For less
recent
fare,
consult the
archives
at left.

Miles Drummond’s Jigsaw

So a while back Enough Plumbers co-designer Arthur Lee started up his Action 52 OWNS game jam, the object being to remake, to the best modern creative standards, each of the famously terrible games in the Action 52 multicart (origin of that Cheetahmen game that 2ch was ironically wild about a while back). To date, nine of the games have been remade. One of those, tackled by a certain Miles Drummond, is the poor man’s Nail ‘n’ Scale clone, Jigsaw.

Add some creative deconstruction, and the end result is a rather charming puzzle platformer that plays a bit like Sega’s QuackShot, enhanced with some annoying-to-me, perhaps engaging-to-others SNES-style switch-block puzzles. You’re a carpenter armed with a nail gun against an army of rogue carpentry tools; you navigate two enormous levels by scaling walls and breaking blocks with your nails. Note that you can only use three nails at a time, a limitation that opens up all manner of puzzle situations.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

(May 31st, 2010 @ 8:58pm)



No response?

The Game-Maker Archive: Samples and Demos

by Eric-Jon Rössel Tairne

Recreational Software Designs’ Game-Maker didn’t just throw its users in cold with its development tools and game engine; packed with the core software was a wealth of sample material, largely composed by the programmers, Gregory Stone and Oliver, Jr. Fair enough, this material was a starting place for many, perhaps most, users’ first games.

Yet as simple and illustrative as the material was, it often was more compelling than the end games derived from it. So in effect, in purchasing Game-Maker users bought themselves a collection of rather neat little games and then the tools to rip them apart and rebuild the games in their own image — in concept not all that different from some indie games you’ll see these days, if a bit more elaborate in the toolset.

It would be constructive to peruse these games if just to provide context for of our past discussion (such as last week’s The Descent), and to provide basis for future commentary. Again, though, some of these games are darned good. All of them are charming, and by definition they’re all amongst the most original Game-Maker games you’ll find.

There are seven basic demo games. Three of them are overt tutorials (one of them named Tutor); four are complete and deliberate games of some sort, and the origin of the most of the materials used in those tutorials. It’s those that we’ll be going over here.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

(May 30th, 2010 @ 12:13pm)



No response?

Wagging Your Arms Behind You… Love+ [Review]

by Eric-Jon Rössel Tairne

Fred Wood’s Love is not a new game. He first contrived and released it in 2008, as an undergrad sample project. Over the last couple of years he has tweaked and fiddled with the engine and design, first opening up the game to aspiring artists with Love Custom; a stabler version of the engine that came with less music and only the one sample level. It was meant as an empty box, you see, for the end user to fill — rather like Nifflas’ FiNCK.

And then fairly recently, there’s the game’s final incarnation, Love+. The engine is again tweaked, and the levels and music are fewer yet richer than in the original Love. As this is the newest version, and indeed the only version that Fred Wood still supports, I mean to give it the bulk of the focus here.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

(May 28th, 2010 @ 10:30pm)



No response?

Explore the Collective Consciousness with Farbs’ Playpen

Rom Check Fail developer Farbs has unleashed on us all the Web-based communal adventure game creation game, Playpen.

The game presents you with a blocky point-and-click adventure interface; as you click around and explore, you will find your choices leading you down increasingly eccentric avenues — until suddenly you hit the edge of the world. Say you click on a path leading to a fountain, but there is no target page to the click. You are then dumped into a simple image editor, where you can paint the scene yourself and designate however many links you like, to however many other pages.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

(May 26th, 2010 @ 1:56pm)



No response?

FiNCK thrown into the Web

As of yesterday, Within a Deep Forest and Knytt designer Nifflas has unleashed his briefly-awaited user-supported toss-’em-up, FiNCK. As reported earlier, the game’s abrupt announcement and release are due to an impulsive yet inspired development cycle, brought on by affection for the odd man out of the NES Marios.

FiNCK (”Fire Nuclear Crocodile Killer”; yes, it’s nonsense) has the same grab-and-toss mechanics as Super Mario Bros. 2 and a few other gems like Rescue Rangers, and Pastel’s much longer-coming Life+. Perhaps understandably enough, considering the free level editor and Nifflas’ existing fanbase, the game only comes with five (in effect) demonstration levels.

( Continue reading at DIYGamer )

(May 25th, 2010 @ 10:23pm)



No response?
forward