Edmund McMillen has revealed that Tim, the main character from Jonathan Blow's Braid, will be a playable, unlockable character in his upcoming Wiiware title Super Meat Boy.

Strange as it may sound, Edmund announced during a Nintendo developer interview that the little guy with the 'back in time potion' will indeed be playable alongside our meaty hero.

There's no word yet on whether or not Tim will be able to use his time-reversing powers in SMB, but we'd be surprised if they didn't get involved somewhere.

The game is set to be released on the Nintendo Wii in Q4 of this year.

Binary Tweed's 'political platformer' Clover is coming very soon to Community Games on your shiny Xbox 360, so they've released a nice little trailer for their 6-months-in-the-making game.

The watercolour design is visually brilliant, but will the simplistic gameplay and puzzles also stand out?

Mezmer Games' slightly odd strategy title Stalin vs Martians has now been released. Just in case you've been down a hole and missed what it's about, here's an extract from the official site:

"Stalin vs. Martians is a natural choice for anyone bored of hundreds and hundreds identical 'World War II real-time strategy games'. It's a perfect choice for anyone who just hates the strategy genre."

From initial reactions it would appear that all the zaniness may have been a smokescreen to hide the fact that there really isn't that much decent gameplay here. Rock Paper Shotgun in particular give it rather a ripping, with Kieron Gillen stating that "it was clear it was going to be absolutely terrible".

He also makes the point that there seems to be "something wrong with the game" in terms of optimisation, and I know exactly what he means there - on attempting to run the game, it simply tells me that a 'problem' has occurred and quits. Lovely.

If I finally manage to get the damn thing working, you can expect a review of sorts to adorn this blog. For now, you can head over to a variety of distributors, including Impulse and Gamersgate and give it a gander.

Crush the Castle is a remake inspired by Liam Bowmers' Castle Clout, boasting much superior graphics and a better interface than the original had ever offered. The game basically involves knocking down one castle after another with your massive trebuchet machine, as you travel around the map visiting each of the twenty-four locations that the resistance had claimed as their own territories.

You get only a limited number of chances to take out all the inhabitants of a castle. Everything is controlled with the mouse, with additional types of ammunition unlocked once you've beaten a certain number of stages during your adventure. A castle editor feature is also included with the game, where players can share castles of their own design with others using a handy copy and paste function.

Toxic Sonic Zombie Massacre is an action platformer where you play any of the three members from the French rock band, determined make it to the venue of their own gig before time runs out. Every character has at least one special skill at their disposal, and you'll be required to switch between them occasionally to overcome some of the obstacles that stand in your path to fame and fortune.

The game won't take longer than a couple of minutes to beat, which is probably a good thing considering how repetitive the background music can be and the rather obvious lack of variety in the gameplay department. (source: Superlevel)

A great piece about surviving the recession with an innovative business model went live on the online edition of Wall Street Journal today. Read what Steve Swink of Flashbang Studios, Ron Carmel (2D Boy), Three Rings (Puzzle Pirates), Toribash creator Hampus Soderstrom and Cortex Command developer Dan Tabar all have to say about creating great games while still finding a way to make it through the hard times.

The next Flashbang game, Paper Moon, will be available to play on the Blurst site this coming May 1st. (source: GameSetWatch)

Boom or Blurst: A New Business Model for Videogames? (The Wall Street Journal)
A Collaboration: Paper Moon Launching May 1st (Flashbang Studios)

Windosill is an odd interactive toy disguised as a sequence of puzzles for the players to solve, available to play on both Windows and OS X operating systems. The game basically involves searching for a key cleverly hidden somewhere in each scene, and once you've found this particular item you can then use it to unlock the door that hinders your progress from the current room to the next.

Access to the first half of the game is free, but to play the second half you will need to purchase an activation code that costs three US dollars. (source, walkthrough)

Glum Buster is a charityware puzzle adventure game which took CosMind four years to create with the Game Maker engine. Comparisons to Seiklus are likely, since both share more than a couple of similarities in terms of sparseness in storytelling efforts and a heavy emphasis on exploration.

Besides using the cursor keys for movement, you would need to interact with objects scattered around the environment quite frequently using either or both mouse buttons. Holding the left mouse button fires a red shot at whatever it is that you're pointing at, while pressing the right mouse button allows you to activate certain objects or attract them towards you.

The solutions to most puzzles are usually contained in the same room, although some locations may span several screens long and wide. This is where one of the major flaws with Glum Buster rears its head, because if you encounter any difficulties solving a particular puzzle then you will be stuck at that area until you figure out the right thing to do.

Nevertheless it's one of those rare efforts that has to be played, especially if you have any fond memories of the first time you were introduced to Clysm's masterpiece. (source, interview)

Lilt Line is "a massively single player retro rhythm racing beat 'em up premiere musical space flight simulator action game with a dubstep flavour". That is, according to creator Gordon Midwood.

Coming to the iPhone/iPod Touch any day now, Different Cloth have just released the above trailer to show what Lilt Line is really about.

Chessmine is a short puzzle game consisting of eight rooms to explore in total, where players assume control over an unnamed protagonist who must grab the key found in each room and make their way to the exit safely. Chess pieces are placed around the board at strategic locations to prevent you from stealing the treasure, although they can only hurt you if you step on a square that's inside their normal movement patterns. Occasionally you can also acquire bombs and shields to create a new path around them.

The game automatically quits back to the desktop once you've solved the final room. (unzip instructions)

One of the games demonstrated during the Experimental Gameplay Sessions at GDC 2009. (source)

"The player takes the role of a shadow, therefore, a 2D character, cast upon a wall that exists in a 3D world. Other shadow objects, cast on the wall by 3D objects, could be moved, and in turn move the real world objects."

Mental Repairs, Inc. is a point and click adventure game in the style of classic LucasArts releases, created by Renzo Thönen with the help of the Wintermute Engine. You play the role of a machine psychiatrist named Henrik Liaw, who received an innocent emergency call during the night from a large corporation requesting for repair works to be done on their main computer with haste. Nothing ever goes smoothly in an adventure game, and once you're inside the building you quickly find yourself trapped with no clear exit from your little predicament in sight.

As a machine psychiatrist, you repair defective electronic devices by entering the machine's psyche and treating them from the inside. This involves using a wrench-like tool called the Katharsis Interface to establish a mental connection with the machine's articificial brain, then finding a solution to the problem before returning to reality once you've managed to sort things out.

There are less than twenty rooms to explore in total, and the game probably won't take longer than an afternoon to complete at most. You can also highlight interactive spots and exits by pressing the space key or clicking on the green magnifying glass icon on screen. (walkthrough)

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Activision, Ubisoft and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Alerted by Tale of Tales, the release dates for two highly-anticipated IGF finalist games had been spotted over at Steam's web site. Erik Svedäng's Blueberry Garden is set for a release sometime in May (that's next month), while Alex May and Rudolf Kremers' space colonization game Dyson should be out on the 31st July, 2009.

No price has been set for both games yet, although there is still time to grab the latest Dyson build from the official download page before it is released later this summer.

UNCF is a game that resembles cactus' xWUNG, in which you take out enemies by swinging the ball that is attached to your character. If you come in contact with any of the enemies or their projectiles, you lose a heart. Lose all four, and the game ends. Fret not though, you can resume the game from your last attempted level by selecting the continue option from the main menu.

Hearts can also be restored by collecting power-ups with the heart symbol that appear occasionally on screen. If you happen to acquire a power-up item, you can activate these using the left mouse button. There are four stages to play in total. (source: Superlevel)

Bang! Heroes is a western platforming shoot-em-up with some pretty nice Steampunk-style graphics and a lot of gun-totting.

Created by the guys behind Whirled, the game has a really great feel to it and has tons of little features to give a worthwhile gaming experience, like upgrades and achievements. There's also multiplayer, but at the moment it has been taken down due to server issues. Sounds like it will be a lot of fun to play against a friend, though.

Give the game a whirl over at... well... Whirled.

Warning: Contains cocks. Lots of them.

Space Phallus is a retro horizontal shooter with a naughty theme, created by the author of Bullet Candy. Here you pilot the disembodied head of a dog, fighting against hordes of evil space body parts with only an assortment of three weapons at your disposal. Thankfully these weapons can blow away anything that stands in your path, just as long as you use them wisely and sparingly.

This updated version now comes with two new stages, accessible by pressing the 2 or 3 key on your keyboard when the main menu is shown. The game is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. (previous mention)

CAGE STG is actually a pretty good vertical shooter created in the style of Hudson Soft's Star Soldier, and though the trial version only features three playable stages the game does not limit your playtime by any means. You even get to unlock additional characters to use if you manage to fulfill a condition or two by the end of the third node.

To upgrade your default weapon, simply grab the small blue gems that appear occasionally when you've vanquished an entire wave of enemies. (source, download page)

Bummin' a Ride is essentially an Oregon Trail-type game with small arcade games replacing the usual random events found in the original. Your character is a bum who had just inherited a million dollars, but to collect the money he must make his way from one end of the country to the other in under twenty-five days or lose it all to a needy orphanage.

There are a variety of mini-games included, but most of these are derivative of the run and collect type, plus you won't have much time to do most of them because of the urgency in getting to your destination as quickly as you can. This is where the game suffers because it requires too much walking to get from city to city, and hitchhiking seems to be a rather strenuous exercise due to the fact that you'll be losing health whenever your protagonist raises his thumb to flag down a ride. (Kongregate mirror)

Warning: Contains nudity.

Naked Festival is a Flash browser game with a simple concept, some novelty value, but very little gameplay. There are three modes to play in total, but each one carries the same objective. Simply click on a dressed man to remove his clothes, and try to make sure that none goes past you while still wearing something. The game also ends immediately if you accidentally click on someone who is in their birthday suit.

To rack up combos, just remove the same type and color of clothing continuously for bonus points. (source: Mouse No)

Everything about RotatSpin makes me want to cry. The music, the precision-timed jumping, the mind-hurting angles.

Yet I couldn't stop playing it for a good, long while. The game is simple - press forward to run fast, backwards to slow down and space to jump. Get to the end of a level, go on to the next one. Hit any of the obstacles, however, and you'll explode into pieces. There's also some strange camera-twisting going on to hurt your mind a little.

I got to level 28 before I decided to call it a day, mainly because it is what I like to call 'impossible'. If anyone can beat it, please don't tell me. I may break.

Give it a spin (ho!) over at Armor Games.

Alchemia is a point and click adventure in which the hero arrives in "an underground city full of strange things" and must help his friend find a new body.

There's no knowing what the gameplay will be like as of yet, but the screenshots posted on the official site look quite beautiful. Springtail promise that the game will feature "many complicated puzzles and riddles" so I guess we can expect it to be quite difficult.

The setup of the game sounds quite strange. Set in two parts, creator Tomas explains:

"The first [part] will be available online for free, second part will be available to download for a symbolic payment"

In other words, they hope players will enjoy the first part so much that they will be dying to part with their cash to continue on into the second part. We shall see if it works out for them when the game is released in the next few months.

After being delayed last week due to "the long march across the Siberian tundra", Mezmer Games' Stalin vs Martians now appears to have a new release date set if the new addition to Steam is anything to go on.

The upcoming RTS, which involves destroying Nickelodeon-like aliens with a Russian army lead by a 40-foot Stalin, has now been added to the Steam store which gives a release date of 29 April 2009.

Meaning we could be helping the Russians to victory is less than a week! Hurrah! Until then, there is a 20% discount on the game at both Steam and Direct2Drive.

When The Bomb Goes Off is a look into the lives of lots of different people 5 seconds before a huge bomb turns them into ash. This is all achieved through Wario-Ware style minigames - some of them with obvious solutions, others not so.

It's all pretty odd and sometimes quite humourous. At the end a score is given to show how many of the situations you correctly acted out.

If this doesn't sound like your type of thing, at least try it just for the music. It's over on CoolMoose.

Source: Tom's Blog

A trailer for just one of the many games that Adult Swim is planning to add to their library of games in the coming weeks. (source)

Not a real game, of course. Although Jesse Venbrux is really working on something new. (source)

The Bryant Collection is essentially a collection of unrelated IF stories, originally sourced from a box of notes and story drafts that the developer had acquired from a yard sale sometime in 2008. The envelope marked 'Undelivered Love Letter' is this writer's pick, simply because of the way the author has limited your mobility and actions to one single scene in an airport.

There is however one major flaw with Gregory's IF collection that could not go unmentioned. Most of these stories have very little puzzle elements in them, save for figuring out what to do in each scene so that the story may progress. But it is also because of this recurring theme that causes the inclusion of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle feel so out of place, something that only persistent IF veterans would appreciate in this package.

The game is playable using one of the many free Z-machine interpreters available for download, or with a JavaScript interpreter accessible here.

Gray is a mob control simulation game created by Intuition Games' duo Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend, where the challenge is to convince the rioters to change sides in an attempt to stop the conflict for good. This basically involves matching the wave patterns that appear when you try to strike up a conversation with any of the mob individuals.

A proper end sequence can be achieved once you've repeated the same steps a couple times over (albeit with increasing difficulty).

Pandaland (download page) is a short 2D platformer created by Svante Danielsson using Game Maker, with music and level design contribution provided by Jonas Eriksson and Nils Vaernö. There are only four levels to play, but credits should go to the developers for keeping the adventure short enough without overstaying its welcome. A challenging hard mode is also revealed once you've beaten the one and only boss encounter in the game.

Being a Game Maker production, you can switch between full screen and windowed mode using the F4 function key at any time. (more info)

Game Informer Magazine are running an Indie week all this week, diving into the depths of the big indie revolution.

Days one and two of their week-long feature are now up. Day one, titled 'What Does It Mean To Be Indie?' features some great interviews with the likes of 2D Boy's Ron Carmel and our own Simon Carless and reads from the perspective of someone who is just realising how awesome the indie scene really is.

Day two concentrates on 'The First Five IGF Nominees' - i.e. Between, Blueberry Garden, Brainpipe, Carneyvale Showtime and Cletus Clay.

It's a great read and a feature I'll definitely be following for the rest of the week. Go give it a read at Game Informer.

The Magi and the Sleeping Star is a game aimed at raising awareness of Type 1 Diabetes. Developed by Game Equals Life, this 'health education game' follows the story of a magical hero who must use his powers to save the world while keeping himself healthy all the while.

Adam Grantham from GEL explains:

"When the player’s blood sugar is too high or low, his powers are reduced or even nullified. This makes it impossible for the player to achieve victory until his blood sugar returns to a healthy level. Players are even rewarded with increased power when blood sugar is kept at ideal levels.

Players must test blood sugar, choose healthy food, count carbohydrates and deliver appropriate amounts of insulin. This teaches the players to take full responsibility for diabetes management and puts them in a position to deal with its real-time affects in exciting gameplay situations."

Gameplay aside, it will be very interesting to see how this edu-athon goes down with gamers. On the one hand it's a novel idea and the driving force behind Magi is clearly a worthwhile cause. Of course, at the same time there will be those who see it all as a rather silly concept.

Can blasting monsters in a fantasy world and devoting time to 'good blood sugar management' work together?

All twenty-seven songs from the World of Goo soundtrack, transcribed and played on the piano by Sebastian Wolff. The free sheet music is available from his site, a link to download the MP3 recording is in the video description, and the original soundtrack can be acquired from Kyle Gabler's portfolio page. (source: 2D Boy)

World of Goo Piano Medley

What's this? Why, it's an awesome-looking 3D tower defense game for the iPhone and iPod Touch and it's coming soon!

Star Defense, coming next month to your iThing, is looking mighty fine. From the official site:

"Defend seven different planets and space installations against the vicious attacks of 10 types of aliens using a large arsenal of defense towers. Earn over 35 achievements, unlock extra towers and ultimately rid the galaxy of the alien scum on each of the three difficulty settings!"

If you're into your tower defense games, this could well be your new favourite thing to do on a long bus journey. Pricing information isn't available yet, but details on the game can be found at Rough Cookie's site.

Source: Offworld

The Nintendo Channel crew speaks to Nicklas Nygren (Nifflas to most), Chris Schlarb and Tyrone Rodriguez about their upcoming Wii release, due out in September 2009. Tyrone had also hinted that a video interview with Pixel will be posted up sometime soon. (source)

Nintendo Channel: Night Game - GDC interview

Portwall LD is X-0ut's barebones effort at remaking Valve's sleeper hit in under 48 hours for the friendly Ludum Dare 14 competition. Similar to Portal, you can create two separate pathways using the left and right mouse buttons, but the gravity in this contest submission is rather harsh and the player does not have heel springs to save them from a long drop to the ground.

Veterans who have memorized the quickest routes for every chamber in the original can expect to be challenged here, although there's not a lot of levels to play at the moment due to time restrictions presented by the contest rules. (updated version)

I've just dispatched a birdman, a guy with a pig face and now I'm about to take on some kind of huge rhino thing. The bird and pig felt my knuckles, but this guy is going to get the special treatment - a big, ruddy pole to the face. This is going to be sweeeet.

Zeno Clash is just plain brutal and quite brilliant. I must admit, like many who were awaiting its release, I was anxious to see how the hand-to-hand combat felt. So imagine my joy when I find that not only is it tweaked to what feels like near-perfection, but my fists of fury are every bit as powerful as I'd hoped.

Warning: Contains flashing images which may cause photosensitive epileptic seizures.

You Got a Demonwall! is one of the more arresting submissions for the Ludum Dare 14 competition, partly due to its unabashed use of epileptic-inducing effects on nearly all objects to be found in-game. Playing as a wall of doom which can only move forward or sideways, the objective of this particular romp is to smash through as many buildings and vehicles as you can for scoring purposes. The wall grows in size as you progress from screen to screen, but shrinks when a chopper hits you with one of their shots.

There is no way to lose the game, unless you count scoring low as a losing condition.

We should have been socking it to those alien scum today, but alas, Stalin's defense against the Martian race has been delayed until later in the month.

Blaming Stalin vs Martians' delay on "the long march across the Siberian tundra", Mezmer Games executive producer Tom Soderlund explained that "A dictator is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to".

So now we have to wait even longer to see if it's actually any good! Fortunately, as a sorry for the delay, the 20% off at Direct2Drive is going to keep running until the game finally gets released.

We will of course report on the new release date as it is announced.

Fluster is a nice little platformer involving a vacuum cleaner and lots of suck/blow related puzzles. It's only in the alpha stages right now, but it's playable and worth a go.

The art direction is pretty awesome and the puzzles themselves aren't half bad. Note that there isn't any sound as of yet (or at least there wasn't any for me) which takes away from the experience, but all in all this is definitely shaping up to be something brilliant.

Try it out on Schearer and Zielinski's site Another Early Morning.

Mind Wall is a puzzler that is similar to Kokoromi's Super Hypercube, where players would have to fit a coloured block through a wall before it is done automatically for them. The shape in play will always appear as a silhouette at the bottom left corner of the screen, and a one-square hole has to be made somewhere on the wall before this shape will pass through successfully.

This Ludum Dare 14 competition entry is available for both Windows and OS X platforms.

Tombed is dessgeega's submission for the Ludum Dare 14 competition, a short game that borrows some gameplay elements from Mr. Driller. Danger Jane is on a quest to raid an ancient tomb, but finds herself running away from a ceiling of spikes that threaten to squash her and end her endeavours prematurely. This is where you step in, as the invisible guiding force assisting her with digging through coloured blocks and navigating the winding passages that obstructs her path downwards.

The maze design is fixed, there is only one level to play, and an automatic checkpoint feature has been implemented to prevent frustration from having to restart a stage from the beginning.

Developed by students at the Utrecht School of the Arts, Triangulum is a 4-player co-op game. Eric Diepeveen, one of the designers on the project, explains:

"The goal of the game is to create triangle formations around enemies to trap them. The fourth player will have to charge the triangle to eliminate the enemies within."

Created in just 2 weeks, Triangulum is to be released "sometime soon".

Gray is a new game by Greg Wohlwend (Effing Hail, Dinowaurs), to be released soon on Intuition Games and all leading casual Flash game portals.

"The player controls a character [similar to the others] attempting to stop what seems like an endless riot. By interacting with individual NPCs in the riot, it’s possible to turn them to your side."

Gray Teaser Trailer

Stalin vs Martians and Zeno Clash are both on offer this weekend ahead of their releases - SvM on Monday 20th April and Zeno Clash on the Tuesday.

For the whole of the weekend, both games can be pre-ordered for special prices. Ridiculous real time strategy Stalin vs Martians has 20% off at both Gamersgate and Direct2Drive, putting it at $16 (rather than $20).

ACE Team's Zeno Clash has an even better offer, with their first-person punch-em-up losing a healthy 50% off its original asking price at Direct2Drive. That's just $10! If you haven't pre-ordered it already, I suggest you go and do that right now.

Both offers will be gone by the end of the weekend, mind, so don't dilly dally!

New show, new site, new shoot location, new games, same old crew. Anthony Carboni (with the help of Jon Rivera) takes to the roof for the shoot, talks about the gravity-shifting platformer And Yet It Moves, then proceeds to highlight a couple of noteworthy indie games (Sword Calibre pictured above) released over the past week or so.

Bytejacker Episode 032
YouTube version

We mentioned Raycatcher back when it was released in March, summing up that, while it is a lot of fun to turn your mp3 collection into a stream of rays and catch the light in a huge, glowing sphere, it's not so fun to pay $20 for the experience.

Which makes me very pleased to hear that Raycatcher is much better value for money since a recent price drop. Impulse are selling the game at $4.99 (£3.34), while the game is also just released on Steam for the same price, but with 10% off until April 24th.

Raycatcher is definitely worth $5, so if the price put you off the first time around, give it another look in. Read the IndieGames review for our opinions.

OK, so this isn't a post about a game, but hear me out! Henrik Nåmark of You Have To Burn The Rope fame has been collabarating on a music video called Reload Press Play.

Henrik was the guy who wrote and sang the song at the end of YHTBTR (titled 'Now You're a Hero', useless trivia fans) and here is he again singing about his life as a computer game. There's all sorts of things trying to kill him - cats, birds, old women - you can't get much more indie than that!

On the face of it, Headspin: Storybook is basically a 'Spot The Differences' game, but the way it is all presented is rather lovely.

Provided with an open book, all the pop-up on the right-hand page must be the exact mirror image of the left-hand page to progress. There's a time limit involved, of course, and clicking each object will make it spin and face the opposite direction.

It's lovingly illustrated and the calming music really adds to it. It also gets extremely confusing in later levels as you scour the scene trying to find all the pieces that need spinning as quickly as possible.

Give it a play at State of Play.

Source: GameReclaim

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Telltale Games, Blizzard and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Now this is really interesting. Garden is a relaxing click-a-thon by a Mr Michael Todd (or Spyeart, as he calls his site). Supplied with a dull canvas, the idea is to use a combination of mana and focus to paint a beautiful garden scene.

Each painted section will give off more mana, allowing for more of the image to be created. As time goes by, more focus will need to be bought using your mana supply to allow the already-painted bits to flourish even more.

It's a simple yet beautiful idea and a very calming experience. The question remains though... Is it a game... or art... or both? Can a game be art?

...oh oh. Let's not go there, shall we? Grab a piece of the relaxtion from Todd's site. (Direct link)

As a testament that ACE Team's The Malstrums Mansion is a project which took twenty years to make, the developers have posted original design documents for the tribute adventure game on their official site. The docs include sketches of each room, location descriptions and even an items list. Though most of the text is not in English there is still a certain draw in seeing how much the Flash game is a direct translation of everything the team wrote back in the late 80's.

Their debut commercial release Zeno Clash will be released this coming April 21st, but customers who pre-purchase the game from Steam gets a generous 25% discount for being one of the early birds.

Related:
About The Malstrums Mansion
The Malstrums Mansion game
The Malstrums Mansion walkthrough
ACE Team Release Next Game: A ‘Point and Click’ Adventure (IndieGames)

Cavern Klämrisk is a physics-based 3D action game which features a man inside a semi-transparent basket, on a quest to descend into the Earth's core with only a trash bin as their solitary companion for the entire journey. Your objective is basically to keep the man inside the elevator for as long as you possibly can, a task made complicated by random sharp protrusions of the cavern walls that can knock the brave explorer out of his ride.

If the game lags or stutters a bit, you can turn off the music to make it run faster.

spidr is an action game not unlike messhof's You Found the Grappling Hook or String Theory, measuring only a measly 96 kilobytes in size. The objective is to grab all gems in each level before time runs out, using only a string of web to launch yourself from one place to another.

Any remaining seconds unused from the previous stage will be transferred over to the next one, with some extra bonus time added to the clock for acquiring all gems. The game supports mouse, touchpad and analog joypad controls. A linux build is included in the same zip package as well. (screenshots)

In 60 Seconds is a speed run platformer with multiple power-ups to collect, a couple of small areas to explore and a boss encounter to defeat. Grades are awarded based on how many power-ups you've managed to acquire during the course of the game.

Collectibles include additional health, new abilities, and even upgrades to existing abilities which can be used to access previously unreachable locations.

Thought I'd add to Tim's lovely selection of previews for today with this here one what I founded via RockPaperShotgun - it's the followup to hilarious point-and-clicker Ben There, Dan That! and it's called Time Gentleman, Please.

There's no details on when it will be out, but there's plenty on how it will compare to its prequel:

"It looks exponentially prettier, and I thought it’s about time I showed off some of the stuff that’s near-as-dammit ‘done’... Everything looks slightly crisper - it’s running at a higher resolution and with much more detail and care put into the locations, but still with that scatty BTDT look and feel.

There’s also the EmotionsEngine, which shows whether Dan and Ben are happy, grumpy or relatively indifferent to a scene."

There's even talk of 'particle effects'. Ooh, shiny! Well, while you're waiting for this to get released, go give Ben There, Dan That another go.

Issue 4 of the bi-monthly Independent Game Magazine is now available for purchase. From the IGM site:

"We have some new features and layouts in our new issue to coincide with our new website. In this issue: we relax with PSN’s flower, dash and blast our way through Caster, Adventure in the City of Malathedra, scheme away in Mayhem Intergalactic, manage an airport in Now Boarding, and more!"

They've also got info on the likes of Gratuitous Space Battles, Project Aftershock and all the IGF winners. As ever, it can be ordered in digital or paper form. You know, like a magazine. Grab your copy from their official site.

Two new screenshots from Amanita Design's upcoming adventure game Machinarium were recently posted on the official site.

(Don't) Save The Princess reminds me a lot of one of my favourite childhood games Chu Chu Rocket, and that's definitely not a bad thing.

You've captured the princess and now the knight must be thwarted in his attempt to save her. This, of course, involves placing arrow blocks all over the screen in an attempt to fling him around, eventually landing in the jaws of your pet monster. When the knight touches the force coming from a placed block, he will speed off in that direction. Stringing together the right path is the key.

The knight will also smash through any arrow block which he has already used before - another idea used by Chu Chu Rocket. While the game begins rather strangely, it does become quite compelling to play. It never really gets difficult and can be whizzed through in a good half an hour, but it's worth a play.

There's also a level editor with the option to save your puzzles for other players to have a crack at. Grab a piece of the knight-flinging action over on Alexander Shen's site.

[UPDATE: Jonathan has now posted on the official Braid blog a step-by-step guide on how to go about creating your own Braid levels. Huzzah!]

Jonathan Blow has confirmed the rumour that there is indeed a map editor for the PC version of Braid.

Some gamers with a little too much time on their hands had noticed that there is a parameter '-editor' which puts Braid into a sort of editor mode with the press of the F11 button.

Now Blow has posted on the Steam forums, explaining that there is indeed a way to make your own puzzles:

"After I get a new version out in a few days that fixes the problems some people are having, and when more people have played/finished the game, I am going to post some documentation for the editor. The way it works is you can make levels with the editor (up to a full game, potentially) and run that with -universe later... also a tool will be released that lets you take Photoshop files and import them into the game, if you want to put new graphics in your levels."

He then reveals that he'll be releasing "a little kit" soon for owners of the game to create their own worlds, complete with replaced sounds, levels and graphics.

David Hellman even appears to have screenshots of the editor in action on his blog, titled 'Developer Mode'. Pretty exciting stuff. I'm sure we can expect a barrage of user-created maps extremely soon.

Scarygirl is here! The flash game which involves platforming, adventure, puzzle and even fighting-game style elements is now available to play over at Scarygirl.com.

It's absolutely huge with over 14 levels of gameplay and it's completely free to play. Can't complain about that really! I'm keeping my opinion to myself on this one, but I'd love to hear what others make of it.

Play it in full at the Scarygirl site.

[UPDATE: Cogs has now been released through Steam and there is a demo available]

Cogs, the puzzle game where players build machines from sliding tiles, is released later today through Steam.

It'll be available for $9.99 which, as I pointed out in my review, is well worth it, even if sliding puzzles aren't really your idea of fun. Check out the Lazy 8 Studios site for all the info you need on Cogs.

Terry and Stephen aka increpare have been on and off creating Judith for quite some time, so it's great to see it finally released.

As we expected, you can really feel the input from both of their creative minds - it has the graphical look and feel we've come to expect from Terry and the story is exactly what you'd expect to come flowing from their combined thoughts (increpare especially).

It's also apparent why neither of them even gave the slightest description of what the game is about - even the smallest piece of information may spoil the game. Therefore I'm not going to say anything about it either - well, other than it's really brilliant.

One niggle I had - although I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation for it - was that at certain points later on in the game, you begin to lose full control and many acts are done for you. It just felt like I was being made to watch rather than do things myself. Of course, I might just be completely misunderstanding something.

Judith is available to download from Terry's site.

You'd be forgiven for not giving RCTiger a try the first time we mentioned it - I'm sure paying cash for a 5 minute drive around put lots of people off.

But now you have no excuse. The 'World's First Remote Controlled Internet Battle' is now free as the wind, with battles happening 24/7. I do not exaggerate when I say this is a must to try - you get to drive real life toy tanks with your keyboard. If that doesn't excite you, you must be dead inside (note: now that was an exaggeration).

If you don't have the time right now but want to know what it's like, read up on when Tim and I gave it a spin.

After many years and being mentioned in 211 entries in this blog (estimation based on a Google search) Braid is now out for PC -- you can get it on Steam as well as Greenhouse, Impulse, and GamersGate.

The best parts of the game for me were the puzzle design and the ending. The puzzles are the meat of the game, and they really do make you feel like a genius when you solve them, as opposed to most puzzles that are often more a matter of frustrating trial and error or multiple attempts until you get it right.

There are no really redundant puzzles, each one is important. It does feel as if there really was three years of work put into the puzzle design. As nice as the music and art are, the puzzle design stole the show for me. The puzzles also aren't just mental challenges, many of them make points about game design in general, referring to other games and suggesting how it could be done better, just through its puzzles.

The story may be a bit too obscure and require too much guessing for some, there's something of a metaphor between the mechanics of the game and the idea of being able to reverse things that you regret. And what it would mean to live like that, and what kind of person would wish for that.

The frame rate was a bit low for me, you probably need a strong computer to handle the game; if you don't have a pretty good video card, try the demo (119 MB) out first.

Although if the frame rate in the first world seems very slow don't lose hope, it (World 2) was by far the slowest for me, after that it ran fairly okay. I felt that there should have been more settings/options -- at least an option to lower the resolution or to reduce some of the particle effects for slower computers.

According to the SaintXi site, Light of Altair, penned in for a Q2 2009 release, "is a sci-fi colony building game with a deep plot". If you ignore the generic dance music over the top, the game is looking pretty nice.

Gameplay will feature colony building, city management and over 30 weapons, buildings, and ship-mods to discover.

Popcap's Plants Vs Zombies is coming May 9th and they've recently hired a temp worker to help get all the work done before release.

Here's your disturbing yet brilliant video fix for the weekend!

PlayFirst are having a 'April Friends and Family Weekend Sale'. Every game on the site bar two can be bought for 50% off the normal price using checkout code APRILFRIENDS, with the sale ending tomorrow night.

I've only actually played one game from PlayFirst which is Emerald City Confidential, but that is easily worth the cut price of $9.95, so I would suggest checking that out. The rest of their games are obviously more 'casual' than 'indie' though, so if you are thinking of giving one a go, I'd say grab demos first.

[EDITOR'S COMMENT: Other notable titles that might be of interest to indie game lovers - Oasis (an IGF winner back in the day), Fizzball, an Breakout vs. Katamari title and IGF finalist from Grubby Games, plus Chocolatier 2 (IF writer Emily Short has done good critiques of this interesting trading game series.)

Oh, and there's Mr. Biscuits - The Case of the Ocean Pearl?!?! OK, skip that last one unless you want to play as a 'lovable pug' investigating a mysterious cruise-based crime. Heh. And incidentally, Gamezebo's Steals & Deals news page is handy for keeping up with casual site deals - Simon.]

Kissma is a score-based horizontal shooter with large blocky sprites and liberal use of vibrant colours, in which players must try to score as many points as they can under the strict time limit of sixty seconds per game. The mouse is used to move the disembodied female head around, kissing is done by left clicking, and pressing the K key activates the special attack that clears the entire screen for just one time only.

A kisskey bottle will appear twice in each game, and grabbing these will bestow a random kiss power-up that can be used to spread the love quicker than the basic smooching could ever do. There are only four rank classes to achieve, with three of them already named inside the high score table. (source, gameplay video, Party-Tencho profile page)

Station's Golf is a golf simulation game created by SKT Products (of Moai fame) which offers just one hole to play. Only three shots are allowed per game, and after you've used up all of your swings the session ends with a results screen showing the final score and grade achieved by the player. Two options are then presented to you, where you can choose to watch a pointless and long-winded replay of your last game or attempt to pocket the ball into the hole once again.

A swing can be broken down into two steps, with the first being determining how hard the ball is to be struck by left-clicking when the indicator is between the min and max marks. You would then have to left-click again the moment the white bar is right on the middle point of the green area to hit straight. The ball is pocketed automatically if it touches any part of the flag, so you don't have to aim for the hole specifically to gain a special completion bonus.

You also gain extra points for hitting several commuters in a row with a single ball, but a score penalty is incurred if the ball leaves the borders of the station.

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Fuel Industries, Infinity Ward, THQ and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Super Ear Man Bros (Super 耳男 Bros) is an extremely difficult platformer in the style of The Life Ending Adventure, I Wanna Be The Guy and Syobon Action, where every step could be deadly and all traps are designed to take you by surprise. There are only a handful of areas to explore, but the precision and concentration required to surpass each could be too much frustration for most to endure. Thankfully someone had already risked his sanity to complete the challenge and posted recordings of their entire attempt online (with some fancy editing work done to trim the length of the videos, of course).

An extended gameplay video of Nicalis' upcoming release can be found over at IGN. Night Game should be out on Nintendo's WiiWare service this September 2009. (source)

Related:
Tyrone Rodriguez interview (IGN)
Road To The IGF: Nicalis Duo Talk Night Game (Gamasutra)
Night Game trailer

mimi-Panic is an audio version of the age-old Memory game where every speaker will play a tune when selected, and the player has to match speakers in pairs to remove all of them before time runs out. A time penalty is incurred whenever you pair up the wrong set of speakers, although there are enough seconds on the clock to make a couple of mistakes and still get through to the next round.

The first option presented to you at the main menu is a link to the tutorial page, while the next three allows you to access different collections of sounds and effects to play with. There are ten stages in each of the three collections. (screenshots, gameplay video)

Just under two weeks to go before we can get our Clash on, and ACE Team have released another trailer for the upcoming Source game.

Titled "Corwids of the Free", it's a who's who of the Zeno Clash world from the eyes of character Ghat, along with a bit of gameplay thrown in. It's still looking rather brilliant!

[UPDATE: A trailer for Braid created by David Hellman has been released, which can be viewed above]

Chris Evans from The Reticule points us in the direction of some lovely 'controversy' regarding the demo for the PC version of Braid. Ooh, I do love a bit of an argy-bargy on a Thursday night.

The PC edition of Braid is to be released tomorrow through a variety of distributors, along with a downloadable demo. However, it became apparent today that GamersGate had already started giving out the demo ahead of schedule.

After being notified via the Steam forums, Braid's creator Jonathan Blow described the situation as 'not cool'. The link was of course taken down soon afterwards.

At the end of the day, it's only a one day early leak - plus it's only the demo - so there's no real damage to speak of. However it's an excellent time to remind everyone that Braid is available tomorrow for the PC for $15 - in fact, you can check out more info via Steam now.

The guys over at Wolfire have been working on storylines and cutscenes for Overgrowth and have posted a few storyboards on the Wolfire blog.

It's pretty much the first sign of a script that we've seen from the game, so regulars to the blog are having a good old chinwag over whether the dialogue is a little too "b-movie" and "frivolous" or not.

Check out the sketches and judge for yourself.

Wadjet Eye Games have released a trailer for the upcoming Blackwell Convergence, the third in the Blackwell Series. Medium Rosangela Blackwell is back with her ghostly guide Joey Mallone in a story which goes as follows:

"A new film opens to rave reviews, despite its bloody history. A beautiful uptown office remains unoccupied, despite its prime location. A downtown artist berates himself for selling out, while a Wall Street investor congratulates himself on a job well done. Just normal life in the big city? Or is something more sinister binding these events together?"

The game is set for a June release. In the meantime, check out the Wadjet Eye site for more details on both the release and the other two in the series.

Shichinarabe is a Flash implementation of the card game known as Sevens or Parliament, where a player wins by emptying all of the cards from their hands before the other players do. All sevens must first be placed on the table before the first round begins, then players take turn to put down a card that follows a certain ascending or descending sequence. Aces come after Kings, and you can also place a King on the other side of the table if an ace with the same suit had already been played.

Effing Hail is a score-based action game where players attempt to damage as many buildings and airborne objects as they can under the strict time limit, using a hail storm and gusts of wind to create large hails of destruction. Hails grow in size the longer you keep them in the air, but for this to happen would need to position the cursor underneath a hail and hold the left mouse button to blow it in an upward direction. Hails which are too large will not be affected by the wind, but there is always an unending supply of hails to direct at anything that stands in your way of acquiring a top score. (Kongregate mirror)

ToneMatrix is a Flash-based sinewave synthesizer which translates the dots you've placed on a sixteen by sixteen grid into a simple tone-based tune that loops continuously. Some nifty special effects were laid down to make the whole package look nicer, although the version posted on the site does not currently have any sharing features or composition save functions yet. (source: Digital Tools)

high quality video

A 2-player platform shooter currently in the works. The game is half done, and should be out sometime this year. (web site, games repository)

Ultimate Vending Machine Challenge is an action game where the player's objective is to beat up a snack dispenser until it surrenders the solitary product held within, or until you concede defeat to the superiority of the machine. This requires tilting the machine until it starts to sway, punching at the spots marked by an X, then delivering the final blow when the dispenser tilts forward and the screens starts flashing. There are nine levels to play in total. (trailer)

We've all agonized over the solution to a sliding tile puzzle at some point. There's always a couple of pieces that just don't want to co-operate, and then once you've got those in the right position, now others have moved out of place... I'd say one of the only puzzles more frustrating than a sliding tile is the Rubik's Cube (is there anyone out there who has actually completed one of those things? I sure as hell haven't).

Cogs is Lazy 8 Studios' attempt at matching that frustration with the same level of fun. Rather than fit a whole picture perfectly into place, players must slide tiles around, some which have cogs attached to them, in order to line the toothy dials up and complete a number of different scenarios including blasting rockets into space and ringing bells in time with each other.

CO-OP, the new and much talked about program from the creators of The 1UP Show, dedicated its latest episode to independent games with segments on the Independent Games Festival and the Game Over/Continue? art show, which opened in San Francisco on the last night of the Game Developers Conference.

The show's first half shares footage of several IGF finalists and winners, such as Feist and Blueberry Garden, cut with the CO-OP group's discussion on the titles and interviews with the developers from the expo floor.

The four-student DigiPen team behind Tag: The Power of Paint, specifically, have an interesting conversation about their first-person puzzle platformer's limited color palette and their aggressive play-testing method - video after the break:

okkuplektor is a stylish 3D shooter where the objective is to search for a yellow box hidden somewhere in each stage, usually placed inside castles which are to be destroyed before revealing their prizes. Weapons and ammunition have to be collected before you can attack any enemy ships, indicated by the buttons and counter at the bottom left of your head-up display. Health is shown as a row of white bars at the top of the screen, and if your ship is damaged by enemy projectiles you can replenish this gauge by collecting the blue triangles found sporadically in some levels.

You only have three ships to use when attempting to complete the entire journey. When all three of the large white boxes shown on your display panel are gone this means you would have to play the game from the beginning once again. There are roughly ten areas to explore in total, and the encounter with a large snake-like creature is the last room you will visit in this TIGSource Cockpit compo release build. Note that when starting okkuplektor for the first time, the game will take a few minutes to precalc data and decompress audio files. This process is only required to run once, although it can be interrupted at any time by pressing the escape key. (direct download link, gameplay video)

Know that spare cash you've been saving for when an awesome deal or two pops up? Prepare to part with it.

Greenhouse have got a few indie titles on offer this week at the low price of $9.95. First up is Penny Arcade's RPG-em-up 'On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One'. Then you've got Hidden Path's 'Defense Grid: The Awakening' - if you don't own this game already, $10 is a ridiculous price for it, and you should grab at it RIGHT NOW.

Finally the only-just-released 'And Yet It Moves' by Broken Rules is indeed just $9.95. Again, it's a must buy - read our exclusive review to find out exactly why.

Three fantastic offers there. Ta very much, Greenhouse!

I found it quite absurd that there's no sound to complement this trailer, but I was also rather excited at the prospect of featuring our first DSi-Ware indie game here at IndieGames, so I said "meh" and gave it a post anyway!

Developed by a Mr. Hugo Smits, Flipper! is a game all about helping our hero find his lost goldfish, using the DS stylus to blow up walls, build staircases and connect bridges. Originally meant for the DS, it looks like it could be a nice little title.

We'd like a little bit of music to accompany the next trailer though please, Mr Hugo sir!

Terry and Increpare were meant to have released Judith over the weekend, but Terry reports on his devblog that the game "is taking just a little bit longer than expected" - however, we are promised that "it shouldn’t be too much longer". Hurrah!

I mean, a collab game from these two is surely going to be something worth playing, right? They did in fact start work on this back in December (check this blog entry for older screenshots), and yet since the very beginning we have not been given a single hint regarding what the heck it's even about!

Let's hope they get round to finishing it in the next few days.

Suffering from a case of too many punctuations, Enviro-Bear 2000: Operation: Hibernation (created for TIGSource's Cockpit Compo) is a physics-based driving simulator where the objective is to assist a bear eat just enough food before going into a long hibernation sleep. Being drowsy and all, the bear's mobility is limited to just one paw, hence the wheel, gear shift and pedals can only be operated one at a time. You could place an object on the pedal to help with the driving, although the unpredictability factor may do more harm than help with the situation.

The bear solely eats berries and fishes, so only by driving through a berry bush or a pond full of fishes wil you be able to fill the inside of the car with the right food to consume. Once you've eaten enough, then it's off to one of the caves to sleep for an entire year. Objects which obscure your view or impede your ability to drive can be removed from the car by grabbing them and throwing them out of the window or roof.

There's a slight problem with this release though. The difficulty curve is rather unforgiving at times, especially when you've reached year five and allowed only sixty seconds to fill the bear's stomach with food. You can switch to full screen mode by pressing the Alt and Enter key. (download page, gameplay video)

Star Cannon: Invasion Formation is a 3D shooter in which you have to protect three separate cities from being destroyed by a hostile alien invasion. This involves shooting at them with any of your three weapons accessible using the keys 1, 2 and 3. Enemy locations are always marked by a red squad icon placed above the troops or ships, making them easier to spot on screen and disappearing only after all units in that squadron have been dispensed with.

Holding down the left mouse button fires whatever weapon you have currently selected. Cities, ammunition and shields also automatically regenerate when not being depleted by one cause or another. This TIGSource Cockpit compo build does have a couple of problems (for example randomly crashing back to the desktop after several minutes of play), but the developers have promised to look into these issues and will hopefully resolve them sometime soon. (unzip instructions, gameplay video)

I'd be lying if I said that I have any idea what triptych is about, but I think maybe the point of Increpare's latest work is to decide the meaning for yourself.

Created for the Dundee Game Jam, triptych is a simple text-based game in which you simply choose options with the space bar. Everything seems normal until a couple of options in, the narrative begins to take a rather odd turn.

The first few goes yield gibberish, but then now and again the crazy talk keeps back for just a little bit longer and you can actually try to work out what is going on. What does the gibberish mean? Is the main character trying to forget something terrible which happened in the past?

Grab a copy from Increpare's site and decide for yourself.

Puzzle Bloom is a 3D puzzle game created by a group of DADIU students, where players get to assist a kind tree spirit named Canotila restore life to a cluster of islands which have lost all of their greenery in the name of development and industrialization. This basically involves floating from the back of one creature to another, as she subtly persuades the inhabitants to carry out tasks that her frail body could not do.

The Unity plugin has to be installed to play, and there are only two islands to visit in this version. (gameplay video)

There's been no news at all regarding Klei Entertainment's Sugar Rush for some time now and, since revealing their new title Shank recently, followers of Sugar Rush could be forgiven for wondering where the future of the game is headed, especially since Klei stated that they were "currently unable to really respond to questions about [Sugar Rush] right now".

Worry no more! There has been an official update:

"The game hasn’t gone away.

Since the shutdown of Nexon Publishing North America, there’s been a ton of inquiries regarding the fate of Sugar Rush.

Nexon has been amazingly great to work with during the difficult transition, and the current result is that Klei has retained the rights to Sugar Rush, and remain committed to the title.

As of yet, both Klei and Nexon are exploring multiple options regarding Nexon’s publishing of Sugar Rush in North America and no final decision has been made."

So while this isn't exactly a definite "Everything is OK!", it's great to know the title hasn't died.

According to creator Jasper Byrne, Rockabilly Head may or may not be about rockabillys (or should that be rockabillies? Who really knows) at all. The last dream of a dying man sat on a train, Rockabilly Head follows his train of thought as he sets out to be a great rockabilly.

Of course this involves stepping into his own head and tapping keyboard buttons in rhythm to impress other rockabillys who have quite a lot to say. Yes, this is your crazy fix for the weekend and it's pretty fantastic. Everything about the game is special - the graphical style, the music you just can't help bounce along too - it even has 4 different endings to find, depending on how well you dance.

And Jasper developed the whole game in 2 days. I call genius on this one. Give it a go and then read his postmortem.

A short clip featuring several IGF award winners being interviewed by Mr. Hatfield. (high quality video)

Super Jail Escaper is a game created by Jan Willem Nijman in roughly fifteen minutes for a friendly one hour Poppenkast competition. You assume the role of a prisoner seeking to escape from a maximum security jail, but of course the alarm had already gone off before you are even out in the open.

The F4 key can be used to switch between full screen and windowed mode. Only the cursor keys are required to play this game. (download link, high score table)

On the heels of the first YouTube-posted Mega64 clip that originally debuted at the Game Developers Conference's IGF and Game Developers Choice Awards, the comedy skit crew posted two more videos from the event.

The first of which is this stirring homage to both independent games and Chris Dane Owens' romantic fantasy music video for Shine On Me (part of a trilogy!):

If you end up humming the song all day with the words "Have you played World of Goo? Feels like God is kissing you" stuck in your head, you can download the MP3 for “Topher Great Payens - The GDC” from Mega64's site. Also, a quick warning -- posting a link to this YouTube video in your work's Campfire chat room will result in something both embarrassing and horrifying.

The second Mega64 video uploaded today uses less horses and more punches to promote the indie gaming agenda:

The latest collab from John and Joey over at Armor Games, Fox Fyre is a bit like Tanks-style gameplay minus the turn-based play and with tons of different options to choose from.

Set atop the Northern Lights (and quite possibly the only game ever to feature Aurora Borealis, or at least to my knowledge), the key is to build up the cash by aiming well and firing lots, then buy more powerful cannons and shields to take out further, more difficult enemies.

Seems a little meh at first, but definitely picks up once your opposition work out how to actually aim. Only 5 different types of missile can be equipped at once, so working out the most efficient set of destructives is essential.

Take to the skies over at Armor Games.

Kyobi is a Columns-style stack-em-up with a physics twist. Your job is still to match 3 or more of the same colour, but once the blocks land they are not stuck down - any square can be grabbed and thrown around the playarea. All the surrounding blocks will react when collided with and launch themselves around too.

It all adds up to an incredibly simply, incredibly fun little arcade mode which is very addictive. It is quite noticeable that once the container begins to fill rather high, simply throwing random blocks around will usually result in the majority finding 2 other partners and your workload decreasing rapidly. While this might sound like a cheap way to win, it actually adds to the frantic pace and looks brilliant.

Give Kyobi a try. There's also a postmortem by creator Richard Davey.

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Realtime Worlds, Krome Studios, A2M, and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

I had already decided before April 1st that I'd choose one, maybe two of the best April Fool's jokes to post about. The first came yesterday, but today I just couldn't resist posting this beauty from Terry Cavanagh. I must admit that for a good 10 seconds my eyes lit up at the thought.

Terry has announced the sequel to his brilliant Don't Look Back. Cunningly titled Don't Look Back 2: Stop Looking Back, he explains:

"Don’t Look Back 2 is an improvement in almost everyway; more action, more jumping, more explosions, and more colours.

The game’s basically an arena shooter/racing game with RPG elements. As you defeat more and more waves of Maenads, you pick up shotguns, chainguns, jetpacks, and nukes."

You can check out the trailer for the upcoming sequel over on his blog. It's an absolute corker. This game is going to be SWEEEET.

About a week ago I began trying out a new release by Subsoap called Faerie Solitaire. It's one of those 'does exactly what it says on the tin' titles - this is Solitaire. With fairies.

Lame, huh? I can play Solitaire for free, it came with Windows! And fairies? No, I knew straight off that this was not going to be a highlight of my week. So begs the question... why can't I stop playing the damn thing?

Described as a 'Political Platform Puzzler', Clover is to be released sometime soon via Xbox LIVE Community Games for the grand old price of 400 Microsoft Points.

Deejay from Binary Tweed has made us aware of a barrage of Clover screenshots for you to feast your eyes on and they don't look half bad - there's definitely a distinct graphical style going on. The main character was recently scrapped and redesigned, with his new look adorning these screenies.

But will the game be any cop? All will be revealed with the release this month.

Broken Rules' And Yet It Moves will be released in a few hours via the official AYIM site, Steam and Greenhouse.

If you've yet to read up on the gravity-flipping platformer, give our review a gander for everything you need to know. Then grab a copy of the demo off Steam and try it yourself! We reckon you'll be entertained.

The ACE Team guys haven't even got Zeno Clash out of the door yet and already they are bored of it and have decided to move on to doing exactly what they always dreamed of - making point and click adventures.

Andres Bordeu of ACE Team explained to us:

"We’re exhausted now that we are reaching the end of the development cycle of Zeno Clash. It’s been two hard years of little sleep and a lot of work, so we are announcing that after Zeno Clash we will not continue to develop such ambitious projects.

Instead we will focus in smaller titles with shorter development cycles. Our new direction will be ‘point and click’ adventure games."

And true to their word, 'The Malstrums Mansion' is already available to play for free! Surely this change of direction will make them millions in the long run. Indeed, all the big indie developers of this generation should look to ACE Team as the guys who started a revolution. Viva la ACE Team and all that jazz.

Anyway... give The Malstrums Mansion a go on this first day of the month of April.

Ska Studios' The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai was released yesterday for the Xbox Live Arcade and I've been giving it a play. It's a platforming side-scroller with a huge dose of the ow-eys - there's blood splatter everywhere, scary-looking knives, heavy-duty weaponry and comic violence galore.

On the face of it, it's pretty much a button basher - think The Behemoth's forte with internal organs throw in (or out, depending on how you look at it). There's an underlying skills set, however, for those looking for more depth, with plenty of button combos to make your blade-wielding crazy man pull off some equally crazy moves. Correctly finishing enemies with the right move reaps rewards so it's always worth laying off the controller for a second to check how best to take your victim.

No, we know what the footage is, it's for Frictional Games' latest project Unknown. See, the title is... never mind.

Penned in for 'an early Q2 2010 release', this early teaser gives us a taste of what's to come. And it doesn't look bad at all! More trailers please.

Redstar Fall is another physics-based block removal puzzler in the style of Totem Destroyer and Tumbledrop, where the main objective is to place the red star on a flat platform to complete a level. This is achieved by removing the striped blocks carefully, one after the other, in hopes that the star will land on the sweet spot safely.

You can use the space or R key to reset a puzzle at any time.