A totally freaky album was released on the french netlabel “Da ! Heard It Records”. Like the title suggests, the topic is about “Hadoupi”, the “Three-Strikes-Law”, that was established in France. This will allow to disconnect filesharers from the internet. Sad, but true. In own words of the creators of this album “Mr. Hadopi” is a “vibrant ode to free culture“. The music is a really wild mixture of broken beats, echoes of break dance, funk and disco and a good dose of chip- and computermusic. Download of the day!

Get it at the release-site, download it as .zip (ogg / mp3) or pre-listen at last.fm.

I think it’s about time to put WickedWorx on the radar. This small indie-studio released the game “DEPT” for the Assemblee Competition at the TIGSource-Forum. In DEPT you play the spaceman Owen Sterling with lots of dept to pay off. So your mission is to guide this little man, in order to collect as many gold and stuff as possible. That storytelling is so lovely. WickedWorx also got some nice other items on their website, primary developing for 360XboX and PC. (via)

Yay, I got excited. The next game-programming-framework for Flash/Actionscript3 is out/updated: FlashPunk. It should serve an alternative to Flixel.

Its goal is to provide you with a fast, clean framework for prototyping and developing games; this means most of the dirty work — reliable framerate, sprite rendering/animation, player input, and collision detection (to name a few) — has been covered with a set of base classes and functions for your ease of use. This gives you more time and energy to concentrate on the design and testing of your game.

Well, this totally sounds like Flixel, so why use FlashPunk? The developer say, that FlashPunk is especially targeted at the use of bitmaps – also hundreds and thousands of bitmaps should be possible, without having any performanceissues. Hm…. I want to doubt that, but why not give it a try? There is a threat at the TIGSource-Forum, explaining the details in depth.

Another good reason to use FlashPunk might be, that some like it more in pink.. ;)

Edit: Just taken a look at the technical details. Really well designed. Thumbs up! Good work! Seems, that FlashPunk is able to fix one of the most criticized issues of Flash: drawing many objects at a reasonable speed.

Update: I interviewed Chevy Ray about FlashPunk.

And here is a demo video:

It’s a pleasure to tell, that Krystian Majewskies work in progress game TRAUMA was not only nominated to the IGF 2010 one time, but tree times: Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Excellence in Visual Art, Excellence in Audio. There are nice sideeffects, like beeing features at the very boingboing. Congrats Krystian! I think now I am not the only one looking forward to playtesting. Well beeing nominated in fact does not mean having won anything yet. So go for it. More conversation at the Global Game Jam at the Cologne Game Lab end of January.

UPDATE: Hm, this game did not made any price. I hope the jury had good reasons for this desicion.

The next Global Game Jam will be from 29.1. – 31.1.2010. Participants all over the world meet, to make games and friendly compete against each other. There are until now 5 locations in Germany, where you can go to attend:

-> München (http://www.ggjmuc.de/)
-> Berlin (http://amaze-festival.de/globalgamejam/)
-> Bremen (http://globalgamejam.com/sites/digital-media-jam)
-> Köln (http://colognegamelab.de/ggj2010/)
-> Nürnberg (http://gjnue.mixxt.org/)

There is a 99-percent chance, that you will meet me at the Cologne Game Lab. (via Gameslabor)

Update:
And one time in Austria / Vienna (http://www.austriagamejam.org/)

The (Net)label Serein is progressing slowly, but if the quality stays at high level, this is absolutely no problem. After searching a designer and after re-launching the site, they come up with their first “physical release”. It is the album “Retold” from artist Nest. It will be released on the 31. January 2010 and can be pre-ordered now. The CD purchase includes mp3-download available from the 31st January. Mp3 and FLAC will also be available to buy separately. The release includes also the track from the “Nest – Nest EP”. Check the release site for more information.

Hey Friends. As you might know, I am co-organizing the Cologne Commons Festival, the festival about sharing, Creative Commons, free music, free art and free culture. In 2010 we will have the second edition of the festival. To start things gentle, feel free to download our winter-compilation. At this compilation you can find cold and warm wintermusic. Be shareful!