New Mac Ports and Mondo

Mondo Medicals (MAC)



Fractal Fighter (MAC)




Illegal Communication (MAC)



Mondo XMAS (PC)



As usual; Mac ports courtesy of L. Be sure to thank him!

Clean Asia! - Mac Version

Mac version of Clean Asia! was sent to me by L today.
DOWNLOAD HERE (38 megs).

Be sure to thank him for porting it for me.

Psychosomnium Mac version?!

L, aka J-Factor of the excellent Soul Fighter (the game that initially got me into shmups) sent me a Mac port of Psychosomnium the other day. Seeing as I don't have a Mac it's hard for me to see if it actually works, but maybe someone here can verify that!



Game available here (12mb). Music by zabutom, titlescreen artwork by Cow.

Also, the blog has been pretty inactive lately so I'll see if I can get some time to do a small game next week. Some big projects in the works though!

Dear Agent

Dear Agent is the game I made for BTH's Game Jam. It's short and to the point. Music by Curt Cool.

DOWNLOAD DEAR AGENT!
I didn't have time to fully playtest it, so there might be some bugs in the game. Will fix as soon as possible if I get any reports!

BTH Game Jam

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:

Life/Death/Island Preview

Working on this for IGF. Lots and lots to do before it's ready though!

Norrland CDs again...

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.

Status Update

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.

Did Norrland Arrive?

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.

CACTUSQUID in TIME

Jordan Fehr notified me earlier on Twitter that my site was spotted at #42 in TIME's 50 Best Websites 2010, getting the number two spot in the games category. I don't have any idea how this happened, but I'm very happy and excited about it of course. Thank you TIME STAFF for making me feel special!


Speaking of this, maybe it's about time I update the game's page and clean it up a bit.

Norrland & Gamma4 separate downloads

DOWNLOAD GAMMA4 - THE GAME


DOWNLOAD NORRLAND

Cactus Arcade 2.0

So this was meant to get done by Friday last week, but things don't always go as planned. I had a few annoying bugs to deal with, that was nothing but a pain to fix.

Anyway, here it is. The following games were included:
ad nauseam 2, blockon, evac, gamma 4, krebswelte, kryzta, norrland, ping pong, precision, protoganda II, retro 4, silent chain, space fuck, stallions in america, stench mechanics, this is infinity, ultra mission, xoldiers.

DOWNLOAD (~45 meg)
This is not the final release of the pack, Gamma4 needs new music since I haven't asked for permission to use Vitalic's awesome See The Sea (Red) as soundtrack. I'm not sure they'd mind, but I guess I should try to avoid any possible conflicts. So if you have a song you think would fit, please contact me if you want me to include it in the game!

Also, since I have one or two upcoming releases and don't feel 100% sure about the games selected, a change in the line-up might also be on my to do list. I'll also see if I can update the first arcade with vista comaptible game files. And I really need to update my game list on the site! But that's for another day.

The Death Set - Around The World

The Death Set asked me to make them a music video after I borrowed their song for the trailer to Air Pirates. This was about a year ago, and just the other day I realized I really should finish this thing up before it's way too late (maybe it is already).

YouTube Link

I'd gladly make more videos, but only if it's music that I really enjoy myself (or if I get paid). There should be another video out by October.

No More Sweden Presentation

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.

An old interview from games™

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.

You can read the full interview here.

New Releases Very Soon

I've just finished Cactus Arcade 2.0 which will feature a set of old, and a few unreleased games. Hopefully I can finish the Metroidvania in time for the release as well. I'm aiming on releasing everything before next Friday.

Norrland is finished

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.

No More Sweden Game

I made a game at No More Sweden. It's a somewhat short "metroidvania" that kind of looks like The Power by Alexitron (not on purpose, it just happened). I haven't added sounds and I'll add a boss or two before I put it up online.

Here's something new

DOWNLOAD GAME NOW!

Final issues of Norrland

Since all the auctions have bids so far, here's the rest of the batch. Thank you everyone for bidding! I really wasn't expecting much from this!

7 of 10 - 8 of 10
9 of 10 - 10 of 10

Norrland on eBay

CD 1 of 10 - CD 2 of 10 - CD 3 of 10
CD 4 of 10 - CD 5 of 10 - CD 6 of 10

Will put the remaining four online if all of these have bids by tonight.

Norrland Trailer

Since I didn't sell any of the copies I printed I'll put them up for auction on eBay. Once they're sold the game will be released for free online.

Please note that this is a bit of an "art game". I'm sure a lot of people won't like it.

Exhibition Game

Here's some screenshots from my project for the exhibit I mentioned in the last post. The game isn't 100% finished yet, but most of the things you see are in there.


So, if anyone wants to get a chance to play this thing early, come to Kulturbygden in Sollefteå this friday! There will be a limited number of physical copies of the game on sale, and you'll be able to play the game on site of course.

JoinGame Workshop and Exhibition in Sollefteå

Me and Petri Purho (amongst others) will be talking at the JoinGame workshop in Oslo, Norway.

I will also be attending an exhibition at Kulturbygden in Sollefteå with an unreleased game.

Krebswelte

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.

New Version, Old Version
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.

I'm not dead!

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!

i won the nuovo award

I can't believe I actually won. Thank you everyone!


EDIT:
You can watch the award show here. The Nuovo award is presented at 30:00.

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.