Posts with ‘DigitalEel’ Tag

Brainpipe

By: Derek Yu

On: January 5th, 2009

Brainpipe

Brainpipe is the latest offering from Digital Eel, best known for their Strange Adventures in Infinite Space series of games. It’s a simple, psychedelic tunnel flying game, where the goal is to collect glyphs and avoid obstacles. Every tenth glyph increases your level, and the game ends after level 10.

Using the mouse to control, you can click the left mouse button to slow down briefly. That’s all there is to it, really. The visuals of the game are good: the procedurally-generated walls and ambient music work well together and are quite pleasing to the senses. Unlike similarly trippy games like, say, Space Giraffe, Brainpipe is meant for ease of play, and not outright sensoral violation.

One thing that has to be mentioned here, because it’s (slightly irresponsibly) left out from the game, the game’s website, and the game’s readme: the demo of the game contains two fairly sedate levels (levels 1 and 3 in the full game), after which you are sent to “Coma,” an impossibly fast level with no glyphs in which you are expected to die. Without the warning, it’s pretty easy to assume that this is part of the game, as there’s no real indicator to the otherwise. I’m told the full version of Brainpipe ($15) has a much more reasonably-paced difficulty ramp. (Source: Shadowcat, via the RPS comments)

TIGdb: Entry for Brainpipe

Casual Games, Cloning, and Discussion Thereof

By: Derek Yu

On: November 30th, 2007

Diner Dash

Russell Carroll, all around nice guy, marketing director at Reflexive, and the webmaster of Game Tunnel, has an interesting op-ed on Gamasutra called “”http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16426">Cloning Created the Casual Business." In it he talks about the impact of cloning on the casual games industry (now apparently worth $2.25 billion).

The argument has been made that clones don’t pay the bills, so developers shouldn’t make them. I would argue the opposite is true. Clones do sell, which is why people keep making them. Money drives the casual games market just like it does any other industry. Where there is no money, people take a different path. Clones are being made because they are often more lucrative than original titles.

Russ reveals that the average Hidden Object game on Reflexive sells roughly 3 games to the sale of every average “original” title. I think this indicates that clones can sell. It doesn’t, however, convince me that they sell better than original games (note: which is not the argument Russ is trying to make), since a number of important comparisons are overlooked, such as the sales of clones to the originals that spawned them. Nor does it speak to the quality of the original games that didn’t sell so well. I think clones are just easier to make, and probably give a better return on investment than your average original game, which is why people make them.

Soup Du Jour

It’s interesting to note that Digital Eel, the developers behind Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, have just made two more of their games free, and have also released a $10 casual matching game, Soup du Jour. The game has a neat physics-ey aspect, but it seems like quite a deviation from their other games, so I wonder…

My attitude about casual games has vacillated from derision, to indifference, to some appreciation (for bringing in non-gamers to the fold, so to speak). Now, I think it’s a bit of all three. I still hope that “core” and “hardcore” developers will not see casual cloning as an easy way out. My belief is still that a good original game will outsell any clone, and creating an original title has side benefits, like curing cancer.

I’m serious, they did a study where they placed two monkeys with cancer in a basement and had them make games. One monkey made a clone of Diner Dash, and the other made an original title about dealing with cancer as a monkey. The Diner Dash monkey died after a week with a tumor the size of a minivan, and the other monkey survived and lived a long and prosperous life! Look it up on the internet.

Anyway, thanks, Russ, for the article, and I hope to see more like it!

Plasmaworm: Now For Free

By: Derek Yu

On: September 24th, 2007

plasmaworm

Digital Eel have made the full version of Plasmaworm, their nifty Snake clone, free for download. They’re the guys behind Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, the “lunchbreak” space exploration game, and its sequel, Weird Worlds.

They’ve been quiet for a while now. Wonder what they’re up to?

(Source: Game Set Watch)