79 posts tagged with game by JHarris.
Displaying 1 through 50 of 79.
The six directions: North, South, East, West, Anth and Kenth
On Steam right now is a game that lets you play Mini Golf in four dimensions, called, naturally, 4D Golf (Steam, $20). I don't mean in the sense that time is a fourth dimension, it's set in a fully 4D world: you decide which slice of it is revealed in the visible 3D world at any time. Here's a trailer. (1 1/2 minutes) Here's Youtuber Icely Puzzles playing the beginning of it. (43 minutes) Here's the video devlog. It's from CodeParade, who also made the hyperbolic plane exploration game Hyperbolica. At the end of the release announcement video, its creator mentioned that there is a secret feature in 4D Golf that makes it even more bizarre, but telling its existence is a pretty major spoiler.... [more inside]
ZachsMind: "It's awesomely awesome!"
Culled from a cancelled FMV 3DO game from 1996, you may never have seen anything so incrediculous as the 7 1/2 minute trailer Duelin' Firemen. While the trailer has been bouncing around the internet for 16 years (previously from 2007 by hypocritical ross), a higher resolution version has turned up that's almost watchable. It contains Rudy Ray Moore, the Rev. Ivan Stang, Mark Mothersbaugh, Dr. Timothy Leary and Tony Hawk. The Youtube channel of a documentary about the game's making has some other obscure clips from it. [more inside]
"I have a Bubsy 3D poster on my wall, it brings me daily inspiration!"
Garfield (2004) was a game for the Playstation 2 and PC. It was a pretty lackluster 3D production where the idea was to help the cartoon cat clean Jon's house within eight hours (real time!) or else be put on a diet. The few places that reviewed it gave it extremely low scores (0/10!). Youtuber planet clue recently had a look at the game (20 minutes) and, while agreeing it's no great work of art, saw that there was still a bit of fun to be had, if it could be made to run on Windows 11, and if one could get over its issues. So, they went about hacking it to correct its more egregious flaws, and when they were done put their improved version online, as Garfield+ (Windows only).
The giant space hamster is a beast; the space hamster is a monstrosity
The Monsters Know What They're Doing is a blog that examines all of the D&D 5th Edition monsters, according to their rulebook stats and descriptions, and offers strategy ideas for the interested DM.
Those skeletons should unionize
Underlevel (itch.io, free but Windows only for now) is a game made in 48 hours. It's got silly and charming graphics, and it's a lot of Halloween-themed fun! You're the skeleton lord in charge of a five-level dungeon, but a knight has invaded your domain and means to destroy you! Rally your lollygagging skeleton minions, to both lead them to the safety of the downstairs and destroy as many of the gem-laden pots on each level as you can, before the knight gets to them first and smashes them to raise its experience level! If you can't play it (that Windows thing, argh), here's a playthrough on Youtube. (9 minutes) [more inside]
Gravity and Escape Speed
XKCD has recently done a couple more interactive posts, both oriented toward exploring 2D space in a gravity-based universe: Gravity, and Escape Speed. The first is a fairly laid back region to explore; the second starts your ship out fairly limited, and you try to find upgrades, get enough speed to leave your starting planet. The first is mostly just something to look around, the second feels more like an actual game, with lots of upgrades and fun collectables to find.
your in a bathroom looking in a mirror looking back? is a SKELETON!
You Are a Skeleton & That Is a Problem, a Gameboy homebrew game made by Nicky Flowers. There is a Good Ending, and there is a BEST ENDING!!!, and there are a whole lot of bad endings. It's short though! It was made for Bad Game Jam, and you might like these other entries.
Hidden Object Game!
Long long ago, before the search for things buried in images proliferated on mobile platforms, there was this classic early example. A true test of your observation skills, it will keep you going for some time. The editor of this image has cleverly hidden within it a can of Spam. Can you find it? It has stymied tens of thousands of searchers for over twenty years. Good luck to you, internet user, and find that spam!
Ruffle and Dungeon Robber
Flash is dead, or is it? Ruffle is an alternate way to run Flash content! It's written in Rust, a language designed for memory safety, so it's much safer than Flash was. It's available as a standalone application, or a browser extension (compiled it to WebAssembly). You can even use it to run Flash apps on iOS. If you want to test it out, you could have another go at Dungeon Robber (Doubles Jubilee, 2013), a simulation of dungeon exploration using the rules from the 1st Edition AD&D DM's Guide.
Waiting for 4.0
For Doubles Jubilee, let's take another look at Godot, a compact, lightweight, yet really capable game development system. It runs on, and can make games for, many platforms! It's approaching a 4.0 release! It's gotten much better in the nearly two years since I first posted it, and had a burst of popularity spurred on by Unity's recent pushing of people towards upgrading to Pro. There are now many YouTube resources to help people learn it. For people who learn best through text, there's also the official documentation and their tutorial page. (Previously, in 2020)
Lode Runner in HTML5
All the levels from Lode Runner and Championship Lode Runner, in your browser. GitHub, also has further documentation. (DoublesJubilee, Original from 2016)
"Get psyched!"
You stand over the guard's body, grabbing frantically for a banana. You're not sure if the other guards heard his muffled scream. Just a few weeks ago you were on a reconnaissance mission of extreme importance. You were to infiltrate the fortress and find the plans for Operation Bad-Boon. Captain William J. "B.J." Blazkowicz, you've got a big plastic ball and eight floors of hell to get through. Good luck! RETURN TO CASTLE MONKEY BALL YouTube demo (CW: Nazi imagery, portrait of Awful Person)
STINKOMAN COMPLETE
Fifteen years ago, homestarrunner.com's fictional video game company Videlectrix released Stinkoman, a Flash platformer game starring the "20X6" version of their characters. Eventually the game would end up with nine levels and a promised 10th that was never finished. UNTIL NOW, literally days before browser support for Flash dies forever. The ridiculousness of this timing is not lost on them. You might need to use these instructions to reenable Flash support--very temporarily, of course. (Note that the Flash install page still tries to install bullshit McAfee stuff if you don't uncheck those boxes.) Fortunately you don't need Flash to view the trailer.
Identifying Luck in Mario Party
For two decades and across seven systems, the Mario Party games have been a beloved but frustrating experience. You might try with all your might to be the damnable Super Star, but a plethora of factors, some luck-related but some not, conspire to throw the match to your eight-year-old cousin who always plays Yoshi. YouTuber ZoomZike has compiled amazing and exhaustive videos going through every element of four games in the series, and showing what can be manipulated and what can't. It's IDENTIFYING LUCK IN MARIO PARTY: One - Two - Three - Four [more inside]
It's Zelda Day in July!
Kleric (previously) posts entertaining YouTube videos showing off glitches and tricks in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Tricks like, how physics changes during 'bullet time' and how to make a 'spaceship' out of a Guardian and a boat, how to make a stable flying machine out of two minecars, information on causing 'glitched blood moons', shield sliding, hold smuggling, creating a flood of Ancient parts, what 'skew' is and how to take advantage of it, menu overloading basics and a better way to do it, how to ensure the day/night timer never begins, and how to make as many horses as your little equine-loving heart desires. [more inside]
Let's drill!
A couple of developers (Johan & Johan) have made Pico Driller, a free, simplified rendition of arcade classic Mr. Driller, in Pico8! It's a good introduction to the Ways of the Drill. Good luck! [more inside]
Simple yet powerful gamedev
Want to get into game development, but find C++ to forbidding, Unity too HUGE, and Game Maker too expensive and prone to charge you hundreds of dollars for every specific export system? Then you don't really need to wait for Godot, which is only 27 megabytes (around 52 with Mono support), is both free as in beer and under the MIT License, uses a Python-like syntax with options for C#, C++ and others, runs on Windows, macOS, Linuxes and BSDs and even Haiku, exports to all of the above plus iOS, Android and HTML5, and is pretty easy to use. [more inside]
"A vision of the future: Mario's shoe stamping on Bowser's face forever"
Amiibots is an automated Twitch stream that hosts amiibo figure fighters submitted by Exion Vault's community fighting each other in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in endless succession, twenty-four hours a day.
Putting the mechanical into electro-mechanical
Mustafa Yasar makes (among other things) homemade pinball machines. They don't have blinking lights, sound effects, scoring over two digits or powered playfield gimmicks. But they do have multiball. (Found from ausretrogamer's Twitter.)
Yaawwn... zzzz....
It's been Yet Another Exhausting Day, and it's time for bed. But you're too snoozy to just stand up and walk there. You don't want to just fall asleep in the middle of the floor like a slob... but you're so tired. Maybe if you don't stand up, but just sort of slide along the floor to the bedroom.... (It's a computer game! Here's a playable demo, and here's the game's Twitter. Sadly, it's Windows only for now. Thanks to Alpha Beta Gamer and Jupiter Hadley for the find.)
Magic Advice in D&D 5E for Players and DMs
For you D&D 5th edition fanatics out there, Youtube animator Zee Bashew makes a series of short cartoons illustrating different aspects of and ideas for the game (especially magic) called the Animated Spellbook. Spellbooks - Save Spells vs. Attack Roll Spells - Spell Levels and Cantrips - Casting Times and Rituals - Weak Characters are Better - Prestigitation - Sleep - Feather Fall - Goodberry - The Deadliest Thing in D&D - Detect Magic
The CRPG Book Project
For over four years Felipe Pepe has been working on a 500+ page book reviewing 400 CRPGs, going over their history from early PLATO amusements to the latest 100+ hour Bethesda open-world monstrosities. At last his efforts have reached a conclusion, and he's giving the ebook away free on his website.
"I could have made something empowering."
Bennett Foddy, he who made exquisite torture games QWOP (MeFi), CLOP (MeFi) and GIRP (MeFi), released a new game as part of the October Humble Monthly, called Getting Over It. It'll be available on Steam on December 6, but in the meantime you can watch this trailer. It is a surprisingly realistic model of a guy in a cauldron with a pick trying to climb a mountain.
Untitled Goose Project
It's a lovely weekday morning in the village and you are a horrible goose in an upcoming game from House House, the makers of Push Me Pull You.
Watch Out For Fuzzy!
Yoshi the Dinosaur in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (YouTube link), an unfinished, but still amazing, romhack from 2010 that recently surfaced. [more inside]
Lode Runner in HTML5
The classic action puzzle game Lode Runner is now on the web, implemented in HTML5 by Simon Hung using CreateJS! It has all 150 the levels from the original and the 50 from Championship (VERY HARD), plus some more collections. Here's the source on GitHub. More info. [more inside]
Why Cops Are Raiding Arcades Over a Fishing Game
There's a line of arcade video games, with names like Fish Hunter, Dragon Hunter and King of Treasures, that are increasingly being targeted by authorities as gambling devices. You may have one in a local game room (set to dispense tickets probably) under the name Harpoon Lagoon. [more inside]
(Oh yeah!) I heard there was a secret chord
Did you ever realize that the word "Hallelujah" has the same syllable count and stress pattern as "Waluigi?"
SO!: It's a Cold and a Broken Waluigi - And here, with adjusted lyrics (but without the voice) [more inside]
SO!: It's a Cold and a Broken Waluigi - And here, with adjusted lyrics (but without the voice) [more inside]
Supper Mario Broth
Supper Mario Broth is a wonderfully obsessive blog devoted to all sorts of Super Mario Brothers minutia. Really, you are not prepared for this. Things like.... [more inside]
"How to Become Famous on the Internet"
The memorable URL damn.dog hides a game where you try to guess the titles of WikiHow articles by one of their illustrations.
Quick+Regen+Slow
Colin Hanson, aka Active_ate, goes through the original (fan-translated) version of Final Fantasy V with only a single Time Mage character, and provides complete, exhaustive details of how this feat was achieved: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3. From retrogaming enthusiast site Skirmishfrogs. [more inside]
"Pinball Palace was a small, almost hidden place...
...tucked between the Jerry Lewis Movie theater and a specialty bra shop. From the outside, it looked forbidden and dangerous, two things that combined to point a beckoning finger at me.
Gina opened the door and I followed, knowing that this was exactly the kind of place my parents warned me about."
-- Michele Catalano, on the lost age of pinball.
Gina opened the door and I followed, knowing that this was exactly the kind of place my parents warned me about."
-- Michele Catalano, on the lost age of pinball.
Happy Zelda Day!
Zelda Day 2015:
- If you love the NES original but are sad you know where everything is, try the Zelda Randomizer! (Windows EXE, requires ROM). Tries to guarantee solvable games! YouTube play.
- Did you know that, in the original releases of N64 Ocarina of Time, if you hold the R button down when you get a certain item, you get a different one instead? Info with more OoT glitches.
- From Double Fine! Devs Play The Legend of Zelda, four parts: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
- Fan animation, "Racing For Rupees".
Hardcore Gaming 101 video articles
Here is the new series of video articles started by the ultra-knowledgeable folks at Hardcore Gaming 101. The first two are up, the beginning of series on Pre-Super Mario platform games and on the early history of JRPGs. Related is the video adjunct to the Game Club 199X Podcast, with over 50 videos. (Previously.)
Bundles and game discounters
It started with the Humble Indie Bundle. (Previously, and multiple times.) But there's now plenty of other places to get indie games bundled cheaply: IndieGala, Bundle Stars, Groupees, and, because you can't get cheaper than free, Freebie Bundle and Free Bundle. There's also Indie Game Stand, Buy-Some-Indie-Games, Fire Flower Games, Shiny Loot and GreenManGaming's Indie section.
How to master Ms. Pac-Man
Here's David Manning's YouTube videos illustrating how to make use of ghost AI quirks on the fly while playing in Ms. Pac-Man: Ghost Behavior and On Grouping. It's excellent for building an intuitive sense of how to play the game which, because of random aspects, cannot be reliably beaten with patterns as with Pac-Man. [more inside]
Unlimited Adventures, Gold Box D&D construction set
Here are two Let's Plays (text) devoted to SSI's classic DOS D&D "Gold Box" construction set program Unlimited Adventures, one of the most revered user-level RPG creator programs and now available on GoG.
- Let's Play UA, an ENWorld forum post.
- Another text Let's Play, on RPG Codex. UA modules are not easy to get running, but for those interested....
John's Arcade, game collecting and restoration
Here is John's Arcade, a resource about collecting, maintaining and playing classic arcade video and pinball machines. But the real reason I'm posting this is his YouTube channel, which is full of long videos (many over an hour) about arcade repair and maintenance. Like restoring an incredibly rare I, Robot machine, or Computer Space, the first video arcade game, or Quantum, a rare Atari game developed by GCC, programmers of Ms. Pac-Man. Or you can just watch him try to break 300,000 in Donkey Kong over several half-hour videos.
Bugs in old arcade games
Here is what causes the kill screens of Ms. Pac-Man and why they happen long before level 256. Here is why you can sometimes control the attract mode demo in Galaga. Computer Archeology explains the "no fire" cheat in Galaga, which causes the enemies to stop firing if you keep two specific bugs alive long enough. (What, you don't know what Galaga is? galaga.info has you covered.) [more inside]
Building cool dungeons in D&D
Here is Justin Alexander's "Jaquaying the Dungeon," a crash course in old-school D&D adventure complex design, for all you grognards out there.
- 1.Definition - Jennell Jaquays wrote many classic RPG adventures for a variety of systems and publishers, notable for their non-linearity.
- 2.Techniques - On non-linear dungeon construction.
- 3.Philosophy - Why do non-linear dungeons matter, how to make good use of it.
- 4. Applied to Keep on the Shadowfell - Jaquaying a typical linear dungeon module.
- 5. General application - Othter ways Shadowfell could have been improved, summation.
- 6.Ways to connect dungeon levels - An appendix of ways to connect dungeon levels to each other.
- 7.Tips and Tricks - Tricky ideas to delight/annoy players.
- Justin Alexander's Gamemastery 101 is further loaded with good GMing advice.
Super Glitchy Mario World
Here is Let's Glitch Super Mario World, an in-depth series of 47 YouTube videos (each from 10 to 30 minutes long) that demonstrate breaking the game in myriad ways, with clear descriptions of what is going on.
SUPER DAVID BECKHAM ISLAND
Here is video of an unusual moment in David Beckham's varied career: the time he was called upon to defeat Mister Woe and the monsters of the Fourth Division. It's GO! GO! BECKHAM!
Here's when he fought a giant bird with his soccer powers. Here is the beginning of his adventure on Soccer Island, and here's a complete speedrun.
Claw machines are often less games of skill as chance
Here's some information on claw, also called crane, machines. Did you ever play one of those games to try to win a plush toy, only for the prize to tumble out of the claw at first grasp, or even outright drop it halfway up? Think you just didn't play well enough? Maybe the machine just decided to make you lose by randomly reducing claw power. Here's more information. Via Dubious Quality, although I did page through a few manuals on my own.... [more inside]
How to make Mario levels, by negative example
Here's a list of things not to do in your Mario levels, consider it advice for when Super Mario Maker comes out in a week and a half. Also, here's things not to do in your Mario overworld. They both come from the rom hacking community at SMWCentral.
The state of being both kid and squid simultaneously
Nintendo's quirky squad shooter Splatoon, which sold 1.6 million worldwide copies in two months of release, is their first real new property since the Gamecube era. People are calling it the game that could save the Wii-U. [more inside]
Nintendo's company guides to job applicants
In Japan, people applying to work at Nintendo are given an amazing company guide (2015), bursting with color, that they remake every year. 2014 - 2013 - 2012 - 2011 ( via Simon Carless [Twitter], thnx)
DOMAIN OF PRIME FROG
"This blog is dedicated to discussing games where you play as a frog, but it might also talk about games which just have heavy frog presence in them. The borders are unclear and the road ahead is hazy. Come with me on the journey to be a frog."
♥FROG WORLD♥
♥FROG WORLD♥
NEON GLITCHY PIXART MADNESS
It's gloriously incomprehensible and very Japanese, but still: BUGGG, a game, or rather several games. (Requires Unity) [more inside]
Sights from Zelda games that will probably never be released again
It's Zelda Day! Presented for your consideration: BS-Zelda, the satellite radio-based Zelda games that never got released outside of Japan.
The first BS Zelda game was an update/modification of the original Legend of Zelda. It was intended to be played over four weeks, an hour at a time, with different areas of the overworld unveiled each week. Here is video, with broadcasts included: 1 (YT 1h) - 2 (YT 58m) - 3 (YT 58m) - 4 (YT 1h2m) Each takes several minutes to get started, which mirrors the time delay before the game started when broadcast.
The second game was called Ancient Stone Tablets, and it used the Link To The Past engine, and much of its map. YouTube playlist (YT 12 items, 3h50m)
More information and emulator files hacked to be playable are at: The BS-Zelda Homepage. [more inside]
The first BS Zelda game was an update/modification of the original Legend of Zelda. It was intended to be played over four weeks, an hour at a time, with different areas of the overworld unveiled each week. Here is video, with broadcasts included: 1 (YT 1h) - 2 (YT 58m) - 3 (YT 58m) - 4 (YT 1h2m) Each takes several minutes to get started, which mirrors the time delay before the game started when broadcast.
The second game was called Ancient Stone Tablets, and it used the Link To The Past engine, and much of its map. YouTube playlist (YT 12 items, 3h50m)
More information and emulator files hacked to be playable are at: The BS-Zelda Homepage. [more inside]
RIP Douglas E. Smith
Douglas E. Smith, creator of the classic 8-bit computer game Lode Runner, which got a second life as one of HudsonSoft's most iconic Famicom titles in Japan, has died at the age of 57. [more inside]
Page:
1 2