Return to Sector 9 is the long awaited sequel to Ambush in Sector 9. Featuring nine game modes, fifteen ships to pilot, plenty of weaponry, and plenty of aliens to use it on.

Each of the fifteen ships has its own special weapon. Once you have unlocked the ships and their weapons, learn which game modes they're best suited to.

Submit your scores to the online high score charts to see how you compare with the rest of the world.

Pekka Kana 2 is a charmingly old-school platformer where you must help Pekka the rooster save his friends after they were abducted by an evil crow. The author cites other platform classics such as Super Mario and Jazz Jackrabbit as his inspiration for the game.

As you journey across each of the 24 levels looking for the exit, a healthy array of bonuses, secrets and pickups are scattered across the landscape for you to make use of.

Name: Pekka Kana 2
Developer: Janne Kivilahti / Piste Gamez
Category: Platform
Type: Freeware
Size: 7MB

Nigoro's Rose and Camellia has been translated to English.

Petri Purho's A Tribute to Rolling Boulder can be acquired from the Gamedev entries download page, along with a number of games from other participants. [source: the2bears]

The results for SourceForge.net's 2007 Community Choice Awards are out. [original story]

This week's GGE indie game feature showcases Cave Story, Polychromatic Funk Monkey and R.

Platformers/Applications

We won't be seeing N+ on the Wii or PS3 until it's out for the Xbox Live Arcade for at least a year. Metanet's platformer is still set to appear on both the Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP.

Boss Arena updated.

Jun Fujiki's Java web toy Individuality gets a new English manual. [earlier mention, OLE Coordinate System]

Shooters

Kevin Glass' beta version of Interferon (arena shooter) is available to play using any Java-enabled browser.

The lead programmer of Söldner-X (Play-Asia's horizontal shooter) was recently interviewed by Press Start. The million-dollar question was asked as well, and here is the response:

What platform(s) are you looking into releasing Söldner-X on?

Marcus Pukropski: I am afraid that I am currently not entitled to answer this question. The game is scheduled for release in late 2007, platforms are likely to be announced during the next couple of weeks...

Pictured below, the first screenshot from DHC's 3Punge competition entry entitled Sonic Ironstorm. The game will be released in two weeks' time. [more DHC games]

A recap of the games mentioned this month, July 2007:

Ninjah is a fast paced action-puzzler by Chris Raz, developer of Pogo Fred. The general idea is to get from A to B as quickly as possible with the help of an elastic ninja rope and your ability to move into slow motion.

You may only come into contact with blocks the same colour as your belt. To help combat this strange allergic reaction to the evil blocks, you can change the colour of your belt by hitting the corresponding checkered blocks.

Use the W, A and D keys to move. Hold the left mouse button to shoot, and press the right mouse button to use your rope. Use the space key to activate the slow motion mode.

Name: Ninjah
Developer: Chris Raz
Category: Platform
Type: Freeware
Size: 2MB

Warning Forever. Fraxy. Both abstract shooters. Both centered around boss battles. Both very good games. But only one can win.

Voting is now closed, thanks for participating!

Vote count: Warning Forever 27 - 29 Fraxy

Winner: Fraxy

- Too Many Ninjas
- Super Mogura Tennis (Mogura 2 review)

Articles

Both Clean Asia and Fractal Fighter were recently mentioned in Download.com's The Daily Download section.

(Everyone who donated recently will get a complimentary copy of Akuchizoku, full version. I've already paid cactus using part of the money received, so he will send it to you guys when the game is completed)

The latest edition of 1UP's Weekly Freeplay features Orisinal, Nitrome, Rose and Camellia, Nanaca Crash, Uchu Force and Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space.

Here's a special one: Oddbob's picks, namely Inyou Douji Monogatari, Rose and Camellia, Blue Wish Resurrection and Burn the Trash.

Remakes

Ishi is working on a platformer for the DS. [pictured right, Ishisoft's web site]

smila's IO remake is out; Devlin's Losted gets a colour version.

Miscellaneous

A number of cropped screenshots from Wiebo's upcoming shooter can be found over at his development journal.

Postman (Shoot the Core) and Hunter's Quarter Munchers' blog is up.

Mr. Robot/Moonpod

Moonpod's Mr. Robot was chosen as the first title to be featured on Kotaku's Game Club. A discount for the game will be offered during this period.

There is also a lengthy interview with Nick Tipping of Moonpod posted here, as conducted by Max Geiger. Nick reveals that War Angels will be their next release (outdated info), and Elite as his favorite game of all time.

XNA

Gameplay video recorded from a Dream-Build-Play (a Microsoft XNA Game Studio contest) competition entry, which one of Moonpod's forum member described as a Raid of Bungeling Bay remake.

Gameplay video of a Catchat remake developed using Microsoft's XNA by Wes Ehrlichman.

Announcements

Registration for the fifth Pyweek competition is now open. The contest is scheduled to run for an entire week, starting from September 2nd 2007.

DHC will be participating in the next 3Punge (Three Minutes Game Contest) with their entry entitled Sonic Ironstorm. The vertical shooter is expected to share many similarities with Demolition Gunner.

Nigoro's next game announced. The post seems to indicate that the latest project in development is a shmup. [rough translation]

Endless Fluff's Valdis Story was recently updated to version 3.0. This Castlevania-like platformer is now Vista-compatible, and comes with two new techniques (dodging and parrying).

An official demo (160MB) for Mountain of Faith is now available from Team Shanghai Alice's web site. [direct download link]

The 120MB trial version for Trouble Witches gets a new update. The game should work on all PCs now. [direct download link]

A 60MB demo for Nanoha Taiken 2nd Chu is available from Musume. Controls: [direct download link]

[source: Danmaku Gata]

Just looking at the gameplay video should make you want to give your computer a bath. Anyway, here's the gameplay instructions:

Z: Fire beam against enemies
X: Fire beam against bullets
Z + X: Fire strong beam against enemies (depletes time)
C: Change ship
F1: Toggle motion blur
F2: Launch highscore table
F3: Toggle random mode

Don't fire for too long, you'll overheat and explode! Don't let the time run out or you die. Killing enemies adds more time to the counter.

The game needs to be extracted before playing. There is an online highscore table too, so don't worry if it freezes up for a few secs, it's just sending your scores.

Use joy2key for joypad support!

Name: Burn the Trash
Developer: cactus
Category: Shmup
Type: Freeware
Size: 1.8MB

I've always found film critic Roger Ebert to be a tremendously engaging writer when he's in his element (film, primarily). This is why I get particularly annoyed that he turns into a reactionary curmudgeon whenever anyone suggests that games are also a form of art, even when (by his own admission) he's wholly unfamiliar with the subject.

I expected gamers would react to his latest uninformed salvo, but what I didn't expect is the responses (the printed ones, at least) to be by and large so lucid and articulate.

The key issue, I think, is the difference between freedom and liberty. Sure, there's no art in freedom -- in being able to do anything you want at any time. Liberty, though -- an allowance of choice, within a limited scope of options -- now we're getting somewhere. Especially if, within that narrow web, there is real, meaningful consequence to every action.

Well, technically. According to Jesus, I mean Nifflas:

"I don't want to get into the mess of charging for them (expansion pack for Knytt Stories). Having worked so much on the expansion levels though, I really want to do something special with them. I'm starting to think something more towards a request at the download page that an amount of $10 or something is donated to some charity organization (Amnesty, Save the Children, etc.), in order to download Knytt Stories - but of course without any kind of verification (I'll just hope that people will be kind enough to do that)."

"Someday I really do plan to sell my games. I still want to give everyone who helped me with Knytt Stories something extra for their effort, but it might end up being a free registration of my next game, when I feel more ready to sell things online..."

"Anyways, I've recently been contacted about a few magazines who would like to write articles about my games. Releasing something really huge like Knytt Stories for free might be very good for my reputation, and open up for things in the future, who knows?"

Read the announcement here

Barely, yeah.



- OLE Coordinate System
- Tutorial
- OLE.dat

A new interview with James Whitehead, developer of Satan Sam and the upcoming Tormishire, can be found at Clickzine.

Retro Remakes is back. Also don't forget to grab Graham's latest podcast episode.

From Shih Tzu: Pixel has revealed on his BBS (untranslated) that for his next project, he wants to make an RPG. No real details yet, other than that it will take a long time to finish. A sampling of comments:

"I'd always steered away from working on an RPG, but now that I think I've finally got the requisite know-how, I've decided to give it a shot. But already it's more of a challenge than anything I've done before..."

"There are all kinds of RPGs. I'd like to avoid anything too large-scale, yet still make it fun to play... somehow. Thanks for your support. I apologize in advance if I never finish it..."

Enigma is a brain-stretching puzzle game similar to Oxyd and Rock 'n Roll. The aim is to use your marble (controlled through the mouse) to open all matching pairs of the Oxyd stones scattered across each landscape, solving various puzzles and avoiding traps as you go.

Occasionally you will also encounter "meditation" levels where you must control two or more marbles at once, your task being to manoeuvre each one into small pits on the floor.

The game has a large (1000+) library of levels split across various styles so there's sure to be something for everyone. The download page has links to versions for Windows, MacOS and some flavours of Linux.

Name: Enigma
Developer: Daniel Heck and Co.
Category: Puzzle
Type: Freeware
Size: 15MB
Download page: http://www.nongnu.org/enigma/download.html

There's a four page article on independently-developed games which was on the front page of Yahoo.com on Sunday. A couple of games were mentioned in this piece, such as:

GarageGames, GreatGamesExperiment and www.mygmgame.com are sponsoring the first Game Development Competition, which will run for a duration of two months starting from July 18th until September 18th 2007. The Grand Prize Winner will receive the entire Torque Suite, while winners from each category will receive a Torque Game Engine license from Garagegames. A list of all prizes are listed here.

Contest rules are stated in this forum thread. All games should have some sort of comedic element to qualify.

The theme is a rather iffy one, as I remember that Ginger Monkey Games ran a similar competition in the past but produced disappointing results. No idea if one of the judges is the person who ran the defunct site linked in that post or not. Destined for success, or doomed to failure?

Read more

Muon is a short platformer by Kvalsternacka with simple rules and controls. Complete ten levels in the quickest time possible to earn a decent score, but avoid falling off the screen as this will incur a time penalty.

Boosters can be collected and used in two different ways but with the same method. Press down to either smash a block underneath the moving object or jump higher in the air. Multiple jumps can be performed for as long as you have a booster stock in your possession.

Name: Muon
Developer: Kvalsternacka
Category: Platform
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB

Boss Arena is an action game based of boss fights, unlike the heavy reliance on platforming skills as demonstrated by Lazrael's earlier release entitled Poyo.

Use the D or V key to attack. Hold the C of F key to jump. Push the F4 function key to switch between windowed and full screen mode.

There is only one boss battle to contend with at the moment, though the author has promised several more in the coming weeks.

Name: Boss Arena
Developer: Lazrael
Category: Platform
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB

A rather short interview with the creator of Everyday Shooter, Jonathan Mak during the recent E3 convention. [thanks to cactus]



I know Jon himself drops by quite often, so we'll just keep posting about Everyday Shooter until he informs us of a PC/Mac/Linux version! And it's also quite funny how they got the name wrong.

"And what was your name?"
"Jonathan Mak. It still is my name."

Not nearly as humorous as the Jenova Chen/Derek Yu story though.

For dcat - here's a couple of freeware games we've wrote about with Linux versions:

Magical Cannon Girl is a vertical shooter developed by KIT Station which features decent 3D graphics and two playable levels in this trial version. Your character has a very basic shot which can be upgraded by collecting red gems, though bosses do take a while to beat especially when your weapons are only capable of inflicting minimal damage.

A life gauge indicates her current health, and the number of hits an enemy can take before going down is shown with a counter that appears every time a bullet connects.

Hold the Z key to shoot, and tap the S key to absorb coins or collectibles. The X and A keys can be used to turn your character around. The special beam will begin to charge when the S key is depressed for a prolonged period.

Can be rather taxing to play at times due to the ineffectiveness of power-up items. The game is also slightly buggy when all options are turned on.

Name: Magical Cannon Girl
Developer: KIT-Station
Category: Shooter
Type: Demo
Size: 30MB
Download page: http://www.kit-station.com/mcg/download.html

2D Boy has a rather interesting post about the results of their Human Brain Cloud experiment, a massively multiplayer word association game.

Postman (of Shoot the Core) and Hunter launches a new webcomic entitled Quarter Munchers. [original post]

Joakim has updated his site with pictures from several of his abandoned projects.

Thanks to Nifflas for the first four minutes worth of gameplay footage from his upcoming platformer - Knytt Stories.



- Nifflas' web site
- Paul Eres' preview article
- higher-quality video, streaming WMV format (right-click to save)
- higher-quality video, ZIP format

the2bears informs about a new Kenta Cho interview (by Siliconera) which reveals his thoughts on the upcoming Tumiki Fighters Wii port by Majesco entitled Blast Works, while mrkwang interviews Samieru - a member of the Nigoro development team responsible for the release of Rose and Camellia, Death Village and La-Mulana.

Quite unfortunate that both interviews are rather short and contains very little information that we are actually interested in finding out (e.g. upcoming developments, etc).

- the2bears
- Siliconera interviews Kenta Cho
- Samieru/Nigoro interview
- Nigoro's web site
- MTV interviews Kenta Cho

Application is a new web toy from Jun Fujiki, originator of the idea behind the upcoming PS3 and PSN puzzler named Echochrome. This particular creation is an attempt by the author to recreate a paradoxical environment best illustrated by M. C. Escher's lithograph print entitled Relativity.

The standard blocks, stairs and portals seen in Fujiki's works appear here as well. Robots can be placed on any side of the blocks and even on top of the wall or floor. Requires a browser capable of running Java applications.

Name: Application
Developer: Jun Fujiki
Category: Puzzle
Type: Browser

Dicewars DS is a multiplayer version of a popular Flash based strategy game for Nintendo DS. Both single and multiplayer game modes with up to eight players are supported.

Your task is to conquer the whole game field by rolling dice. Each turn you may attack any opponent's territory from one of your adjacent territories as long as your territory has more than one die on it. A battle is won when you roll more than the defender during an attack. [thanks to Caffeinekid]

Name: Dicewars DS
Developer: Matti Palosuo, Reko and Jari
Category: Strategy
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB
Direct download link: Click here

The trial version of Trouble Witches features two playable levels and cartoon graphics not unlike some of the stuff seen in Konami's Parodius series. Pets act as options, while temporary upgrades in the shape of spell cards can be bought from the shop. These appear periodically, tied to a hot air balloon in the shape of a pumpkin head.

The shopkeeper can be touched in strange places, though the results from such actions are unknown. Coins are be collected automatically when the shoot button isn't held down. Tap the X key to cast a protective spell, or press the C key to use a spell card if one is bought from the shop. The V key serves as a pause button.

A choice of three difficulty settings are shown after the character selection screen, with the one at the top being the easiest. [source: Danmaku Gata]

Name: Trouble Witches
Developer: Studio SiestA
Category: Shooter
Type: Demo
Size: 120MB
Direct download link: Click here

Zillion Beatz is a new vertical shooter by RezetiA, featuring one short level but with five different difficulty settings. The needless configuration and armory shop from Pladzma has been ditched, allowing folks who don't speak Japanese to sample some of the gameplay on offer with little hassle.

Either ship is outfitted with two primary weapons, switchable using the C key. Hold the Z key to shoot, and press the X key to launch a bomb. The type of bomb launched depends on the current primary weapon in use, but still shares the same slot. It's possible to orient the option position by moving your ship around, then locking them in their current alignment by holding the Z key.

Only the weapon currently in use will be upgraded when a power-up is collected. Options can be aligned right in front of your ship by holding the W key.

Name: Zillion Beatz
Developer: RezetiA
Category: Shooter
Type: Demo
Size: 30MB
Direct download link: Click here

I'm not sure how much I can reveal, but -- there's an umbrella which slows your descent, and there's (my favorite feature in any platformer) a double-jump! Those two things alone make it play very different from Knytt. There are a few other new abilities as well, but the double-jump and the umbrella were the defining ones to me.


There's also an extremely scary area, we're talking Silent Hill scary. That may have been my favorite scenario, even though it was extremely challenging (I died at least a dozen times) and even though I don't normally like horror. This is the first time I've seen that level of eerieness pulled off in a platformer.


The game is also pretty challenging, more on the level of Within a Deep Forest than the original Knytt, so those who complained about Knytt being too easy will be happier; but for those who liked the difficulty level of the original game, most scenarios also have an easy mode.


I think the best part about it is that it'll include a level editor, it'll be interesting to see the great variety of worlds that people will doubtless make. It's hard not to want to make your own world after playing this, I have a few ideas myself.


There's not much that I could see that would improve the game, which is rare for me. The only thing I really missed was: no glowing light pointing the way to the next item, which made exploring large areas a lot more reliant on memory than in the original Knytt.


One big part of the original game was the mysterious creatures inhabiting the world, acting on their own, which don't talk to you and which can only watched and guessed about -- and that also thankfully remains. Knytt Stories is expected to release by August 30th.

Actual gameplay video! A two minute preview of four levels from Everyday Shooter. [source: Kotaku]

Update: You can save your layout with F3, and load your layout with F2. It saves to the ole.dat file, and it seems you can only have 1 at a time.

There's a pretty complex world as the default, so back it up before you make new levels. Other random key pressing created a capture.rec file, I don't know what it's for, or what key did that.

The Object Locative Environment Coordinate System is an engine that determines and calculates a robot's interaction with the environment based on the camera's current perspective. Gaps can disappear behind a pillar, bridges can be joined just by rotating the camera, and all sorts of weird mind tricks can be accomplished with a little experimentation or plenty of imagination.

The Fighting Fantasy Project hosts a collection of original adventures based on the popular gamebook system. Originally devised by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, Fighting Fantasy was a series of gamebooks that played out like choose-you-own-adventure stories. Each gamebook would consist of around 400 short numbered passages of text and the reader would be given options as to how they wanted the story to develop.

The gamebooks featured on the site are played directly through your browser. Game progress can effectively be saved by copying or bookmarking the current page's URL for later recall.

Adventures are typically fantasy-themed and have the reader encountering monsters and collecting possessions throughout the adventure.


Name: Fighting Fantasy Project
Type: Browser

Tank Universal released.

Kairos recently pointed out a tool which can be used to convert GM releases (developed with version 6.0 and 6.1) into a file that is compatible with Windows Vista. No more Vista incompatibility issues for GM games! [RR forum thread, download conversion tool]

The Crypts of Despair updated with several new changes.

The XBLA version of Switchball previewed. [PC version download page]

Earl Mansin: The Breakout updated to version 1.1.

Spark Spectra updated. Several screenshots from (possibly) a new bullet barrage simulator were posted on the front page as well. [Spark Spectra review]

Mind Control Software (Oasis) has released Arrrrrr!

Voting is now closed, thanks for participating!

Vote count: Sumotori Dreams 8 - 44 Toribash

Winner: Toribash



"sumotori is far more entertaining and to crunch it all into 96k is herculean." - Joe

"Toribash wins hands down, it's both much deeper, much more developed, larger community and keeps you coming for more." - Mahatma

"Toribash is just stick figures and elastic bands." - Jim

"This sumotori looks like theft to me. He couldn't even figure out a name for a game by himself." - anonymous

Uchuforce 2 updated with sound and new enemy ships. [Uchuforce 2 review]

A new edition of 1UP's Weekly Freeplay is out. La-Mulana, B-Intruders, Marathon Trilogy and Once Upon a Time were mentioned. One out of four ain't bad...

The Crypts of Despair updated; collected food units increased from 50 to 75. [thanks to Paul, tips by Baptistry]

Another Joakim Sandberg interview uncovered by Mosh of Planetfreeplay. It's nice to see Paul Robertson's name next to his in the credits for a Disney game.

Remakes

Richard Jordan revealed as the perpetrator responsible for the Starquake remake gameplay videos posted recently. [Zub review]

New version of G-Force posted. [direct download link, G-Force review]

The first third of Remakes 100 is up.

Synaesthete is an arena shooter which attempts to bombard players with a cacophony of sound and images, hence it's not surprising that this DigiPen student project contains a seizure warning as well. The objective of the game is to guide the protagonist from one area to another, though each exit is only made accessible once the entire room is cleared of enemies.

Attacks are initiated by timing the correct key presses to each beat. This is where Synaesthete suffers, because a simple arcade game was unnecessarily turned into a car wreck with complicated control elements - the only letdown of an otherwise impressive team effort. The game is still undergoing changes, so there's a possibility that it's difficulty could be toned down in future releases.

Name: Synaesthete
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 50MB
Videos: Gameplay video 1, video 2

Strict Machine is an arena shooter which borrows gameplay elements from Invader, another one of dessgeega's creation. Use the W, A, S and D keys to shoot in any of the four possible directions. Tap a shoot button quickly for rapid fire.

There are only six stages to play in total.

Name: Strict Machine
Developer: dessgeega
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB

The Crypts of Despair is a new release from the creator of Death Worm, though with a lot less action than it's famous counterpart.

The X key can be used to open a chest, collect items or rest in an alcove to restore energy. A food unit is consumed for every move, but can be replenished by collecting meat found in the crypt. Arrows can be used for range attacks if a bow is bought from the shop. Press the C key to enter the aim mode.

Fans of roguelike games will enjoy this tiny little dungeon romp quite a bit. There are thirty levels to explore in total.

Name: The Crypts of Despair
Developer: JTR
Category: RPG
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB

Joakim Sandberg (Chalk, Noitu Love) interviewed by Skaldicpoet9. [Chalk review, konjak.org]

Fraxy updated with new version, dated 13th of July 2007. [Fraxy review]

An XBox360 version for Paul Cunningham's Doppelganger is now available. [Doppelganger review]

Yakouga 4 released. [mature content]

Another Everyday Shooter gameplay video - part of an indie game coverage by the 1UP show. Invalid Tangram on the DS was featured in it as well.

According to a recent Siliconera article written by Spencer, the original Tumiki Fighters is an unlockable game within the upcoming Budcat's Wii production, Blast Works.

"As the conversation continued he (Budcat representative) explained that Budcat is working on bringing more of Kenta Cho’s shmups into Blast Works as unlockables. rRootage is going to be included for sure. Gunroar and Torus Trooper are possible additions."

- Read more
- Blast Works preview
- download Tumiki Fighters

Major spoilers! Try and beat Rose and Camellia at the hardest difficulty first, as the easter egg awarded at the end is worth all the effort. Plus it's no fun watching when you can play the game yourself.

There's a PC version of Everyday Shooter! Pictured right, an official trailer from E3. Extra: GameZombie interviews Jonathan Mak.

In Rose and Camellia, the player steps into the high heels of an aristocrat, working her way up the social ladder and earning respect among her peers. This is achieved by engaging them in an age-old tradition of slapping each other in the cheeks until one succumbs to her opponent.

The roses shown at the bottom of the screen indicates each combatant's strength. To attack, simply move the mouse from the bottom right of the screen to the upper left. The slap will be successfully executed if the line drawn crosses her cheek. Click on the evasion button to avoid your opponent's attacks, then launch your own counter attack quickly with a similar move. Move the cursor from the bottom left of the screen to the bottom right to sidestep a slap.

The gauge at the top left of the screen indicates the current player's turn, while the number of roses shown at the top right represents the selected difficulty setting.

Name: Rose and Camellia
Developer: Nigoro
Category: Action
Type: Browser
Demonstration movie: click here

The MarkUp magazine is a PDF-download publication created for the game development community, specifically GM users. Officially endorsed by YoYo Games, it contains a variety of articles ranging from tutorials to reviews of notable Game Maker creations.

For an official magazine, they do seem to cover most of the bases but certain new releases were strangely ignored to accomodate reviews of games with ripped sprites or music. Some of the new writers they have brought on board seems to be kids who are fresh out of school as well, but overall the quality is decent enough and having room to improve is always a good sign.

Read more

Several entries from Dream-Build-Play (A Microsoft XNA Game Studio Contest) are already available from other sources, though the best twenty finalists will only be made public and posted for download from the competition site on the 23rd of July 2007.

Bound Bear gets a new, but rather bland Quest Mode; Telltale interviewed.

The fan-made adventure game, Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth, is still an awfully long way from completion. Don't hold your breath.

There's a couple of XBox360 student projects (several with PC versions) made available for download by the Technische University in Berlin.

Retro Remakes has a really nice list of freeware stuff that they calling 'games you might have missed' over in this forum thread.

Wilfred, the Hero was recently featured on VH1 Game Break. [web site]

GameTunnel has recently published a rather noteworthy list consisting of the top hundred indie games reviewed on their site for the past three years. The list is extremely comprehensive and doesn't end up looking like a top ten bestselling title on any of the casual game portals - so credits to Russell and his team of hardworking reviewers for doing a brilliant job of summarizing the scene into one page.

Read more

In IMA, the player's objective is to collect pulsating stars by guiding a multicolored ball towards it. This is achieved by hovering the circle around any of the selectable objects. Your ball will then float towards it at a high speed, and with a little practice the velocity from a swing can even be used to reach stars at isolated locations.

A chosen object will glow differently, and no mouse clicks are ever required. A work in progress.

Name: IMA
Developer: maxmoosa
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 5MB

Metroid Cubed is an almost complete web-based version of the original NES Metroid, but using pre-rendered voxels based objects.

The website is also home to many other Nintendo-inspired demos.

Requires Shockwave.

Name: Metroid Cubed
Developer: Qubed Studios
Category: Platformer
Type: Browser

"In the 1990s, your humble correspondent spent some time working as Development Manager for legendary multi-platform game developers Sensible Software. During that time, Sensible created a game called Sensible Trainspotting, a fun simulation of the bizarre anorak's pastime to be given away for free on the coverdisk of games magazine Amiga Power. It was Sensible's last original game, and was intended as a little thank-you farewell gift to the company's many fans.

In 2003, a company called Demon Star released a game called Train Tracking. As a tribute, Train Tracking would be charming. It is, in every gameplay design and mechanical sense, a clear and exact copy of Sensible Trainspotting - only the graphics and presentation style have been altered. Sadly, however, Demon Star have no intention of paying any tribute to the game they're reprised. Their website presents the game as their own original work, going so far as to offer up a detailed story of how the game came into existence."

Read more

(Thank to Retro Remakes for this story)

According to a Gamasutra article written by Brandon Boyer, PopCap has recently acquired the Chicago-based developer Retro64. Founded by Mike Boeh in 2001, this creative development studio has produced Cosmic Bugs, Water Bugs and the recent PopCap hit Venice.

Mike Boeh is also heavily involved in the independent games industry, hosting both the popular IndieGamer forums and GameTunnel as well.

- Gamasutra article

In this Android remake, your robotic friend has been sent to shut down a nuclear reactor which is going to explode. You have to battle and blast your way through a myriad of mutant monsters, and when you reach the reactor to shut it down, you've got to make your way back to the screen where you started from.

The original game is absolutely awful, though, with ridiculously simple graphics and sound effects, and it's also too hard.

Name: Android
Developer: DevlSoft
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 3MB

Blazing Wings is a remake of the classic Atari shooter Wings of Death, and has been updated by Aligarion to version 0.6.1. The new version features a sixth playable level.

Aligarion reminds us to download the level six remixed music, by Nils Schneider, as well.

Name: Blazing Wings
Developer: Aligarion
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 5.6 MB (+ 40 MB for Music)

Sony Computer Entertainment has acquired rights to publish the IGF award-winning entry Everyday Shooter on the Playstation Network, due out very soon. The new version will run at 1080p and a consistent rate of 60 frames per second. According to Newsweek:

EveryDay Shooter is a twin-stick shooter. You steer your ship with the left analog stick and fire in whichever direction you push the right analog stick. You can simply shoot down all your enemies and collect the pixels they leave behind for points, but the most efficient way to take them out is to shoot the objects that trigger chain explosions. But each level not only looks completely different from the level that came before, it also has its own rules as to how its explosive chains work.

Best of all, the surreal graphics are vector-based, which means that they're created from mathematical equations; and every enemy you destroy plays a musical note or a riff which is layered on top of the default musical theme for the level. The whole thing adds up to a unique experience that requires your complete attention at the start of each level as you try to figure out its rules, then zone out once you know what you're doing.

- Read more
- Queasy Games web site
- Everyday Shooter preview
- Update: new Jonathan Mak interview

Raigan has confirmed it's awesomeness as well!

Chris Crawford's epic project to create a new type of computer entertainment which would be to games as food is to candy (to paraphrase him) is one step closer to fruition: Storytron has gone beta. Even if it's still a bit buggy...

For those not familiar with Chris Crawford, he founded the GDC, wrote the first book on game design, and created successful games for early personal computers, the Atari 2600, and the Mac, only to eventually leave game development for the more experimental enterprise of interactive storytelling.

Storytron may be difficult to understand. And, lacking a significantly sized demo storyworld it's hard for the casual observer to see what makes this engine any different from real-time multiple choice games like Masq, but I think it's something to keep an eye on or even play around with.

Entries for the GBAX 2007 Coding Competition are now available to download. This homebrew competition is in it's fifth year, and is proving the most fruitful. One can expect to find all sorts of homebrew games, applications, emulators and demos among the 60 entries developed with the DS, PSP and GP2X consoles in mind.

Some notable submissions include several remakes (e.g. Knight Lore, Ruck-Man, Blocked, Boomshine, Blast Riot), Sudoku clone (NDS), a tower defense game (Sqdef), a couple of scrolling shooters and even a Polarium remake (UNICOLOR, GP2X). For DS owners, there's a fully-working Genesis emulator which runs at 60fps and a TrueType eBook reader with anti-aliasing as well.

Breaking: EA Chief Executive John Riccitiello bluntly admits to the Wall Street Journal that the games his company and its major competitors make are boring people to death; he also says that those mainstream games are now less interesting than iPods and Facebook.

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble is an extremely unique game by Mousechief, who also made The Witch's Yarn. Set in the 1920s in a high school in the U.S. (with excellent writing in the style of that era).

You take control of a gang of girls and run around taunting, fibbing, flirting, and exposing secrets (each with a corresponding mini-game). This world of high school girls is not as easy a world as you'd think. The writing is excellent and the visual style is unique, one of the more creative and idiosyncratic games I've played this year.

The game is still in production, but due to be released soon.

The recently announced Cave Story PSP port is now playable from start to end, though the author of the project has stated that small bugs do exist due to the portable console's wider screen size.

Your PSP has to be capable of running homebrew to play this port. Supported firmware versions and known script bugs can be found in this handy readme file.

[download mirrors: Rapidshare, Mediafire, Filefront, original PC version]

Bound Bear is a small action game which resembles Mike Kasprzak's PuffBOMB, but with simplified game mechanics. In it, the player is required to guide a young bear towards it's larger brethen located on the other side of the screen. Use the left mouse button to set the direction and launch power, but beware as later levels will have destructible blocks which obstructs your direct path towards completion.

Collect a white bear with a square face to increase your life count by two. Both difficulty settings contain ten levels each. Extra lives do not appear as often in hard mode, while white blocks will generate after a short while as well.

Name: Bound Bear
Developer: GamePure
Category: Action
Type: Browser

Sound Energy is another action game by GamePure, creator of the Speed Cluster series and several other notable Flash releases. Click on the left mouse button to change the color of your circle, then collect the corresponding objects on screen to build your combo count. Energy is lost whenever your circle collides with an object that is of a different color.

A combo box appears when you have several combos going. Switching colors when your circles is hovering above any of these boxes will cause a variety of effects, dependent on your current combo count. Grey objects tend to chase after your circle. Blue circles float horizontally and red ones move vertically.

Name: Sound Energy
Developer: GamePure
Category: Action
Type: Browser

A couple of projects that may or may not see the light of day.

- Untitled Dash 'n Mash
- Dreams: Essenses of Life



Another teaser image from Lazrael pictured below. [web site]



Orange-Juice's Junpyon was retitled to A Diary of Little Aviator. This new vertical shooter by the creator of Suguri uses cel-shaded graphics, much like Karous and Radilgy.

WIP screenshots of a remake of Phoenix in development by Minion.

Shooters

Pug Fugly's Return to Sector 9 will be released next week.



More screenshots from X-0ut's horizontal shooter posted, recently confirmed as the sequel to Prototype. [download Prototype]



Reincarnation updated to version 0.3. [download page, instructions, review]

Remakes

Millenipede updated to version 1.1.0. [change list]

Two new screenshots from the upcoming Spindizzy remake posted.

On the left is a gameplay video from smila's IO remake, while the video pictured right is from the original C64 version. [IO remake preview]

Weekly Freeplay is a new 1UP feature that attempts to dethrone Gamespy's Download This (discontinued since December 2006) as the best regular column about indie games in general. And off to a very good start, I must add.

I really like the fact that more and more mainstream editors and journalists are turning to indie games even when there are a large number of commercial stuff to write about.

De Blob five minute gameplay video, an early 2008 release for the Nintendo Wii. Get the original PC version here. [direct download link, IGN preview]

The Four Color Problem is a new puzzler by GameDesign. The game involves grabbing as much land as possible in turns, though any adjacent areas captured should be of different colours.

Grey and black are assigned to the player, while green and orange belong to the computer AI. Bars and numbers at the bottom of the screen shows the conquest status of both generals, with a small vertical line indicating the winning position that either players should achieve for.

An online high score table is provided.

Name: The Four Color Problem
Developer: GameDesign
Category: Strategy
Type: Browser

There's a very special feature on the best of indie games over at the GGE site, written by Skaldicpoet9.

Matt Thorson's (Jumper series) An Untitled Story will be released as shareware.

Coptron Game Studios will release King Solomon's Treasures in late August.

Yes, you can play as cactus himself in the game!

The SourceForge.net 2007 Community Choice Awards is an annual event organized to honor the best SourceForge projects, with the latest to be held during OSCON (Open Source Convention) at Portland on the 26th of July 2007.

A list of finalists for each category was recently made public to facilitate the final voting phase. Some notable nominess in the Games category include:

- FreeCol (open source Colonization)
- Tremulous (FPS)
- UFO: Alien Invasion (turn-based strategy game, Quake 2 engine)
- ScummVM

Incidentally ScummVM was also nominated for the Best Project category.

Read more

Much like Line Rider, the basic concept of Coaster Rider is to draw a set of tracks for the cars to travel on. The Pegasus is based on an actual attraction found in Europa-Park.

Each level can only be completed by collecting all stars before reaching the flag. Accelerators can be used to speed the train up, and the control panel allows a player to tweak or change a track at their leisure.

Hold the right mouse button to move your view around. Coaster Rider also allows a track to be saved for the purpose of resuming a game at a later date.

Ten playable levels and an editor is included, plus each stage may take up to half an hour to solve. Impressive effort from a twenty year old.

Name: Coaster Rider
Developer: Sascha Swiercy
Category: Puzzle
Type: Freeware
Size: 10MB

Uchuforce 2 updated with several new changes. Lasers wil now overheat after prolonged use and requires a short period of inactivity to cool down. [review]



The new Super Mogura Tennis video showcases several characters' special moves (known as 'Technical Counter') - wholook

Paul Cunningham's Doppelganger is a new Defender remake with split screen action and single button area switch. The project was completed in less than two months, hence the lack of features such as those found in Alien Abduction.

Press the A key to change sides and hold the D key to shoot.

Name: Doppelganger
Developer: Pumpkin Games
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 30MB

Marippy is a Mappy remake by yu-ki with characters from the Touhou Project universe. The Z key can be used to open or close doors, and touching one of the enemies will result in the loss of a life.

A trampoline breaks when it is jumped on by the player three times successively. Slam a door at an opponent to knock them out temporarily, and collect all items to complete a level. Timing your jump and landing is important as three misses in a row miss could result in a bad fall when the trampoline under you is broken.

A faithful adaptation of the source material, though this means that it's audience would be limited to players who played the original as well. Set the image quality to low to reduce slowdown.

Name: Marippy
Developer: yu-ki
Category: Action
Type: Browser

Barbarian is a sword-fighting game that pits one barbarian against other barbarians to free a beautiful Princess captured by the Evil sorcerer Drax. The game offers sword combat in various locales.

There are several kinds of hits, and some hits take off half a point while others take off a whole point. Each player has six of these 'power points'. They also have a unique move called 'death sword' which decapitates your opponent, killing him with one fell swoop.

Name: Barbarian
Developer: Luxregina
Category: Action
Type: Browser

Smila is working on a remake of the C64 horizontal shooter entitled IO.

- IO development journal
- Retro Remakes preview
- We Make the Cops article

Update: Gameplay videos from the original C64 IO added. Click here for the entire playlist of all four levels. Current development status: 50 percent completed.

News levels from all four Xmas Lemmings were recently added to the Lemmings DS project, a port of Lemmings for the Nintendo DS.

This means the level count total is now close to 300, featuring:

- 120 levels from the original Amiga Lemmings
- 100 levels from Oh-No! More Lemmings
- 72 levels from Xmas Lemmings '91, '92, '93 and '94

Download Lemmings DS here.

[thanks to Heavy Stylus]

Download The Infinity String.

It's possible to double-click on an exit to leave a room quickly.

There are two possible endings to the game. A reminder to save at the crucial point is noted in the walkthrough.

Download Earl Mansin: The Breakout.

"The solution for several puzzles have been changed for the latest version. Instead of finding the rag at the bottom of the bin, you must cut it off the bed sheet, bed sheets or the makeshift rope. Instead of cutting up the bed sheets to get the rope, you now have to use the bed sheet with the bed sheets." - Adrian

I'm Jamie Sanders, the guy who made vNES, the classic Nintendo Entertainment System emulator. I started work on vNES after realizing that I had nothing to do for the summer, and as a side-effect of my love of Nintendo and emulation. The original vNES website was created a few days before June 1, 2006 and was hosted at vnes.thatsanderskid.com. vNES was actually a small mistake, all my other ideas I was toying with at the time turned out to be remarkably bad. Before vNES, I was toying with making a web-based GUI, an RPG (which occasionally gets worked on still), a proxy server and a GPL flash preloader that is supposed to detect eBaum's World and then halt, playing "Suicide Is Painless" instead of a real movie.

Since all of those other pursuits were either futile or impossible for me to improve upon, I started reading technical documents on the NES, spend a good two weeks implementing stuff and reworking the mappers, and wound up with vNES. On October 1, 2006, vNES managed to get on the front page of Digg, and that's when my popularity skyrocketed. I found myself being mentioned in the most mainstream to the most unlikely of places, from college radio, Iraqi military bases, all the way down to the India Times.

To this day, people still don't believe that I'm 15. Mostly, because I inherited my NES from my older brother, who was alive when the NES was very popular. My style of writing also seems to throw people off, as I you don't run across many teenagers that bother to find the shift key. Or for that matter, can actually spell "teenagers that bother to find the shift key."

My original host got really angry about the traffic on the site, and continued to claim that I was abusing the server. What they didn't tell me is that the entire problem arose from my inadvertently deleting the favicon.ico file, and that was making the server return a 404 way too much of the time, which isn't really good for ther server. So, I decided to move vNES to Dreamhost. Dreamhost then promptly decided to shut me down, under the perception that my enabling the online emulation of the NES is illegal. I've been mistaken before, but I'm really sure that piracy denotes the downloading of files without the consent of the copyright holder. Technically, this isn't downloading anyway.

Dreamhost felt they could suspend my site without giving me a particular reason, initially. I don't know what it is with server farms and doing this, as it happened a few months later. I then re-enabled my site, and they kicked me off for good. If you're going to shut me down while I'm getting around one million hits a day, give me no actual reason, and then make me wait in support queue for twelve hours and think I'm not going to re-enable my site, you've probably been hit in the head one too many times.

It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so remarkably and incredibly uncooperative. Not only that, but at the time I had received around $200 in donations from the users of vNES. Dreamhost continued to refuse to give me those funds back until I was about a minute away from sending papers to them, as I finally got them to at least return the money to the donators. If you're reading this, never buy your hosting at Dreamhost (or GoDaddy, but that's obvious - you don't want a content Nazi to be your host).

William Burns, the Chief Technology Officer of VR5 (a company that was using vNES for their Virtual Reality program) really came to my rescue dealing with Dreamhost, writing one of the best open letters I've ever had the pleasure to read. It was sent to Dreamhost and posted on www.virtualnes.com for the world to read. It was one of those New Radicals moments, the underdogs doing a reasonably good job of making the establishment seem incompetent and ostensibly obsolete.

At that point, I moved vNES around donated servers for about 48 hours before moving to my current host (of this site, anyway). Thanks to another site linking to me, the server overloaded and crashed. They decided to lock it until I could guarantee that I won't crash the server anymore. That was the birth of Public Terminal Mode, which allowed people to link to the Coral Content Distribution Network to play games on vNES. Problem is, if you were on a public computer, such as a Library or School workstation, Coral CDN was probably blocked. So, I kept a way to access the main server directly. Hence the name "Public Terminal Mode."

A mini site was created in anticipation for the release of Nigoro's Rose and Camellia - due out very soon. [visit information page, basic translation]


Title screen


Slap each other silly

Kyle Gabler (Tower of Goo) has recently started up a development journal to record his thoughts and share sneak peeks of his upcoming game, World of Goo.

There are even several Flash prototypes and music posted in some of his entries. One example is Human Brain Cloud, described as a massively multiplayer word association game which basically stores every single contribution by users and displays them as a network of clouds.

- 2D Boy dev. journal
- Play Tower of Goo

Echoes was recently updated to 1.02 and soon after 1.03. The updates fix various bugs within the game and also include a new un-lockable bonus game called Crack.

Edge Magazine have recently published yet another of those ever wonderful gaming lists that allege to cover the best games ever made. Ignoring the fact that once again we're being asked to hand over ten of your English pounds in exchange for a list of games which you could write on the back of a beermat without opening the magazine itself... I'm left wondering just how accurate these lists really are.

Is it still the case that as good as it is, Ocarina Of Time is The Best Game Ever Made or is it just so terminally dull and predictable a choice that it ends up there because, well, thats just how these lists work? No thought, no imagination, no heart and no soul.

Colour me unconvinced that if the readers of this blog were to vote on their best games we'd see such a tired and predictable list. So, putting the arguments of how useless lists like this are - I reckon we should show them how a real list would look.

How about you fire me over your top 10 best ever games, and by that - they can be freeware, commercial, shareware, remakes, public domain, console games, arcade games... whatever your list would actually contain and in a few weeks I'll collate all the info together, add them all up and post them onto the internet for everyone to pick over? Don't just throw something in because you feel duty bound that it should be there, put it in because you believe wholeheartedly that this is one of the best games you've ever played.

Drop me a mail at remakes100 AT gmail DOT com and lets set this place on fire...

Original remakes forum thread / Retro Remakes News Post

In The Infinity String, you assume the role of a scientist named Yerik Elnar. The year is 2009, and mysterious ruins have been discovered in Antartica by Russian explorers. One year later a complete research base was built to study the findings. You arrive on the scene to provide assistance to the first research team stationed there but only to discover that the entire crew has disappeared.

Left click to walk or interact with objects and right click to examine them. Double click on an exit to leave a room quickly.

There are two possible endings to the game.

Name: The Infinity String
Developer: Sektor 13
Category: Adventure
Type: Freeware
Size: 30MB

Uchuforce 2 is perhaps the most accessible shooter by Babarageo after his memorable STG Banner, supposedly inspired by the classic Star Soldier series. Collect the letters to spell the title and earn an extra ship plus weapon upgrades. Losing a ship means a weapon downgrade.

Hold the left mouse button to shoot or press the P key to pause. Sound isn't implemented yet but the author has promised that it will be sorted out in a matter of days.

Name: Uchuforce 2
Developer: Babarageo
Category: Shooter
Type: Browser

Warning: Strong language and graphic scenes.

In Earl Mansin: The Breakout, the objective of the game is to help the titular character escape from his imprisonment. A convicted serial killer who has been in prison for the last twenty-seven years, your first task is naturally to find a way out of your current confinement.

This release comes with full speech and accompanying soundtrack, hence contributing to the large file download size.

Name: Earl Mansin: The Breakout
Developer: Adrian Bernstein
Category: Adventure
Type: Freeware
Size: 160MB
Walkthrough: Click here

Set in a madmax style world, Darkwind is a turn-based MMOG which fills the niche created by Steve Jackson's board-game Carwars back in the heady days of the 1980s.

The player hires a gang of characters who can unleash death and destruction from behind the wheel of a car. Vehicles include tricked-out muscle cars, armoured sports cars and hearses with mounted flamethrowers - plus motorcycles and character movement on foot will be available soon as well.

Hired characters must be fed and paid. Money can be earned in races, deathrace leagues, via jobs from NPCs or from scouting for pirates in the wastelands between cities, alone or in squads with other gangs.

The game advances in real time; travel, healing, training and car modification takes time to complete, giving rise to a sense of realism often not often found in other games. Gameplay is split between a browser for gang management/world movement and a Torque-based game engine with physics simulations for playing out events.

Other interesting features include psionic powers, performance enhancing drugs with side-effects, player ownership of production facilities and camps.

Name: Darkwind
Developer: Sam Redfern
Category: Strategy
Type: Demo
Size: 80MB

The videos just keep coming... who is this cecille anyway?

A comment by Gil over at the Capcom Digital site:

The person doing the new sprites is a tracer and nothing more. The following statement...

"he looked like a giant troll. That’s why the head was moved up and made a little smaller."

...is certainly misleading. It suggests the head was redrawn from scratch.

In fact the head was probably altered because it seems it was more convenient for the guy who's doing those terrible new sprites to TRACE the portrait of T-Hawk from an artwork for Street Fighter 2 - Turbo Revival (GBA). [picture]

The artwork was drawn by Capcom's Edayan. Why not mention this? If all you do is what seems to be TRACING Edayan's art why not hire HIM to do the job?

If the persons involved with this project are as big Street Fighter fans as they pretend to be they should at least give credit to the original Capcom artists when they trace their stuff. The whole matter is very disrespectful towards the original creators of the Street Fighter series.

If you guys TRACE over existing artworks at least mention which ones you are tracing and give them credit in your blog updates.

I'm still looking forward to this project but hope you will change the artist who is in charge of the sprites. [NeoGAF, Pixelation discussion]



Here's an unfinished proof of concept by Helm, and some words from the artist himself:



"Hello, I am Helm. Since this is a public project on the internet, I assume that criticism, no matter how harsh it might appear, is welcome. Here are some thoughts:

First of all my art is not finished (no, not even the parts that look finished. It would take more smoothing, more range and some overpainting to call it done) so I'm a bit ashamed anyone would link to it. I had to stop working on it for a period of time and when I returned to it my incandescent zest to go through with this had all but evaporated. I did some minor touchups and thought 'why am I still doing this? This is a stupid way to do game art. Should I spend another hour proving a fanboy point?' and posted what I had and hoped that would be the end of it. I don't think my take is particularily breath-taking, but I do think it's more pleasing than that's going on.

Some people will say 'HE CHANGED THE STYLE!' when they see this. I'd like those people to go back to the SFII art and notice something: It doesn't look like anime. It's intentionally more westernized by the capcom art direction. The portraits aren't all angular-jaws-dark-eye-shadows-huge-hips like the newer SF stuff so I say my attempt is more in keeping with the vanilla SFII art than the Udon art.

There's many problems with how Udon is doing this. The biggest and most glaring problem is that whoever is in charge does not have the anatomical knowledge of the capcom staff that made SFII. And SFII isn't exactly the wonder of anatomy (nor is my attempt). The second problem is that they're mixing styles. They take a t-hawk head from an illustration, put it on a turbo sprite... it doesn't work like this. If you're getting paid to do a remake of a very well-loved game, you might want to invest some thought in coherent aesthetics and art direction. Finally the people working on this are pillow-shading. Sprites are sprites, when you're doing illustration work (this isn't animation work as it should be, really) then you shouldn't just go with a silly 'darker around the edges, lighter towards the middle' mindset. It comes down to this: when you REMAKE something, you make sure to hire people who can do it BETTER than the original crew.

All this screams for me, at tiny budget. How many people are doing the art here? I estimate that I could do about 3 frames in a workday if I were under contract to work on this, given I'd have some time to get my methodology streamlined. SFII has how many frames of animation? 1200? How fast does the team have to work to get through those? What are they expecting? Seems like a bad plan. I expect this to get cancelled soon.

If I can put a single comment on the actual remaster idea it'd be: it'll look awful, even with the greatest HD art in the world, without more inbetween frames. Bigger resolution = bigger spatial gaps between frames. It'll look like a Monty Python animation."

- 8 enemies plus five enemy ideas
- 3.5 bosses plus two planned
- Storyline outlined and planned
- 3.5 pilots
- Character portraits
- Menu
- Character Select screen (70% done)
- Title screen
- 2 finished songs and four early versions

Read more, interview

Graham reviews Hurrican. Excerpt:

Hurrican is Turrican Megamix essentially, and I can't think of a more fitting tribute to the series. I don't think I've seen many remakes which have lavished such care and attention on updating an old game while remaining true to its roots.

Although the basic exploratory gameplay shines through - and has even been bettered thanks to signs pointing the way to the exit - there is a problem, in that more doesn't necessarily mean better. Hurrican boasts no less than 5 different fire buttons, one for a switchable main weapon, one for a rotatable beam weapon and three more for various limited resource weapons. And some of these can even be combined with other buttons to activate secondary functions. It's just too much, they should have just picked a single one of the extra weapons and got rid of the others for the sake of simplicity.

Read more

"The rise of quick pick-up-and-play games is an important development, and Flash games mirror their rise in mainstream gaming," says John Bardinelli, contributor too casual gaming site Jayisgames.com. And because most web browsers can use Flash, playing a game through them is an effortless pleasure: "In the same way that short-form viral videos have taken off, I think we're seeing the same things for web games," says Jim Greer, founder of Kongregate.com.

"Digg has a section devoted to them, and 90 per cent are Flash. When one gets to the front page, the hits rocket - games three years ago never achieved the same levels of audience awareness."




Such popularity is beginning to earn the game makers money. Newgrounds, which receives around 500,000 visitors a day with 200 game and animation submissions, each month awards the top ten contributors, as voted by users, $250. Kongregate, which was launched in December 2006, gives its game-makers a cut up to 50 per cent of the ad revenue their games generate.

Meanwhile, companies like Crazy Monkey Games and Armor Games have begun to sponsor games in return for them featuring their logos and linking to their sites - both Flash game portals that earn money on advertising revenues. It's in both parties' interest that the games are featured on as many other websites as possible.

[source: gaming your way]

Sean Howard has decided to change the format of his site from one game mechanic posted every day to an update every week. Instead of getting all three hundred ideas in less than a year, you would have to visit the site for another five years before an entire collection of three hundred is posted. What a cop-out!

Hopefully this does not translate to longer waits whenever 'Squidi' feels like changing his schedule. The good news is that he plans to create a couple of free games using some of the fifty suggested design mechanics, though this is doubtful as well since making games are much harder than coming up with ideas!