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Mix in the speedy loop-dee-loops of F-Zero, the block-matching of Tetris Attack, and the psychedelic funkorama that is Frequency. Do all that, and have it done on whichever song you’d like. Invisible Handlebar’s AudioSurf is like that (well, close enough) and more. In fact, I’ve already laid down the defenses on this one. It’s all I played yesterday from my day off work, and I’m stilling playing it now knowing I’ll have to get ready in a few hours. But no! Every second wasted is every second not being put into trying some other mega-repetitive J-Pop track with it, and seeing what happens. Which is why I’ll have to resort to a quick quote from the developer’s home page and condense enough effort for this blog post to go and play more AudioSurf. It’s all descriptive and shit, assuredly.
In Audiosurf, you race down a futuristic and colorful highway. The highway, the traffic patterns, and the scenery are all synchronized to the music you have chosen from your own collection. You earn points for clustering together cars of the same color on the highway, and can compete with others on the internet for the high score on your favorite songs. Audiosurf builds a highway for any music CD, MP3, iTunes M4A, WMA, or OGG song you choose, so the experience that you have is totally up to you.
Great. Mission accomplished. Now that you know what’s the whole deal, here comes the part where I hastily drop a download link and scamper off for another play session. Starting here.
Gah, me and my big fat motor. Oh well, February is just around the corner. I think I’ll be able to handle not having to murder any first-borns before then. I’ve been practicing!
If you haven’t heard of Penumbra, you’ve got to start playing more indie games. Really! Having followed the game since the students released a tech demo and moving into the hugely successful Penumbra: Overture, I’ve been waiting for more details on its sequel, Black Plague. And while we are still no closer to a release date other than sometime in early 2008, we at least have new screenshots to look at while we wait to resume Philip’s spooky adventures in Greenland.
For those unfamiliar with Penumbra, it follows the story of Philip’s quest in Greenland to find his missing father. Stuck inside a massive underground mine, with hundreds of weird creatures after him, Penumbra uses a unique mixture of first person action elements along with survival horror, where the player has to use physics-driven combat to hide from and escape his enemies. If you haven’t already played Overture, please do so right now, considering it’s probably the best indie survival horror game out there. You’ve got my personal guarantee that you won’t be disappointed.
Hit the jump for screenshots.
Arctic Quest is a simple puzzle-solving game, where you finish each board by collecting falling crystals from the sky and placing it on the board. Once you finish a board, you move on to the next level. The boards take the shape of different animals, or according to the developers “…other tropical wonders.”
Azangara is a pretty neat arcade adventure game. You play the role of a sombrero wearing hombre, on the run to gather hidden treasure from castles in the long lost land of Azangara. The dark castles are littered with an assortment of monsters, puzzles and traps that make your life harder. Find keys to doors or force them open with crowbars to reach an exit while collecting as much as booty as you can on the way. The whole point of the game is to explore enough of the castle to gather all of the collectibles to get a high score.
Today’s indie highlight is a small diner game called Stand O’Food! NO! No cake for you! More like lots of burgers, sandwiches and lotsa layered stuff for the others, maybe even a Ribwich. The game starts off with a trendy colorful startup screen that will appeal to many. Jumping right into a tutorial you get a taste of what is about to come – cute isometric graphics adorable enough to be eaten like juicy burgers.
I had promised myself that I would write a review a day on whatever game Giveaway of the Day… well, gives away (be it good or bad). So on with it!
Ok, so what’s on today’s menu? A small 3D Breakout clone by the name of Real Ball 2, developed and published by Arcadebird. Real Ball 2 looked promising as it started out, reminding me a lot of the old, original Breakout games to DX-Ball to Ricochet.
A bit about the developer, before we start
Aliasworlds Entertainment was founded in 2001 by a group of independent developers: programmers, artists and designers. We formed the company to produce FUN, high-quality games. So, Gold Sprinter is our first creation made following this credo. We hope you’ll like it. We work hard to make games that you will enjoy.
Developer : Aliasworlds
Publisher: Alawar Games
Snowy The Bear’s Adventures was the first in line of a franchise of games from developer Aliasworlds.. The game puts you in the shoes, or rather feet of a happy and cheerful polar bear who throws snowballs and fights off monsters and has a ball doing so…
High time our site started having a regular feature corner covering particular areas of gaming intrigue. And what better way to start by talking about independent gaming! Ah, the joys of not having to hurdle through hyped launches and fanboy commentary. The joys of not having to know what the hell terms like “Parallax Mapping” and “Blend Shaders” mean. The joys of feeling glad that you don’t need a high-end configuration to enjoy a solid game or two programmed by enthusiasts that probably have even shittier real-life jobs than we do. Goodness gracious, someone throw me a tissue box already!
In our first fiery episodic expose, we’ll talk about Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! and Axel City. Double-team, hooha!
Remember our little rant on Secret Agent Doritos? Well, the Doritos brand finally announced that five lucky guys have been selected from over two thousand submissions to the Unlock Xbox challenge to have their own game made for the Xbox LIVE Arcade. Announcing the five finalists:
1. Doritos Dinosaur Dash by Mike Borland of Sewickley, PA
2. Doritos Presents UDC: Ultimate Dodgeball Champions by Devan Moore of Panama City, FL
3. Monkeys from Mt. Dorito by Juanito Lagasco, III of Algonquin, IL
4. PB’s Quest for Flavor by Jeremy Mattsen of Colorado Springs, CO
5. Rythum Racing by Kenneth Parker of Warner Robins, GA
What’s more, you will be able to head over to the contest’s website soon enough and participate in promotions to net some cool goodies including Xbox 360 consoles, Xbox LIVE Gold subscriptions and more, as well as getting to play the beta versions of these games sometime in October. Now a lot of people seem to be quite pissed off already with this selection, but I think I’ll actually reserve judgment until I can actually get my hands on them games later.
The winners for UK’s computer games design festival, Dare to be Digital, as well as nominees for a brand-new BAFTA, have been announced at a special event in Dundee. The Dare to be Digital contest, now running on 8 years, is supposed to be the “‘perfect pathway’ for young talent in the games industry”, with prizes worth £2,500 having been snatched up by Phoenix Seed with Bear Go Home, for ‘Innovation and Creativity’; Carebox with ClimbActic, for ‘Use of Technology’; and Voodoo Boogy with Ragnarawk, for ‘Commercial Potential’. They will now be the only nominees for the BAFTA Ones to Watch awards that will be announced later in October.
With students designing games ranging from cute and cuddly (Bear Go Home), to extreme adventuring (Climbactic) and the obligatory fantasy RPG where you battle enemies, not with swords, not with staffs, but the awesome power of an ancient and powerful electric guitar (Ragnarawk), the 12 teams that participated in the event were subjected to a plethora of poking and prodding by game industry macho-men, including Geoff Heath of NCSoft, Chairman of the judges, who said:
“The judges were incredibly impressed by the quality of the work they saw. All the teams have demonstrated an extremely high level of achievement in the 10 weeks and have clearly benefited from testing their games at Dare ProtoPlay.”
Hit the jump for the official press release, while we await even more goodness at the next upcoming indie game festival.