Tuper Tame

Is it Mario Bros. or is it Tetris?

It's BOTH. You have to play Tuper Tario Tros. - it's very compelling and has got my mind spinning to what other great games would taste great together...

Pac-Man and Burger Time?
Sinistar and Quake?
God of War and Legend of Zelda?

I have no idea why I didn't post this before...

I'm sure everyone on the internet has already played Canabalt, but here's a link anyway.

Pay $400 to read this post.

I just played Upgrade Complete, a very amusing shooter over at Kongregate - in which you have to buy and upgrade EVERYTHING in the game - including your ship, the graphics and even the copyright screen. It's a great statement on the state of micro-transactions.

I hope they do a second version as the game play is a little unchallenging - the enemies don't even fire back and there are no sound effects and I would have liked to see the graphics get really ridiculously detailed as they got upgraded but then again, it's just about you obsessing about getting more coins.

All-in-all a fun concept.

Growcube

If you haven't already, you should play Growcube - a highly addictive puzzle game. Using no dialogue whatsoever, the game is extremely clear (and yet not, as that is the nature of the game) and it is completely adorable. The creator also made the excellent Grow RPG for those of you who like a little Dn'D with your puzzles.

The Hunt for Sandwich Alpha!

Thanks to Kotaku, I discovered a hilarious site: The random video game name generator : http://www.norefuge.net/vgng/vgng.html

After playing with this for more time than I should have, I generated a list of truly awesome (and awful) names. The weird part is, some of these names sound like games I'd want to play (or in some cases, just real games):

Dracula's Battle Hell

Post-Apocalyptic Assault Overdrive

Ancient Dungeon from Planet X

National Lampoon's Submarine Slam

Indian Jetpack Battle

Disney's Cowboy Princess

Vampire Karate Maniac

No one can stop the Sword Machine

On the other hand, some of the randomly generated titles are just plain wacky:

Ultraviolent Amish Basketball

New Punching Strikes Back

Nasty Beast Park

God of Beach Jamboree

Papal Batman Brothers

Giant BMX of Love

Epic Hair Salon Gone Wild!

And one title was generated which could be chillingly accurate:

Indiana Jones and the Wheelchair of Magic (Harrison Ford is looking a little old)

Post your own random name results here!

Passage

I'm probably late to this party, but I recently discovered Jason Rohner's "game" Passage and I must say that it's a brilliant piece of work.

A metaphor for adult life, the player walks a 16-bit character (which reminded me of the Activision's Pitfall Harry) on a "life journey" - the first session I played, I walked straight ahead - got a wife (more on that in a second) and scored moderately high points-wise but encountered no treasure (which increases points) and no obstructions either. As I walked along, the area ahead of me (the future) was hazy and as the character aged, the future became clear but the past grew hazy. (It reminded me of a trip I had once when on 'shrooms, but that's a story for another time.) If you "go off the straight and narrow" you encounter treasure chests which can be full or (more often) contain nothing at all.

There are also obstacles which can be circumnavigated alone, but if you have a wife following you, there are many paths you cannot take - as a married man, I can tell you this was the most poignant aspect of the design - a mechanic never really done in games outside of Ico - and one that really brought home the whole theme of the game for me. I would love to see this design idea (caring for someone else) brought to more games - I'm beginning to feel that the era of the solitary hero against the world in games is almost dead.

I highly suggest everyone to experience Passage for yourself here.

52 games in 52 weeks - madness or awesomeness?

This year at GDC, I attended a talk by Patrick Curry (lead designer of Stubbs the Zombie) who did an interesting project in 2006 on his own blog - he created a new game design idea a week using these rules:

Only new ideas. This will force me to keep the creative juices flowing, which is the primary goal. But it will also prevent me from posting a game concept belonging to a long-lost friend, co-worker, or company.

No work-related ideas. I will steer clear of all game concepts that are directly related to any professional game projects that I have previously worked on or am currently working on. Of course I can’t predict which projects I might work on in the future…

Only good ideas. This will be the hardest rule to follow. But I’m really going to work hard to filter the ideas down to the gems, and then go into as much detail as possible about why I believe it’s a good idea, and would make for fun gameplay.

I haven't read all of his ideas yet but I really like the idea of this challenge and I'm thinking of taking on myself. Am I crazed? More to come...