Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Hurrah! You know Eurogamer do their expo on October 1st-3rd, in London-town? Well, it’s also got an internal expo of an indie-arcade where people get to show off their new games. Last year, it was a chance to play things like Joe Danger, Plain Sight and VVVVVV before release. Right now, however, it’s time for developers who may have something coming out to submit to Pixel-Lab. The full press release is beneath the cut, but there’s some more pointers over on the Indie Games Arcade site. There is one change from last year though – we’re involved, and will give the “Rock, Paper, Shotgun Indie Game of the Show” award to whoever we think is tops. It’s already being coveted, apparently, which is a good thing to do towards awards, but a bad thing to do towards your neighbour’s ox.
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Blendo Games latest project has just been released. The makers of micro-indie FPS-joy Gravity Bone and turn-based space-fleet-battle game Flotilla have let Air Forte out into the world. It’s – to quote the site – a “high-altitude game of math, vocabulary, and geography”. In other words, an educational game where you zip your plane around to select the answers. Features co-op, adventure modes and… oh, you can play the demo or see the trailer below. And it’s available on PC, Haircut-PC, Beardy-PC and Console-Toy.
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Curran twittered this yesterday and… well, I had to call the ever-literary delightful girlfriend in from the next room to gawp at the video. Yes, it’s a casual game based around that classic of the Jazz Age and favourite of American English Teachers (OR SO MY TELEVISUAL SHOWS TELL ME). You can get the demo from here and then buy it for a mere seven dollars or so. Barg! Video follows. I especially approve of the section entitled RECREATE FITZGERALD’S CLASSIC PROSE…
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By striking wallet-scouring operational wargame Command Ops: Battles From The Bulge repeatedly with sledgehammers, Matrix Games have managed to chip off a small scenario-sized piece. Eight tutorial vids make up the lion’s share of the 525MB fragment. If you’re new to the unique Airborne Assault/Command Ops approach, you’ll definitely want to watch these before attempting to dislodge the regiment of doughty Volksgrenadiers defending St Vith. Read the rest of this entry »

Sundays are for sleeping. And then awakening, to compile a list of the fine (mostly (Well, less mostly than normal)) games-related reading I found this week, while trying to resist linking to some piece of pop music. Go!

• Andrew Vanden Bossche writes about how the visual novel Fate/StayNight goes beyond binary choices – focusing in how its three-endings are three endings, with the idea that you’re meant to process them all in parallel. There’s a point. That we talk about games with “Good” and “Bad” endings is arguably a real problem.
• Ed Stern points us all at this New York Times writing on the Theatre Of The Arcade. In short: “What if the characters and stories of classic video games were reimagined and reinterpreted as live theater in front of you?”. Go reads.

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My insides are riddled with post-Develop conference flu, I have a massive mouth ulcer which I am 100% blaming on the Brighton sea air, and I’m still feeling somewhat sleep deprived. It’s the bargain bucket! Yay. That’s about as much enthusiasm as I can muster right now. I guess I should tap out a list some games what you can get for cheaper than they normally cost before I load up and all things menthol and drift into a drug induced slumber. SavyGamer.co.uk is still going. Lets do this thing, it’s the *cough* bargain bucket.
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More fruits from the fulsome Develop 2010 tree now, this time based on the talk by Popcap’s Dave Bishop. He basically turned up and proudly thumped the company chest (albeit in a likeably unassuming way), but based on some of this stuff he’s entirely justified in doing so…

• They tried – and failed – to sell Bejewelled to publishers for just $60,000 when they first made it.
• They’re now selling another copy of Bejewelled every 4.3 seconds.
• 25 million people played Bejewelled Blitz in its first year live.

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Right. This is a funny one. Releasing today is the new game from Arcen Games, who you remember from the splendid expansive and original space-strategy game AI War: Fleet Command which you may remember from our long-running diary series which you may remember from Quinn’s constant and chronic lack of Iron. Anyway, his new game is totally nothing like that. I actually have used the logo as the header, as if I just show a screenshot you’d go “Casual square-matching game! No!” and click away. But this is a lot niftier than that – it really seems like exactly how you’d imagine the creator of AI War would make a square-matching game, in terms of quietly adding depth. I’ve only had a quick twenty minutes of it, but it has a mass of content and highlights its rotate-square-create-chains dynamic perfectly. Give it a shot, on PC or Mac. You can buy it from ten dollars direct from the developer, or on any of the usual direct-download places. Well, at least when they appear later today. Launch trailer follows…
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So, well, Valve just rather nonchalantly announced a game. Yeah, exactly.

Remember Alien Swarm? A total conversion mod for UT 2004, with four-player co-op top-down action. The team behind it, we’ve just learned, were hired by Valve two years ago, and have since been working on L4D and now Portal 2. Except at the same time they’ve been making Alien Swarm all over again in Source. And it’s coming out on Monday. And it will be free. And it looks great.

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It really was the Develop for it. After Schafer’s lobbing of the prick-stick at Kotick, Cliff Harris returns from there to write a furious blog post arguing that Epic’s Mark Rein is “a jerk”. Which is a lot milder than prick, but Cliff keeps-on-keeping-on climaxing with him telling that Triple-A bosses should “Fuck off”. The cause for his concertation? Well, it’s the microdeveloper panel at Develop where Harris – on the panel – took umbrage with Rein – in the front row – interrupting the discussion to give him a piece of his marketing wisdom. Go read Cliff’s takes on the event – though I was actually at the event, so will hopefully write it up soon. It’s worth noting that Rein’s interruption came when Cliff was talking about his time with Lionhead and getting into trouble with PRs for speaking to the forumites. However, it quickly continued into the wider area, with Rein basically acting like a fifth panelist for the closing section.

I’m hoping this erupts into a full-scale war between the American Mainstream and British Independents by next Develop, and look forward to Terry Cavanagh saying that Valve are a big bunch of tossers or similar.

Yet more reasons why Dejobaan are one of my favourite Indie developers. Firstly, they’ve started their own Indie Games blog – Indie Superstar – where they interview Indie folks and header articles with pictures like the above – plus using the RPS favoured Designer-annoying Impact Condensed font. The one at the top of the interview with Cliffski is quite the thing. Secondly, they’ve got a fan club. Basically, sign up for their mailing list and they send you free mini games. The current one? Dejobaan’s Easiest Video Game Ever where you have to get chains of kisses, and showcases the algorithmic content generation stuff they’re playing around with right now. Just sign up, and they’ll send you the link. Here’s some footage of what Dejobaan say will be their 14th game, currently called ooo! ooO! oOO! OOO!
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