Monthly Archives: January 2009

And the nominees are… (cont’d)

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Continuing from the post yesterday, some more thoughts on other IGF nominees.

You Have To Burn The Rope
The hit quirky internet flash game You Have To Burn The Rope surprises just about everyone (including the creator himself) by being nominated for the Innovation Award in the IGF. You Have To Burn The Rope is short, sweet, and most of all an actual funny game. Much like Portal, another shortform game with comedy that its been compared to, Burn The Rope knows exactly what it has to do and doesn’t waste anytime doing it. And by being a genuinely humorous game, You Have To Burn The Rope earns its placement as a nominee for innovation.

Snapshot by Kyle Pulver and Peter Jones
The inclusion of Snapshot is a reminder how even as the IGF each year grows larger with more entries, bigger development teams, and higher budgets, there’s still a place for the one or two man garage developers to come together and build something cool and interesting that can still get nominated and compete. Snapshot is a game built part-time by pretty much one guy and is less of a game than a demo that details the potential of the idea. Still, even while competing against other groups with more developers, more money, and more time a game like Snapshot can still emerge from the fray powered by hardwork, dedication, and maybe even a little indie love (aaawww…).

And the nominees are…

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Yesterday the IGF announced the 2009 nominees for the Independent Games Festival to be held at this year’s GDC. A quick refresher for those new to the IGF: the Independent Games Festival represents one of the biggest chances for publicity for indie developers. If your game gets chosen it will receive marketing and publicity that would be unheard of for a typical indie game. Getting accepted into the IGF is not just a huge honor, but essentially the proverbial Golden Ticket for indies.

You can see the full list of nominees here. Some quick thoughts on a few of the games.

Dyson by Rudolf Kremers and Alex May
Dyson deserves mention for being not only one of the more unique entries (a procedurally-generated realtime strategy game), but also because it began its humble origins as a game created for the Procedural Generation competition on TIGSource. It’s not the first game to come out from that particular compo (sin(Surfing) was the first to that claim), but its great seeing

Pixeljunk Eden by Q-Games
The murmurings from the indie peanut gallery is showing some dissatisfaction with how Q-Games is handling their submission of their Pixeljunk line, first with Pixeljunk Racers 2 years ago and Pixeljunk Eden this year. Eden was nominated in 3 different categories (technical excellence, audio, and visual art). The IGF is seen more than anything as an opportunity to raise the profile of lesser-known indies. Q, with its publishing contract with Sony and its prominent line of games on the Playstation Network doesn’t seem to qualify as a developer who needs particularly more publicity. It’s a sign of independent games maturing as you get a larger range of developers that constitute “indie” and the related controversy with those on the edge.

More IGF review tomorrow!

Goodbye to my old friend EGM

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Back when I was a kid (which wasn’t that long ago), there were two game magazines. You had Nintendo Power, the official mouthpiece for all things Nintendo, and you had Electronic Gaming Monthly (or EGM) that represented all games, all systems, skewed to a slightly older demographic. Back then each issue of EGM was a godsend for a kid like me. This was before the widespread advent of the internet so in every issue was a treasureload of information, pages upon pages of previews for every game, reviews from editors and their personalities, and news from crazy distant places like “Japan” or “Europe”. Even the ads back heralding the Sega Genesis and what Nintendon’t were piece of information insatiably devoured.

Now with the death of EGM it really marks an end of an era in game history. EGM has been one of the longest running mags in the business. Operating since 1989, its covered consoles from the NES all the way to the current crop (and everything in-between). It was one of the magazines (along with GamePro and Game Players) that introduced gamer personalities like Sushi-X. And as far as I can recall it was one of the first publications to use the now ubiquitous 0-10 rating scale for games. Humorously enough, at the end of its life EGM has abandoned that scale for letter grades, but the influence lives on.

So here’s to EGM, another victim in the slow death of print media. We will miss you for better or for worse.

Shiren the Wanderer and other rogues

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Over the weekend I picked up the early 2008 release Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer for cheap at a Best Buy post-holiday blowout sale. Shiren the Wanderer is the sort of game that has inspired much love from particular fans despite its highly idiosyncratic nature. The game itself is a pretty simple tale of a wanderer named Shiren on a quest for some mystical object.

Shiren isn’t just any sort of adventure/RPG though. Its a roguelike, that very particular love/hate genre of games that inspires as much frustration as it does joy. Roguelikes are games that trace their influence back to the seminal PC game Rogue. These games are defined by a few simple traits: randomly-generated dungeons, turn-based combat, and an unflinchingly high level of difficulty. Death in roguelikes will happen and they will happen often.

Gamers (and games by association) have become increasingly focused on the conclusions of play. Stories demand an ending, blockbusters lead up to epic boss battles, and journeys must conclude. Yet the roguelike remains an artifact against this mode of thinking. Roguelikes typically don’t have a proper ending as much as they just end. Death is the only conclusion, but a momentary one since you can also start over from the beginning.

Roguelikes focus on the process of getting to the inevitable. Each journey is unique with unknown paths, items, and enemies lying just ahead. They are games less about reaction and careful management, resources are precious and need to be used constantly and eventually the grind will wear down the best of travelers. At this stage in games its a fairly significant shift in how gamers approach games, most casual players are immediately turned off by the brutal difficulties and low initial rewards. But for those gamers who are touched by the addictiveness roguelikes are notorious for the games become near-infinite fountains of playability.

So I’m going to continue to chip away at the roguelike and hope for a breakthrough. If not with Shiren, then maybe the brand new Spelunky will solve the riddle for me. Until then, happy random dungeon crawling!

Cartoon Friday: It’s Adventure Time!

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In early 2007 there was a short little pilot that got released to the internet. It was the birthchild of some fun, quirky, and talented creative people and the end result was a fun, quirky, and creative little show called Adventure Time. In this pilot, Jake (the dog) and Pen (the human) were adventure buddies who saved the lovely princess from the doofus the Ice King. There were dragons and penguins and Abraham Lincoln on Mars. And in short time, this eccentric little cartoon that was the brainchild of Pen Ward gained internet fandom with phrases like “Mathematical!” and “That was totally math!” becoming favorites of certain online communities.

But for reasons unbeknown to us, the executives at Nickelodeon never though this little pilot was worth giving a series. Despite its relative widespread fan following created almost entirely through word of mouth, this little cartoon languished for almost a year and a half waiting for something to happen. In the meantime, those talented creative people dispersed to other series where there work brought much joy and laughter to all (i.e. The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack).

But luckily this is not the end of our story. Cartoon Network, riding high on its recent success with more esoteric cartoons like Chowder and Flapjack, has decided to give Adventure Time a chance to shine. So sometime in 2009 we will see the continued adventures of Jake and Pen.

So check out the Adventure Time blog and search for the video for the show (its online if you Google for it). It’s well worth your time to take a little sojourn into pure imagination and entertainment (imaginetainment).