chansu

If I had a little indie team, and I made this in nine months, I would practically explode from sheer pride.

Gameplay seems interesting, but the rendering style and complex city sprawl environments really had my jaw dragging. That is onehell of an art team.

Check out the RPS post for the trailer video and see for yourself.

Go, immediately, to Rock Paper Shotgun and watch the trailer for this.

It is a real thing, and it is the best satire of our gritty-realistic-war-theme-saturated game market that I have yet seen.

“Have you ever wondered what it would have been like if wizards were allowed to roam the jungles of war-torn Vietnam, attempting to bring peace and stability to the region by casting spells on all opponents?”

Indeed.

Also, the fan-made trailer underneath in that RPS post is well-formed and good for a chuckle.

I do love RPS. What kind of news media site would post endearingly familiar chat dialogue between two gamer chums in lieu of actual post text?

The Dead Island trailer felt sort of…honest, to me. Not honest about what the game experience will ultimately be like, nobody knows yet, but honest about exploring the implications of a zombie outbreak at the personal level.

We would not make chainsaw-paddles and cheerily slay them in hundreds, we would not form a hard-boiled band of heavily armed comrades and endlessly run-shoot-run. We would grab the fire axe and try, probably in vain, to defend our families in a hotel room last stand.

Make sure to read the article at Poisoned Sponge on the subject, it's good.

I haven't seen many pixel artworks that rival this.

The essence of fantasy is on display here, all impossi-architecture and wild seas. Yet somehow the scene retains its pixel cuteness, those fish tank sides making it seem so pocketable.

With its simple yet sophisticated art and whimsical musical interaction concept, January left me feeling warm despite its winter setting.

Alec Meer was writing his part of Rock Paper Shotgun's five-part series on The Most Important PC Games, and he came to writing about Dune II.

This was all he wrote:

Our great-grandfather who art in strategy heaven, Dune II be thy name. Thy House come, thy will be done, on Earth as it was on Arrakis.
Give us this day our daily spice, and forgive us our harvesting, as we forgive those who harvest against us.
And lead us not into sandworms’ mouths, but deliver to us Fremen.
For he who controls the spice controls the universe, for ever and ever, Westwood.

This is why I love Rock Paper Shotgun, and those whose words adorn its pages. 

This is not your average trailer for a zombie game. It seems to be going for a much more emotional angle, touching on the despair that befalls these people on the worst vacation of their lives.

Don't be fooled though, this is plenty graphic, so brace yourselves.

Just to critique the CG, some of the environment lighting was really great and the quality is high overall, but the character animation stuck out in some moments as a little quirky.

That said, this is certainly one of the very best trailers I have seen in some time.

This is some really early footage of a game called Awakened, a game about living out your dreams of being a superhero.

What differentiates this from Prototype or Infamous is your ability to create a custom superhero. Something that really grabs me about this trailer is the scenes where mostly ordinary looking characters are displaying some serious power. If the trailer is anything to go by, it also seems purer in intent than those two games, focusing on good old saving-the-human-race.

More information can be found in the Gamasutra Interview with the devs, who recently jumped ship from Midway to form Phosphor Games.

As one Joystiq commenter put it, they had me at Sigur Ros.

This made me giggle.

Someone has turned off the car friction in GTA4, what will come of this? Much hilarious and bizarre violence, as it turns out.

While I'm posting GTA4 videos, I simply must mention The Trashmaster, a 90 minute epic machinima that wrings an impressive array of creative shots from the aging Rage engine. Watch Out For: the obligatory strange voice acting, being far too long.

Oh voxels, I do adore you. This new arena shooter is made of them, a fully destructible environment of them in fact. It warms my little voxel heart.

Of course it only makes sense, in this ever-expanding landscape of indie development, that old technologies should be dusted off to shine once again. Modern tools allow micro teams to meddle with technical ideas that were once at the bleeding edge, giving them new life as something accessible. Reliving the arcade glory days was only marketable or interesting for so long, lo-fi 2D art styles were clearly just the beginning. And even they are still being evolved.

I must write something more substantial on the rebirth of low-fidelity art and music styles at some stage. Something like technical limitations giving rise to forms which would not otherwise have existed, but these forms having intrinsic worth beyond the duties they were originally created to fill. There is much more than mere nostalgia going on here.

Dead End Thrills is a site dedicated to the art of game screenshots. But it is more heartfelt than that, more considered, more creative, more like photography of game worlds.

The rules state that the only Photoshop tinkering allowed is gamma correction, leaving it to enterprising enthusiasts to get what they can from the game engine itself. Mods used should also be in the spirit of the original game, so as to better capture the game world as intended by its crafters.

Just scanning the Mass Effect 2 shots, almost all of these look exactly like promo shots, and they really showcase the beauty of the game's art and engine. The galleries could perhaps be a little more curated, but it is a community affair after all.

Support indie games!

This bundle is obscene value, and the ability to both choose your price and customise how the money is split (charities, game devs, bundle organisers) just makes me want to abuse the italics tags even further.

Also, hilarious trailer.

This short essay by futurist Jamais Cascio is worth a read. He calls for a philosophical approach to futurism than can reconcile our fear of the future with our hope for progress and improvement.

Dear Santa,

This comes on a t-shirt, and I dearly want one. Also, purchasing said t-shirt counts as philanthropy! So I'm automatically in the 'good' column for even requesting it.

Love,
Chansu

P.S. PRETTY PLEEEEEEZ

Gorgeous, emotive, innovative.

I won't go into the details here, but from what I read when this was announced at E3, there is a lot more to like about this latest thatgamecompany game than art.

Yay! I made more music. It's a work in progress, but I like where it's going and I felt like sharing it.

I actually had some success with beats this time, finding a lo-fi glitchy sound that I liked in between some heavier and more satisfying regularity. This is my first track actually focusing on drums at all, so I'm only just getting started with the variety.

Thanks to Cosmic Boy for the delightful Icecream VST, and Hello Robot for the elegant Bit Boy VST (though it would be better with more control to supplement the randomness).

Dan Cook is a game designer at Spry Fox, known to some for their charming aircraft strategy game Steambirds. The sequel, Steambirds: Survival, was recently released on a number of platforms (including the humble web browser), and Dan has written an epic blog post/essay on his learnings through this project.

The key argument here is in favour of procedural content, something very much en vogue these days among indies, but what makes this a must read for designers is how clearly Dan explains his ideology (complete with adorable diagrams and graphs!).

Thanks again to Penny Arcade's Tycho for the link, he is forever unearthing internet treasures.

For those of us who like things minimal, Facebook product designer Tom Watson has put together Simple Desktops, a site dedicated to desktops of the simple kind. The work is from a variety of designers and utilises flat colour fills for a simple and cute effect.

The web design is pretty sharp too, cheerfully bold and functional.