The good old days are gone: Kickstart the good old days
Published May 6, 2012 | 
Nostalgia, you bastard of bastards. You’re always out there, hermit-crabbing about in the smell of old perfume or the jingle of that ad that used to play just before MacGyver got creative with pudding spoons and twine.
And this is a good year for nostalgia, which for me bites hardest in game form. For one, Wasteland is making a comeback, which is such stupendous news I may actually start to consider religion. But it’s not just Wasteland. It’s also Shadowrun. And Space Quest. And Leisure Suit Larry. And… Continue reading
Posted in Gaming | 
Kickstarter, Leisure Suit Larry, nostalgia, remakes, retro, Shadowrun, Space Quest, waffles, WastelandReview: A Valley Without Wind
Published May 3, 2012 | 
Games like A Valley Without Wind pose a conundrum for me.
It’s a stunning proposal, see: an infinite world, filled with infinite possibilities, challenges and content. It’s the gaming grail, and it’s rather often that an intrepid group of developers set out to raid the tomb that holds it.
Sometimes they come back. Continue reading
Posted in Gaming, Reviews | A Valley Without Wind, Arcen Games, AVWW, Metroidvania, RPG, sad sad fairy princess, sidescrolling, strategySerious blam: A Random Encounter of the Sam Kind
Published October 25, 2011 | 
I like my pixels big and meaty. Not pong racket meaty, mind you – just meaty enough to see. Um. Like minced meaty. It’s a throwback from having spent my formative years in 16 bits.
I doubly especially like to rain smite upon pixels such as those aforementioned. Another 16-bit-induced dementia, no doubt, and one amply catered to by the low-fi takedown of the Serious Sam franchise that is The Random Encounter. Continue reading
Posted in Gaming, Reviews | Alex Mauer, Paul Veer, Roy Nathan de Groot, Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, shmuRPG, VlambeerShackle up: Prison Architect
Published October 20, 2011 | 
I once tried to hone a toothbrush into a shank to be proud of, but I figured I was getting ahead of myself. And indeed, I have never eaten prison food.
I do have this morbid fascination with prisons, though. What do all those hardened convicts get up to? Really get up to, I mean. Aside from needlepoint, gang rape and garrotting. Dear, I hope I’m not being stereotypical. (Actually, being South African, I think I’m painting a picture of flowers and possibly a bunny that is mauve of hue.) Continue reading
Roger the cabin boy!
Published October 20, 2011 | Pirates aren’t what they used to be. For one, the originals are all dead, which is probably for the best. I don’t think they’d get on with climate change and the demise of polar bears. Then again, they’d be a surefire hit on Twitter. Oh, it’s a dilemma.
I’m actually experiencing a classic double bind of similar magnitude: download the IGF Pirate Kart or save my precious bandwidth for Youtube videos of cats and Fighting Trousers?
Dash it all. The Pirate Kart looks so racy, so backstreet geek, so very full of free games that are almost certain to be inexplicable. On the other hook, Fighting Trousers. I also have those IF Comp entries to consider, but my body is already racked by Fucking Parser Syndrome, which is like a bout of specialised Tourette’s.
There is only one solution:
Mental elements: Grimrock’s magic mystified
Published October 14, 2011 | 
One word: Legend.
Not enough for you? Here’s two more, then: of Grimrock.
Now that we’ve got the requisite suspense out of the way, please look away while I salivate helplessly. I have a syrupy spot for old-fashioned dungeon crawlers, especially when they’re new-fangled, and Legend of Grimrock is tolchocking me directly in the nostalgia sac.
Details of the game’s magic system have arisen, and they’re looking very… runic. But in a good way! I happen to loathe runes in general, owing to a childhood mishap with Vikings, but it seems Grimrock’s take on the matter will allow for some neat combinatorial combat cake. (I say cake not merely for its alliterative benefit, but for its deep symbolic value.) Continue reading
Interactive Bitching: IF Comp 2011
Published October 13, 2011 | 
Fiddlesticks! The 17th Interactive Fiction Competition has been go for half the damn month already, and I haven’t so much as eyeballed an entry. I hide my head beneath the fridge in shame.
It does not help my tenuous frame of mind that The Interactive Fiction Archive is spurning my attempts at downloading the games. Blast it all. Where is worldwide pneumatic data transfer when you need it?
Don’t answer that, for it was a rhetorical question.
I suppose I’ll have to play them online for now. Every second counts.
Expect my thinkings on them. And not just any thinkings, either. They’ll be select. The cream. The bejizz.
They’ll be late. You can think of them as retro with a fucking fast turnaround.
Technorati tags: horror of horrors, IF Comp 2011, interactive fiction
What?
Published October 12, 2011 | I know what you’re thinking. I can see that look in your eye(s). Some of you, no doubt, have already reported me to the authorities for blog abuse.
But you’ve got me down all wrong. This is not like that time I forgot I owned a hamster and later figured the quickest and most honourable thing to do was brick up the pet room and slap a couple biohazard signs in the vicinity. In a pang of post-apathy guilt I launched a tear-jerking poster campaign offering a reward for my missing hamster, whose useless name escapes me momentarily, and afterwards I was forced to drown my phone as it had started to resemble a clear-cut case of tinnitus.
I should have seen it coming; all hamsters are interchangeable, grumpy bio-toys that eat their children and don’t even have the decency to bounce when thrown, and who wouldn’t want a few hundred bucks to get rid of one? Continue reading
Tidings. Also, trucks
Published August 25, 2011 | 
I ain’t dead! I’ve just been hiding.
Admittedly, I’ve been hiding long enough that the guard wolves I stationed around the hidden entrance to Hidden Exit tried to gum me on the way in. I showed them, to be sure. But the bear traps! Those seemed like a good idea at the time, but unlike guard wolves they don’t lose their teeth to scurvy and old age. Troublesome, that.
Any way. I’m here now, and that’s what counts, right? Right?
Right. Here, while I dust the place off and put the kettle on, have yourself a muse at the meaning of trucks over at NAG. It is my attempt at proving I can maintain a full-time job and be a facetious perpetuator of harmful trucker stereotypes.
And you thought I didn’t care.
How to squeeze a pixel till it bleeds: Spooky Squid speaks
Published August 13, 2011 | 
I have a template in my head, don’t you know, that sketches out in rough all the things that will likely enhappy me. Items such as sex and Earl Grey tea feature prominently on it, which is to be expected. I did not know until I encountered the trailer of They Bleed Pixels, though, that creepy children with deathly claw hands of death – taken in combination with smug Lovecraftian grimoires and lashings of the old ultraviolence – would manage to click so firmly into place on this toyshop implementation of my pleasure centres, but who am I to argue with the evidence of my convictions?
Because I am not a patient child, I couldn’t exactly be expected to wait for the game without pestering the developers at Spooky Squid with petulant questions, could I? Imagine the pang of happiness that assailed me when Miguel Sternberg, who is a very interesting chap and one of the delightfully disturbed minds behind Spooky Squid, took the time to reply. Comprehensively. Continue reading
Posted in Gaming, Interviews | design, interview, Miguel Sternberg, platformer, Spooky Squid Games, They Bleed Pixels