Juegos iPad que merecen ser revisados: QatQi

Esta es la primera entrada de una serie de mini-posts que pienso escribir sobre los juegos para iPad que he probado y que pienso que de algún modo valen la pena.

QatQi ($ = Gratis) es un juego de palabras que a mi gusto, sobresale sobre el mar infestado de juegos de palabras para el iPad. Sus cualidades: excelente diseño visual y muy buena mecánica de juego.

Básicamente el juego es un tipo de scrabble para un jugador que se juega en tableros que varían en forma y tamaño. El resultado es muy entretenido y adictivo.

Eso si, el único inconveniente que le he podido encontrar, es que de momento solo está disponible con palabras en inglés.

[Enlace a la descripción en la página de los desarrolladores]
[Enlace a la aplicación en la AppStore ($ = Gratis)]
[Enlace a la reseña de QatQi en TouchArcade]

Humble THQ Bundle

Excelentes noticias! Salió a la venta una nueva edición del Humble Bundle!, pero además es un Humble Bundle algo diferente, porque esta vez está compuesto de juegos AAA de THQ. La lista de juegos disponibles incluye dos de los juegos que tenía previsto comprar Metro 2033 y Darksiders. La lista completa por el momento incluye:

• Company of heros con sus dos extensiones Opposing Fronts and Tales of Valor
• Darksiders
• Metro 2033
• Red Faction: Armageddon
• Saints Row: The Third (solo se incluye si se paga más del promedio)

Al momento de escribir esto, el precio promedio esta en $5.69, así que no hay motivo para no aprovechar esta oferta.

Postmortems en Gamasutra

Uno de los tipos de artículos que me encanta leer son los postmortems publicados en Gamasutra. Básicamente son un recuento, narrado por los propios protagonistas, de las experiencias vividas durante el desarrollo de un video-juego. Hace algunos meses que no revisaba las publicaciones en Gamasutra, pero hoy pude leer el postmortem de The binding of Isaac por Edmund McMillen y me pareció una lectura muy interesante e inspiradora.

Postmortem: McMillen and Himsl's The Binding of Isaac [by Edmund McMillen]

P.S. Aún no he podido escribir la entrada del primer juego de iPad, pero ya está planeado que sea QatQi.

OMG, Finally! Indie Game: The Movie

I can't wait to have it in my (virtual) hands!



Link to the official info.

PxTone

Maybe these are pretty old news (Christmas 2010), but yesterday I have downloaded the PxTone manual by Gryzor87. I found it some months ago while reading about Locomalito's games (Gryzor87 has collaborated with him in some of his games), and until yesterday I haven't looked at it.

PxTone as stated by the wikipedia is "both a freeware music editing program and the specialized music format (.pxtone) that it uses". It was created by Daisuke Amaya (Pixel) as a successor of the Organya format used in his awesome game Cave Story (by the way I haven't beat the final boss of Cave Story yet... maybe I'll write about it later). The PxTone Collage suite is a collection of programs that include an arranger/tracker program, a voice builder program, a WAV based voice editor program, a format player, an some instruments and resources to work with. I my self am a declared music lover and find this tool extremely interesting. In the other hand a library that enable the use of PxTone in Game Maker have been developed, so I hope that I can integrate it in my projects.

The manual itself is an incredibly detailed (96 pages) resource for music in games. I will be reading it trough my spare time, and I'll post any interesting thing that I found.

Talking about my really insignificant spare time, I am reading some Game Makers tutorials too, and I plan to write something about them as soon as I complete them.

OK, that's all, only a final word to thank the wonderful people that make the PxTone manual possible.

Locomalito

Today I want to write about both, a game, and a game developer that caught my attention recently. Locomalito is an Spanish indie developer that has been around for a long time, his games have been featured in IndieGames blog and TIGSource many times, and is well known among indie developers. When you visit his website you will find that his background as graphic designer is pleasantly evident, and after you dive around for a while you will probably notice his remarkable retro-game-love philosophy too. But above his outstanding graphic art and his philosophy (with which I couldn't agree more), there are his games: in every single game that Locomalito has develop you will find those retro-arcade-game-lover principles that he has named has his philosophy.

I found Locomalito while doing a little research about Game Maker (a 2D game development framework). I was looking for games created with the engine to see what it was capable of and decide if it was really and option for me (that was before I found that Derek Yu did Spelunky with it!). The first game I was attracted to was L'Abbaye des Morts, and I fall in love with those ZX Spectrum graphics. Next I tried the rest of the games, and while doing it, I get more and more excited about the possibilities of Game Maker, and what an indie developer could make with his spare time.

(Wow, now that I look again at the game, is just  amazing that there are only 16 colors)

The games, as I said before are retro-inspired, and that means that sometimes difficult is pretty hard, but hard in the good way, the fun way (yea, by fun maybe I mean a little masochism...). On the other hand I think that retro style games makes game design work at the edge, because with limited resources you can not easily hide a flawed design, and that makes playability a super-important aspect that you can not put behind state-of-the-art graphics, as in many AAA games.

What else can I say... maybe just that I want so badly to be the game developer that Locomalito is, and make the games that he does. Thanks for the inspiration!

Shadowrun Returns!

I just read about the kickstarter project by Harebrained Schemes that would make a new RPG game based on the Shadowrun universe. I discover Shadowrun tabletop game a couple of years ago, and I read through the manual totally absorbed by the cyberpunk-magic mixture. Unfortunately I never get the chance to run a game or play as runner in one. Some years latter I found the Shadowrun SNES game, and I remember it as one good gaming experience. So when I heard that a new game would be developed, I get really excited, beside that the description made by Jordan Weisman about the game sounds as the Shadowrun game that I want to play:

Here the link to the official Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun page.