Cool point and click adventure

http://machinarium.com/demo/

Don`t click on this link unless you have lots of free time...

Crush the castle.

Games

An interesting article on games.

Early Showa Japan and games

I was just doing a bit of random Saturday browsing about what Taisho Tokyo looked like and was fascinated to come across a computer game with a beautiful old Tokyo backdrop. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army is supposed to start in the 20th year of Taisho, which never existed. In fact, there were only 15 Taisho years, so we are really talking early Showa Japan, the early 1930s. From what I can see, the sets have been quite deeply researched.



Gameplay video:



Thinking a bit more about my question to myself a couple of posts ago about whether games can ever be art, it seems a bit of a rubbish question now. Without getting into a long discussion about what art means, it seems self evident that games can achieve some kind of "artistic" status in graphic art, even now. Theoretically, there is no problem with them being poetically artistic either.

I think the question I wanted to ask was whether - like plays, films, novels etc. - games can aspire to become a form of narrative art. I stick by my earlier intuition that this question is probably only interesting in that it shows I am a old choffer. I suppose it is a common experience of newly emergent art forms to find themselves being judged by irrelevant critical standards developed out of established forms. The real question is can games aspire to become a form of game art. However, I do feel that "game" and "story" are antagonistic. The first person to develop a really engaging and satisfying narrative comparable to a novel in a game format will be a genius. Perhaps it has already happened. I don't know.

Boomshine by Danny Miller

I seem to have followed a couple of posts on productivity with a couple on games. No really, I am working like a dog!

This one is a chilled-out, kicked-back, West Coast number.

PeaceMaker, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict game

There are a growing number of digitprop computer games: game designers using their medium to make political points just as their forebears in cinema, drama, art and literature did in their media. PeaceMaker, a game about the Middle East conflict, is the latest I have come across. This is a promotional video and you can download a free demo of the game. If you want to read up on the growing digitprop world, this is a good place.

While I am on the subject of games, the French have started inducting game designers into the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. I have long puzzled over whether game designing will ever be considered art. I have had this terribly old fashioned view that the game element of a game is destructive and cheapening and inherently problematic in the creation of an artistic experience. All that shows is that I am old choffer, like those people who thought film could never become art.

So what you want is a game that doesn't take too much time out of your day but will insult your intelligence in French...

Fair enough.

So what do you do if you have billions of images to label?

Employ tens of thousands of people?

Or create a game and get the world to do it for free. Quite brilliant. Not the game, the thinking.

The game is quite compulsive too. You are given a partner across the internet and have to bang as many one word descriptions of each image put in front of you as possible. When you match with your partner, you get points and move on. Frustrating if your partner is a dimwit or a rheumatic typist; strangely rewarding if you get someone on the same wavelength. My best score was 1100 in the allotted 90 seconds.

Pong Squared

Four paddle pong game.

Knuckles in China Land

UPDATE: This game is no longer available. I was not the original distributor. I was just pointing to the link. I cannot distribute the software and I cannot offer any guidance on installing it because I don`t own the rights. I don`t even have the computer that it used to be installed in.

I stumbled upon a free and fun language vocab drilling game going by the rather bizarre name of Knuckles in China Land. It is a role playing game with a very early 1990s feel, based in the Sonic the Hedgehog world. It has no sound, which would be a great addition, but Andre Dirk, the chap who has put this free tool together, has written a pretty intriguing storyline.

The language learning twist is that, whenever you fight, you drill vocab. We use basically very similar language drilling programs at university but they are about one millionth as fun. I find that when I get too tired to carry on ploughing through the textbook, Knuckles is a good refuge. Here is the download page.

If you had the time, you could input any vocab list from any language into the game, but, for those not prepared to put in that effort, there is already support for Japanese, German and Indonesian. The Japanese stuff is particularly strong, with a whole range of downloadable vocab lists, ranging from basic to very advanced.



Oh, and here is a slightly cryptic explanation of the bizarre name.

The smallest website

Guimp, the smallest website, punches above its weight. It has more content than many a flabbier site, including an art gallery, a drum machine and a piano. They have just added to the games section. My favourites: Pacman, footy and pinball.

Woooah!

Woooah!

[A funny and rather icky music video made completely within the online game of the moment, World of Warcraft. Well, I found it funny.]

Weird game

Here.

There is no real point except watching things fall in different ways but make sure you scroll to the bottom and play around with all the different elements you can draw with.

This is the Japanese original. And this is their new "Hell of Sand". Weirder still. I think I'll stick with the first game.

And, from the same stable, a Cat Sledging game. Use "Z" and "X" to shift the cat's weight backwards and forwards in the sled.

Games and stuff

There seem to be a growing number of quite arty internet based games out there (ie. games you can play by just going to websites without having to download anything). Some are pretentious. Some are pretentious and rubbish. Some are card company cute. Some are political. Some are queer (click the headline on the page). But this strangely beautiful game is the pick of the crop. You need to have the sound on for it and to take a look at this to understand what the hell is going on. Basically, you run your mouse over the screen, find spots where it turns into a pointy hand and click them to see what happens. You have to work out what combination of clicks will get you off the screen and onto the next one. It is only few screens long and is really quite easy (especially with the hint site).

Alternatively, you could opt for a not particularly arty but fiendishly addictive mining game or have a snowball fight or a game of table tennis. Perhaps you just want to sit back and watch a (quite violent) animation.