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: Minter releases Gridrunner Revolution, Space Giraffe bundle

As promised, Llamasoft have just released their Gridrunner Revolution -- the latest iteration of the long-running psych-shooting classic -- alongside a new demo to experience it gratis.

In celebration of the launch, the 'softies have also bundled together Revolution with the the PC version of their last original shooter, Space Giraffe, for $25, just $5 over Revolution's asking price. Visit Llamasoft for the demo and purchase information.

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.

Brandon Boyer

Running free: the MS Paint purity of Thorson and Sennett's RunMan

There are few things in life that bring me joy more than doing my best, making new friends, trying new things, triumphing over adversity, and running real fast, and I get the strong sense that Matt Thorson and Tom Sennett's RunMan -- coming to PC October 1st -- just might satiate every one of those desires.

Brandon Boyer

TGS: Square Enix, Popcap partner for RPG/puzzler Gyromancer

Not to be outdone, apparently, by scrappy puzzle-newcomer Infinite Interactive and their would-be casual/RPG champ Puzzle Quest, the two behemoths of their respective fields -- Popcap and Square Enix -- are teaming up for Gyromancer, due soon on Steam and Xbox Live Arcade.

The game will take the core of Popcap's Bejeweled Twist and run it underneath a combat/RPG system designed by Square, and will see main character Rivel overcoming distinct challenges in each stage "from defeating beasts that block the player's way, to solving puzzles before time runs out."

The two companies say Rivel will eventually learn to "summon dozens of the unique beasts he encounters, bending their power to his will and commanding them in battle," and can "search the map for items, coins and new beasts to join Rivel's fight."

From the trailer above, it looks to be a more compact and casual focused experience than the sprawling story laid out in Puzzle Quest or even its sci-fi spiritual sequel Galactrix. Expect more details soon as the two companies prepare for the 'upcoming' launch.

Jim Rossignol

Ragdoll Metaphysics: Game Research, Ghost Stories, Alan Moore, and Academia: The Far Reaches of Edutainment

Academia has thrown up a bunch of interesting game projects over the past few years. As more gamers get into positions of academic usefulness, so that trend grows. Of course university and research groups have long been creating games with educational purposes in mind, but they're now handling increasingly hefty budgets.

One of the most high-profile projects (and most obvious recent failures) was Indiana University's Arden: The World Of William Shakespeare, which reportedly had a grant of $250,000. It was an experimental MMO which came about via the work of Professor Ed Castronova, author of Synthetic Worlds. Castronova wondered whether the creation of a genuinely educational MMO was possible, and set up the student development project to find out. Having spent thousands of dollars on Arden it was shut down. Castronova cited "a lack of fun".

But I don't suppose that was the only reason. Games don't necessarily have to be fun to be engaging. Indeed "fun" seems like a trite expression in the face of some contemporary projects: games can provoke more than simple enjoyment. Look at the terrifying crypts of Stalker, or the strange sadness of Shadow of the Colossus. To realise that games ride on more than fun only takes a quick glance at the bigger picture.

One game researcher for whom "fun" seems inappropriate is the academically oriented team The Chinese Room, who are games researchers working for the University Of Portsmouth in the UK. Their medium, for now at least, is the Half-Life 2 mod, and the experiences they've created are peculiar investigations into the emotive possibilities of game design. They've realised that 3D games, with their claustrophobia and their immersive properties, can be spooky, scary and deeply evocative.

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Brandon Boyer

Retro Remakes: Jeff Minter's Gridrunner Revolution in full Vindaloo-motion

Referring to Gridrunner Revolution simply as a remake is somewhat of an understatement: it's really the something-like seventh iteration on a concept that Llamasoft head Jeff Minter (he of PC/Xbox Live Arcade's Space Giraffe and the Xbox 360's own music visualizer Neon) has been hammering on for going on two decades.

Expected to be released by the weekend, above is the first video of the game's 'Vindaloo' mode (a spicier version of its Korma mode, but a step below, of course, the Phaal), and it's quite what you'd expect: all the signature Minter-isms from ungulates to underlying Neon flashes to mind-melting hyper-color shooting.

And Minter's never shied away from reveling in those expectations: above is the placeholder title screen he'd used for Revolution before it had undergone the more radical treatment seen above and was still a more glorified version of Gridrunner++ -- all of which you can read about in greater detail via his History Of... and design evolution articles via the official Llamasoft site.

For a taste -- in anticipation of Revolution's release -- of what Gridrunner's about, try the PC/Mac demo of ++, or spend some time with the surprisingly full-featured Facebook version.

Brandon Boyer

Jungle Hunt: the first blood-smeared pixels of Cactus's Life/Death/Island

Traces of Death Race and Cannon Fodder permeate what appears to be a you vs. zombie horde game from the ever-prolific and re-inventive Cactus, and I sincerely hope that map view is showing the blood-smeared/cleared areas where you've totally eliminated the threat.

Brandon Boyer

On Guard: Team Fortress 2 probably not getting a dog

The best part of the recent Team Fortress 2 Guard Dog class mystery -- in which this entirely convincing but not-Valve-hosted website emerged, followed by this official and also amazing TF2 blog post riposte -- is that the Valve team have become so adept at both fast community awareness and response and opaque meta-updates that from now on it's honestly kind of impossible to tell who's snowjobbing who.