I just discovered the game “Smurfs Village” for iPhone and iPad, that was made by Capcom Mobile, and that is surprisingly well made. This days everywhere are the trailers for the Smurpfs movie are popping out, but I somehow dislike the way, the 3d-characters are made in the movie. Compared to the movie, this game is really close to the original Smurf-comics when it comes to the look and feel of the game. And this is really the quality.

The gameplay is really exactly like in Farmville: you create crops, harvest berries, build houses, make friends and visit other villages. There are some sublime differences and additional gameplay, for example you can mix Potions at Papa Smurf’s House or send Smurfs into the forest, to look out for the cat Azrael. This all sounds familiar, since the “additional gameplay” is 100% derived from the comic books. Even the graphics, in handdrawn-style, are more or less 1 to 1 taken from the original comic-books. But this indeed is the quality of the game: if you ever loved the Smurfs in your childhood, you will instantly love this game, because it has this strong and original vibes, the books have. Even if not, the Smurpf’s world is really unique at its own.

Although this is game from a comic or movie (that go normally wrong) I really can suggest this free to play game. If you play it through facebook, you can add me as a friend.

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)

A collection of great online-streaming-radios. Whether bot-powered or made by human!

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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.

What is art all about in the era of highly available access to information and cultural artifacts? How does the role of creation and artist will change? How is art integrated into culture in the future? Questions like this stand in the middle of this 22 minute documentary, including lots and lots of footage and interviews with some people from the present, taken during the Transmediale Berlin 2011. Find the list of the participants, including the links to the artists websites at the Vimeo-page. (via)