Sorry for the lack of output these days. I've been feeling some pressure to actually make worthwhile games and generally not been having ideas popping into my head as frequently as I've had earlier.
I really want to finish the new mondo game as it is very close to completion, but I keep losing momentum.
Maybe if I see that there still is interest I'd get my shit together and plow through the last 10% of the game. I actually really like what I have so far, although it's a step away from previous installations. I hope it won't disappoint fans of the earlier games.
So, if you can't wait to play the game, please post some fanart and I'll try to feed off of that to get the game done!
Yeah, I know you're waiting for the Mondo game and whatever else, but I can only update with what I've actually got! Mondo X-mas will be released soon, I've got it to around 50% made, the only thing that isn't there is actual gameplay, sadly.
So here's what I've got instead; a horribly crappy game about Nordic Game Jam. It's a joke game, although some of it is somewhat accurate. I enjoyed the event a lot, but I couldn't resist poking fun at it when I failed to finish the more serious project I started. I also made a trailer so you wouldn't have to actually play the game.
Further more, the ever awesome L has provided me with two more Mac ports and even sent me slimmed down versions of Clean Asia!, Fractal Fighter and Illegal Communications that he ported earlier.
So here's Burn the Trash and Block On! for Mac users:
Also, I edited a video of my acceptance speech at IGF last year for a talk I gave and decided to upload it to YouTube. So I can finally post it on my blog without having to link the vid of the entire event.
Tomorrow I think another one of my games will be released! And I'll leave you with a screenshot of my work in progress for the TIGSource competition.
I was invited to Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (a university in southern Sweden) to hold a small talk and participate in a game jam. It was a lot of fun, and probably the most generously organized game jam in the history of game jams.
Petri Purho was there to give a talk as well, and he talked about how limitations in games can cultivate creativity. It was an inspiring talk and as usual it was very fun to listen to. I talked a bit about what to think about when you want to finish a game in a short period of time, basically a modified version of my 4 Hour Game Design talk I gave at GDC.
After that the game jam started of with a design competition where everyone got to draw a motive for a shirt that would be printed as an official gift to everyone participating in the jam. My entry split first place together with another one by Martin Jonasson (grapefrukt).
I also made a game, but ended up not winning the game jam. I'm happy with the results though, and the game that won did deserve it. I'll release the game tomorrow, got to add sounds and some small things before it's ready to be played. Meanwhile, here's a preview:
I was going to finally send out replacement CDs for those who haven't received their packages this week. Unfortunately all my money went down the drain when I got quintuple electric bills and was forced to start paying off my student loans on top of my usual costs. It's my birthday this Saturday, and I think with a little luck I'll be getting enough cash to cover shipping for the replacement CDs and some beer.
If anyone wants a refund instead, I'll see if I can work that out as well. I'm terribly sorry about my messy handling of this whole deal.
So, what's happening? I'm currently working on a game for Adult Swim which is taking up most of my time. Then there's the Metroidvania that I'm not sure what to do with, either I expand on it and make it a bit more worthwhile or finish of ASAP. In a week or so I'll be traveling to Texas, to attend Fantastic Arcade and make a presentation about Norrland.
I'm also going to try to finish a demo version of Life/Death/Island for IGF if I have the time. But it looks doubtful.
If everyone who won a copy of Norrland on eBay could post here whether or not they received the discs I sent out I'd be grateful! I know at least two people have not gotten the parcels I mailed, and since I'm planning to send out new ones ASAP it would be good to hear if any of the other ones has gone missing as well.
This is the first time I've ever done something like this so maybe it's a mistake on my part, but I think it's weird then that several packages arrived safely.
I showed off an early version of Life/Death/Island and parts of Norrland at No More Sweden. The presentation was recorded and has now been put online. Not sure how interesting it is to watch, but might as well post the vids here.
Google Alerts just alerted me that this old interview from December last year has been published online. An interview from Swedish national newspaper Aftonbladet was published yesterday as well, and there will be interviews or stories about me in Paste Magazine and Artforum at some point.
Not terribly exciting, but I still think this particular point is pretty important:
"There are almost no games that try to convey messages or personal views on life and matters that are important to the people who have created them. It’s even rare to find any personal aspect about games at all these days."
I feel like a lot of things are pretty pointless right now, I could really use something to draw inspiration from and hopefully start feeling that there is some meaning to everything. Not that I should be complaining, life isn't bad right now, but I seem to have lost my interest in a lot of things.
Norrland has now been updated and sent out to all who managed to win an auction on eBay. I'm not sure how long I should wait before releasing the game for free. I said I'd release the game when all the copies were sold, but I sort of feel like I should wait until all the packages has arrived. So you guys tell me what you think...
Metroidvania game now has music and is pretty much bug free, but I still want to add a storyline, bosses and possibly a few extra features to make it a really worthwhile release. We'll see what happens.
Someone on the forums posted about an old game I made for the procedural generated content contest at TIGSource, so I decided to update the game slightly and put it up again.
Updates include random mode, more generous amount of treasure chests, reloading by pressing DOWN + Z (or R), as well as a number of smaller fixes to make the experience a little bit more smooth.
So, been over two months since last update. Truth is I have been doing a bunch of things, but somehow I've ended up with nothing to show for it. I'm dying to release another game, but I've been trying to work on something worthwhile. It might be a good thing, maybe I'll end up creating something that blows my other games out of the water, but it'll probably mean fewer finished games.
For now, here's a few screens of things I've been experimenting with:
With some luck one or two of these will actually be finished somewhat soon!
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have been getting some rather negative feedback on This is Infinity, and after letting one of my friends test it, I can see why. The game is incredibly difficult until you get what the objective is.
My original intent was to try to let the player experience something that felt alien, and at first incomprehensible. Then they would feel a cool sensation when they figure out what was going on.
The problem is that the game doesn't have a fixed difficulty curve, you actually start out with a very large chance of entering the most difficult area of the game first. This area is on the verge of being too difficult even played after getting through half of the game, and certainly not a good starting point.
Therefore I think it might be good to give some further instructions as to what to do. However, I do think the game is more rewarding if you have some patience and try to figure out the objective on your own. So if you want to have the most interesting experience possible with the game, have some patience and try your best to figure it out on your own. If not, here's an explanation of what you need to do:
To summarize the game: Find four portals, figure out what to do after you enter each portal, then figure out how to get to the end. The objective in each area is fairly simple, but because of the way the game is presented it can be hard to figure out. Observe the elements you see in each level to get a clue to what is actually going on, and you'll probably be able to beat the game relatively quickly.
If that's not enough to get you through the game, here's a walkthrough.
Seems like my filehost will go offline in a while (it might already be). And I don't feel like re-uploading my games too often, so I was wondering if anyone would be willing to permanently host them.
If not, does anyone know a good place to upload them that isn't likely to be taken down, and that offers hotlinking?
So I now have two mirrors. Should be up within days. In other news, I just got a real domain... So now you can go to cactusquid.com instead cactus-soft.co.nr.
I'm a game developer living in Gothenburg, Sweden. I've been making small freeware games since 2004.
My aim is to create interesting things, whether it be through visuals or gameplay mechanics. A lot of the games on my site are just small experiments dressed up as games. I'm glad that people still seem to enjoy them.
