There is a new app for the iPad available, that aims at “learning openGL ES 2.0” on the iPad, called Shaderific (AppStore Link). It features an editor, where you can code your shaders and a presentation mode – to enjoy your results. In other words: it is another app, where you directly code and test and code on your iPad! Somewhat the counterpart app of for example Paragraf for iPad. The app is designed very straightforward and you will get results and playing with code within minutes. I am curious, if there are mind-blowing updates coming for this app later on.

Suddently Germany has two new game-magazines! The first one is the WASD Magazine. It deals about “Texts about Games”. It is an essay-magazine, that should be released about every 6 month in a small addition. The format is a mix of magazine and book. Content is about culture of games, game-reflections and everything else, that the gamer wants, but does not find in the “review-gaming-zines”. The design of the magazine is very clear and looks like a “want-have” product. Yes, what have!!

The second new kid on the block is the “Spielplatz Magazine“. It’s subtitle is “Games for Everyone” and its approach remembers me instantly on the GEE Mag. Compared to the WASD Magazine, Spielplatz only comes in a digital format: that is the AppStore (for iPhone and iPad) and web-based. The content is about games, new games, culture of games and anything else related to that culture. Welcome!

Small tile-map-jam I made yesterday in under 30 minutes

Ever struggled making decent tile maps for your small game project but not wanted to ask or hire an pixel-artist? Then this here is for you! It is simply one of the best tutorials on “how to make pixel-art” that I’ve ever read. The magic of this tutorial is, that you you learn how to make real “edges” to your basic, loopable tiles.

Just head over to tileset-tutorial. Everything is much better explained there, than everything I could write here. This tutorial was written by Blackmoon Design andy published at Wildbunny-blog.

When graphic-designers meet game-design – this can be a very fruitful combination. The game Reprisal is a good evidence. Artwork and in game-graphic of Reprisal is one of the most clean and charming pixelartwork, that came within the last years – playing in the same league as Sword and Sworcery or Fez.

The game was made by Jon Caplin, a UK-based graphic-designer. He worked on this game in the last six month as a private project. His blog says: “Ever since having an Amiga 500 as a kid I’ve been interested in making a Populous styled game.” And now the game is really to play (in your browser). Watch out – there are Reprisal printout-posters coming at you, too!

Syder Arcade is a shooting-game in the style of a really classical vertical shooter, developed by Studio Evil. The game does not only have a clean gameplay, but also very polished graphics. This is how classical shooting games from the Amiga-times would look like today. As a special feature, the game offers some “graphic filter”, that lets you select very strange in-game color-schemes. You can select for example, to play the game in color-schemes “Apple II, C64, Amiga HAM or gray2bit“. And since there is a decent lack of good shooting-games on Mac OS-X, consider this a gaming suggestion! (The game is also available for Windows)

(via)

Most recently John Ferrara published a book called “Playful Design“, that tries to bridge the gap between “everyday user-interfaces” and “game design“. It is aimed at user-experience-designers, who want to try to make their apps more sticky and more meaningful for the users. Here is the link to the Table of Contents.

The “Netmagazine” published an edited version of the chapter “Ten tips for building a better game“, with sentences like this:

“Consider what makes a game intrinsically interesting. You’ll find a lot of creative opportunity in games that make the player think through interesting choices instead of executing twitch responses.”

All in all, this book looks like a very nice lecture for both game- and user-experience-designers.

The great retro-casual game “Forget me Not” from Nyarlu Labs is now available in a browser-ready Flash version. The game features generative level processing, clean designed graphics, sounds and gameplay – and therefore a never-ending source of arcade fun! The game is already available for Mac/Win and iOS. (via)

PS: Nyarlu Labs has a good writeup in the blog, how he did the procedural level generation. Yay!