Passage creator Jason Rohrer’s latest upcoming title Sleep is Death is currently being previewed by a number of games media reporters.
Sleep is Death is an interesting game, because it is more so a tool for storytelling between two people than it would be your standard idea of what a game should be. To help demonstrate that Jason has been conducting sessions as a storyteller, giving each media recipient their very own tailored story.
Besides that, Anthony Burch was also given access to the “controller” tools, where he acted as the storyteller, and played with his girlfriend Ashley Davis. You can download the entire series of screen-captured events and see for yourself.
Update: Anthony posted a new package containing all three of his stories. You can get that here.
Not only has Team Meat been hard at work on their upcoming platformer Super Meat Boy, they’ve also been working to get you to fork over cash for awesome, awesome STUFF.
Who wouldn’t want their very own adventuring tarball, in the form of Gish plushes, available in two sizes and two facial expressions: smiling and toothy.
UK based indie studio GLPeas‘ second Xbox Live Indie Games effort has finally hit the service for purchase. BlindGiRl is a game of colors, waves, and overcoming adversity, and is something you should definitely play.
Gameplay and Audio/Visual
In BlindGiRl you play as the eponymous youth, lost in a confusing world of darkness with only your voice and your footsteps to reveal your path. Every stage begins with complete blackness surrounding the blind girl. To combat the darkness, Blind Girl’s footsteps will emit sonar like radial waves of red, these waves then reflect off walls to reveal the structure of the girl’s surroundings. A button also causes the girl to sing, emitting green waves that function similarly to the red. The goal of each stage is to reach a musical note which adds to the duration of the song, thereby increasing the range revealed by your song. Later levels introduce blocks that break when presented with a certain wave, helpful paths and checkmarks that only show up when in the presence of the proper wave, as well as mysterious eyeballs that are attracted to noises of a particular type and can “catch” the blind girl, ending the stage.
Due to the theme of the game, the audio and visuals both play an extremely important role in gameplay. While the art is admittedly crude and simplistic, it still adds to the charm of the visual aesthetic. That said, the art is actually much less important than the wave propagation effect which makes up the actual gameplay. You will notice the interesting capitalization of the title BlindGiRl, emphasizing the B, the G and the R to match the usage of primary colors blue, green and red for the wave effects. The colored waves slowly radiating out and bouncing off the walls and hints and other obstacles is a very interesting effect, especially when you come across the blocks which alter the speed of the waves creating a very cool effect. I’m a bit disappointed, however, that the bulk of what you will see is only the interaction of red and green waves, since the blue wave is only visible when you either die, or use the “scream” button to exit to the stage select. In general though, the wave visuals are a rather interesting, unique and beautiful gameplay mechanic.
The song which is formed by the collection of musical notes is also of utmost important to not only the game’s aesthetic, but its play as well. I found the little tune to be pretty, but rather forgettable, which is actually probably for the best as it could have easily been of great detriment to the game given that you will be listening to it constantly as you navigate the levels.
The difficulty of BlindGiRl comes from learning what new obstacle you must face in each stage, so as a progressively different puzzle game, it works quite well. They manage to do a lot of different things using only the two colored waves. What I didn’t like, however, was the threshold on the usage of the analog stick for movement. Often to escape the “red beasts” which are attracted to your footsteps, you must move past them by utilizing only the lightest of pressure on the analog stick so as to move extremely slowly and keep your red waves to an absolute minimum. At times, making this happen nearly gave me cramps. My only other gripe was at a puzzle very late in the game where the solution is only visible in the presence of a blue wave. Unfortunately, a blue wave is only visible when you A) scream to exit a level or B) get caught by an eye beast, meaning either way you basically have to re-start a screen to figure out how to get through it.
Summary
BlindGiRl is a charming and creative effort. I love seeing something as artistic and interesting as this on an independent games channel. The game is available on Xbox Live Indie Games for 80 Microsoft points. While it may not have much for replay-ability, I highly suggest spending the points, if not to support the amazing creativity of an awesome development team, then to play something wondrous and beautiful that you won’t soon forget.
So here we go again, three new games on the XBox LIVE Indie Games marketplace today. Including a platforming robot that lets you set off electromagnetic pulses. I could only be more happy if it drank beer, smoked cigars, and snatched purses. As usual the descriptions are the handy work of the developer. Our comments, however, will fearlessly demand your attention with extra pixels.
“Combine and Control two characters simultaneously in a post-apocalyptic abstraction of the King Arthur Legend with a haunting metaphorical overtone.” – As Arthur the Exiled in a post-apocalyptic world, harness the powers of 4 different robotic companions, known as the “Knights of the Round” over 2 different modes, in a unique “Single-Player Co-operative” experience.
Developer: Kangsanagi
Price: 240 Microsoft Points
This one is a little strange, it functions much like its description suggests. The problem with controlling two characters at once is that I’m bad at controlling one and I’m terrible at controlling two.
Mechanoid Army is a very entertaining platform based video game, which action takes place inside of a mysterious spaceship, the Nexus-9. This frenetic video game will challenge the good reflexes and ingenious of the player since the very beginning.
Developer: mancebo
Price: 240 Microsoft Points
Demo’s like you would imagine a platformer would. The visuals are surprisingly good. It also has this mechanic where you transfer your robot programming to another robot and gain access to its abilities, pretty interesting. The list gets longer of games I need to review!
Test your skills at skiing and shooting simultaneously! With 16 levels of action packed mayhem on four different level classes: Bunny, Blue, Black Diamond and Murderhorn, Trickshot will show you no mercy on the slopes. Did we mention you’ll have to dodge mines in the process?
Developer: sterlingware
Price: 80 Microsoft Points
This one doesn’t demo well, and I have no option but to expect the full version plays the same way. Right off the bat your presented with some wonky menu’s that seem inclined to let you hit one button and go directly to the buy screen. Also not getting the impression it’s designed for fans of the ski and shoot sport, as the mines that make you explode sort of destroy the simulator feel. Although, it could be a welcome addition to the “sport.”
So I’m a little late to this party, but OMG! Robot Unicorn Attack, only one word is even capable of describing it, magical. This is one of those rare instances where the music is so exceptionally well suited to the game that it makes the entire experience. The game was created by Scott “Spiritonin” Stoddard and the music is none other than Erasure’s “Always”.
Click on through to play the free browser game at AdultSwim.com
It’s a bit of a slow morning out there today, with the industry seemingly trying to recover from a lively PAX East. But whatever the reason may be, we have a duty to keep things fresh! So here is a little music for you from the Swiss duo Pocketmaster.
Residue is Swiss duo Pocketmaster’s first album.
After the festive EP Tin Guerilla (2008/self-produced), the Cube-C and Emiglio Laser duo abandons self-production to release its first label album.
Used to lowtech manipulations and samples from old chips, toys or other various sources, this time, Pocketmaster chose to surprise us by preserving the sound card’s raw sound, without manipulation. A certain image-radical-purety!
The album is thus concocted entirely from the Game-boy and Commodore 64 duo, spiced up with all sorts of samples and a few old synthesizers, all recorded in a record time. The result is a twelve tracker, fresh and joyful, in the spirit of the duo’s over-vitamin live performances.
Yet, the two artists don’t hesitate to have their pieces drift through several musical universes. In addition to a track remixed my Stu, and a Naomi Sample cover, Residue offers the listeners a magnificent cover of the “It Crowd” series’ credits.
Contrary to its title “Residue”, which means leftover, or relics, this first album is innovative and illustrates the wacky duo’s wish to always surpass themselves.
Here are the first three tracks from the album Residue. You can find the full album available at “da! heard it records” where it’s available for free in both MP3 and OGG formats. If you end up liking what you hear you can even pick up the CD to support the artists.
