Posts with ‘Sigvatr’ Tag

Muslim Massacre

By: Derek Yu

On: August 19th, 2008

To continue our theme of controversial topics this week… Sigvatr, who you might recognize as Michal Marcinkowski’s collaborator on Link-Dead and Berserker (both still WIP), has released Muslim Massacre, a NES-style arena shoot ‘em up set in the Middle East. Delicious satire, tasteless shock game, or both? I’ll leave you with a quote from Benzido, which I think does a great job of summing up my own feelings about the game:

The idea of this game certainly makes me uncomfortable. You are skating a very fine line between satire and bad taste. But the game makes a very worthwhile and timely political point, in my view, even if you claim to be apolitical.

I think it’s brave, because it’s the kind of satire that many people will misunderstand, especially in America and in Islamic countries. So you’ll probably offend some muslims and some ‘liberal pussies’, and even worse, you’ll get a bunch of right-wing racists playing it with a boner. If you’re especially lucky, it will appear on the ‘huffington post’ as evidence of how video games send the wrong message to children.

Still, you can’t be misunderstood any worse than the ‘super columbine massacre’ guy.

I am also reminded of Zi-Xiao Liang’s Scientology PWNED (TIGdb), although this is decidedly a more dangerous and ambitious venture.

TIGdb: Entry for Muslim Massacre

Posted in Freeware, Shoot-em-ups, Social Impact, Windows Tags: Sigvatr | 99 Comments »

Berserker

By: Derek Yu

On: January 9th, 2008

Michal Marcinkowski, Sigvatr (aka Eric Vaughn), and Hamish McLeod have teamed up with two other talented artists to form Transhuman Design. You might recall that MM and Sigvatr were already collaborating on Link Dead, a spiritual sequel of sorts to the ever-popular Soldat. Now they are planning a new online game that will use the Link Dead engine:

The game is called Berserker and it is about killingâ€¦ bare hands and blunt weapon plain raw killing. On the website you can check the main game outline and a video of Sigvatr doing some vocal recordings of the game. I think you can get a feel of the game from there.

MM is saying the game will be much simpler than Link Dead and will be released before the latter as a test of the new engine.

I have to say, with the amount of indie strength on board, I have high hopes for this one. And I do enjoy a bit of the ultra-violence now and again.

(Thanks to BMcC, Terry, Tim, Xander, and ithamore for keeping things going while I was away. It’s good to be back!)

Posted in Multiplayer, Platformers, Previews, Windows Tags: HamishMcLeod, MichalMarcinkowski, Sigvatr | 20 Comments »

Link-Dead: Graphics and Concept Art

By: Derek Yu

On: October 11th, 2007

Sigvatr, the lead artist for Link-Dead, was kind enough to let me know that he has a new blog up to talk in-depth about Link-Dead’s graphical going-ons. Quote:

Like Soldat, your player character in Link-Dead will be extensively customizable. We are upping the ante significantly for Link-Dead, offering the player multiple clothing types, decorational equipment and trinkets, armor types, hair, facial hair and other surprises. Iâ€™m putting a lot of effort into make the characters appear as realistic as possible, even within the confines of a two dimension side scroller where they will appear quite small on screen.

Well, what can I say? It looks great, and it sounds like it’s just going to get better. In his first post, Sigvatr also talks about physics, level editing, and gibs. Delicious, gory gibs.

And while you’re at it, check out (Link-Dead developer) Michal Marcinkowski’s blog. He recently posted some sweet concept art here and here that’s definitely worth checking out.

Link-Dead, which was just announced a few weeks ago, is the spiritual follow-up to Marcinkowski’s highly successful Soldat. In case it wasn’t obvious!

Posted in Physics, Platformers, Previews Tags: MichalMarcinkowski, Sigvatr | 21 Comments »