|
Today is a good day for hiding, escaping, approaching and, er, shooting coloured blocks to make them disappear. You'll find all that and slightly more in the following webgames, a couple of which are brought to you by the letters G, G and J, which collectively stand for Global Game Jam. Read on for horror, HORROR, and maybe even some HORROR, plus a game that is basically Tetris With Guns. Play it online here.  These indecipherable documents appear to be written in alienese. That or French. If a tree falls in the forest and there are no people around to hear it, does it make a sound? Yes, obviously, because of all the animals, but the same doesn't appear to be true of a pixelly little guy with a flashlight. The dude in Traal – I'm going to call him 'Traal' – is non-existent to the various creepies that inhabit his very green dungeon, that is until he turns in their general direction and his torch-beam blasts them in the eyes. Creeping through each area is a matter of stealth and puzzle-solving, then; as you're unable to turn off your torch, you have to rely on walls to block the beam from your enemies' gaze. As a stealth or a puzzle game, Traal is unusual, tense and rather inventive, but the absolute best part is how your character looks like an adult jelly baby. Play it online here.  The walls have eyes, but at least they don't have ears. I Can't Escape is a dungeon crawler minus the role-playing, focusing instead on the horror of being dumped in a vast subterranean prison, with only your thoughts (and a bunch of creepy eyeballs) for company. Obviously you have to escape, but as the name suggests that's not going to be particularly easy. It's simple enough to descend into the labyrinth, but hard not to get irrevocably stuck in a sort of Labyrinth-esque oubliette; each floor is full of weak floors and holes, doors that need keys, and with things-that-look-like-ghosts lurking on the periphery of your field-of-vision. I'm not sure it's even possible to escape from I Can't Escape, but I'm looking forward to seeing people try. (Via Indie Statik) Play it online here.  You fancy the blue cube, by the way. Hey, I'm not judging. Crush is a game about sidling up to a person you have a crush on, while fending off unwanted conversations and fighting your desire to immediately do a 180 and run as far as possible away. I think it captures that awkward, terrifying, butterflies-in-your-stomach-feeling rather well. Every time you try to get close to the object of your affections, your body (in this instance, your body is a red cube) rebels and turns the other way. As an exploration of anxiety/panic attacks, I found Crush quite moving and effective, despite having no idea how to win out over my frustrating body. (Via IndieGames) Play it online here.  PROTIP: Spikes hurt. Adult Swim's latest brill browser game is the clever Super Puzzle Platformer Plus, which introduces Tetris/Columns to the platformer genre like it's no big thing. It is a big thing, because it's one unholy mashup that works incredibly well. When it gets going, Tetris gives you more than enough things for your brain to worry about, but SPPP adds one more: the little guy with the gun tasked with blowing unwanted blocks from the screen. As with every game of this sort, you'll want to create as many coloured chains as you're physically able, but here that carries a significant risk: chains of identically coloured blocks are more resistant to bullets, the bigger the chain, the harder it is to break. Developer Andrew Morrish is currently working on Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe, which adds a two-player Vs mode, in addition to a host of other stuff. 
| |||
| | |||
| | |||
|
vineri, 1 februarie 2013
The Free Webgame Round-Up g21
Gabe Newell on the history, future, economics and philosophy of Valve g21
| Gabe Newell recently spoke at the University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs about productivity, economics, political institutions and the future of corporations. The school have now posted the full lecture. In it you'll find information about how Valve operate, and why their unusual structure works for them, as well as the success of the Steam Workshop, and that Valve are supposedly the fourth largest bandwidth consumer in the world. If you've a spare hour, and an interest in the thinking and numbers behind the PCs largest distributor, it's well worth a watch. Thanks, Kotaku. 
| |||
| | |||
| | |||
|
Guild Wars 2′s latest patch kicks off a “living story” g21
|
According to ArenaNet, the latest Guild Wars 2 patch – Flame & Frost Prelude – sees the birth of the game's new "living story". It's small, pink and wriggly at the moment, but the developers plan for it to grow over many updates into a tale that could result in dramatic changes to the world of Tyria. A post on the ArenaNet blog explains the Living Story team's plan. "The job of the Living Story team is to bring the world to life," writes narrative designer Angel McCoy. "On an ongoing basis, we'll spin out story threads that will introduce you to new heroic characters, mysterious plot twists, and dramatic moments that affect the world." With Flame & Frost, that story is only being hinted at. "You can participate by volunteering to help the refugees streaming down from the Shiverpeaks in both the Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau. These refugees have lost their homes and their loved ones. They're arriving in the Black Citadel and Hoelbrak with little more than the clothes and battered armor on their backs." McCoy claims that each portion of the story will be available for a limited period of time, but will have a repercussions on the world. "The Living Story is simultaneously transitory and permanent. As the story arcs play out, the tale evolves." To ensure you don't miss out on anything, a new Living Story Achievements category will guide you to the relevant characters and locations. "Story arcs will play out over time. You won't necessarily know how long an arc is, and some could take months to fully unfold. We're weaving many plot threads together to make one big cohesive world, a river of story, a living world." Thanks, Massively. 
| |||
| | |||
| | |||
|
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare gets huge content update, adds maps, modes and weapons for free g21
 "It's just a flesh wound!" The latest patch for Chivalry: Medieval Warfare may not add anything as grand and regal as Brian Blessed, but developer Torn Banner understands what fans of the online dismemberment simulator really want: bludgeonings. Along with two modes and 13 maps, this huge content update brings a selection of brutal new weapons, including polehammers, flails and heavy flails. Things are going to get messy. It's a massive amount of new content, all provided completely free. New modes include Capture the Flag and a Duel Mode, which comes with 10 arenas for your 1v1 grudge matches. There's also a full compliment of tweaks, bug fixes, added polish, stronger anti-hack measures and an option to specify how long corpses litter the battlefield. Well, you want to take pride in your work, after all. Full patch list here, or you can watch a video tour of the update's new features below. 
| |||
| | |||
| | |||
|
Valve sued by German consumer group because Steam users can’t resell games g21
|
The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZVB) is suing Valve over Steam's refusal to let users resell their games. According to Carola Elbrecht, the VZVB's project manager for digital consumer rights, Steam users should be given the same rights as owners of traditional board games – allowed to sell their used copies on at will. The VZVB's complaint is that purchased games are tied to a user's Steam account, with no option to transfer the license to a third-party. The organisation also notes that, for those games that use Steamworks, it makes no difference whether a game was purchased online or as physical media, as either way the game is locked to a Steam account on installation. The lawsuit follows a cease-and-desist order the company issued to Valve back in September. That action was prompted by not only the resale issue, but also in response to the updated Steam Subscriber Agreement, which prohibited class-action suits against the company. The consumer group have attempted to sue Valve over game reselling before, but the case was dismissed by the German Federal Court of Justice in 2010. However, back in July, the The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the trading of "used" software licenses was legal, and the VZVB are hoping that this lends credence to their case. Of course, Valve aren't alone in this practice. No digital distributor offers the option to sell on your used licenses to a third-party. Elbrecht says that, while Valve are the target, the suit is meant to serve as a signal to other distributors that operate the same way. Thanks, PC Advisor (via Slashdot) 
| |||
| | |||
| | |||
|
joi, 31 ianuarie 2013
How Octodad became popular: from student project to cephalopod about town g21
|
Octodad, a physics-based adventure by indie group Young Horses released in 2010, is about an octopus disguising himself as a human male. Let the brilliance of such a concept sink in for a moment. The student project slowly picked up media attention, and now in an official blog post, programmer Kevin Geisler has described the timeline of the adorably clumsy cephalopod's rise to fame. Geisler notes larger events such as the Games Developer Conference and Independent Games Festival actually contributed less exposure than simple word-of-mouth from gamers and press sites. A two-sentence tip from the Ctrl+Alt+Del webcomic granted the first spike in 2010, and a bundle of YouTube gameplay videos picked up the pace shortly thereafter. Geisler highlighted Cr1tikal's early playthrough in particular, which racked up over 1.5 million views. Frankly, I can't get enough of a cheery octopus perfectly convinced of his disguise as he crashes into everything not bolted down, which is why I'm looking forward to the sequel, Octodad: Daliest Catch, coming out sometime this year. Check out the rest of Geisler's overview on Young Horses' journal. 
| |||
| | |||
| | |||
|
