Wizorb

By: Derek Yu

On: September 29th, 2011

Wizorb, the first title from newly-formed Tribute Games, has just come out on Xbox Live Indie Games. You may have followed the development of this Breakout-like on the blog of Jonathan Lavigne, one of Tribute’s three founders and a talented pixel artist who created Ninja Senki and worked on the Scott Pilgrim video game. A PC release of Wizorb is slated for the end of the year.

TIGdb: Entry for Wizorb

Preview: Wizorb

By: Derek Yu

On: June 14th, 2011

Wizorb is an upcoming Breakout/RPG game from Jonathan Lavigne, the creator of Ninja Senki. It will be released on XBLIG and PC, with the price to be determined. Paul Robertson is helping out with the animations in the game.

Ninja Senki

By: Derek Yu

On: December 23rd, 2010

Jonathan “pixeltao” Lavigne, who you may recognize as having worked on the Scott Pilgrim video game, has just released Ninja Senki, a lovely platformer that’s spread across 16 brutish levels. The phenomenal graphics are what drew me to the game in the first place, but it’s really fun, too. Even though the game mechanics are standard (the hero, Hayate, throws ninja stars horizontally and has a small double-jump), there’s a nice variety of enemies and environments, and the challenge is tough but not unfair. You get 2 lives but can continue at the beginning of a stage at the cost of 100 points (you restart with the points you had when you started the level).

My main criticism of Ninja Senki is that I would have preferred perhaps 8 slightly longer and harder levels over the current 16. It felt a bit drawn out by the end, and seeing each environment a second time was unnecessary, in my opinion.

By the way, if you’re wondering why Jonathan chose to use NES-style graphics and music but also the GameBoy’s resolution (I know you are), he answers in the comments of his blog:

I chose the GB resolution as a constraint simply to force myself to keep the sprites small while still having a good size ratio on screen. Because often when you make a game, you get too excited and start to make everything too big and too ambitious and you end up never finishing it. So, that was simply another limitation to help me stay focused.

Constraints are good!

TIGdb: Entry for Ninja Senki