one in ten Swedes who drink magic Swedish elf water turn into Finnish Trolls… which are able to develop video games but ironically will explode if they try to play them. A sad fate for a Swede.)

Hideki Kubo’s Music Games

By: ithamore

On: April 11th, 2008

These are two acid techno music games by Hideki Kubo, which can be found on his Download page. In the first, vs Music, the main mode is Shooting[Play]. It pits the player against a single boss ship that has 3 lives, and the boss’s fire patterns are sequenced to the music. Movement of the ship is slower than I normally like, but the slowness also makes dodging that much more precise. Use C for continuous fire, X to clear the screen of shots with a bomb, and SPACE to get past the intro screen and to start a play mode.

Action Jockey, the second game, is a 2D, fixed screen jump-and-shmp. The available enemies and bosses are changed by adjusting mixer settings during the Acid Machine Phase. Of the 3 bosses, I’ve only been able to beat the Pong Paddle bosses so far, and it seems the game simply loops until you run out of hearts. You can fire with C and X can be used to jump, double jump, or slide (when your crouched).

More info on the other modes of vs Music and Action Jockey’s variations can be found below in the extended.

vs Music

Shooting[Loop]: an endurance mode similar to Shooting[Play] but with no time limit.

Music[Reco]: adjust the instruments and patterns for different parts of the ship’s firing using the arrow keys and C. When the counter gets to zero, your secession overwrites the replay.dat file. This is the data used for Shooting[Play], so you might want to backup the original.

Music[Loop]: you can experiment with the music with no time limit and exit with SPACE.

vs Battle: it’s described as a 2 player mode, but I don’t know what the 2nd player is suppose to be able to do.

Action Jockey:

In the Acid Machine Phase, pressing left or right long enough will change the first 2 music values respectively for the lead, and pressing up or down long enough will change the last 2 music values respectively for the drums. Also, Q will change the first value and W the last.

The last value seems to effect which boss you face. The easiest way to get to each of the 3 bosses (SPOILERS/TIPS after this parenthetical statement) is to set it to 00 for the Pong Paddles, which is the default after dieing;
01 for the Giant Doppleganger, which is the default for starting the game’s .exe; and 02 for the merciless Space Ship.

The other three values seem to effect which enemies the player will encounter. The 1st, 2nd, and 4th values can also be changed by moving too much or pressing Q or W, but it’s not quite clear if they have any more effect beyond changing the music during the Action Phase.

Audiosurf to be released this Friday on Steam

By: Xander

On: February 12th, 2008

There really is no avoiding Valve/Steam these days as news comes in that Audiosurf, one of the IGF finalists for a number of categories (including the Seumas McNally Ãœber Special Prize won by ‘The Underwater’ last year), will be released to buy on Steam this Friday, accompanied by a free demo.

For those that don’t know, Audiosurf is a kind of music-rhythm-puzzle game where you drive across a track designed by the music you choose to play. Layout, mood, and the placement of the score-arousing coloured blocks are all affected by the type of song you choose to play. Choosing your ship at the start also determines the overall difficulty of your challenge and the style of play, where some ships will initiate a typical match 3 colour system (come back! It’s not a flashy Bejeweled clone, I swear! You can’t play Reggae Remixes of IK+ in that for starters) and other ships like the Mono-types which turn the game into an insane test of reflexes as you dodge grey blocks and try to collect the colourful lumps of pointage between them.

Price will be the wonderfully squiggly number of $9.95, though as usual customers will get a pre-order discount of 10%, so check it out if you feel like taking a chance. Included in this release is also a free copy of the Orange Box soundtrack, which, given the nature of the game, is a pretty sound deal. Through the new Steamworks feature you’ll be able to gain achievements for your profile and rub your ego at the same time (but can you do it whilst patting your head?). It’s a solid package at great price, but I can’t help feeling a little shunned. We get the full game of this, but not even a taste of Noitu Love 2?

Where’s the love, Konjak? Where’s the love?!

Kanoguti’s Music Games

By: ithamore

On: January 2nd, 2008

Below are several music games akin to Electroplanton. However, they are free and playable in Windows, so you can more easily use a streaming audio recorder to save any enjoyable, random music you might generate.

Kanoguti’s most spectrally encompassing of them is Mono World (pictured to the right). It contains 10 gameplay variations (aka worlds) that can be selected at the top of the menu screen. The mouse is used as the main inface (left-click adds to most worlds and right-click usually resets a world). Pressing “enter” returns to the menu. Note: the download link is at the bottom of Freem’s page next to the drive icon that has an arrow pointing down into it. In other words, look for the link with this icon to its left:

A few of Kanoguti’s similar games are Glass Park (No71), Seasons (No66), and

Q.q (No84). Then there are Wave Searcher, Sound Collage Wave, and Sound Collage Electron, each of which only have one form of play, but the wave files they use can be augmented or replace, which makes them more customizable. The controls are usually similar amongst all these games: some use “esc” instead of “enter” to return to the menu and the last part of Glass Park uses the left mouse button to select creation points while the arrow keys are used to spawn musical elements.

Check the extended for images of the other games.

Edit: Since the direct downloads didn’t work, the post has been changed to help those who had trouble figuring out how to download Kanoguti’s games from his software page. Also, (for those who had trouble with the description for finding them) here are the links to the auto-download pages of Kanoguti’s games on Freem: Mono World and Wave Searcher.

Glass Park: Chapter1 (No71)

Seasons: Snow (No66)

Q.q: 1 (No84)

Wave Searcher (No88)

Sound Collage Wave (No74)

Sound Collage Electron (No59)