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Feature: Virtually building
While at GDC I had the opportunity to sit down with Colin Northway, one of the creators behind the excellent VR remake (and the 2D original) Fantastic Contraption [official site]. We talked about how VR worked differently compared with traditional game design or, to put it less mundanely, why a walking cat dispensing sticks is better than a menu system. While at GDC Adam really…
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I spent the weekend doing two things, building furniture and mucking about with Vive games such as Fantastic Contraption. It's a remake of an old browser game in which you must transport a ball towards a goal by building a vehicle to carry or push it there. I was pretty sore after bending and twisting at odd angles to put screws in my furniture and,…
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It's hard to demonstrate virtual reality games in video, because most of the good ones depend upon them being viewed through a headset and not via a flat YouTube embed. This latest footage of Fantastic Contraption [official site] finds a good route though by alternating between video captured in-game, in-headset and via a secondary camera looking at the room which blends real and game footage…
Fantastic Contraption [official site] is returning as a room-scale VR game built for Valve and HTC's Vive headset. The original game was a 2D browser-based puzzle game about creating a device to carry a ball towards a goal, but creator Colin Northway is now re-building it as a virtual reality experience in which you build similar devices in 3D. There's a trailer below.
If you want to spoil other games that straddle the imagined psychogeography of the casual/hardcore divide forever, the Rebuild series [official site] is a good place to look. On the surface, these strategic games of zombie uprising aftermath survival and urban reclamation are simple, colourful resource-gathering exercises, but they're cleverly balanced and squeeze plenty of flavour out of the setting. Since the earliest Flash incarnation…
Colin Northway made Incredipede, a game about building a walking-and-climbing creature from muscle and bone. Rich Edwards made Pineapple Smash Crew, a bright, explosive squad shooter. When their forces combine, it turns out they form Deep Under The Sky: a single-button game in which you play a jellyfish who swings around in the clouds of Venus. It's out now for $10 direct from the developers.…
The Rebuild series has filled many a train journey and lazy evening, simple enough to provide a mobile diversion but smart enough that the time doesn't feel entirely wasted (see Tiny Tower, a charming bottomless pit of taps). Rebuild has difficulty settings, randomised cities and involving turn-based survivor management. It's about zombies of course, but it's also about pre-zombies, also known as human survivors. Beginning…
Feature: A Game About Life And Feet
Incredipede's not like other physics-based puzzle games. Well, OK, it's kind of like one - namely, developer Colin Northway's own Fantastic Contraption. This time around, though, he's used sinewy strands of muscle to bind QWOP-ish controls and heaps of charm to Contraption's impressively freeform puzzle-solving. But do the added ingredients take the formula to new heights, or does the whole thing come tumbling down in…
Incredipede is kind of disgusting. Not Human Centipede disgusting - or even normal centipede disgusting, for that matter - but still a little yucky. As you add writhing masses of legs and muscle clusters to your 'pede's eyeball body, it becomes all the more likely to flop and flail and squish and splorch in adorably grotesque fashions. Don't get me wrong, though: it's magical. I just messed…
