Nukezilla

NZCast 3.15: Sexy Vegans

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 08:00:56 +0000

This weeks show was recorded later than usual, as a result I am more ill and morose than usual and John’s grasp of the English language becomes rather loose. We still manage to cover the following topics though, so that’s good:

I Got Next.
Sexism and shooting up schools.
John likes ale.
A smashing header image from the talented FLanks.

Send an email to NZCast@Nukezilla.com with suggestions, questions or topics to discuss. You could even just send emails about vegan beauty contests or pictures of your dog, others have! Ask me and Wardrox stuff on twitter, or leave something in the forums.

Next week we will be recording a LIVE SHOW! Point your ears at Nukezilla on Monday 4th April at around 6pm UK time (find out when that is in your time zone here) to join in.

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NZCast 3.14: Delicious Pi

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:00:34 +0000

For our irrationally numbered show we decided to record an irrational podcast! But not really. In this week’s show we get inundated with super cool and sexy emails, but manage to squeeze in discussion about some of the following topics:

John’s laptop which is not unlike KITT from Knight Rider.
Dragon Age 2‘s dodgy Metacritic review.
Cosmic imbalance of the universe and Gavin’s happiness and misery.
Our insignificant and trivial existence in a finite and uncaring universe.

Please send an email to NZCast@Nukezilla.com with suggestions, questions or topics to discuss. Or even just send one with a mundane anecdote or something! Ask me and Wardrox stuff on twitter, or leave something in the forums.

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NZCast 3.13: Wardrox is a Hipster

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:57:04 +0000

This week myself and Wardrox talk about how awesome Rayban Wayfarers are and discuss whether or not really low cut v-necks can be worn with keffiyehs and still make a statement. But aside from that crap, we also talk about some of the following things:

John’s exciting AIDS results.
Blops is the most successful game in all eternity and will never be bested, until next year.
David Cameron is scared of disabled people.
Grazing on dried nuts and fruits. (Click here, magic code: WVH9G9T)

As ever you can ask me and Wardrox stuff on twitter, or leave something in the forums! You can also send an email to NZCast@Nukezilla.com. Seriously you can email anything, even whatever mundane thoughts you’re having whilst sat at your desk bored, share it.

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NZCast 3.12: It’s Satire, Idiot!

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Hello everyone. This week we actually talk about videogames again! At this rate we’ll soon be the best podcast on all of the internet. Ever. To achieve this monumental goal we decided to talk about, among other things, the following topics:

Gavin can’t stop playing with iDaft.
John is a terrible vegan.
Shitty defences you hear for the videogame industry.
Laserquest.
Shameless cross-promotion.

Ask me and Wardrox stuff on twitter, or leave something in the forums! You can also send an email to NZCast@Nukezilla.com including audio files containing poor impressions of Wardrox if you want!

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NZCast 4.14: Poop Sandwiches And Philosophy

NZCast 3.11: It’s Business Time

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:00:25 +0000

This week CEO/EIC/CFO/President/Wardrox and Co-Host/???/Vortex of pain and suffering/Half Left talk about TPS reports and the Weekly Estimated Net Usage System (henceforth WENUS). But not just that, we also talk about the following stuff sometimes:

Gawker redesign.
John got an HIV test.
Sony sues a hacker.
Apple products piss me off.

Remember to ask me and Wardrox stuff on twitter, or leave something in the forums! You can also send an email to NZCast@Nukezilla.com.

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NZCast 3.10: Sony Doesn’t Like Pirates

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 09:00:16 +0000

This week’s show was recorded in a different way than ever before. With webcams! John was blessed with my glorious visage the entire recording, I unfortunately had to look at a scruffy Manc resisting the urge to masturbate furiously, so forgive any stumbles during the transition (not that you guys get to see, mind). We discuss things kind of like this:

That Dead Island Trailer.
The “PlayStation Phone.”
John is a hipster.
I would rape Jesus just to say I had.

As per, remember to send any emails to NZCast@Nukezilla.com or Tweets to @GAllmond or @Wardrox with the #NZCast hash-tag! Leave a question in the forums too while you’re at it!

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NZCast 3.09: Back!

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:32:09 +0000

The NZCast returns from a… brief winter haitus in which nothing interesting happened. I went up a big building an John bought a nice chair. Hear the adrenaline-fuelled tales of them in this week’s NZCast. Other bits and pieces discussed include:

PSP2 NGP
In a break with tradition, Gavin actually bought a videogame.
So did John!
Didn’t get up to much in one of the most metropolitan cities in the world.
Battledrome returns!

Be sure to check out the shiny new forums and leave a question for the next show. You can also tweet @GAllmond, @Wardrox, or use the hashtag #NZCast or even send an email to NZCast@Nukezilla.com if you have anything to say/abuse to hurl.

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Communicast 3.02: Operation Valentine’s Panties

Kevin Murphy — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:00:24 +0000

Hey everybody. I’m hungover and Adushan is drunk on this Valentines Day edition of the Nukezilla Communicast. This week is weird and full of digressions, thanks to Adushan being under the influence and sticking his finger in his internet. On the Communicast we discuss:

Operation Panties, DOOD!
Persona 3
Activision closing down studios
The SOM

You can get the RSS feed here, and the MP3 here.

Communicast 3.01: The Revolution

Kevin Murphy — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 15:42:50 +0000

We’re back! The Communicast returns with a vengeance, with your hosts Kevin “Hawkeyed One” Murphy and Adushan “Nahsuda04″ Govender. This week’s ‘cast includes:

Adushan buys lots of stuff in the Steam sale
Kevin wasting a lot of time on Persona 4
Fallout: New Vegas is kinda shite
We somehow transgress into poor Chinese labor rights
Our Gaming Origins
Also, listener questions! YAY!

You can get the RSS feed here, and the MP3 here.

BBC Radio 4 Discusses Women Playing Games

Sam Jordan — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:55:10 +0000

BBC Radio 4′s Women’s Hour has delved into the subject of women playing videogames. The show, which is an hour of programming based on women’s issues and news, has spoken to Belinda Parmer, founder of Lady Geek TV and Aubrey Fry, creative director of Sine Wave Company.

Host Jenni Murray asked “how responsive has the gaming industry been to the kind of things that might engage women who don’t particularly want to be involved in Grand Theft Auto where you can run over a grandmother or beat up a prostitute?”

The pair tackled this question and discussed the kind of games women play, as well as the issues facing the industry.

Parmer has just completed a study on the trends of female gamers and their interests. She said that “casual gaming for women is anything but casual” and that “women are spending valuable time in the evening and really enjoying casual games.” The idea that women just play games on the bus is a myth, she said.

The predominant games played by women are casual games, said Parmer, with 50% of women surveyed playing casual games on their phones on computers. She cited the price, the simplicity and the overall level of fun as a to why especially older women are increasingly playing more games.

Murray asked why games have taken over other pastimes, such as reading. “It’s a displacement for television” says Fry, “in the 20th century cinema ruled the roost and in the 21st century as games become ever more visually stunning and engaging. They’re taking over.”

Finally, Lara Croft, the typical example of male-oriented stereotypes, is brought up along with the “helpless princess” model which, Parmer said, are “both male fantasies – this is how men want to see women, this is not how women see themselves.” Fry argued that women are less concerned with this portrayal, but when pressed conceded it is an issue and said that its cause is the male-oriented development industry – something which we’ve looked at before.

They touch upon other topics and it’s only ten minutes long, so check it out on the BBC iPlayer. Sadly, only folks in the UK will be able to listen directly, but you can download the podcast any where in the world. (This section starts around 19 minutes).

NZCast 3.06: Poopsocks And Positive Thinking

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 09:00:39 +0000

Upsetting isn’t it? Oh well. In an abnormally positive and happy show, Wardrox and myself keep things smiley and joy-filled. With some of the following points of discussion:

Puppies!
Rainbows!
John got rope burn on his neck.
Stickers and unicorns!
Gavin’s early Christmas dinner.
Battledrome results!

Send emails to NZCast@Nukezilla.com and tweets to @GAllmond and @Wardrox. You can also contribute to the totally awesome forums!

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NZCast 3.05: In Which Videogames are Discussed

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 09:00:40 +0000

Makes a nice change really. Joining us this week we have Ian Miles Cheong, known as a handful of names around the Internet, and as Stillgray on Twitter. He is in Malaysia and sleeps twice a day, awfully confusing I know. Experimental sleeping patterns aside, other topics include:

More Battledrome fun.
The Minecraft Man is surrounded.
John gets less fat REDUX.

As ever, spread the love on Twitter with #NZCast or ask a question @Wardrox or @GAllmond (that’s me). Leave something fun in the forums or send an email to NZCast@Nukezilla.com!

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NZCast 4.15: Zombie Apocalypse Revolution

NZCast 3.04: A Paddon on the Podcast, Allegedly

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:00:18 +0000

This week John and myself are joined by Ben Paddon (the guy from GJAIFW) for an extra concentrated dose of cynicism and disdain. Dire state of videogame journalism aside, other loathsome topics covered include but are not limited to:

SHOCKING Battledrome results?
EXCITING Mancunian cross-dressing [rumour].
おっぱいとケーキ。
PRESS RELEASE: Microsoft cool with Kinect hacking.

(See what I did there?) As usual, feel free to tweet at myself or wardrox, or use the #NZCast hash-tag to spread the word. 140 Characters not enough? Send us an email at NZCast@Nukezilla.com or leave something in the forum!

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Surprised Man: Rorgers and Beyond

Peter Silk — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 18:00:59 +0000

Kieran and I had our first game-making session quite soon after the end of the Ludum Dare event. The aim was to make a major update to March of the Rorgers, put it behind us and start thinking about our next project. The result is a pleasing step up from the original 72 hour release, but the process made me think a lot about about the way I work in general.

I think I now understand why improvisation is such an appealing mode of creativity for me. Improvisation is essentially a way of creating and implementing at the same time; that’s the nature of making it up as you go along. On hearing the term most of the time you would think of improvised theatre or performance of music, but it applies just as well to composing or art or writing. When I’m in that improvisation mode I’m happy, but when the gap between creating and implementing starts to widen, the trouble begins.

To explain some of this, I can turn to the weekend we spent working on the final release of March of the Rorgers, making some of the changes we wanted and tweaking and improving it in several significant ways. Whenever I was doing something such as creating new graphics or figuring out a solution to a problem, I was in my element. But as soon as a task turned from creating and figuring out to implementing something I had already done, it became tedious. It made me lose all patience for the slightest of obstacles; I would keep thinking “I know what I want to do, now just work!”

For me it’s all about the problem solving process, or the developing of ideas. When I order online I get excited about deciding to buy the thing, but then get irrationally annoyed than now I have to wait for someone to put it in a box and deliver it to me. If only there were some way I could order stuff a couple of days before I knew I wanted it. It’s the same with this game-making malarkey. Once I know how I’m going to do something I want it to work right now, no matter how unreasonable that expectation is.

It’s things like this that make me feel lucky to have a collaborator such as Kieran. It’s not quite as simple as “I set ‘em up and he knocks ‘em down”. We work together on ideas and from watching him code, I know for a fact that that he often has to creatively work his way to a solution which doesn’t have an immediate answer. But he certainly has a calmer, more focused approach to what I would label the “tedious busywork” that can form much of the implementation process.

The first advantage of this is that there’s only one, rather than two, drama queens in the room getting all stressed about, say, having to spend a few minutes copy-pasting half a dozen images. Even better, it helps put it into perspective for me and I at least try to grit my teeth and get the boring stuff over and done with.

The other week, while working on the next project, I had the most almighty hissy-fit at something that wasn’t working. It took a ticking off from Kieran to get me to climb down from my tree – and I don’t think I’ll be doing that again any time soon. I surely can’t be the only person with this sort of problem, so if any of this sounds familiar to you, my advice is to find yourself a collaborator you can work with. But you can’t have mine.

If you’re still here after that self-indulgent introspection I suppose you might wonder what we actually got up to on the Rorger weekend, practically. The answer is, well, quite a lot.

A number of new features have been added to the game in order to prevent the flow of Rorger traffic becoming too predictable and stable.
Some of the graphics have been tweaked so that the visuals maintain a more consistent perspective.
Several bug issues have been fixed, although much of this work was done before the weekend.
A brief in-game tutorial has been added as well as a high score table with the ability to submit online, on our website.

The fact that these changes took at least as long as the initial release is an interesting lesson in itself. The distance between a game that basically works and a game that works exactly how you’d like can be surprisingly large. It also seems to grow larger as each new level of perfectionism is applied. There are still things in the game that I think we both wouldn’t mind fixing, such as making the sound effect playback cleaner, but at a certain point the returns on time spent diminish so much that it becomes difficult to justify.

Doing another update to March of the Rorgers could take twice as long again and it is perhaps time to draw a line under it and take its lessons into the next project. This dilemma of whether to spend that time is one which I am sure every developer, large or small, must be familiar with.

And so to new things. We’re working on a much bigger project now, which so far I can tell you nothing about except that it is named Control and we also hope to take a break from that in December for Ludum Dare 19. Still, we couldn’t let go of March of the Rorgers completely, could we? So we went out with a song.

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NZCast 3.03: Sexy Leather Bondage Pants

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:00:42 +0000

Seriously go watch this stuff, I think it’s great. In this week’s show everything is going to shit. However it doesn’t hinder us from being as cynical and pessimistic about recent gaming news as ever! But keep in mind that neither me nor John have played any Kinect games, so don’t expect any talk about that. Christ no! But we do cover some of these other topics:

How much does Kinect cost to make?
‘The Kinect’ or ‘Kinect’?
The only animal-based clothes John will wear is leather bondage pants.
I pick on our most generous #1 listener.
John almost cries during the Battledrome.

Leave us iTunes reviews and forum questions and all sorts of goodies! This week we need you to send emails to NZCast@Nukezilla.com with something that will make Wardrox happy and that will make me ponder and go “hmmmmm.” This can be anything in the world, from .gifs of cats surfing turtles to academic journals on the correlation of rent prices to Siberian fishing vessel groundings.

Oh, and we’re playing the same game again for the Battledrome next week and will hopefully have a special guest.

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NZCast 3.02: University is Rubbish

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 09:00:05 +0000

Wardrox and myself come into this episode stressed as ‘owt through University and other fun stuff. Luckily, I don’t think it affected the show in a negative way whatsoever. Our depressing lives aside, topics discussed include:

The New New Xbox Experience makes Wardrox dizzy and confused.
Kinect is hilarious. We won’t be buying it.
Cliffy B hits women.
Emails with cats in them.

If you have any more cats to email to us please send them to NZCast@Nukezilla.com. You might also want to review us on iTunes or even ask a quesiton for the next show in the forums!

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NZCast 3.01: For The Thinking Gamer, Not The Gaming Gamer

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 08:00:56 +0000

If the classy episode title and cryptic header image don’t tantalise you enough into listening to this week’s particularly silly show, perhaps this list of topics will?

Halloween is not a big deal in the UK.
New New Xbox Experience.
Pretentious hipsters at the vintage fair.
This:

Be sure to subscribe to the new NZCast feed if you haven’t already. Emails with pictures of cats with captions (catptions) go to NZCast@Nukezilla.com and other junk goes in the forums.

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NZCast 4.15: Zombie Apocalypse Revolution

NZCast 3.00: With a Vengence

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:00:17 +0000

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen. If you’re lucky enough to be reading this then it means you survived the season break without your brains turning into mush. Topics covered on this first episode of the new season include, but are not limited to:

University is rubbish.
One Button Bob.
New iTunes and RSS feed.
Sonic Fan Remix.
Loads of interesting news from the busiest month in gaming ever.

If you have anything interesting to say feel free to tweet @Wardrox or @GAllmond with questions, or send an email to NZCast@Nukezilla.com or even get involved in the forums!

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Eurogamer ’10: Indie Games Arcade 2010 Round-Up (Part 2)

Peter Silk — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:00:27 +0000

This part concludes my round-up of the Indie Games Arcade with my impressions of the remaining six games.

Indie Game Arcade 2010 Round-Up (Part 1)

Skulls of the Shogun
Haunted Temple Studios

Certainly one of the more polished games I saw in the Indie Arcade, Skulls of the Shogun is a turn based strategy game with a more freeform approach than the standard tile-based affairs. I spoke to Borut Pfeifer of Haunted Temple Studios who explained some of the gameplay concepts and the backstory behind it all.

While we were talking he also mentioned that the current control scheme I was using was tailored towards those who already play a lot of this type of game. They had tried another which beginners found easier but veterans were confused by. I hope both schemes make their way into the game in the end, as I sometimes got confused about what button I should be pressing some of the time – indeed, one such mistake early on nearly lost me the game.

One thing that I think might be worth looking at is the pacing of the game. The aim is for fast paced strategy and though I agreed with Borut when he suggested that part of this was the learning curve, I didn’t always feel like I was playing a fast paced game. At one point, the person to my right turned to me and said “What round are you on?” and it suddenly brought to mind a prisoner asking “How long have you been in for?”

Controller-wrangling and pacing aside they seem to have a great, easy to learn set of strategy mechanics here, with enough hidden depth and risk/reward decision making to appeal to the more seasoned strategists. This is a genre that is ripe for experimentation by indie developers and I’m surprised that more of them haven’t done so. In the meantime, this is certainly one to watch.

Hohokum
Honeyslug

Hohokum presents you with a whimsical world populated by cheerful folk who just happen to be under seige by an unknown sinister force. You, some sort of giant worm, are the only one who can lead them to safety. As such, it’s torn between being a rescue operation and an interactive playground with plenty of hidden puzzles around the environment for the curious gamer to discover. I spoke to Mark Inman of Honeyslug for more details.

When I first saw Hohokum it certainly didn’t look like a prototype as was revealed to me above. The graphics are colourful and rather finished-looking and next to the PC was a stack of promotional cards, so it could easily be mistaken for a game that’s ready for release.

In a sense it was something of a relief to discover otherwise. The version I played had plenty of potention but seemed as if it could benefit by less fiddly controls; I frequently found the worm difficult to steer around the environments and would get stuck bouncing around its nooks and crannies. It also came across as rather aimless: there was no real measure of my progress, so at times it felt like it was a neat concept in search of an actual game.

I hope Honeyslug find time to flesh their ideas out and eliminate the control frustrations as it goes from prototype to finished game. If they do then the sense of charming playfulness I got from it will get a proper chance to shine.

Fractal
Cipherprime

Fractal is going to be another one of those games that’s difficult to talk about through no fault of its own. It’s a puzzle game where you push hexagonal tiles around to create clusters that explode and push other tiles around in turn.

The main appeal of this puzzle mechanic is in its capacity to create chain reactions of explosions, a very satisfying thing to watch. It’s also vital: you have a limited number of moves and so the challenge is in finding the most efficient route to clearing the tiles.

And that’s it, really; there isn’t much else to say. It’s all very well presented and quite satisfying to play. Not exactly the sort of thing that’s going to set the world on fire but I don’t think that’s the intention here – and that’s just fine. To see what all the fuss isn’t about, visit the website where you’ll find that, for a change, this is an actual finished game ready for you to purchase at $9.99 right now.

Swimming Under Clouds
Piece of Pie Studios

“What this Indie Arcade needs,” I thought to myself, “Is a platform game where you control an amorphous blob of water protecting a little fish from the outside world.” That’s exactly what Swimming Under Clouds is, or at least the one-sentence pitch version.

How well it delivers on that premise is something I’ve been wavering back and forth on since playing it. It’s a matter that I think will only be resolved with further play. The water-physics are certainly fun, if unrealistic: if you clip a platform at a certain angle, your blob will split into two, one half at either end, rejoining when you get to the other side. On the other hand I found the physics worked better when cruising along quickly, getting too unpredictable when ever I needed to do something precision based.

How much fun the game will be all depends on how well the levels are designed, and it was difficult to tell with the few I played. If they are going to demand a lot of slow, careful jumps then frustration will set in quickly. Focus level design into momentum and flow, however, and Swimming Under Clouds could be a breezy and delightful diversion for anyone who has ever longed to protect fish at speed.

Tiny & Big – Up that Mountain
Black Pants

I’m not sure I gave Tiny & Big a fair shake, in hindsight. In this game you are tasked with scaling a mountain as Tiny, an odd-looking little guy with an underwear-stealing nemesis named Big. To do this, you have a grappling hook to pull rocks around and a laser which can slice stone in whatever direction you choose.

Unfortunately, I think there is quite a bit more work to be done on this game before it’s properly ready for public consumption. The physics of cutting and dragging blocks could be quite unreliable at times and the controls made it feel like my main character didn’t have any weight behind him. As an example of these frustrations, I died more than once because a block I was dragging on clipped me in a way that the game interpreted as deadly for no good reason.

I’m optimistic that these problems will be addressed. The game and website is quick to point out that it is currently in Beta, and it deserves another chance after some more time in the oven.

Nidhogg
Mark Essen

Nidhogg was the only game I didn’t get to play on the first day of Eurogamer Expo. There were always a few too many people crowded around it and from a distance it didn’t look too interesting. In hindsight, the number of people should have clued me in that there was more than meets the eye.

In Nidhogg you play a little 4-bit style fencer on a side-scrolling level, as does your opponent. There are not many controls, the main one being the ability to set how high or low you want your sword in order to parry incoming attacks, but what’s there reveals a hidden elegance and subtlety. The results are always fun and often hilarious; there’s nothing more satisfying than deftly rolling underneath the other player’s incoming attack, then turning in time to run them through. Killing your opponent enables you to progress a little further into their territory before they respawn. The aim of each player is to reach opposite ends of the arena, resulting in a tug-of-war style mechanic.

With its simple-but-not-simplistic combat and giggle-inducing antics it’s no surprise that Rock, Paper, Shotgun decided to name this the winner of the Indie Game of the Show this year in the face of considerable competition from bigger teams. As for when you’ll get to play it, I found precious little concrete information, but you could do worse than visiting the official website.

Eurogamer ’10: Indie Games Arcade 2010 Round-Up (Part 1)

Peter Silk — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 14:52:04 +0000

At last year’s Eurogamer Expo, the Indie Games arcade was tucked away in a side room which seemed to get its biggest traffic from people tromping through on the way to listen to Important People talking about their Big Games. This made me feel rather sorry for the little guy, so I resolved to do my bit to make sure the Indie Arcade got some coverage, at least on Nukezilla.

Happily, this year is different: the Indie Arcade found me rather than me having to find it. Sure, it was a little toward the back, but on prominent display and I came across it before I had even thought to look. And what did I play? Well, I’ll tell you.

Frozen Synapse
Mode 7

If there’s anything that my favourite indie games have in common, it’s the way they iterate on basic ideas just enough to make for a great experience, without overdoing it. They’re focused, precisely designed things and from what I’ve played of Frozen Synapse for PC, it’s an excellent example of just that.

The thirty second video above shows the entirety of a game I played against the AI. A very, very short match, you might think, but you’d be wrong. What the video doesn’t show is that for every five seconds of action there is a few minutes of planning, which is where the heart of the game lies.

Players are tasked with telling their fighters where to go, whether to stop to attack enemies or keep moving, which direction to aim in or whether to duck behind cover, all via a series of waypoints. Both players plan simultaneously, which produces an fascinating mind-game between two human opponents: What is he planning? What does he think I’m planning? What does he think I think he’s planning? To explain the intention behind the game, I spoke to Ian Hardingham of Mode 7, which you can listen to below.

You can pre-order the game at the official website now, which will also give you access the beta.

B.U.T.T.O.N. (Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally Okay Now)
Copenhagen Game Collective

A little after lunchtime last Friday I was furiously trying to wrestle an Xbox controller out of the hands of a complete stranger who was playing me at this game. Far from this being a display of unsportsmanlike behaviour, I was simply playing B.U.T.T.O.N. just as it should be.

Participants in this game might be called upon to do all sorts of random tasks at the behest of the on-screen text, from jumping up and down on the spot to singing “Happy Birthday”, but all of this is a prologue to the real action. You might be told to press your button a certain number of times, or make sure your button isn’t pressed at all, and just how far you are willing to go to make this happen is up to you. More on the genesis of this game from Dajana Dimovska from the Copenhagen Game Collective:

This game won me over with its whimsical charm, but a significant worry remains: it seems to me this is a perfect recipe for a pile of broken controllers (if not broken ribs). While I didn’t particularly care about tugging on the pads provided at the Expo (sorry, Eurogamer), in my house I can imagine that I might quickly become a party pooper for suggesting that my friends are getting overenthusiastic in their attempts to win.

Anyone willing to take that risk can may have to wait since, according to the website, they’re still figuring out how best to release it.

Scoregasm
Charlie Knight

Scoregasm is a twin-stick shooter.

Revenge of the–

Okay, okay, I’m not quite being fair on Scoregasm; I’ll say a bit more. Play takes place in multiple stages inside metallic arenas which gently bob around the screen for no discernable reason apart from to cause disorientation. The title refers to the score multipliers that can be enjoyed from killing plenty of enemies, although my own didn’t get particularly high since I kept dying. A difficult game isn’t a bad thing, but I did feel at times that I wasn’t getting visual cues anywhere near as clearly as in something like Geometry Wars 2.

That isn’t to say that it felt like a bad game and with its level progression and arenas, Scoregasm isn’t a Geometry Wars clone by any means; the video should also attest to that. However, after trying a few stages I struggled to think of reasons to want to play it over one of its many rivals, and that’s why I find it difficult to write about. The full game may prove me wrong, and I hope it does because what we have here is fundamentally well-made, and by one man at that.

Revenge of the Titans
Puppygames

Tower defence games are as much of a staple of the indie community as the twin-stick shooter. Since Revenge of the Titans doesn’t immediately jump out as a fresh take on it, you’d expect my reaction to be similar to Scoregasm. However, while the latter pushed me away with its busy graphics and unforgiving world, I found myself drawn in by Revenge‘s simple, clear pixel art and gentle learning curve.

What I played was nothing greatly original by tower defence standards, though a surprisingly sprawling tech tree hinted at hidden depth to come. Whether it will deserve a place in a game collection which I feel only has -so- much room for tower defence remains to be seen when the game launches. In the meantime a demo and discounted pre-order with beta is available from the website.

Gemini Rue
Joshua Nuernberger

Oh, how my heart sang when I saw what appeared to be a traditional point ‘n’ click adventure hidden amongst the games of the Indie Arcade. With accessible tools like Adventure Game Studio, indie adventure games aren’t exactly rare these days, though they do vary wildly in quality.

Gemini Rue looks very promising. The detailed but lo-res visuals wouldn’t have appeared out of place alongside the best of adventure gaming offerings circa 1994. Its gritty future-noir setting evoking a more down-to-earth Beneath a Steel Sky among other things.

The story was impenetrable in the short time I had with the game but its sinister organisations and memory manipulation intrigued me enough that I genuinely could have continued for some time longer if I hadn’t got stuck. The writing seemed good enough to support the setting, too, with the exception of a rather hackneyed “you two blokes” during the intro (presumably to indicate that the character in question spoke with some variety of British accent).

Still, there was enough there to make me excited to see more when the time comes. Exactly when that will be is difficult to say, as there is precious little information on the internet. The post on the AGS forums seems to be the place to go.

So that’s it for now. Join me next week for part two, where I’ll be talking about the rest of the games I played.

NZCast Eurogamer Special

John Kershaw — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 18:56:49 +0000

An all star cast join myself and Gavin for this very special NZCast. Recorded LIVE at the Eurogamer Expo this past weekend this is our recap of the day. During this hour long spectacle you will learn about:

Gavin’s inability to relate
Move and Kinect are both a bit shit
We are not excited by brown games
What happens when we get back to Gavin’s at 2am.

Listen below or grab the mp3 here.

This is probably also a good time to link to the BRAND NEW RSS FEED. The old one will still work, but you should use this one for [stupid technical boring reasons]. There’ll be a new iTunes page up before the new season starts.

No related posts.

NZCast 2.12: Underground Airship Factory (Live!)

Gavin Allmond — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 08:00:38 +0000

The last show of this season was recorded in front of a live studio audience. Don’t worry though. We’ll be returning soon after we move cities and continents and homes and go to school and things and get all nice and settled. Topics discussed on this week’s show include:

Hitler.
Final Battledrome scores and season finale.
PAX! Again!
Brief mention of a lady gaga blow up sex doll only enjoyed by live listeners.

Just because we’re away for a while doesn’t mean you should stop spreading the love. Tell a friend. Leave an iTunes review. Carve the logo into your forehead with a pair of compasses. Every little helps!

MP3, iTunes (review us here), Zune, Any other RSS, Subscribe by Email

Unconvinced Pete: Ludum Dare Post Mortem

Peter Silk — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:29:23 +0000

A couple of weeks ago My friend Kieran and I made a game in 72 hours as part of the Ludum Dare Game Jam. We chronicled our efforts on this very site and the game itself (in the state it was at 72 hours) can be found here. It’s traditional, not to mention useful, after making a game to look back and think about what went well and what could be improved next time around. So in that spirit I present to you our edited Post Mortem for March of the Rorgers.

So before we got into the stuff about what worked and didn’t, what I was curious to know is did you have fun? I definitely did, but I think also I had the lighter load in that I didn’t constantly need to be doing and fixing things; mostly it was creative bits and lots of thinking about design.

Oh yes, very much so. Being a programmer comes with a specific mindset where solving programming problems makes you feel good. I was very disappointed when it seemed like we’d release with a huge bug still in (he’s talking about a problem where the Rorgers would actually sometimes ignore the signs, which is game-breaking – Pete) but banging in a debug mode in an hour to fix it was great.

I’m also of a problem solving mindset but I seem to work on a ‘here’s a big thing and what principles do we need to apply to make it work?’ level while you seem more ‘here’s this tiny thing which is ruining everything, how can I locate and fix it and save the day?’ So that’s actually kind of good to have a big picture and a detail person collaborating on something. Which I guess leads us to…

Things That Went Well

I liked the way that once we had a basic idea, new things to go into it just kept appearing naturally from it.

Personally I think we had a good economy of ideas in that we seemed to know just when an idea had to happen and what we could shelve. For example in the initial design we had various ways to ramp up the difficulty over time, such as having the Rorgers start to emerge through holes at random. We want to go back and put some of that in but lack of time meant that we actually came up with more innovative ideas for keeping the players on their toes, I think. What would you say you were most happy with coding-wise?

Finding a graphics library that was excellent to begin with, maybe. It’s hard to say. The code is a mess in places, brought on from the whole speed thing.

From the outside I was very pleased with how all the interface bits came together. For a rush-project it seemed quite elegant to me. But then I never heard you complain about that so I guess that could have been the easy bit.

Delphi is very good at putting interfaces together in. Oh, one last thing I liked: adding a config file made it amazingly easy to tweak the game, next time it’s going to be the first thing I do so you can be tweaking settings all the time without me recompiling constantly. It doesn’t make such a difference when we’re right together but it does when you’re at your place and I’m at mine.

I think what I was most happy with personally is how easily the music came. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything and I was worried I’d just have nothing, but it was a joy to do and I’d love to work in that style again with FamiTracker. But enough of this happy talk.

What Could Have Gone Better

Shall we talk about odd numbers?

Hisssss. We picked a dodgy tile size (35×35). Should never have been an odd number but I didn’t really think about it at the time. If we’d have stuck with the much simpler animation we had at the start it would have been no problem as it was it introduced a bunch of clumsy rounding issues in the code.

The other problem of course is that it led us off on a complete red herring as to the cause the hellish bug we talked about early. It seems now like a schoolboy error. Always use multiples of four! With the config file you mentioned before, that was great but I actually think it would have made a difference early on because it would have meant I could start the process of testing and balancing different setups earlier. As it was, we only really had an hour or two to do that.

I think maybe now we have more of an attack plan for this stuff – maybe a little more planning at the start of when we have to do things. Sound effects got left very late in the process.

On my part, I played the game too late. I think it was late on the second night that you suddenly realised I’d never even touched the game, so I had a go then but when I’m in design mode I should really know how it feels to control and how that affects balance.

Because of the nature of the game, it’s very, very difficult to balance it completely, I’ve heard of people getting it into loops where they can effictively leave it for hours, and wonder how they did it when we weren’t able to. I suppose you lose out on play testing with such a short time. It would also have been nice, maybe, to have put in a win condition, but I sort-of like how you can’t win at the moment; the Rorgers are unstoppable, as they should be.

One area I know I can improve is in the art. I was very pleased with some of the stuff, like the floaty orb and the explosions, but I got muddled early on with whether I was drawing top down or side on art and so there’s a bit of inconsistency. But it has taught me a lot and I know the next one will look much better because of it.

Ha, I was so happy with the orb when I did the animation system and the explosions are incredible.

The big explosion apocalypse thing you did for the game over was a nice touch – it was good that we found time for those touches, like having the Rorgers say ‘ROR’ or ‘GER’ every so often. But we’re getting back to stuff that went well which I think just goes to show how happy we were with it in the end.

In Conclusion

And so the future. I think the plan is first to do one more release of March of the Rorgers, an update fixing some lingering issues and updating some of the gameplay so it’s just a little bit closer to our ideal. We’ll make a checklist and once everything is ticked on it that is the game done and behind us, and it’s onto the next project. Surprised Man is now a thing, an excuse for us to have more fun making games.

Awesome.

Awesome indeed. I’ve been more excited about Surprised Man, the name we have given ourselves, (the website will be here, soon) as a long term project than I have been about anything for a good few years. If there has been one major source of personal angst for me recently it’s that I have many ideas and schemes but find it so difficult to motivate myself to act on them. In this way, the Ludum Dare competition was a huge ego boost.

It may have been the tiredness but I was so pleased that it actually got done that I felt rather emotional. It showed me that I do have it in me and can still make things happen with a little encouragement. But that means making some room for it. Making games, as you may have gathered, has a tendency to stomp all over weekends.

For that reason, and for the fact that I have started as Features Editor at this site, this post mortem also marks the end of Unconvinced Pete. I will continue to write articles for Nukezilla but on a less regular schedule, though my intention is to focus on writing about the trials and tribulations Surprised Man as it establishes itself and we learn more about how not to make games.

No related posts.

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: Omega-Thanks

Hans Wuerflein — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:29:49 +0000

In the final update from PAX we learn about this year’s Omegathon, as well as who deserves to be thanked.

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: Last Night’s Concerts

Hans Wuerflein — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 17:36:30 +0000

This phone-in was done the morning after the night before. It also includes a very subtle name-drop, see if you can work out what it is.