Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Oh what a strange and special thing Candy Box is. It reminds me a lot of Frog Fractions in that I absolutely cannot, will not spill its delicious bounty of secrets before the break, because its rapid descent into gloriously elaborate madness is the whole point. So just click the link, and wait patiently as you magically spawn multiple mountains of candy, a candy archipelago, candy kingdoms, candy condominiums – basically, a whole, whole lot of candy. All via a tiny number that counts ever upward – spiraling, dancing with the clouds – so long as you have a browser window open. After that, just sit back and wait for the magic to start happening.

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The only sound I ever heard during my playthrough of Gods Will Be Watching was the crackling of a fire. Slowly but surely, its embers would die, because when you’re stranded in the freezing cold and slowly succumbing to disease, there’s no easy fix-all. Just increasingly high prices that buy you a few more moldy scraps of time. So I’d heap more wood onto the wheezing ash, and my group’s flame would spring back to life, but it never quite returned to the lively, hopeful blaze of day one. Neither did my people. One by one, the little squad of survivors I was managing fell apart. Distrust, discord, and madness flooded delirious minds while empty stomachs’ pleas fell on deaf ears. I wanted to hold it all together, I did, but one man can only do so much.

On my grave, I pray they write, “At least he didn’t let the dog die. All things considered, he was really good about that.” Also, I hope they omit the part where I strongly considered killing my engineer with my own two hands because he wasn’t worth his own weight in food. That was maybe one of my less glamorous moments.

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Remember Duke Nukem Forever? No, not that one with the poo-throwing; the other one, the one people were excited about 12 years ago. The one in the 2001 trailer which appeared to offer endless impossible, fantastical things. By today’s standards, those things no longer seem impossible and quite a few them seem deeply unsavoury, but it remains a shame that the DNF we got was something entirely different. A group of modders have been busily attempting to rewrite history – by recreating the game that 2001 trailer suggested in good old Duke Nukem 3D. Given they suffered aa degree of 3D Realms-esque hubris in their struggle to finish the thing, are these the first Method Developers?
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Yeah, Notch’s game got a mention on its own, because a big name is a good way to encourage those who otherwise wouldn’t be interested to take a look at the many splendid things created as part of the twenty-sixth Ludum Dare global game jam. It is very important to reiterate, in this case via the medium of a post (and in addition to the one below singling out The Unseen), that you will be generously rewarded for looking at LD anyway, regardless of whether or not anyone you’ve heard of is involved. Ludum Dare – and many other speed-development events across our blue’n'green marble – is the bleeding edge of game-making, where ideas and pure talent hold far more sway than fancy graphics and big-budget explosions. It is ur-game and omni-game, a wild, wonderful badlands for all the potential that software holds.
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Given that Ludum Dare 26 spawned several trillion games, we’ll probably be talking about it for the next 30,000 or so years. I will, however, almost certainly do a round-up sooner or later, seeing as the theme – minimalism – has led to a teetering tapas tower of bite-sized, sometimes seconds-long experiences. Don’t get me wrong, though: I have come across a few slightly meatier efforts. Of those, The Unseen stands out as well worth a mention, if only because I’d love to see it take on a life beyond LD26. Doubtless, it’s got some oily, hair-strewn warts on its style-savvy skin, but the core idea is brilliant on a number of levels. See, you’re dead. And how’d you die? Well, while searching for your body, you’re almost certainly going to find out. Agonizing step by agonizing step.

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I hate Adam Foster, creator of last decade’s rapturously-received Half-Life 2 mod series MINERVA (not to be confused with BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den) and more recently a Valve employee. I hate him not because he is talented, not because he works at a cool place and not because I have a pathological distaste for people called ‘Adam.’ (Smith, you’re fired). I hate him because today he has made me feel SO OLD.

One of the first long-form pieces I ever wrote for RPS was an interview with Mr Foster about his excellent, thoughtful mod, and its fine accomplishments in level design and mood. That was in 2007. Now it is 2013. Six years later. And I am posting about MINERVA again. He now works at Valve, and meanwhile I’m still typing words into the same CMS, but older, grimmer, fatter. At least I’ve changed my chair twice since then. Something Foster has also done is repackage and spit’n'polish his mod for a well-deserved re-release on Steam today.
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Last time Notch competed in a Ludum Dare game jam, he made Minecraft again, only tiny. Also Zelda. And this time around? He, er, didn’t throw his unmistakable hat into the ring at all. But he coincidentally released a game that practically fits the theme – minimalism – to a tee on the same day the competition wound down, so close enough. Titled Drop, this one contains no traces of survival, blocks, or ill-timed creative blocks. Instead, it’s about typing, pulsing dance beats, Super Hexagon, and Notch’s home ceiling. Naturally, I’m expecting it to be the next Call of Duty.

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We’ve peered at the glitchy, distorted Memory of a Broken Dimension before but an insightful post over at Eurogamer alerts me that a new playable version is now available, featuring the first-person sections that follow the nightmarish command line opening. It does tickle the memories – of DOS and directories – and there is something dark and dangerous lurking between the static bursts and confused mechanics of its shattered world. You can play online or download, for either Mac or Windows, and I suggest that you do so as soon as all of the light has withdrawn from your corner of the world. I haven’t played a game that so effectively uses my screen, mouse and keyboard as the functional part of its fictional user interface since Uplink.

The next SWTOR update is all about customization, allowing radical visual overhauls for any and all characters. Nice move, space developers, but what won’t get me playing your game is the inclusion of cat-people. As we all know, the inclusion of cat people in any franchise (we’ll omit Thundercats for now) is an admission of creative bankruptcy. Yes, even in Elder Scrolls games. It’s just not okay. If you are looking around for that other race, the crazy alterative to elves or stormtroopers, and the best you can come up with is a man that looks like a cat, well… no. Anyway, that’s what this next update brings. Not player Jawas, or anything like that. Hell, even Star Wars Galaxies had playable Ithorians.

Grumble. Videos below.
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Our chums over at Indiegames spotted an interesting-looking freeware game out there in the open wild country of the internet. It’s called Fragment and has seen the light of day thanks to a busy team of Vancouver Film School students. It’s a stealth sort of thing where you can assimilate your enemies, deploy clones to distract them, and so forth. There’s a video of it running below, or you can just grab it here.
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