The game industry is recession proof they said in October. Yeah, right.
Game news are full of studios closures, people layoffs, companies bankruptcies. Why? Not the so called crisis fault, simply long term bad business decisions.
A product like the last Tomb Raider selling poorly is not a surprise I mean come on shareholders and management from those big publishers, you can’t give people the same shit every year and expect it to sell well! You gave people the Indiana-like bimbo stuff nine damn times of course the last one didn’t work, especially in a tougher economy.
But enough pointing out stupidity.
Add the brazilian music and you’re in another world, really.
Gravity Bone. Free FPV game with no gun, 60fps (Quake2 engine) and an awesome feeling. I WANT MOAR!
The twenty best freeware adventure games of 2008, starting with Dirty Split.
Damn it! He knew that one!
Here’s the link to the download page with four languages (and yes, there’s french).
Osmos, IGF nominated physics puzzle game.
Osmos Trailer from hemisphere games on Vimeo.
Developers interview, here’s an excerpt:
“What kind of background do you have making games?
Eddy Boxerman: I liked modding as a kid — coming up with alternate rule-sets and tweaks for Monopoly, Stratego, etc. and then play-testing them. A good friend introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons when I was 12 years old, and that was it.
I’ve been making games as a hobbyist ever since. More recently, I worked for a few years at Ubisoft Montreal as a physics and animation programmer.
And it doesn’t hurt that the friends who have contributed to Osmos are all super talented: Dave Burke worked at Epic as an engine programmer, Kun Chang served as cinematics art director on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and Andy Nealen has been teaching courses in game design.”
The game industry is full of people wanting to escape and do their shit..
Audio is in the indie/indy scene really well exploited. Osmos has a neat soundtrack, Walkie Tonky uses audio as input feedback making music -a trend I want to see more and more- and the more impressive about it:
Retro/Grade, a rhythm shoo’t em up game. But in reverse. Can’t wait! Interview with Gamasutra. I almost forgot about Kranx’s Musaic Box, a music based puzzle game.
Let me sum it up: indies have limited ressources, limited budgets. They use the most of the medium whenever wherever it’s possible. Audio is a huge add to a minimalist approach as it is with the gamedev scarcity. The game production is really divided as Game design, AudioVisual design and Code design which we try to push to their interaction limits. Video game means absolutely nothing.
Now that Nvidia losts money, they say that 3D screens are coming and totally hot (meaning another layer of complexity to a fucking hard task: making a good computer game).
I call bullshit.