People who love pixels, should check out the game Thor, published by Marvel. It’s a pretty much straightforward platformer, with a nice and colorful pixel-style. Read more about the game here.
One Single Life is a concept game by Fresh Tone Games. The game mechanics are similar to Canabalt, but there is a special twist, that games usually tend to avoid: You only got one simple single life. If you loose it, you cannot start the game again. Really. This leads to some very interesting shifts in the experience of the player. The game actually feels like having a round of Parcours, but in a game. Before you jump, you can practice every level. But when it is getting real, the adrenalin rushes into the veins. To achieve this thrill with such a minimal casual-game… Well, that’s something I call something. Best try it out yourself. At least this game is a free download. (via)
Unfortunately I got lost in level 6!
Gameduino is currently a Kickstarter-funded-project. It is a game-controller concept, that is build upon the open-source Arduino microcontroller-platform.
“Gameduino connects your Arduino to a VGA monitor and speakers, so anyone who can write an Arduino sketch can create video games. It’s packed full of 8-bit game goodness: hundreds of sprites, smooth scrolling, multi-channel stereo sound.”
This sounds great. You can still support this project by spending funds at Kickstarter.
(via)
Marble run is a collaborative gaming approach. Every user can build a custom “Marble Level”. The marble runs along this track from start to goal. The distance the marble runs is measured. The somewhat goal of the platform is to provide the “longest marble run that ever was.” Well, at the moment the current track-length is at 662 kilometers. The game was already made for the Mozilla GameOn challenge 2010. As a special bonus you can even download a special “Marble Run”-Font (.zip / ttf).
My first attempt, level called “Hey!“
Spent is a serious game made for the Urban Ministry of Durham, that want to teach about homeless people and the stuff the Ministry does. In the game you ran out of money and have to get through it, without getting homeless or loosing all your cash. This flash-game takes the approach of an interactive text-adventure, where you are bound to make choices all the time. Although the clean style and the interesting idea, the game itself unfortunately feels a little bit too serious in my eyes. All choices you make in the game, can be reflected too easily through the eyes of “not spending to much money“. On the other hand, this game tells a story about living at the border, so why not have a try? Somehow a counterpart could be Queue, that is about standing in an social welfare waiting line. Cool ideas for games I guess, but please put a little more fun into it! (via)
Popularity award of Cologne’s Global Game Jam 2011 goes to Krystian Majewski (I suppose to say so). He made a charmin’ retro-gameboy-looking Julian Assange game. I’ll bet you know this one. Just head over and have a play! Read a bit more about it in Krystian’s blog. (He’s the Trauma guy btw…)
Yes people, I did it! I finished a game for the Global Game Jam! It is a two-player-game and some sort of “space-fighting game”. (The topic of the game jame was “Extinction” by the way). Since I had extremely limited time at this weekend, I decided to make a game I can assemble in 30 minutes or so. In the end it took me about 8 hours.
This game reflects my growing interest in “fighting games“, that developed over the last 10 or so months. I like the idea of games, that do not have a “optimum strategy” to win the game, like “knowing and mastering all secret moves” or “pushing the button faster or harder“. The idea of having a game, where you can combine tactics to always make a turn on the game against your enemy was and still is of high interest. I am also thinking about stuff like the “All in” at a poker game: you can always be the matchmaker and win epic or fail miserably. Ok, enough of the theory.
“An Accident in Paradise” is a 2-player space-fighting game for iPod Touch and iPhone. You play with another human on the iPod as a playboard. The bullet strength is determined by the time-interval between the single shots. Stronger shots extinguish weaker shots. There is no optimal strategy to win, but you have to examine the enemies moves to decide, what works best for you to hit the enemy ship. Unfortunately there is nothing to play on the web right know, because I made this on the iPod Touch device only. I am heavily thinking about polishing the game a little bit and ship it with the Apple App Store. But this won’t be within the next 3 weeks.
Ah, I had a great inspiration this weekend by Sven Väth’s first album “An Accident in Paradise” from 1993. I can still recommend this 17 year old record much, much, much. Here is the title-track “An Accident in Paradise“, but for more popular I suppose is “L’Esperanza“.
Global Game Jam Link: http://globalgamejam.org/2011/accident-paradise
PS: Later this week I will post about other interesting submissions of the Global Game Jam Cologne. Thanks again to the Cologne Game Lab to make this great event happen once again!
