Warialasky's trailer for a big-budg apocalyptic science fiction movie based on Tetris is all too plausible in the era of Battleship: the Movie: "Official Tetris Teaser Trailer. The invasion is beginning. It is inevitable. You created them, you can destroy them! I did not create Tetris, I was but the messenger. Tell me how to stop them. This is an extinction level event. No, don't go! Let her go!"
The RedPower Minecraft project, which has built a programmable 8-bit computer for Minecraft, has done a new release. Engadget's Mat Smith sums up the new features: "The system is made from three separate cubes, representing the CPU, monitor and disk drive, respectively, all connected by ribbon cables. Part of pre-release 5 of the RedPower 2 mod, programmer Eloraam has also thrown in pumps and solar panels to keep crafters busy -- you're no longer limited to light switches. The emulated 8-bit processor can interact with other Minecraft blocks and while the computer can be programmed alone, its creator has been kind enough to include a Forth interpreter alongside the hardware, for those looking to get a little more involved."
Just in case you were wondering, the Battleship movie is as stupid as it seems: "I was floored by just what new levels of stupidity in cinema the film achieves. The premise is insultingly stupid, the dialogue more so, and I’m torn over what is more cartoonish, the cliché character stereotypes or the godawful CGI. It even has a laughable post credit scene trying to set up for a sequel, the possibility of which should have every one of you in a cold sweat." (via Making Light)
— Cory
Me and my colleague, Alexandra Keller, gave up our day jobs as web geeks to write this game, and almost two years later we finally have it:
Sky Alchemist - a puzzle game about transforming impure matter into pure forms, using heaters, coolers, and breakers, phase-specific collectors, and a centrifuge. We tried to be as scientifically accurate as possible - the heat capacities, hardnesses, and so on are taken from real data wherever we could find it.
It's set in a rich world - a human society that has achieved "Victorian-level" technology, but with a twist - women are the dominant gender. We hope to expand more on this in future releases of the game.
Fract is a bizarre-looking game described as "Myst meets Rez meets Tron" in a world "inspired by synthesizers." Sold. Jim Rossignol interviews the creators. [Rock Paper Shotgun]
John Scalzi attempts to explain privilege using a video-game metaphor in "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is." It's a good metaphor in that is illuminates more than it obscures (the litmus test for metaphors).
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
Now, once you’ve selected the “Straight White Male” difficulty setting, you still have to create a character, and how many points you get to start — and how they are apportioned — will make a difference. Initially the computer will tell you how many points you get and how they are divided up. If you start with 25 points, and your dump stat is wealth, well, then you may be kind of screwed. If you start with 250 points and your dump stat is charisma, well, then you’re probably fine. Be aware the computer makes it difficult to start with more than 30 points; people on higher difficulty settings generally start with even fewer than that.
As the game progresses, your goal is to gain points, apportion them wisely, and level up. If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.
r0r0 sez, "Ping Pong Ball Suction Construction is a pneumatic delivery system for ping pong balls as part of an art environment that's actually on display in Lille, France."
In Spring/Summer 2012 both guys were invited to create an installation version of Ping Pong Country in Lille’s Gare St. Sauveur. They were a bit tired of doing the same thing for such a long time over and over again, so they asked me to contribute some machinery to the environment in order to make it a bit different in its actual version. I came up with the devilish plan to offer the audience an opportunity for sabotaging the game in a playful way. “Ping Pong Country / Edition Sabotage” was born.
While some people play ping pong (preferably more than two players which then have to run around the table) another visitor can confuse the players via a separate control panel which is part of the sabotage edition: This destructive master mixer lets you switch the music to Heavy Metal (accompanied by disturbing strobe light); you can turn on fans on the ceiling for an additional wind challenge; you can just add some funny train and animal sounds with a supercool children’s toy, or – and now it comes – you can spill plenty of balls onto the ping pong table which you collected beforehand with the “Ping Pong Ball Suction Construction”!
Diablo III, one of the longest-awaited titles in gaming history, is to be released within minutes. The second game—released fully 12 years ago—sucked countless hundreds of my hours with its near-perfect combination of clicking, stat-grinding, loot-hunting, medieval gloom, clicking, and right-clicking. This is why I'm sat up at 11:30 p.m. waiting for a video game to unlock, like an indolent rat watching a ball of rat crack slowly tumble its way toward him through a translucent plexiglass rat crack dispenser somewhere in a lab at Merck.
Already the most pre-ordered game of all time, Diablo III will be familiar territory to anyone who has played an action RPG since Gauntlet: new character classes, slicker graphics and 2012's more reliable internet connections garnish what promises to be the same gloriously addictive co-op multiplayer fare.
Controversial changes include a real-money auction house for trading in-game gear with other players, and the lack of player-vs-player combat at launch. Having played the beta, I might add that some World of Warcraft-esque visual camp lightens up the series' necrotic Gothic airs a little—this seems to bother hardcore fans a lot.
But hey, it's not like they're about to just say no, is it?
For the fans of the Portal games, this is the latest 3d-printed weirdness I made, a puzzle box. It was much harder than I expected, went through 2 prototypes to get it to work out, and I still had to fix a lot of things with a knife and sandpaper to get this model to work just right. Not for sale though, unless you wanna do the delicate carvings to fix it yourself :)
Cards Against Humanity is the perennially sold out, CC-licensed card-game that turns madlibs into an anti-social exercise. They're sold out, but you can put your name down for future runs and expansion packs, or download and print a set.
To start the game, each player draws ten White Cards.
One randomly chosen player begins as the Card Czar and plays a Black Card. The Card Czar reads the question or fill-in-the-blank phrase on the Black Card out loud.
Everyone else answers the question or fills in the blank by passing one White Card, face down, to the Card Czar.
The Card Czar shuffles all of the answers and shares each card combination with the group. For full effect, the Card Czar should usually re-read the Black Card before presenting each answer. The Card Czar then picks a favorite, and whoever played that answer keeps the Black Card as one Awesome Point.
After the round, a new player becomes the Card Czar, and everyone draws back up to ten White Cards.
Interactive fiction is a thriving genre, but its commercial heyday is long gone. Here's Leigh Alexander on how Kickstarter could usher in text adventures' long-overdue renaissance: "There's more than just nostalgia contributing to a potential revival for interactive stories. A broader gaming audience means appetites for game forms we might have once called "casual" in another time -- and furthermore, the popularity of tablets and e-readers means there's a real appetite for game forms that take advantage of a culture now habituated to reading on luminous screens in ways prior generations were widely not. [Gamasutra] — Rob
Me and my colleague, Alexandra Keller, gave up our day jobs as web geeks to write this game, and almost two years later we finally have it:
[Amazon]
