peng ink

Earlier this year I attended Global Game Jam at USC. Showing up to the party a bit late, I ended up forming my own group of one, a perfect opportunity to make an exploration into the world of “art games”, or so I thought. The result after three days was Bird and Fish, which can be downloaded here.

Music by Adam Lederer.

sin(Surfing) is featured on this week’s Bytejacker, the gentleman’s preferred indie games web based tv show. Check it out!

Also, due to popular demand, I am pleased to release the sin(Surfing) OST by Adam Lederer! We meant it as a thank you to everyone who supported us by buying the game, but since we have no way of actually verifying anything, you have to promise not to break the honor system OK?

DOWNLOAD

A hotbed of independent developers in the Arizona desert gathered for 72 hours of heated game development, spirits ablaze, their eyes burning with passion. The weather was just fine thank you.

Having migrated to the retail world, I’ve been somewhat lax with my indie work, passing up the TIGSource Demakes Competition for lack of determination. Surprisingly, there don’t seem to be that many people who attempt to straddle both the indie and big budget commercial line, with exception of Rod Humble of course. Somehow he alone has been able to occupy both ends of spectrum, leading the super casual Sims Series and finding time to make art games like the Marriage. My hero.

TIGJam showed up with perfect timing, reinvigorating the indie spirit and squeezing those brain oranges dry for their creative juices. I went with the goal of working on a Gamma3D entry, spending a good amount of time bouncing ideas back and forth with Steve Swink (buy his book!) and others before finally giving up and starting work on Space Harriet in the Third Dimension. In the end, the general consensus seemed to be that anaglyphs, though quite interesting from an aesthetic point of view, tend to lend themselves to gimmicky mechanics with most concepts working just fine without them.

Space Harriet attempts to shoehorn in 3D gameplay by having enemies of different sizes but similar look spawn at distances where the perspective renders them identical (i.e. a big enemy from far away and a small enemy up close). The player then deals with this “depth deception” by using the interocular distance to be the true judge of enemy proximity, and responding with a carefully timed variable range attack. Does it work at all? You be the judge.

DOWNLOAD (Art by Kyle Pulver, Music by Adam Lederer)

Unsurprisingly, Space Harriet wasn’t accepted into the show, but even after playing the final entries, I’ve still yet to be convinced of the viability of the anaglyphic medium. On the other hand, in theory these sort of games have the potential to bring players to a new level of immersion, so maybe that would have been a better focus rather than incorporation into the gameplay mechanics?

Sin(Surfing) (200): Deleted it. It looks like Line Rider on an Apple IIe. Yuck.

-Forum Guy

Line Rider on an Apple IIe? Fuck, I wish!

HD? Meet stylish black borders.

sin(Surfing) now available for Xbox Live Community Games! But why Greg, can’t I already get it for free on this very site? Absolutely. Also note that the game is entirely playable within the time limit of the free trial version. HRM…

Still, if people do buy the game, I’d be plesantly surprised. Support the Guerilla Freeware initiative!

No matter how hard I resist, I’m again drawn to the latest TIGSource compo, this time with the theme Procedural Generation. And surprisingly, something good has come of it.

What would it feel like to surf on a sine wave? The initial idea came up while I was working on a game for post-orthopedic surgery patients (more on that later), and since then I’ve been sitting on it for nearly half a year. Then I got a call from Raph, antsy for gamedev action, and I couldn’t refuse.

DOWNLOAD

Sadly, this might be my last XNA project as the horrors of XNA PC distribution are too strong to ignore anymore. Sure, it’s a blast while you’re making the game, but when it’s time for release, nobody but other XNA devs will be able to run your game without considerable trouble. How much trouble?

A basic PC XNA requirements list

1. The XNA Redistributable – all right, makes sense
2. Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 – for C#, beats downloading both 2.0 and 2.0 SP1
3. DirectX Runtime – unless you’re already up to date (you probably aren’t)
4. A graphics card that supports pixel shader 2.0 – no shader effects for you! or game for that matter…

Good luck! (You’ll need it.)

So I was thinking about all the cool creative people here in Northern Virginia, and wondering what would happen if I brought everyone together in a single place to jam. On games.

I’m expecting the house to implode with awesome.

As with most game development jams, there’s some sort of underlying theme to 12hr. I figured why not take it further, and make the theme a game as well.

Every person will be randomly assigned a theme from a hat (be it EXPANSION, NEGATIVE, MINIMALIST, SPACE, DINOSAURS or what have you). However, if people wish to collaborate, their game must then fulfill the thematic assignments of everyone working on the game. Hopefully this will yield in interesting collaborations, and even more interesting games!

Snacks/beer will be provided, but you’ll have to bring your own tools (laptops, graphics tablets, mice etc). Also, feel free to invite other people – the more the merrier!