The third Global Game Jam at the Cologne Game Lab just went over and it gets better each year. This time we had over 15 contributions – in total over two hours of presentation time. Also the platforms, game-concepts and realization of the games and game-prototypes really went into a mature state. I try to highlight some of the great works. Follow the links to get downloadable files! Here is a list of all submissions.

Obelisque

A 3d-exploring game. You start as a robot, that woke up in an ancient, abandoned city on an planet far away, trying to research about what happened and what this is all about. A work with a strong mood – maybe close to “notgame” as well. Check it out! (Jammers-Site).

Sequpes

A music-toy, exploring game-mechanics and the joy of making music with two players. Player A plays a little melody and player B confirm this melody, by playing the same melody after some delay – or rejects it by not playing the melody. It uses simple music-phrases in the background and pentatonic scales. A unique fun experience – worth checking out! (Jammers-Site)

Nordic Bondage Hero Vikings

A mature fun game. Two players – bound to each other – have to collect and drink as much beer as possible. If drank enough, they enter “Valhalla Action Hero”-mode. When in this mode, player must kill himself to enter Valhalla. While you are running, you are tied to a second player with a rope. You can pull the other player and help or annoy him. If you begin to glow, try to kill yourself and die as a hero before the other player becomes a hero. (Jammers-Site)

Mindloop

An experimental exploration of a new input-device. The game uses a “mind-feedback-machine” as input. The player has to change “calm” and “focus” state of minds, to progress further in the loop. Polished graphics – things to build upon. (Jammers-site)

Don’t be square aka “The revenge of the psychedelic boring boxes” aka “vice versa”

A flash-experimentation game, exploring visual effects over gameplay. Something nice to tinker into – and to get inspired! (Jammers-Site)

Sifteo Specials!

Two remarkable works put a game on a new platform, called Sifteo. The tangible objects can be programmed, to also games can be run on them. We had a snake-game (unfortunately they did not provide the game on the Global Game Jams site yet) and Krystian Majewski once again launched a homing missile to out heart by bringing the Nyan Cat to the Sifteo! Programming by @mczonk (Jammers-Site)

Recommended

Feel free to look also into this works: Giant Robot Snake, The Tale of Archy, Loopy Island, Punxatawney Adventures. You can see, lots and lots of contributions. I made also a project – not finished unfortunately. If interested, look at Internity.


Games - Date published: January 29, 2012 | 1 Comment

This one is a cool real-time face-tracker application. It utilizes the FaceTracker API by Jason Saragih and is build upon the openFrameworks-implementation of it (ofxFaceTracker). Than “simply” the mesh of the real-time recorded face is matched in the face-mesh of a celebrity and blended over the real-time picture. Cool stuff to build upon. The openFrameworks source-code is available! Credits for making this go to Kevin Atkinson and Arturo Castro.

via

Blog - Date published: January 7, 2012 | 0 Comments

Dear all. Digital Tools wishes you a happy new year 2012!! I got lately a little bit slower and lazy with blogging, due to much, much work here. Nevertheless within the last few weeks I made some videos under my moniker scnclr, that I want to share.

The series scnclrBleep is based upon a YouTube-video account. It’s about own visual explorations, uploaded to creative commons music, unasked. Enjoy the latest four episodes!

PS: Thanks go to the especially cool guys at Broque and Renzu. Great music!


Blog - Date published: January 1, 2012 | 1 Comment

Phlow 366 Days of Music

The Phlow-Magazine, that featured over 3 years daily reviews about free Creative Commons music, is back in 2012 with a nice package for all lovers of the internet-spirit. In 2012 Phlow will present a creative commons music highlight every single day. The music is curated by experts of the netmusic, namely Applejux, Brigitte Bijoux, Roland, Sven Swift, Mango Aioli, Christian Grasse and Moritz »mo.« Sauer.

The first door will open in just some hours! To stay in touch, visit the 366 Days of Music page and connect via iTunes podcast or RSS-Feed.


Blog, Download - Date published: December 31, 2011 | 1 Comment

Ugress Luftslott EP

Famous netmusician Ugress is back with another brilliant cinematic electronica EP. The Luftslott EP brings you back to phantasy worlds, far far away. Embedded in wandering beats, retro-instrumentation (say hello to trackers) and pumping stabs. Gamers will love this a lot.

The music can be streamed on the Ugress website via SoundCloud and is available (and streamable) on Bandcamp. Download it with pay-what-you-want. Honor the music!


Download - Date published: December 14, 2011 | 0 Comments

Sphero Robotic Ball

Sphero is a new gadget that has the potential to come massive in 2012. It is a remote-controller “self-rolling ball”. It can be remote controlled via smartphone or it can roll pre-programmed figured. Sphero can light in different colors. Even games are applied to this robotic ball: the demo-site already shows one smartphone-driven golf-game. The feature “Sphero-Cam” points into the direction of mixed reality apps where you can control and observe the robot-ball, while taking pictures at the same time. (via Neogolf)

Blog - Date published: December 2, 2011 | 0 Comments

The app ZX Plectrum is a simple digital-noise-generator instrument with just a limited functionality. In a retro Spectrum-ZX-style tones and visual bar-gliches are made, if the user touches the iPad-screen. It’s really just that. Not a very interesting app – I thought at first. But the longer I think about this app, the better I like the idea. It’s just about this – a really simple app, to turn the iPad into a more or less useless noise generator with just a single function. Reduced to the limit of usefulness.

The ZX Plectrum is made by Dave Sapien and his website revels just another interesting app: Paint Sapien. Also a more or less simple app. With this drawing tool the user can “wet-paint” with colors, brushes and simple filters. The interesting detail is, that the iPad2-camera enables some sort of “pressure-sensitive” drawing on the iPad, like tablets do.

Both are simple and interesting works. I wonder what Dave Sapien will come up next with.

(ZX Plectrum app via wire to the ear)

Blog - Date published: December 2, 2011 | 1 Comment

« Previous Entries