Nitrome are back with once again a nice casual game with polished graphics and a little bit more of gameplay, like other simple casual games have. In Rouble Trouble you have to destroy. Yay. Destroy buildings for your boss. Every tiny bit you destroy will get you a little bit more money. The nice thing is, that this game do not rely on one (simple) game-mechanic, but every of the first level introduce new “weapons of chioce”. There is a bit of stories involved, adding to making this a nice casual for the meantime. Only the music is really annoying. I also think that the game is a little bit too easy – it should get challenging much more faster. (via)

Somewhere in the deepest guts of the Global Game Jam, I discovered the game “Resonance” (Global Game Jam Entry). It has a decent poetry, and also a little bit of innvative gameplay. Resonance is basically a puzzle-platformer, where you have to reach the exit of each single-screen level. In order to do so, you will collect clefs (Notenschlüssel). This will unlock notes (actually sounds). Every time you play thouse notes, special colored platforms appear. A little bit of a very classic gameplay. But… the note you play merge with the harmonics of the background music. In some levels, just triggering the sounds is a bunch of fun – more like playing music, than a game! I could imagine, that some “timing-based levels” cound increase the fun of playing this music-game much, much more, giving the feeling of playing a score. Another plus of Resonance: the graphics are really, really nice!

Tonight we stay strange and colorful. I just found works from Matthew Lyons, a 21 year old student illustrator from UK. He shared his works via blog and flickr. Somehow a little bit of modernist meeting poetry and a good dose of demoscene aestetics. I highly suggest to also take a look at his inspiration-tumbleblog. Cold and distant, nostalgic and synthetic. Stanley Kubrick would love this, too!

The artwork is intense and strange like the music. A perfect fit!

Hurray! The netlabel Error Broadcast is back with a new release! And everything looks and sounds friendly and promising. Whether it be the title, tracknames like “Boss Worm” or “Quarty Boy”, the very beautiful cover-artwork or the broken shitloads of beats with warm reminiscene to analog gaming goodness. Yay. This is truly a good one. Go and have a listen! You can download this four tracks for free, or choose to purchase them in a very high flac-quality at bandcamp. Go for it, it is just 2 Euros!! Artwork by Michael Dotson. Strange things.

Making use of the camera, another more or less useful art-application was released. This time for the iPhone, transforming camera-shots or pictures from the library into zoomable ASCII-pictures. Next up you can send them via mail, Facebook, Twitter or save them back to your library them. The overall design if very lovely. Video:

(via)

Dot Dot Dot is the third from an ongoing series of 6 games, that has a “dot” as its main character. Each one of the games is made in 48 hours (a little bit like the global game jam) by the team at UsTwo. This game is a small casual game with a very simple idea and a short playing time. Your aim is to “flee” the dot from reaching the top. In order to do so, you have to every time reach the hole in the ground as fast as possible. What makes the game so interesting is nicely executed sound-design and the monochrome graphics. The game was released for iPhone (0.99 cent, Entry at Playstate.org), but you can also play it for free in your browser (in Flash, click on the 3 dots).

The Global Game Jam 2010 also started in Cologne. I attended the kick-off, which was more like a gentle breeze of air. The project-brainstorming and the forming of groups was absolutely accurate and on time. The games that are going to be created as part of the Global Game Jam 2010 have to stand under a certain topic: “deception”. I personally did not liked the topic that much, but nevertheless it lead to more or less robust project-results. There were also another constraint: the game had to include minimum one of the following: key, monkey or donkey. I had the impression, that monkeys clearly dominated the show. Anyway… first thumbs up for the organisation-team from the Cologne Game Lab and all participants. Let’s hope, that also the game-submissions will be in between light air and stromy winds.

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