GDC 2010 + Gamma4

I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm doing three presentations at GDC this year. Click here for details. I'm also showing off Tuning at the IGF pavillion and my GAMMA4 game at the GAMMA4 event.

I hope I'll see some of you there!

Friends

This weekend a friend of mine was brutally murdered by a bunch of kids for no reason at all. He was a wonderful person, always happy and friendly, wouldn't hurt a fly. It's hard to understand something like this could happen to him, or anyone else for that matter. Over four hundred of his friends showed up at his memorial yesterday, which goes to show how deep he managed to touch people's hearts. It's really hard to get back to life the way it was before, I just can't stop thinking about what's happened.

So show your friends how much you appreciate them, you never know when someone will be snatched away forever. Life can be very cruel.

Contrasts

I think contrasts are important for everyone, they make everything a lot more intriguing.

(Possible collab with David Scatlife)


(Possible project with ASCII graphics)

IGF 2010 Nuovo Award Nomination

So, apparently TUNING ended up with a nomination for the Nuovo Award at IGF 2010 (another huge thanks to Stephen Lavelle for making this possible!).

- Tuning (Cactus)
The jury found praise for Cactus' platform game thanks to its bold style and its "uncompromising exploration" of almost psychedelic abstraction. Although the title can be frustrating as times, one juror noted that "you have to see the visual distortions and transformations as gameplay", and under that lens, the game seems even more charming.

I've got some stiff competition in there though, with games like Today I Die, Closure, Enviro-Bear and a mysterious Atari 2600 game called A Slow Year. I hope I have a chance!

Now I'm looking forward to see the student category nominations, and I'm very glad to see that Star Guard is up for an award, since it was probably my favorite game of last year.

Top 10s of the Decade

I can't sleep tonight for some reason, so I figured this might be boring enough to make my bed seem more welcoming.


Favorite Albums:
Black Eyes - Black Eyes (2003)
Greg Ashley - Medicine Fuck Dream (2003)
Pseudosix - Days of Delay (2003)
Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone (2003)
Kent - Du och Jag Döden (2005)
Tough Alliance - The New School (2005)
Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006)
Delta Spirit - Ode to Joy (2008)
Electric President - Sleep Well (2008)
Woods - Songs of Shame (2009)


Favorite Movies:
Dead or Alive 2 (2000)
Requiem For a Dream (2000)
Amelie from Montmartre (2001)
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Grizzly Man (2005)
Noroi (2005)
Tropa de Elite (2007)
No Country For Old Men (2008)
Watchmen (2008)
The Dark Knight (2009)

2002 was a pretty shitty year, apparently. And I really had to struggle with the movie list (bet I forgot a few great ones, though). You probably expected a top 10 of games as well, but to be honest I don't play enough games to write a decent list. Let me know if I missed something really worthwhile.

What was supposed to be a Mondo X-Mas

So, I started making a little game for Christmas eve, but ended up being convinced by my friends to go out and have a few Christmas beers instead. It's 50% complete, so I might release it anyway, but I don't know.

Here's a screenshot tho. Merry Christmas! Eat my corn.

Game Over / Continue

Back in March when I was at GDC I did a game for an exhibition at Giant Robo. The event was called Game Over / Continue, and imaginative as I was I ended up naming the game the same thing.

Originally I had planned to do a single player game, but time went by and the day before the event I hadn't received the graphics I was going to work with nor even started working on the game engine. So I went to my collaborative partner, Deth P Sun's studio to spend three hours or so finishing my project. I ended up destroying the awesome cat graphics he had drawn for me, and turning the whole idea around to a multiplayer action game instead (everyone else at the exhibition was doing multiplayer, so I blame group pressure). The cats became freaky mutant spiders crawling creepily across the screen, and the environmental graphics ended up falling down the gameplay arena like slow rain.

I'm not sure if I should be ashamed or proud of the results, but either way I can't really release the game since it requires two joypads and I'm not even sure which ones I ended up using in the final version. I had to recode the movement script at the scene, semi-drunk, since they were all out of 360 controllers.

So today I found a nice video from the event, and figured that it might be interesting to see for those who were unable to attend themselves. My game is shown at 3:45, with Erik Svedäng (of Blueberry Garden) and Messhof playing. The other games are better than mine, and the whole video can be fun to watch since a huge portion of the indie scene can be spotted mingling in the background.

I'll see if I can finish a game for Christmas eve as well. I've released way too few games this year.