Brandon Boyer

Why I'm going to Indiecade (and you probably should, too): Pt. 3

For my final entry this week on why I've decided to go to LA for the Oct. 1-4th Indiecade conference/festival (and why you should come, too): a quick and dirty run down of all the games that have been selected as finalists for this year's show runs below, and continues below the fold.

All of these games will be playable every day from 10am to 7pm at three Culver City locations: Wonderful World of Art Gallery, Culver Hotel Mezzanine and Gregg Fleishman Gallery.

See my earlier entries (pt. 1 and pt. 2) for more information on the star-studded keynotes and sessions that will make up the main Indiecade conference, and see the official Indiecade site for information on attending.

On to the list:

Aether (pictured at top), Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel

Akrasia, Team Aha!

ClassicNight, Akarolls

Cogs, Lazy 8 Studios

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Brandon Boyer

Gimme Indie Game: the psycho/schizo puzzling of McMillen/Good/Karpel's Time Fcuk

I knew Time Fcuk was after my one true heart on hearing the first few melancholic melodica triplets in its title screen theme, which are nothing if not lovingly lifted from Carter Burwell's score for the Coen Bros.' Fargo, and perfectly peg the pathos that begins to unfold as you start your cyclical descent into the game's world.

Created by No Quarter, Super Meat Boy, and Aether designer Edmund McMillen, programmer William Good and musician Justin Karpel -- and described only via cryptically impenetrable blurbs -- at its core, Time Fcuk is a fairly straightforward game to describe: it's a block/switch/key puzzler with a twist of inter-dimensional-spatial-chronological tearing that rips you through layers of the same room you occupy.

What sets it apart, though, is the tone McMillen has set via an in-game one-way communicator that sees an unidentified narrator constantly interrupting your thought processes with ranting inanities, cries for help, and, eventually, more deeply unsettling and I.D.-confusing asides. And there's this matter of the small growth coming from the back of your head...

The effect, if that narrator is you -- and it certainly looks like you -- echoes movies like the previously big-upped Timecrimes or basically pick any of your favorite schizo-persona David Lynch movies from Twin Peaks to Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive.

By being forced into "the box" from which you spend the game trying to escape (which you were pushed into by someone who claims to be you from some 20 minutes in the future) you come to realize that the interruptions more likely are echoes of every iteration of a loop in which you're stuck: 'you's that have been through multiple times and no longer fear your surroundings, newer 'you's that haven't yet figured out what's happening. In the meantime, you -- the you that's playing -- are acting out that transition from confusion to confidence by learning the puzzle-tricks that get you from one room to the next.

All of this is subtle subtext, and that's precisely what makes Time Fcuk so affecting. Add to that its expertly devised level editor -- which takes a page from Echochome's book and gives players a 20-level loop of random player-creations to rate for difficulty and fun, so that essentially no puzzle goes un-played -- and the gang of three have created what is easily one of the best Flash games of the year thus far.

Brandon Boyer

Beatles Hell: No Fun's quarter-note dodger Norwegian Wood

The new best Beatles game that isn't the other one: Montreal's No Fun Games has created Norwegian Wood, the world's first fab-four bullet-hell dodge 'em up.

The point? Escape the synchronized notes escaping from each corner's guitar/bass/sitar/mic as the disembodied head of John Lennon, gaining multipliers the longer you can manage to outwit the notes.

The catch? You'll have to supply your own original MP3, for obvious reasons (and beware the internet's false positives), but once you do, it's a surprisingly engaging experience, complete with an online high score table (of which I've been completely pushed off, after pegging #18 on my first go).

Download the game for PC, Mac and Linux here.

Brandon Boyer

Offworld Gallery: Say Hello to Hello Games

Less than a week away from announcing their first game, a little introduction to Hello Games: you may have spotted -- especially if you were on the GDC Austin show floor -- Hello's recent appearance in Edge Magazine, where they talked about their decision to leave gainful employment elsewhere to set up shop for themselves and prepare their debut PC-, 360- and PS3-bound title.

If so, you may also have spotted (though only in print) the accompanying concept sketches by Hello artist Grant Duncan, which was basically all I needed to see to realize that the team was laser-targeting my one true heart (particularly with the cube-head at top) with whatever they had in store.

The dev team at Hello is made up of (from L to R) creative director David Ream (formerly of Kuju, where he helped expand the Geometry Wars universe with Galaxies), managing director Sean Murray (former Criterion tech lead on Burnout 3 and Black), artist Duncan (formerly artist on Sega/Sumo's Virtua Tennis 3 and Sega Superstars Tennis), and programmer Ryan Doyle (also of Kuju, where he was lead programmer on the aforementioned Galaxies), and while none of the art sketches give too much away on the group's debut game, it does give a distinct (and ultra-sweet) flavor of the direction they're heading.

Below the fold then, four pages from Duncan's sketchbook to let you get to know Hello. After you've taken it in, visit Hello's website to read more (see esp.: this post, in which each of the team have been morphed into collectible diorama characters of their respective top games).

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Brandon Boyer

Formerly known as: Dyson opens pre-orders, ask for new name

IGF grand prize nominated strategy game Dyson has just partnered with digi-distro Digital2Drive to open preorders for the game ahead of its October 20th release, and at the same time are announcing a new contest to let fans give it a new title.

The devs say the game -- originally titled in tribute to "the work of theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson" -- will be re-titled to whichever entry "best encompasses the mood and themes of the game," and the winner will receive both a copy of the game and two additional Direct2Drive downloads.

See the contest page to enter, and visit the dev's official home page for more information on the game.

Brandon Boyer

A little Love: Quel Solaar's impressionist MMO gets test client, character

The best news I've heard in quite some time: Eskil Steenberg's abstract painterly MMO Love is prepping a beta release possibly "just a matter of days" away, and has let loose a test client to gauge performance on various machines. While the client tantalizingly won't let you connect to a server, it is the first opportunity to see the game running, finally, on your own hardware.

At the same time, Steenberg's just released a batch of new screenshots that show, for the first time (so far as I've seen), the procedurally generated characters that will populate its world. More of those below the fold.

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Brandon Boyer

Retro Remakes flipside: Demaking modern games

The other side to the Retro Remake phenomenon is, of course, the demake (a term, I've just found out via Wikipedia, was coined by Polytron's Phil Fish): taking a modern game and simulating it as if through retro tech.

We've covered (or spawned) a number of these via Offworld in the past: the best examples of which are Kent 'SnowBro' Hansen and Andreas Pedersen's NES Guitar Hero game D+Pad Hero, Bill Meltsner's text adventure version of the same, Champion of Guitars, and CymonGames' ASCIIPortal, a game just released for PC and Mac.

In late 2008, though, the TIGSource Indie Massiv held a Bootleg Demakes competition, the results of which are reams (or, more appropriately, a 200+ meg torrent) of fantastic work: visit their site for more demakes than you can handle, including Oracle's NES-ish version of Aquaria at top.

Brandon Boyer

Why I'm going to Indiecade (and you probably should, too): Pt. 2

Continuing on from my last post on why I've decided to spend October 1st through 4th at Indiecade, and expect you should as well, conference organizers have revealed more of what to expect from the four days, including highlights of its keynote from none less than former Maxis head Will Wright.

Wright, you'll remember, recently departed the company to head his long-time incubator side-project the Stupid Fun Club, and -- given Day 2's theme of "art and innovation" -- Wright will be focusing on what he's cooking up in the Fun Club.

Apart from Wright, day two will also see talks from Avaloop, the indie virtual world company behind their "self-expression, communication, environmental awareness" focused Papermint, Arts Game Innovation Lab director Tracy Fullerton on working with video artist Bill Viola on The Night Journey, an iPhone panel by the RadioFlare, Ruben and Lullaby, and Eliss teams, and Uncharted designer Richard Lemarchand talking with Giant Sparrow designer Ian Dallas, creator of void-painting game The Unfinished Swan.

Indiecade has also sent Offworld more information on the Day One conversation between Katamari Damacy's Keita Takahashi, Flower's Jenova Chen and thatgamecompany's Robin Hunicke, who have clarified that their talk will be a brainstorming session on "Fresh Ideas for First and Third-Person Shooters". Takahashi will discuss his theoretical FPS/TPS "where characters grow as they succeed," Chen will "brainstorm ways to make an FPS/TPS where the players have to be nice to each other," and Hunicke will talk about her own game where "shooting created things instead of destroying them."

The full conference schedule has been posted to the Indiecade site, which will also see Sunday sessions themed around "opportunities for aspiring young gamers, including a special workshop on colleges and universities that offer degrees in gaming, and a special pitch session where young designers can get feedback on their game ideas, as well as a series of sessions dedicated to adults interested in entering the game industry. Sunday's program will include a premiere of a soon-to-be-published indie game."

I'll do a final post wrapping up all the games to be exhibited at Indiecade in the very near future, and might have more surprises in store, as well.

Brandon Boyer

King me, please: The Behemoth reveal new Castle Crashers figure

Joining the lineup of The Behemoth's extensive collection of vinyl figures: Castle Crashers' King, quite possibly my favorite if only because I've always been a big believer in the "one big tooth" (or three, if you've got them to spare) theory of character design.

Brandon Boyer

Square pusher: former Spore dev gives bare minimum with iPhone's MinMe

Created as part of last month's Experimental Gameplay Project (that would also spawn Adam Saltsman's Canabalt), Chaim Gingold's MinMe [App Store] adheres strictly to the Project's "bare minimum" theme: the user has to "minimize the board," has a bare minimum of graphics, was made in 1.5 days, and costs the App Store's bare minimum of zero dollars.

The kicker: Gingold (best known as the original prototype developer of what would become Spore's Creature Creator) only had time enough to include a bare minimum 10 levels, and so it ends precisely at the point where it's just getting good.

Consider this an open plea, then, for an expansion of at least another, say, like, 60 levels. Download the game via iTunes here.

Brandon Boyer

Hey Montreal: go see the debut of Polytron/Infinite Ammo's Power Pill Sept. 30th

As part of Montreal's latest Pecha Kucha Night, coming Wednesday, September 30th to the SAT (1195 Saint-Laurent), Fez creators Polytron will be on hand to talk about the "highs and lows of designing a multi-touch game for fun and profit": specifically, their long-teased Infinite Ammo collaboration Power Pill. If you go, take lots of photos and forward them kindly to brandon@offworld.com, please.

Brandon Boyer

Video: Jan Willem Nijman takes EXTREME to its furthest extremities

From the creator of low-bit Id demakes QQUAK and BOOM (get it?), Jan Willem Nijman's upcoming game -- teased here simply as EXTREME -- lives up to its name via: chili peppers, cheap booze, smokin' los Muertos skulls, bikini girls, what appears to be uzi-wielding lucha libre, Bigfoot stunt-jumpin' and massive, fiery explosions, all set to a Ratatat score.

At this point, I don't know anything more, and at this point, I really quite honestly don't need to know anything more, and at this point, I'd be surprised if you weren't already reflexively screaming the game's name at your monitor.