The Python Game Programming Challenge, better known as PyWeek, for May 2012 has come to a close and now it’s time to start playing those games and give them a rating.

From May 6th to May 13th, a number of developers were working hard on developing games from scratch using Python as part of PyWeek 14. Now that the development week has finished, it’s time for the playing and judging of the games. The theme of this PyWeek was Mad Science so you should expect crazy professors and weird physics on your journey through the 50 entries.

Most of the games are available for Windows so you should be able to download them without any problem, presuming that Windows is your operating system – there are some Mac builds too. The organizers of PyWeek do say that you may need to download Python (typically 2.5+), PyGame, pyglet or PyOpenGL to play some of the games, so they’re worth getting.

Entries we recommend having a look at are the following:

Doom Tower – You run the day-to-day operations of Doom Tower. Hire Scientists and Igors to work with clients and build Doomsday devices. Build rooms to expand your operations and meet customer needs. Become a leader in the field of Mad Science!

The Fabulous Laboratory of Dr. Goldenstein – Doctor Goldenstein has finally assembled all the ingredients, formulas and finished his gold-making machine. Face the challenge of this insane memory game, with fifteen combinations in a single arcade level with original fine pixel art, funny animations, two original soundtracks and lot of fun.

Mauvesoft Wasabi – Working from his secret volcano lair in the Pacific Ocean, Doctor Korovic has created an atomic super-squid with which to take over the world! Alas, Susie, the squid, is allergic to sea water. Doctor Korovic has conceived a most fiendish plan – Susie must take to the skies!

The Cloud Shepard – Control the weather and teach nature a lesson.

Sudo Science – A slick isometric puzzle game set within the confines of a lab.

You can see all of the entries and their download links over on the Entries page on the official PyWeek website.

With the release of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition last week, those familiar with the PC version of the sandbox crafter would have realised that it the console has been treated to a much older version than the most up to date one. Fear not, as 4J Studios have announced that the XBLA version of the game will be getting continued updates:

“We’re aiming to update to the major PC releases – first one will be the equivalent of the PC Beta 1.7.3 version”, they said via Twitter.

As they mentioned the specific version which the game will be updated first, we can actually tell you what you can expect to see change in the Xbox 360 Edition. As follows:

• Added pistons
• Fixed clay generation
• Flint and Steel or redstone is now required to trigger TNT
• Fences can be stacked
• Added Shears
• Redstone wire now will connect to a repeater
• Shears can be used to pick up leaf blocks
• Shears can be used to shear sheep without hurting them
• Sheep no longer drop wool from being punched, only from being killed when they are unsheared
• New textures for Cobblestone and Brick blocks
• Silverfish skin was added (for Beta 1.8)

So there you have it. There’s no release date on this first update but we imagine that it shall be sooner rather than later. Even better, you should be seeing regular updates in the future so that you’re not playing a version of Minecraft from yesteryear on your console.

More information on Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition can be found on the game’s official Xbox Live marketplace listing.

Thanks GamersHavenNews!

A brave move perhaps, combining two very saturated genres, but that is what Klonk Productions have done with their first person shooter/tower defense hybrid, Fight For Dawn.

Yes, it has been done before and in good form – Sanctum anyone? But you do have to wonder how much zombie/mutant shooting and turret placing we can do. Regardless, Fight For Dawn doesn’t look to bad in all honesty, we particularly love the game’s bold outlines and comic book visuals in general. The game has a simple and pretty familiar story in that the town of Scave has become victim to a mutagen leak which has turned the inhabitants into, well…mutants.

You play as a hired mercenary whose job it is to move on into the town and kill every mutant you see. You’ll be armed with just a plasma pistol so you’ll have to rely on your range of turrets, landmines, force fields and tesla to help you defend each area. There’s no anticipated release date or information on what platforms it will be coming to. Safest bet is at least Windows PCs.

More information on Fight For Dawn can be found on the game’s official website.

You may recall that on the weekend of March 30th to April 1st 2012, the first Molyjam was held. This was a game jam event in which developers got together to make games inspired by the tweets of @petermolydeux – a Twitter account that matched the eccentricity of Peter Molyneux by tweeting often crazy game design ideas.

While the many games that were made during the first Molyjam were great and you can check them out here, our focus is not so much on the playing of them right now but the event itself and how the games were made.

A new 15 minute documentary has just been released on YouTube called The Story of Molyjam London 2012. This covers the game jam event that was held in London that weekend and contains some narration by Peter Molydeux himself. It also covers Peter Molyneux’s appearance and speech as well as speaking to many of the developers who had gathered there in order to get an incite in to what they were doing and why.

We’re not going to say anything more than just demand that you watch it – it’s pretty great to see the games being developed and the developers that were interviewed have a lot of very interesting things to say about design, game development and the industry in general.

You may remember that a couple of months ago a video of how Mario would play out if it were first person hit the internet pretty hard, well, now we’re telling you that you can play it.

While you may not believe them, Sohcahtoa Studios were making First Person Mario a whole month before the video hit the internet. Three months after they started on the project, the small team of five have now released a beta version for people to play. There’s not much that needs to be explained about the game really – it’s Super Mario Bros levels played from a first person perspective.

The game is made in Unity as you might have expected, and makes good use of the mouse to let the player look around while travelling along the one brick wide platform – don’t worry, you can’t fall of the sides. Jumping on top of the heads of Goombas proves unsurprisingly tricky and has been the main reason why we have lost many of lives just on the first level. You can sort of get used to it after a while, but it is tricky.

You can play the beta version of First Person Mario in your browser by following this link.

Chucklefish have released a new video of their hugely ambitious sidescrolling ‘too many genres to surmise’ game, Starbound, in which they show off a snippet of the procedurally generated forest biomes.

Set to be one of the biggest indie games this year, Starbound is born from the mind of Tiyuri who provided the art and many other features in Terraria. With his new studio, Chucklefish, he is producing a game of epic proportions with so many features that we’re better off just pointing you towards this article rather than try and cram them in here.

We’ve seen a little clip of Starbound in action with a lighting demo before but that pales in comparison to what you’re about to see. This forest demo showcases a character running across (note the need to not jump up slopes like in Terraria) a number of forests that are being procedurally generated. Tiyuri says of the demo on the official Starbound website:

“The following is a demo of just a SMALL number of the forests the game can generate on the fly. Each forest appears on the same terrain type in this video (as we’re not ready to show those off just yet), but forests are capable of appearing across all different kinds of terrain.”

More information on Starbound can be found on the game’s official website.

It’s been a couple of weeks since Ludum Dare had its 10th anniversary game jam and that can only mean that judging has now come to a close and the results are in! The goal in order to celebrate the special anniversary event was to have 1000 games produced in just 48 hours, but that got entirely blown away as 1402 games were submitted in total, all with the theme ‘Tiny Worlds’.

It was going to take a lot of people then, to play all of these games and vote on them according to the various categories, but it was done somehow. So let’s take a look at those voted the top games from Ludum Dare 23.

The overall main winner was Tyler Glaiel who is more famously part of Eyebrow Interactive who recently released Closure on PSN. The game we’re paying attention to though is his LD23 game, Fracuum, which is retro styled action adventure game if anything. The most interesting aspect is that you constantly move towards the center along the z axis as you progress. In other words, the more towards the center you travel, the smaller you and the world becomes. There are pickups as well, which will aid you on your way – retreating to get them and going through different paths is essential practice.

Here’s a list of runner ups:

Memento XII – deep night
Super Strict Farmer – Benjamin
Soul Searchin’ – Maxim Schoemaker
Lonely Hated Rock – Xion
This Precious Land – Ishisoft
Planet 161 – saint11
Astro Break – hulahulahest
Recluse – chambers
Pocket Planet – Molten Mustafa

As far as the Jam games go – that is ones the parallel, more relaxed Ludum Dare competition – the winner was Inside My Radio by Bisous and TurboDindon. A catchy platformer, Inside My Radio really feels polished and that’s impressive given the time constraints. You’ll be moving the neon radio around the environment more or less to the beat with which everything pulsates, jumping dashing and smashing your way through the many obstacles. Download it right here for Windows and give it a go.

Here’s a list of runner ups from the Jam:

Going Rogue – Frankie Smile Show
Tiny Shards – Gabriel
Greed Wars – Ignatus Zuk
Boxed in. – PIXEL^3
Stranded – Evil Cult
Rambros – Black Ships Fill the Sky
subAtomic – MurrayL
Tiny Timmy and Big Bill – 4urentertainment
Dude, where’s my planet – Zamando

To see the full lineup of games from Ludum Dare 23, go to the official website where they can all be played.

Illogic Tree is led by Eddie Lee of Q-Games (PixelJunk series) and their latest game, or rather “interactive ambient musical visualizer”, is called Kyoto and is the perfect supplement to a lazy Sunday.

Released just today, the latest and one of the very last builds of Kyoto features everything in the game, with just some of the audio aspects still being finished off. Now more than ever is it worth checking out this hypnotic experience. If you do, prepare to sink into a short but very sweet treat with Kyoto. There’s not a huge amount to it but there’s plenty of good to go around.

You’re presented with a single screen in which you’ll blossom a tree. Most things that you can see will react to your mouse movements, so you can effectively run your fingers through water, shake a tree’s branches and ruffle the grass. There’s a few calming notes played in the background to create the tone, but you’re more likely to notice the flying orbs (shooting stars?) which you can grab and use to cause some progressions.

Lights in the sky will appear, lanterns and torches too. The music builds up and soon you will find yourself adding to it by plucking strings in the sky and clicking on various other elements in the screen. This is a combination of serene graphics and wonderful audio holds the ability to tempt the curious and delight as well as relax the mind.

You can download the latest build of Kyoto for free by clicking on this link. More information on the game can be found over on its official website.

It’s the end of another busy week so that means that handsome fella, Mr. Josh Mattingly of Indie Statik, is here to go over all of the exciting events from the past seven days with all the grace and charm he brings to your screens.

So what did happen this week? Well, as far as new releases are concerned – Minecraft is now available on on the Xbox 360 of course, Dynamite Jack and Offspring Fling are now on Steam and the latter has been updated with a level editor. Looking for something a little bit more experimental? Then POP: Methodology Experiment 1 is the game you should purchase, oh and let’s not forget that Reflexio has been released too!

In other news, the 7 Day FPS Challenge has been announced and everyone is very excited about that. For fans of The Binding of Isaac no week is better than this one, except maybe that of May 28th as that was announced to be the release date for the Wrath of the Lamb expansion pack. That will be available for $3 and if you already love the game, well, it’s a must-buy for sure.

The last thing Josh wanted to remind you of was the Barabariball trailer due to its crazy sports game meets Smash Bros vibe and the rather wonderful music.

That’s enough reading for now though – it’s Sunday after all, time to kick back let Josh do his thing. Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this video then why not check out the Indie Statik channel for more news, spotlights and Let’s Plays all focused on indie games.

Triple-B Titles have entered their impressive looking space shooter, Ring Runner – Flight of the Sages, into IndieCade this year and supplement the event have created a new trailer.

Considering how appealing the backgrounds are in Ring Runner, with planets and stars containing an eye-catching depth, it’s quite a surprise to find out that they are procedurally generated. Who knew technology would be such a good artist? That’s not the best feature of the game though, not by a long shot – with several ship archetypes with variations inside of each, a multitude of game modes and the fun of a shmup; Ring Runner has impressed us from the very start.

It’s simplified as an action RPG for those who prefer, but it’s quite unlike many others due to its combination of straight up action as well as deep customization and procedurally generated content that can aptly provide hundreds of hours of gameplay apparently. That’s not even mentioning the multiplayer aspect of the game – which is fleshed out just as much.

Of course, the fact that it manages to remain graphically impressive on top of this is just icing on the cake. Ring Runner is expected to release on the Xbox 360 in Q2 or Q3 of 2012, and in Q4 or early 2013 for PC. Have a look at the game’s IndieCade trailer for a more in-depth and pleasantly visual look at the game’s many features.