Indie

The Cat Lady

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Remigiusz Michalski’s Downfall remains by far the curiousest adventure title of yesteryear, a psycho-horror point and click that I personally spent considerable time with, trying to adequately wrap my head around its subtleties and twists. In delightful if surprising news, the Russian publisher Akella has picked up the game for release in mid-January.

The Cat Lady Promo 01

After completing his first game, Michalski quickly turned his attention onto a thematic follow-up to his first game. The new game, then, is titled The Cat Lady and looks to be, once again, an atmospheric, macabre adventure game developed on the AGS platform.

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The Fires Will Consume You In Igneous

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

IgneousRichard linked me to a video of this today, and I felt compelled to pass it on. Igneous is short little game by a group of DigiPen Institute seniors calling themselves Going Down In Flames. Inadequately described as an “action platformer”, the game has you rolling a little stone totem guy through a vast underground cavern, with flowing lava bearing down on you all the way. There are four main areas – any of which you can pick from a chapter menu – and two difficulty settings. The graphics and physics are impressive considering it has all been done from scratch in 16 months; the game is definitely worth a look.

It may seem like there isn’t much more to the game than vaulting forward at top speed, but it isn’t as simple as that. Not only must you keep up the pace so as to stay ahead of the lava and crumbling floor, but you must jump over cracks and chasms – some of which may be created suddenly by falling rocks. Add to this a thumping soundtrack of tribal drums that brings a certain urgency, and you have a game with a real sense of speed not unlike that found in the Burnout games.

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The download clocks in at 114MB, and can be obtained here, but do have a look at the hefty system requirements first. The video trailer that enticed me is embedded after the jump.

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Your Attention, Please

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Half-Life 2 BreenboardSome video games we lambaste for holding our hands, others we chastise for letting us wander. For developers, then, balancing the flow of progression means… a walking of the tightrope. On this topic, then, I would like to share with you two interesting articles that I have recently read.

In “Guiding the Player’s Eye”, Matthew “Gangles” Gallant directs our attention to the complexities of orienting the player in a three-dimensional world by illustrating, via a generous amount of example screencaps, Valve’s use of various visual cues:

The best approach is to guide the player organically, catching their eye with elements that fit seamlessly into the game world. In this school of thought, Valve is peerless. 1)http://gangles.ca/2009/05/26/guiding-the-eye/

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Small Worlds

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

Thanks to @SorenJohnson for the heads-up on this lovely little game. Small Worlds is a pixely exploration game with the most rudimentary graphics and controls, created by David Shute for the Casual Gameplay Design competition. You play as a three-pixel-high sprite that could pass as a human if you squint hard enough, moving him around an environment that slowly reveals itself as you progress.

Small Worlds Small Worlds Small Worlds Small Worlds

At first there is nothing remarkable about finding the way forward, with indistinct backgrounds and no clear goal. But as you play the black fog of war clears away, and view pulls out, making the pixels smaller and more defined. At a certain distance you realise that the three pixels are enough to describe your protagonist and the low-def world has a charm all of its own.

The way the game leads you along a path that winds back and forth and up and around and over things, makes the deliberate revelation of the background more evident. Stepping into a flashing object sends you to a new place, and completing that area brings you back, now with a goal in mind. The haunting and thematic music complements the quiet and atmospheric environments, and you feel there is a story being told even if it’s not quite so straightforward.

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Out of Hell Is, Well, Out

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Halloween has become the de facto standard release date for the zombie mod, and this year turned out to be no different! Four months ago, we briefly discussed how the one-man UT2K4 total conversion, Out of Hell, had been slowly inching its way closer and closer to release for the past seven years. You can guess where this is heading, right – the ageless, timeless project has indeed been released! In his development blog, designer Long “Chicken+Ribs Combo” Nguyen outlines his feelings about the release:

“After 7 years of work, Out Of Hell has finally been released upon the masses! What can I say? I feel…weird!…and floaty! I always thought about this day, but now that it’s here, it feels as though I’ve been sleepwalking for the last 7 years and am now just waking up!” 1)http://eveningofthewalkingclinicallydeceased.blogspot.com/2009/11/hell-has-been-unleashed.html

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