Scene from “Walk or Die”.

Jordan from NecessaryGames.com asked me, to point to a vacation-project called with the name “GameTrekking“, he plans to make. It will be about “world-travelling making games about it”. Jordan generally is interested in alternative ways of storytelling and experimental games and new forms of interaction. He released some interesting works at the NecessaryGames-site, for example the game “Walk or Die“, that is really minimal and conceptional.

For GameTrekking he wants to make a little world-travel and make games about the experiences at the vacation. The goal in mind: to support games as a narrative art. Each game should be released for free and also with the source code (let’s hope, that he will not use too esoteric programming languages like he partly did in the past…).

Learn all about the project at Gametrekking.com. Jordan searches supporters for GameTrekking-project at Kickstarter.

Some Drawing

Muro Toolbox

There are more and more online-drawing tools appearing, that are based on the new school of html5, css3 and JavaScript. The popular community-art site Deviant Art kicked of their own drawing-tool “Muro” and this is one of the best I’ve seen so far. You can not only draw (including “generative drawing brushes”), but also have filters and a undo-buffer at hand. The tools are really fun playing with and logged in users are also able to buy more brushes. The app is “Wacom ready”, if you install a special browser-plugin from Wacom. Great tool!

Uh yes! Get you game-music pop-upgrade NOW!! There is also a mp3 available from this tune, and chords with lyrics as well.
(via Superlevel)

Uh, I’ve didn’t know until now, that the genre of “surgeon / health games” wasn’t invented by Nintendo. Derek digged some footage of Intellivisions game “Microsurgeon“, dated back to 1982! The aim of the game is to “cure the patient” with some kind of micro-robot inserted in the body. Ok, it is 1982, so do not expect realistic graphics. In fact, we have the opposite here: the graphics are so colorful and hardly remembers on the human body, but more on abstract paintings…

Junkboy (Pixelation profile) released a couple of “Demake Mockups” on the Pixelation-forums. The works are imaginary clashes of various games, characters and styles, like Super Mario Cart meets 16-bit eagle-eye perspective or Mirrors Edge in Contra aestetics (and so on). Impressive works, that really itches the love for pixel-art! (via)

Via the excellent score-driven music-site “The Sixty One” I discovered a great band today and almost instantly became fan. It is Muchuu from “Hereford” in UK. Both brother and sister, they began to make music with simple drums and things they found in their garage.

“The name ‘Muchuu’ – pronounced “Moo-chew” – comes from Milky’s love of all things Japanese. It means to be in an ecstatic delirious trance or dream.”

Very well.. count me in then! Fun is here to stay.

Visit this article, to learn about good old “Color-Cycling”, that old Amiga-users used to enjoy. Some details of this example:

Those of you familiar with color cycling may notice something a little “different” about the palette animation in this engine. Many years ago I had an idea to improve color cycling by “fading” colors into each other as they shifted, to produce many “in between” frames, while preserving the overall “speed” of the cycling effect. This creates a much smoother apparance, and gives the illusion of more colors in the scene. I call this technique BlendShift Cycling. Someone may have invented this before me, but I’ve certainly never seen it used.

Source-Code of the example is provided. The works there are also about “achieving more with less”.