Experimental Gameplay Project: It Lives!

Now this is excellent, excellent news. The Experimental Game-ugharghit'snotarealword-play Project, which you may remember as being co-founded by Kyle 'Half of 2D Boy' Gabler and Kyle 'Henry Hastworth on the DS' Gray, went the way of Marmite-flavoured Mini Cheddars some years ago. This was sad, because it was ace. Its brief: "discovering and rapidly prototyping as many new forms of gameplay as possible." To seek out new genres and new strategy games that weren't Civilization, to boldly go where no major publisher had gone before. Specifically, for one-man developers to create games in just seven days. Its loss was a terrible one, even if many of its contributors went onto great things.

It's back.

Not all of its archive has returned, but much still functions. The really good news, though, is that the monthly theme competitions are returning. This month, it's Unexperimental Shooters - an agreeably perverse way to relaunch the site. Shmups are the order of the day, in other words. Personally, I'd poisonously claim that this particular genre has been milked to death by indie devs, but in the hands of folk like Gabler, Gray, Crayon Physics' Petri Purho and whichever assorted heavy-hitters and half-mad newcomers they rope in, I suspect we're going to see some fun, clever, stupid and cleverly stupid stuff.

Meantime, I'm wading through that archive. Anything with titles such as Attack Of The Killer Swarm, Mime After Mime, Kieron Gillen Mud-Wrestles Tom Wolfe, Extermination Disco Nation! and Child Eater* is a guaranteed good time, far as I'm concerned.

All free, too. This is yer veritable treasure trove, folks.

*One of these may be fictional. Thank Christ.