GDC 2010: The Games of Gamma IV

By: Derek Yu

On: March 17th, 2010

Gamma IV marked a nice interlude at the midpoint of GDC (following the Independent Games Summit). I’ve never been before, but I left feeling more than ever that games are work great for shows, galleries, and parties when they’re created for those spaces. Here are the six games that won the chance to be in the show:

4Fourths – That’s got to be the sickest trailer for a game ever (by John Likens). Anyway, Mike and Greg’s 4Fourths is a 4-player game where teams of two cooperate to destroy nukes before they fall onto a city. In each team, one person controls the thrusters and one person controls the laser. You can also shoot the other team, which is easy to do accidentally or on purpose. Great fun, and it looked fantastic projected big.

Faraway – Far and away (h’yuk) the game I played most at Gamma IV, Faraway is an addictive highscore game from Steph Thirion, who created Eliss for the iPhone. Like Eliss, Faraway has a great minimalistic audio-visual design. The game, which has you playing a comet trying to make constellations, requires a lot of skill and practice. You can be seriously good at this game, as was evidenced by Colin Northway’s “constellation domination” throughout the conference. I wish I was playing it right now!

Poto & Cabenga – There’s no video for Honeyslug‘s Poto & Cabenga, unfortunately. In this game, you control both Poto & Cabenga at the same time, with one button. The way it’s handled is really clever (you can read about it in more detail here), and the character designs are great. I can’t wait until they release it on the internets.

B.U.T.T.O.N. – I had no clue what B.U.T.T.O.N. was about when I started playing, so I was holding a drink in one hand with the notion that I could play a one-button game with the other. Then the screen instructed all the players to do five push-ups. Thankfully, being me, I did twenty push-ups, finished my drink (whiskey and snake’s blood), and still won (sorry, there were no witnesses!). You can’t tell from the above video, but the game actually has pretty nice graphics! Fun party game.

GAMMA IV – The Game – IGF Nuovo Award Winner cactus released a really fun, trippy Gamma game, aptly titled Gamma IV – The Game. It was projected behind the DJ, which was a good idea. It will make you think of swastikas and then you will have a seizure.

Silent Skies – I didn’t get a chance to try Michael Todd’s Silent Skies, unfortunately. But I enjoyed watching the planes do loop de loops from afar.

None of these games are playable as of writing, but a lot of the games that didn’t make it are. There were around 150 entries this year, so plenty of great ones didn’t make the cut. You can check them out at the Gamma IV forums.

10 Sweet iPhone Games

By: Derek Yu

On: December 15th, 2009

I think we’re well due for an iPhone/iPod Touch post. My Touch has become the peripheral of choice for the go, so I made sure it was well-stocked with games. Here are 10 of my favorites:

Eliss – Steph Thirion’s Eliss was one of the first iPhone games to catch my eye, and still stands out as one of the best games for the platform, in my opinion. It’s gorgeous and challenging, and makes great use of the iPhone’s multitouch.

Canabalt – Conceived by Adam “Atomic” Saltsman, the big brain behind Flixel and Edgecrement, Canabalt has you leaping from roof-to-roof in a frantic and stylish escape from a dying city. It’s the best one-switch game I’ve ever played and the latest update – which features new environments and sick beatz by Danny B. – make it even better.

Developers should check out Adam’s post about “The $0.99 Problem”, too.

Evacuation – We covered Bennett “Benzido” Foddy’s Evacuation on TIGSource before, when it was a Flash game. It’s even better on the iPhone.

Little Master – Likewise, Benzido’s cricket game started life as a Flash title before it became an iPhone game, and we covered it before. What can I say? I really like his work!

Sword of Fargoal – Jeff McCord’s classic roguelike game has been rebooted by McCord and his partners, Paul Pridham and Elias Pschernig. For those of you yearning for a good roguelike experience on the iPhone, this is it! It’s a fantastic update to the game.

Earth Dragon – Earth Dragon was created by Chaim Gingold, the design lead for Spore’s Creators, including the Creature Creator (now indie as the day he was born). It’s quite cute and fun and makes clever use of the accelerometer and touch to let you control your dragon. The art is by Jane Ng, who also worked on Spore.

ZenBound – Zenbound is a calm (I wrote “clam” first, and almost left it), meditative game that has you tying up wooden animals with rope. It’s really striking to look at. The creators, Secret Exit, are best known for their Stair/Truck Dismount series of games.

Stair Dismount – And yes, Stair Dismount has finally made it to the iPhone. This version has a variety of different levels and lets you paste your friends’ faces onto the ragdoll via Facebook. I chose Edmund McMillen, because his photo was cropped the best. Then I chose a baby.

Skull Pogo – Chevy Johnston’s Skull Pogo started off as a Game Maker game, but it works best on the iPhone, where you can use the accelerometer to control your little skullpogoman. Aside from being an awesome, creative, and helpful dude on the forums, Chevy knows how to make an addictive game. The recent update is pretty sweet, too.

Cross Fingers – Because of a certain someone asshole, Edge has been removed from the App Store again. But at least he didn’t prevent Mobigame from releasing their next title, Cross Fingers, a sliding-block puzzle game that uses multitouch. Although perhaps not as unique as Edge, I actually prefer CF as a game to play on the go.

So there you have it! 10 good games for under $22. And I’m sure you got more, so lay it on us in the comments.

game mod

By: Derek Yu

On: September 24th, 2009

This caught my eye. It’s an old workshop (2007) led by Steph Thirion, who created the iPhone game Eliss. In the workshop, Steph gave students the source code for a simple Breakout game (made with Processing) and had them modify the code to create something new. Most of the students were graphic design majors and not game developers, but they managed to make some cool mods during the workshop.

Now, when you edit animated shapes into a music video, of course they look great, especially if Steph Thirion is the editor. Also, this isn’t really a new concept, considering mods, hacks, and open source have been around since the dawn of games. Still, it’s an interesting idea to create a game that’s made made specifically to be deconstructed and reconstructed like so…

The source is Marie Foulston, via Tigers Hungry.

Eliss

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: March 19th, 2009

Here’s another grab from Brandon’s Blog — an iPhone game called Eliss, which has you splitting, merging, and moving colored planets to “keep up harmony in an odd universe.” Brandon does a lovely job of describing the experience, so I’ll just link you to that.

Up for this year’s IGF Mobile Design Innovation award, Eliss seems well deserving of it, with creative use of the iPhone’s hardware (particularly multi-touch) and super-slick style to boot. You can find it in the App Store here.

(Why, thanks again, Offworld!)