Pixelprospector was to kind to put me at the blog zolyx.com. There you can find reviews of all 73 games, that were made during the Assemblee Competition (at zolyx search for TAR, a tag for this would be useful!). With that help, I discovered a game, that is so cute and so fun, so I want to share. And here it is: Oh Crackers, Not Again!
You play a girl’s dog (no, really!) with the mission to protect the girl from the evil monsters everywhere. You do so, by running fast and destroy the obstacles, before the girl runs into. Lovely, indirect gameplay and well designed sprites make this a fun game, that’s more than just a little distraction of the day. Here is the TIGthread, with all the details about the game.
Today the game “Kovoclak [PlayState entry]” for iPhone / iPod Touch was released. It is the first game from the indies caou.org, a “small development studio from Europe” with the focus in “games for touch screens“. For Kovoclak Mouky teamed up with with the French artist Lingouf, who provided the artworks and the music for the game. And this game captured my heart in record time – I can highly recommend it.
You play Kovoclak, a “businessman dealing with polluting companies”. He has a big clean-up duty to achieve. So somehow an eco-game if you like. You must find your way through all this dirty factories, avoiding robot rabbits, radioactive waste and other evils. You can move Kovoclak left and right. He cannot jump up, that’s why you have to move the platforms up and down to get your way through the levels. There are 50 levels in total, divided in 4 zones. The things that make this game so remarkable are the charming storytelling, the cute and funny graphics from Lingouf as well the well balanced music and sound-design. The intro alone with that straight industrial-techno-sound is definitely a must see. The depth does not come alone from the gameplay or the assets, but from the games as a whole. It feels dense and complete.
Unfortunately two things I absolutely miss: 1. This game should support mulit-touch! I tried so many times to move the player and move the platforms just at the same time! 2. The start-menu should show an option to watch the intro again, without the need to start a completely new game.
Maybe Cauo will make a update for that issues? Would be great! And here’s the gameplay video:
Sometimes only the lineup of the game reads really promising. Cream Wolf is such a case. It is an “Ice-cream-man in disguse cannibalism-game“, where the indie-makers Pixeljam and Messhof teamed up to get the game done. Both gameplay, as well as aestetics look absolutely retro. But this browser-game is also full of modern graphic- and soundeffects, that support the gameplay really well (and to be honest, we didn’t expected anything else from Pixeljam and Messhof).
About gameplay and story: You drive an mad ice-cream man and have to collect cones, play music with your ice-cream van and attract children in the street, in order to sell them your ice cream. The more ice they eat, the fatter they get and more addicted to ice. If it gets full-moon, the fatter kids will follow your ice-cream van. You have to try to get the kids to your homebase… where they then support the ingredients for more ice. Weird story, weird game. Just one click away. (via)
Pixelprospector is still a realtive new site about “promising indie-games in the making“. Ad it is becoming more and more promising, to have a look at pixelprospector itself – just because the games presented there look really promising. Have a look for example at Invert Inc. – a black and white puzzle-platformer, that are so popular this days.
Less is more… I love this formula! The other game, that caught my interest is the opposite of being minimal: “V-Knights is a very fast paced platform shooter that comes across like a really nice SNES Game from the 16-bit era.” The graphics are awesome, while unfortunately the sound-effects are a little bit annoying. V-Knights at least scores with the mood, somewhere between Double Dragon, Turrican and Finwick.
Interesting photo-works from Japan – on the way to taking the photography to the next technical level. Back in the old days, you needed minutes or hours to complete one simple picture. This artist here (I think this is his website) shows us the next level – 21st century style – by taking hundreds of pictures within hours – even one complete day! Some of the works make one picture in one minute for 24 hours. The result is an animation, showing some sort of “animated photo”, that circles around void. At least I think so. I totally like this stuff! Short calculation: 24×60 pictures = 1440 pictures making “one shot”. (via)
I recently found this cool Spectrum ZX fan website, with lots of content about the Spectrum ZX. This small homecomputer was quite successful in the early 80ies, and still today, we can learn something meaningful from it. For example “achieving more with less“.
Look at this gallery-page. It contains pictures from artists, mainly from Russia, Slovenia, Poland – some are very well executed. Due to the limited palette of the ZX (and the strange colors as well), the paintings strongly concentrate on lighting, instead of pure form or textures. Also look at this game-screenshots. Some gaming scene are made by one color + black! Totally pragmatic and ill looking as well. Definitely like it! (via)
