For people, who are able to understand German: Ben Hammer made a nice interview with me about this blog Digital Tools. It is available at Ben’s marketing and communication-blog xevis.

Did you ever used a printer for playing games? No? Now you have the chance with Receipt Racer. All you need is a videobeamer, a printer, some game controller, a Mac and a copy of Receipt Racer. Even the sourcecode is available!

The game is played on a receipt printer, a common device you can see at every convenient store. It prints those papers you usually find crumbled up in your pockets, just to throw them away. It is a thermal printer using heat to darken the paper. This eliminates any slowdowns in printing lots of black. A roll can be ordered online and costs around 80 cents. 50 meters is the maximum distance you are theoretically able to race in one run, before running out of paper. So ecologically it’s pretty much a disaster, just like any real car.

The nice thing is: after finishing the race, you can take away the map you played. The map includes the score and a nice game-over screen as well.

How did they made the collision-detection? It is all about calibrating the beamer with the software. The game-engine knows the playfield and also knows the position of the player sprite. Collision therefore is not made on the reality-surface, but internally in the software. Great project, made by undef and Joshua Noble. (via)

Dear Esther looks like a very interesting, upcoming gaming experience. That game has an interesting story in its creation. Originally started by Dan Pinchbeck in 2007 as a mod in the context of a research-project at the University of Portsmouth the game hit some serious audience. It also won the best world/story award at the IndieCade festival in 2009. So there was clear evidence, that Dear Esther got the potential, to become a successful title on the market. And that is how the game became the 4th funded title of the Indie Fund – a collective that funds and invests in unique indie games.

Indie Fund about titles like Dear Esther: “While Indie Fund is looking for unique gems that exemplify the indie spirit, it is not a charity, and the funding partners hope that they don’t lose their investments. (…) the time is right to find out just how commercially viable such offbeat titles really are.” (quoted from Gamasutra).

Creative Indiegames like Dear Esther are fundable, because there are small teams working on the title, not teams that are like 20 or 100 members big. Original indiegames can make enough money, to refund, but do not necessarily be real million sellers. This is why this could be the right time with the right opportunities for getting big in being indie. Let’s look forward to it! (via)

Parallel to the Gamescom 2011 and the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Europe 2011, the Cologne Game Lab will host an event of the special kind: The Notgames Fest is an exhibition and a “play together” of so called “Notgames”. Games, that are more expressions by itself than systems of set rules. There is a call for submissions! You can submit your works until the 10. July 2011. The event is curated by Tale of Tales (Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn), who came up with the original Notgames Manifesto.

Event is on the 15. / 16 August 2011. Feel free to join the Notgames Expo Facebook-Group about this event.

The “8bit-Guerrilla Chiptune Database” is an ongoing collection of links to artists, musicians, releases, tutorials, tools etc, that as connected to 8-bit -scene, -culture and -style. Everyone is invided to submit own links with brief descriptions to their works.

Just in case you missed the beta of the game FRACT: just don’t miss it. FRACT is a somehow abstract adventure game, that plays in a virtual world, reminding of TRON or something like The Sentinel, Rez or Darwinia. It is not only the look, but excellence also comes from the sound-design. Extremely well made sounds totally support the games experience. (The game was selected as one of the Independent Games Festival student showcase winners as well.)

For my opinion the riddles are a little too abstract, but walking through this designed landscape alone is worth the try. The beta is available for download the the FRACT website, is available for Mac or PC (and is about 170 Megabytes, just in case you ask). The game was made by Richard E. Flanagan, linger in his portfolio as well!! (via)

Once again Cologne, once again “digital games meets art, culture and business”: In November 2011 the second edition of the “Next Level Conference” will take place at the Abenteuerhallen Kalk – a very nice locations, that hosts the demosceneparty Evoke as well, the Gloria Theater and the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum. In panels, performances and workshops you will learn lot about games, art, sound, teaching with games and the business around games as well. Next Level is about connecting creatives and supporting artful use of the medium game. One partner this year is the SoundTrack_Cologne, who care about music and sound in films and games. Read all about the festival-program at the opulent Next Level Conference Website.