The Japan Foundation, which describes itself as “The first organization that specializes in international cultural exchange in Japan” has launched their new website dedicated to teaching Japanese through the use of Manga and Anime examples. The site currently only has 2 series of examples available, “The Love Word Quiz” and “Character Expressions”. However, it appears they will have at least three more sets, “School Expressions by Scene”, “Samurai Expressions by Scene”, and a “Ninja Kanji Game”. Personally I am holding out for the hentai module that will teach me to recognize when someone is telling me “Watch out, there is a tentacle monster around the corner” in Japanese.
source: Anime News Network
Pixel! is the latest installment in the series of games created by indie game developer Arkedo Studio, who’s past titles include Jump!, Swap!, Big Bang Mini, and Nervous Brickdown. This time around they take on the challenge of shedding some light on why cats nap all the time. Here’s a hint, it’s because they are mad platforming fools.
The gameplay element of Pixel! is very straightforward. You play the roll of a cat who goes out for the night, in your typical cat way, and has an epic adventure. It is a traditional platformer in every sense of the word, progressing through the game by jumping on or roaring at enemies and make progressively more precarious leaps of faith as you venture through the six stages. Within each stage are numerous signs that give you helpful hints and humerus captions.
Another major element of gameplay that is used as a progression element, are small puzzle squares. Once inspector mode is activated by pulling the left trigger, you direct the giant magnifying glass over boxes of interest and enter into a puzzle mini-game of sorts. The rewards of completion vary from health restoration to mechanisms that aid in your completion of stages.
In all the gameplay feels fine. The progression of difficulty is a bit of a roller coaster. The first couple stages are pretty easy. Once you get to the Sky stage, things start to get much more complicated. One of the elements in particular that felt like it took too many failed attempts was the areas that involved leaping from ladder to ladder. I don’t even want to talk about how many times I have listened to the death musical bit. Fortunately there are infinite lives and benefits from very intelligently placed check points.
The visuals are a stylized two tone pixel art that is rather charming and works well for this particular game. Though to be fair, I have no idea what half of the monsters actually were that I was jumping on. That all being said it works, and doesn’t detract from the gameplay in any way.
Audio seemed pretty good, it was high quality and matched the stylized pixel feel of the game. As previously mentioned I could do without hearing the death tune ever again, but I suspect that is my fault for sucking.
Pixel! is available now on the XBox Indie Marketplace priced by top voodoo economists at 240 Tricky Dick Fun Bills. The game is well worth its $3 price tag, however I think there are some better values out there in Miner Dig Deep and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 which both clock in at a third of the price.
The Japan National Tourist Organization(JNTO) the agency created to promote tourism in Japan recently released a new tour guide. This time meant to appeal to English speaking fans of the popular Evangelion anime. Which after watching the series I am not entirely sure who will be looking forward to touring the Rei Ayanami cloning tank, but hey different folks different strokes.
The map was created in conjunction with the anime creators at Gainax the studio who selected the Hakone area as the location for Tokyo-3, the fictional setting of Evangelion. This new English map is a translated and updated version of the Japanese “Evangelion Hakone Instrumentality Map” released last year.
source: Anime News Network
A puzzle game with a musical element, Chime is reminiscent of Lumines but feels a lot like flOw. With its sublime techno tracks, provided by some noteworthy artists, Chime is basically audio visual cannabis. Developed by Zoë Mode and published by Valcon Games, it is currently available on XBox Live for 400 Microsoft Points and, per usual, has a timed playable trial.
Chime itself handles as you would expect of a genre that has had three decades to perfect. The controls are solid and intuitive. Simply position your block with the left stick, rotate it with either the shoulder buttons or the right stick, and drop it with the “A” button or by pressing the right stick.
The game seems intentionally devoid of the opportunity for failure and elects to focus more on allowing the player to simply cut loose and be creative. The blocks themselves, when placed, will trigger small notes to be sounded as the bar sweeps across the screen. Once the blocks combine to form rectangles of three by three squares or more they become “quads” and then are triggered as special rhythmic or vocal bits depending on their size. These quads can be continually expanded as long as they are kept alive by adding blocks to them before the sweeping bar finalizes their size. Once the quads are finalized they become part of the completed area of the map and cam be played on again to complete new quads. There is an element of scoring and time limits, however, once you are really grooving along all of these things seem to sort of melt away.
With regard to modes, the game has two Free Play and Timed. The modes are exactly as they sound, Free mode lets you play until you have 100% coverage of a map and Timed lets you play until the clock runs out. Both modes are necessary for 100% achievements.
As you may expect the audio is quite good, seeing as how the music is the primary objective of the game. It is pretty lean on actual tracks unfortunately featuring only 5 sets. I say sets, rather than songs, mainly because the structure of the music is ultimately defined by you and your block placements.
The visuals are simplistic, easy on the eyes, and fit the mood of the game nicely. The only real complaint I have within this particular facet of the game relates to a fairly infrequent occurrence. There are occasions when you are struggling to get that last block placed as the sweeping bar gets close and can sometimes cause a bit too much bloom to really get the job done resulting in stunted quad growth.
Chime is a great “mellow out” low key game that allows you to stretch your creative muscles without leaving the couch. It rings in at a palatable five real people dollars and as a puzzle game it has a good deal of replay value. The availability of a demo really takes the guess work out of this one, the game is exactly what the demo gives you a taste of, so check it out.
In case you happened to have missed it, a video was created for Tohou Project’s song “Bad Apple!” The song itself is quite good, and the vocals really sell it, but it is the video that has made it a viral hit. So popular in fact, that it managed to earn a mention on the illustrious CNN. Who gave us some truly keen insight into the creation of the video by presenting the follow up stop motion video as a “The Making Of” featuring all six thousand or so frames are shown. Pretty impressive right? See I had just figured that they used 3D computer models to create the original video, how terribly foolish of me. Thank you for setting me straight CNN. In any event, here are the 3 videos: the original Bad Apple, the stop motion video, and the CNN buffoonery video.
