• Onwards and Upwards with Comic Jumper [PAX]

    Twisted Pixel is something of an indie success story – and that might be putting it mildly. While there are around twenty employees now, with more being considered as I type, the company was originally started with just a few. The team jumped up to six or seven folks for The Maw’s development and moved [...]

  • Yeyifications!… Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale [Review]

    Next time you’re off galavanting around a massive RPG world, slaying monsters and fulfilling your destiny, spare a thought for the shopkeeper in the last town who sold you all your gear. Without them, you’d be a nobody – you’d have no sword, no armor, no healing products. Confined to a live of standing behind [...]

  • Buckets of Blood Means Nothing in The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile [PAX]

    While roaming around the halls of PAX10, we were lucky enough to stumble upon Ska Studios, the guys who made both the original Dishwasher and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1. And, since we’re super best friends with them, we were able to sit down with both James (the founder) and the their new game [...]

  • Bursting with Innuendo: Fowl Space [PAX]

    Pixelante Games, the Vancouver-based group of independent developers, want to make you laugh at all the dick jokes in their new game Fowl Space, or at least it shows that they cracked themselves up while creating the title. And I think there’s something to be said for developers who enjoyeds creating the product they release, [...]

  • Creating a World in Bastion [PAX]

    I covered Bastion a small bit a few days ago in our run up to PAX. Back then I knew little about just what the game was and what it was going to offer beyond some small details given by developers Supergiant Games. Luckily for you (and me) I’ve just returned from my first play [...]

    Related Posts with Thumbnails
  • The Game-Maker Archive — Part 15a: The Easiest Lifting

    I’m not saying that everything has to be original. We’ve gone over this before; some of the best ideas in history began by ripping someone else off and then veering off in an original direction. One of the best ways for a budding artist to learn form and space is to trace everything in [...]

    The Game-Maker Archive — Part 14: Laser Light

    My association with Recreational Software Designs started early, maybe around the time of my first game. I don’t remember the circumstances. Maybe I wrote in with some suggestions. Maybe I was trying to show off my work. Whatever my motivation, I was fourteen and unhampered with caution or tact. I mailed a letter [...]

    Paul Greasley takes you Under the Garden

    The same game jam that brought us Whale of Noise and Pigeon Racing (and indeed Deltoid Onions) has inspired Edmund and My First Skydiving Academy creator Paul “Farmergnome” Greasley to contrive a side-scrolling survival-based take on Animal Crossing. At least, that was his stated goal. The end result is a highly original cross between [...]

    Deltoid Onions Will Puzzle You

    Deltoid Onions, AKA Onion Warriors, is one of those single-player cooperative puzzle games where you play as a character then switch roles then switch again to accomplish tasks. In this case the enigmatic Fabienne has unleashed on us a Kwirk-flavored push-and-pull action-puzzler. In place of a tomato, we’ve three onions with slightly different mustaches. [...]

    Tiptoe the Tiles in Meong

    Kyle “Neonlare” Riley has reforged the baffling Action 52 opus Meong into a NES-styled action-puzzler reminiscent of Adventures of Lolo. The story involves a blue-robed thief who goes tomb raiding in China. Avoid traps and occasional mind games to get to the next screen.
    The game uses just the arrow keys and a single [...]

    EDITORIAL: The Meganode

    When I want to read Catch-22, what are the options? I can go to a library, and do it for free. While I’m there, I can browse the rest of his works or nearby, possibly similar, books. I can search by topic, author, or year of publication. If I want my own copy, I [...]

    EDITORIAL: Jam Together — Thinking Inside the Box

    A medium goes through its phases. Generally it starts off piecemeal, little snippets of ideas that stand alone, each studying the nature of the medium. What’s possible? How do things look? How do people respond? Later the ideas coalesce into short subjects, often delivered through a reservation in some passing medium. Periodicals set aside [...]

    The Game-Maker Archive — Part 13: The World Wide Haystack

    Over time Recreational Software Designs’ Game-Maker may have become obscure, but in its time it was both progressive and widespread. From a small family business in New Hampshire, the software traveled to Russia, to South America, to Singapore, to Australia. It sometimes seemed that every other game was from a new country. This was [...]

    The Game-Maker Archive — Part 12: Cut-and-Paste Opportunism

    For its time, Recreational Software Designs’ Game-Maker offered users the world over to put practice to their game design ambitions, within certain strict limitations. Mostly this ambition took on an informal shape. Users connected with each other through bulletin boards and shared ideas and resources. They explored how to subvert the engine’s limitations, and [...]

    Nitrome makes you Worm Food

    Not to be mistaken for Unnatural Selection, Fault Line creator Nitrome has unleashed its own subversive worm-based browser game. This one, though, takes more of an arcade route and seems to follow the example of Taito’s Syvalion. Mechanically, it seems to; thematically, it’s… you know those old 8-bit games based on horror movies that [...]

    Related Posts with Thumbnails