A game where your knives' attack power is directly proportional to how thoroughly and lovingly you lick them before battle.
"Sadly, this game only ranks a 5/10 in Evil Wizards, a 3/10 in Ancient Prophecy and a miserable 2/10 in Sword Fetishism."
You turn on the tap. A stream of multicoloured muddy liquid flows out. All around you, the colour in your cell slowly drains away to gray.
The death-beam punches through her body and into yours. In that instant you feel united, connected, in a way that eluded you both in life.
His only warmth in the cave, a flash of dragonfire. He cradles it, ponders the fact that flame spat in animal fury can bring such coziness.
Your web quivers under you. You read a stream of frantic tugs - too slow for a moth, too heavy for a mosquito. Is it⌠a human? "Delicious!"
A world where the only act of anti-consumerist rebellion left is spelling brand names with inaccurate capitalisation.
A strange fungus filled his body. Every cut or scratch produced not blood but a bloom. He walked into battles a man, emerged a dense forest.
In his later years he found words inelegant compared to a single belligerent hand wave. He could coast through whole conversations that way.
A grate in the floor with a complicated lock. You imbibe the potion of puzzle solution! You swiftly dissolve and dribble through the bars.
"Many an archeologist's spouse has slid into bed, only to leap out screaming at the centuries-old femurs they'd smuggled under the covers."
"Exploring crypts is dangerous⌠Many get 'cryptomania' and rescind civilisation to live inside for good⌠The siren song of bones and stone!"
Decrease your game's RAM usage and improve its performance by replacing all the image assets with circuit-board textures.
"Baggage check, please hand over all mud. Hmm⌠Sir did you know this mud has traces of slime in it? Did you think you'd get away with this?"
Recon has revealed that Swamp 2's so-called "Death Cannon" is just a big slingshot made of 30 hairbands safety-pinned together.
And with the Sacredmost Amulet finally complete, the Boy Knight gasped as across its surface appeared the words "GROWING UP IS IMPORTANT".
Just a note: even though the @TalesOfGames site lists the Barkley port as being for OS X 10.8, it will also work for 10.6 and above.
http://l.j-factor.com/macports/ - Just added the newly released freeware port to this page.
Plenty of games have pattern bosses with specific weak spots. Few of them give you a Super Missile to blow through them in a few key hits.
I also admire that the Kraid battle is simultaneously an arduous battle of attrition for beginners, and a 10-second speed-bump for experts.
The way the beam makes a keening wail and takes a full second to charge up, as if you're exhausted, struggling to get the last few shots in.
I really like the way the charge beam in Super Metroid feels like an act of desperation when you run out of missiles in a boss fight.
"Jumping couldn't be implemented in this port. Instead, Mario runs into the goomba and dies, and a text box describes the rest of the game."
"First, imagine the endings of Super Hexagon, Rez, Dyad and 2001 put together. Okay? Now please describe it because it sounds fascinating."
"Swamp 2 is licking us in giant garbage mound supremacy. We must step up our garbage collecting! All littering is now punishable by swirly."
"When it's down to 1/4 life, it unleashes a beam of pure energy, a beam of energy mixed with garbage, and a beam of pure garbage."
Forced to choose between the wise race and the crafty race in the character creator⌠A woman is tortured by the dilemma⌠A man weeps openlyâŚ
"Behold the degraded, slovenly future of humanity⌠a civilisation that has never tasted fruit, nuts and grains unaccompanied by chocolate!!"
Leon Trotsky was not killed by the blow of the ice axe, but in hospital he bit into a sandwich so hard that his brain shot out of the wound.
Today is Wednesday and I am now 26. Thank you for subscribing to my tweets and I hope to make the next year just as interesting as the last.
"Well, I guess that's the end of another episode." *pauses awkwardly until today's Salutation Sponsor logo pops up* "Adios, Doritos."
Human NPCs feel so confident, so assured in their existence. Non-human NPCs seem like they don't know who they are any more than you do.
Human NPCs in Mother games seem so callous and self-absorbed. The non-human NPCs seem humbler, gentler, thankful for the player's attention.
The game in the previous tweet reminds me a lot of Aisle http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=j49crlvd62mhwuzu both in tone and the "improvised story" dynamic.
http://hismsv.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/bluelit/ - @berv_ made a Twine game for the first time, based on one of my tweets. I'm touched.
Apparently you can crash the Mac version of Game Maker by doing a find-replace where the "replace" string also contains the "find" string.
The wider availability of alien technology has led to more biomutation crimes being reported⌠but how much is it causing in the first place?
The world of "dark crime"⌠Breaking secret laws unknown to most citizens⌠Police and judges feign ignorance, until they put on their masksâŚ
"The boss has to be like POW! And the screen has to shake like THIS!" *shudders on the spot for 30 sec as the artist carefully takes notes*
"What is this?" cries your NES. "Are you leaving your video game duty to lose time with work? Cease now! Back to play!"
You guess she'd meant to shoot the shrink ray at the angry cotton ball instead of the growth ray, but now you're both in its fluffy tummy.
Sweat is simply pouring off you! Flowing, cascading, okay you got me it's blood, you're dying, look I just didn't want to break it to you.
I mean⌠Did he mean to type "other slide", or is the joke that it really _was_ the other side? Or⌠Is this ambiguity the REAL joke?⌠My godâŚ
https://twitter.com/WeeklyFrogJokes/status/273087868036079617 - This joke⌠It's simply⌠diabolicalâŚ
A head bursts forth from the desert sand, shouts "Don't you get it? The sand is the real mirage!", and sinks back down from whence it came.
"I think you should put your heroics⌠on ice." *flames shoot up and incinerate the hero* "And you said my puns made me predictable."
"I only stepped back into my birthing-body for the magic moment itself. Well, I wasn't trusting a servant to just squeeze you out, was I?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mRwSVQIFjU - Watch this pretty good obscure 60s British meta-comedy programme before YouTube pulls it again.
"In the end it is revealed their day-long hug was to prevent the detonation of a sunlight-triggered grenade that had fallen between them."
"Alas, we are straight men, and the only means we have of showing affection is through the meeting of knuckles." *proffers fist for bumpage*
For your crime of wasting cotton balls, you shall be slowly lowered into a pit full of hungry, frisky cotton balls.
Illegal Sandwich Forms: Antiwich (filling on outside) Uniwich (1 big slice folded over) Triwich (3 slices in a triangle) IF SEEN DO NOT EAT
"Millions can be saved per year by fitting offices with conveyor belts transporting workers directly into their cubicles."
The Emperor was delighted - finally, someone had invented a machine that would allow the sick and dying to lie down and bury themselves.
"There's 3 paths to the throne room - the Path of 100 Wriggling Fingers, the Path of 100 Darting Tongues and the Path of 100 Lowering Feet."
A Grow-like Twine game where you have a single scene and eight verbs that can be performed once in any order.
Would that you could find a pair of arms in which your weight was no burden, a pair of eyes in which you never ceased to fascinate.
The peculiar task of choosing words for tweets - the feeling of creating an entire mood with an adverb, an entire person with a verb.
"Your life is just so vicarious," he said dismissively, as if this was due to slovenliness rather than, say, sheer necessity.
You enter the changing room. As you disrobe, the walls slide up to reveal a vast auditorium of rich women silently scrutinising your body.
"No society before ours has realised this truth, that justice is as much a human need as food and water - even more vital than law itself."
I'm kind of impressed at how good I get at Super Hexagon when I slip into a trance of depressive thoughts of self-loathing.
Acknowledging and accepting other people's beliefs that you have worth and value, even when you have no emotional basis to believe it.
* Dishonourable Mention - Evil Games Showcase 2009 * 666th Place - Carnival of Electric Sin 2010 * Brimstone Medal - Hades Game Feast 2011
"Buy Window Premium today for: * No ads on the sun * Unlimited trees * The acclaimed Open and Shut features * Up to 3 licenses per house!"
"The outside world is being presented to you on a conditional basis, and access may be withdrawn at any time without notice."
"Mind Calibration Begin. Adjust until these means of producing capital and these positive emotions overlap. Mind Calibration Successful."
"70% of our bodies are water. 90% of our body cells are bacteria. We really, really shouldn't have bought these off-brand models."
Feeling cold, yet being unable to will yourself to find a coat. Needing to leave, yet being unable to will yourself to even stand up.
It seems fitting that a cobbled-together dream-themed licensed game has diffuse boundaries between enemies, allies and powerups.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/588660-the-simpsons-barts-nightmare/faqs/11348 - Fairy Lisa tries to turn you into a frog. If you get caught by a gang, Lisa turns the gang into frogs to save you.
Game where the ending cutscene is only available as paid DLC, and the main quest is about trying in vain to pirate it.
Games seem more interested in authoritarian imprisonment rather than capitalistic imprisonment - monolithic jailers over intangible jailers.
What emotional response do games want to elicit by making their bosses giant and towering? Fear? Awe? Glee? Surrealness? Anything at all?
Some say ending tweets with "Who knowsâŚ" is a cheap way to add a false sense of mystery. Are they correct? Who knowsâŚ
"The meteors in the Netscape logo are a warning" he whispers. "To survive the Dataclysm, we must surf harder than we've ever surfed before."
The Grand High Evil offers you a Neutron Orb. You take it and your head taps the floor as your body is twisted in an arch by its gravity.
"Apology accepted," said the Grand High Evil. She lifts the supergravity curse, but your body is already gelatinous from the pressure.
Yoshi's Island and Story have both Squishy Friction and Puffy Friction. Lots of big creatures whose bodies you can sink into or bounce off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton "The project missed its original goals to reinvent personal computing [citation needed]"
"The shadow web is great⌠cool sites about the anti-videogames between your TV's scanlines⌠webcomix about osmotically devouring all lightâŚ"
Your shadow surfs the shadow web when you sleep. If you ever retweet one of your shadow's tweets, it will absorb you and claim your body.
http://animatedscreenshots.tumblr.com/post/36307708411/retro - I like it when game manuals' enemy lists assume an air of mystery and suspense.
People bemoaned the absence of the long jump in post-64 Mario games, but I also miss doing that sliding kick attack all over the castle.
"Squishy Friction: the friction of bouncing off the belly of a giant slime. Puffy Friction: the friction of sinking into a giant puffball."
I found something really sad about the hazed-out stat bars in @increpare's Home. I'm surprised at how emotive a bar full of static can be.
"You know what they sayâŚ" she said, gazing into the dark. "Slugbeast cerebral slime sinks⌠Waspmind mental jelly floats."
I want to know when they'll invent a pixel shader for the effect of distantly remembering a happier time that is now forever gone.
"I only really like scrolling games." "Me? I'm all about timed games." "Give me map screen games. If a game has a map screen, I'm on it!"
What I do wonder about OAOS is that it 'teaches' you about fall damage by making you die in the pit once, then unlocking your jump ability.
I was going to include the oft-derided One And One Story in that list, but its first level actually contains stuff.
This dress is marked 'click to enlarge'. You click and it swells up, bursts out the top of your monitor and rapidly fills your entire room
Here's a vintage cartoon PSA from when Australia made the switch to decimal currency: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZVEEs-RJpw
"You didn't know it at the time, but I actually said 'please don't fall in this pit' in reverse-psychology quotes."
I find it interesting comparing the desolate tutorial levels of Flash platformers to Super Mario Bros's "jump onto this goomba" approach.
http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?p=1197275 - A brief ode to the empty, featureless tutorial levels of single-screen Flash platformers.
#IPlayed Hot Air Jr. Reminds me of the DS. Awkward to play, but it has some genuine visual variety between levels.
I think NetHack has a bunch of interesting and meaningful moments unfortunately embedded in a game that's not that fun to actually beat.
What I like about NetHack mimics is that they can mimic the '[' glyph (armour) as well as ']' (a glyph that no item uses at all).
"A floor is a degenerate pit, namely one with a depth of 0. A block is a degenerate spike, namely one with a sharpness of 0."
I'm amused that "write a CYOA, get your cool artist pals to illustrate it" is an idea @auntiepixelante beat Ryan North to the punch at.
http://www.kongregate.com/games/pixelcontinuous/humbug - This game is tricky in a way I like. Similar in places to the Karoshi series.
"Someday this child will be a scientist, growing immense carrot tops in vast saucers⌠drawing chalk outlines around evaporating lakesâŚ"
A man wakes up to find himself in a world where all books, signs and labels read "Use WASD or arrows to move!" repeated over and over.
"I'm fascinated with the all-or-nothing nature of blades. When you're just an inch away, you're fine - but one inch closer, and you die."
A game where you can run past every boss fight⌠the bosses pursue you, struggle to send even one attack pattern at you, but you're too fastâŚ
Imagine if you replaced all the slow, ponderous boss battles in puzzle-platformers with desperate, chaotic knife fights.
The interactive fiction parser should admit it's making up all this puzzle junk to stall for time while it writes the next bit of the plot.
In an alternate universe where Jim Henson's The Cube is as popular as Portal, strawberry jam references are as tired as cake jokes.
If only there was a videogame that actually really did play you. I'd love it if a videogame played me. I wonder if I'd be hard.
"Rats, vultures, hyenas and a species of carrion beetle can solve this logic puzzle in just 6 days. Can you?" *picture of you from Facebook*
In the 19th century, the metal 'inedible knife and fork' was created to stop children eating their cutlery before dinner instead of after.
A bonetruck spill on the road⌠Children are grabbing tibias and ribs by the armful⌠Clerics are spraying the pile with consecrated soilâŚ
And thenâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚ7 ate 9
WellâŚâŚâŚit's actually a sad storyâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚyou seeâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚI had just finished the gifs from Mega Man 7âŚâŚâŚâŚand thenâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚso tragicâŚâŚâŚâŚâŚ
http://animatedscreenshots.tumblr.com/post/36087622957/mega-man-mega-man-2-mega-man-3-mega - Now you're thinking "I don't know if Mega Man 8 had those, but what about Mega Man 9, Leon? Where's Mega Man 9?"
"Apple ordered the company to cease production and every sold unit to be recalled - by force, if necessary. You have been issued a shotgun."
http://l.j-factor.com/gmhtml5/ - I've added download links for the offline Windows versions of my games, including a Brainpan exe I'd forgot to make.
You're in a baffling cave in space! Are the walls mineral, or organic? Is this even gravity, or the capricious whim of a psybersquid?? Aaah!
"Thank you for purchasing Pseudo!, the board game of conniving and deception." *opens lid, finds box is empty* "The game has already begun."
http://www.meltyfresh.com/neshouse/onlyinjapan/doropie/level2cutscene1.gif - What I don't get is why Doropie's sprite has cleavage when her cutscene pictures do not. http://www.meltyfresh.com/neshouse/onlyinjapan/doropie/level1cutscene1.gif
http://www.masterstech-home.com/Images/Font_Sample_Gifs/F/Fantaste.GIF - The ultimate roguelike font???
http://www.masterstech-home.com/Images/Font_Sample_Gifs/O/Otherworld.GIF - I like this font.
The new version of Opera is glitching out my games' graphics even without the special "glitch graphics" button I added.
You turn around. A 7-foot-tall, radiantly beautiful movie star is confidently striding towards you with a large dagger. Obvious exits are .
"Millenium 'Bug', you say? More like⌠Millenium Sabotage!" *opens PC case revealing two gremlins making out on a pile of stolen '19' digits*
Game idea: RPG where you're an obsessive ghost who simply has to close the lids on all the treasure chests the adventurers left open.
I thought of that as one of the @actionbutton devs has claimed that ZiGGURAT has a secret final ending if you survive for 9 hours straight.
âąâ26-06-2014 â 23:56:51
http://www.gamefaqs.com/genesis/563327-gunstar-heroes/faqs/16625 I like that Gunstar Heroes has a secret message if you keep one of its easiest bosses alive for an hour and a half.
"This bed design utilises the 'instinctive devouring response', where humans involuntarily go limp when placed between enormous jaws."
"We only have Web 2.0 today thanks to the success of Tim Berners-Lee's post-retirement Kickstarter."
Imagine if every television show opened with the frame story of being watched by those two penguins from Beakman's World.
"Humanity didn't save electricity⌠Now electricity is doing the opposite of saving us!!" --Me during every thunderstorm from now on.
"Hey everyone, look at this!" *all your twitter pals run to the doorway at the same time, get wedged together for the rest of this episode*
"You know you're working too hard when a rack full of drying dishes looks like a TV show cast photo."
You gingerly step over the sleeping dragon's gems and cups - the merest touch of your skin will make a loud chime and give you 200 points.
You are locked in a dungeon. >JUMP Where do you want to jump? >ENDING ROOM Congratulations - your journey is over. You have won.
I'm still amused by someone once saying that my game Return Alive is really a convoluted magic carpet collecting game.
"And finally, the price," says the spokesman, his voice suddenly changing to that of a child's. "We shall cost but a single perfect cent."
"Other consoles can only play 3 videogames" says the nameless spokesman, his head concealed in a papier-mâchÊ mask. "We shall have but one."
A new upcoming game console⌠How many hands will its controller use? Visual or proprioceptive output? Electricity or kerosene? No one knowsâŚ
A man lost in the desert, starved for impressions and previews. He finds an oasis. He fumbles as he tries to plug his phone in the USB port.
"Welcome to the hottest source of info, impressions, input, data, observation, awareness, and sensory stimulus on the web!"
"I'm lookin' for: bosses, sub-bosses, guardians, kingpins, last guys, end-foes, crook-kings, mega rascals, ur-galoots and omni-miscreants."
Am fantasising about making a very basic Ren'Py to Twine converter thing⌠gazing at Ren'Py source files with unwarranted anticipation.
You see three absences: vacant spaces in your room which you know should contain some possession, but you struggle to remember exactly what.
A simple notion - enemies can't occupy the same spot - but it goes far to giving them substance, physical presence.
Played ZiGGURAT a bit more. Didn't realise the extent to which the big guys allow the small guys to bounce off them and get unreal hangtime.
"A type I swamp is one in which 100% of its mud is utilised by its citizens. Hypothetical 'dirt fusion' reactors may aid in reaching this."
"I'm not dizzy, I just realised that 6 feet off the ground is actually pretty damn high up! I mean, whoa, that's like a ton of centimetres!"
"You might assume I'm really squeamish or light-headed, but I really need to brush the floor and it's a good thing I've got all this hair."
"I wish to make it clear that I am NOT fainting - I just have important business under this desk that requires my entire body's attention."
I feel, suddenly, as if this mode of social computing is already dead, gone and alienated, and I'm merely wistfully reminiscing about it.
Playing the Digital: A Love Story music while reading Twitter has given me the powerful sensation of perceiving 2012 as the distant past.
The businessmen are gone, leaving behind all their Earth money - mountains of it. Too much to spend, too much to bury, too much to burn.
The world's businessmen are flying away. They say they've found a planet with a healthier economy, behind the tiniest star in the sky.
"The economy of the year 2000 will be powered by hypertypists, typing 10, 15, 20 words per second! These people will be revered like gods."
"In the year 2000, people will control PCs with ten tiny mice - one per finger! The computing power of two entire hands will be realised."
Some question having a flashing Boost Pad on the street outside your house⌠It constantly glows at all hours with no visible energy inputâŚ
Purple stoplights reverse your controls when you go past⌠Silver ones flip the world horizontally⌠Hazards of driving the Special StreetsâŚ
A coder eagerly telling an AI of the night it was born: "I'll remember hacking those final few link-time errors for the rest of my life."
Emoticons as phrases - the idea of a face as a sentence, one that you read from the premise of the eyes to the wry punch-line of the mouth.
"Welcome to Swamp College. Name two kinds of mud." "Wet and brown". "Have we blown up Swamp 2 yet?" "No." "Now let me photocopy a diploma."
Hammer's gal, Second Prize In A Beauty Contest, was an ex-pageant contestant⌠She always won first prize. No one in the city can resist herâŚ
Their leader is Jack You Are Assessed For Street Repairs Hammer⌠His right hand man is Bill Bank Error In Your Favour Teller⌠Hardened menâŚ
"This needs to be 2001: A Space Odyssey in explosion form," he told his graphic artist. "This explosion needs to have LAYERS."
"The annihil-bots only sense movement or human shapes⌠which meansâŚ" Suddenly your team notices your prominent "Planking is Stupid" t-shirt.
"This morning's brief vision of a swan-headed weeping angel in the sky has left consumers hungrily searching for a brand that resembles it."
"Experts are optimistic that the newly awakened omniscient crystal-god will gladly aid the industry's fight against copyright infringement."
In 200 years urban environments will be nearly impossible to perceive, let alone navigate, for a human born today.
Is there a word for a creature whose existence is visibly at odds with physical reality, yet, impossibly, exists? This idea fascinates me.
Just so you know I always pronounce "the 00's" as "the zero-ies" and will never consider any alternatives.
http://animatedscreenshots.tumblr.com/post/35794303492/ryan-thunder - If you don't know what this is, it's basically just "The 00's: The Zeux."
The personification of the word "blog" visits you. You're amazed you ever thought this gorgeous word was ugly and shallow. You slowly caress
I just beat Super HexagonâŚ's Hexagon difficulty. I ought to think of the 60 seconds as just two long Super Meat Boy levels back to back.
The Organisation gazes down at the people. How can I keep them doing only what I want them to, it wonders. It passes a motion to frown.
Cartoon characters shoveling sand into their mouths long after the mirage has faded, unable to accept a reality where they were so gullible.
"A spokesman has stated that the rise of 'pan-crime' by large majorities of the populace has made industrial-scale laws 'very desirable'."
"The state refuses to yet confirm the existence of newly enacted 'megalaws', capable of charging thousands of people at a time."
http://studygroupcomics.com/main/haunter-part-1-by-sam-alden/ - I like this comic. There's a lot of thoughtful mysterious dungeon comics on the web, actually.
I love these exotic planet landing cutscenes in Solar Jetman. Makes me think of Anna's and @LorenSchmidt's WIP game.
"When a doctor, a dietician and a physicist were shown this amazing product, they shed their skin and began strafing us with acid spit."
"The empty space between levels is filled with tile 0: a vending machine. Some believe in-game myths about 'Merchant Acres' refer to this."
"You derived 5 euphors of enjoyment from this show, -12 below your Friends' average. Suggestion: Stop being so uptight!"
"Wealthy 1AM subscribers can also buy a lucrative upgrade to '1AM Platinum' (3 bonus minutes where everything is made of platinum)."
"The hour of 1AM to 2AM has been privatised. Users must pay a subscription free or else use '1AM Lite' (only five-past to quarter-past)."
"Public weeping is known to cast nearby brands in a negative light and may incur a fine from the brands' Integrity Protectors."
"If only the self-loathing had come first, he occasionally thought, so that these injuries would at least have had a reason."
"His body was a constant reminder of slips, errors, lapses of judgment - his God-given attire foolishly reduced to muddied, shabby rags."
"Soon he was consumed with interpreting his self-inflicted injuries. Was this just? Is being a poor keeper of your body its own punishment?"
"I'm covered in lizards!" "The only lizards are those which you choose to separate from everything." "Now I don't know what I'm covered in!"
Death Alert: An unregistered death has occurred on Street 524. Avoid the street until officials declare it fully recorded and quantified.
"The goal is to reach New York by any means. Go on dogsled, build giant wings, invent a teleporter, hijack a drill machine⌠try anything."
Why can't AAA space games be as colour-rich as the cover of Gravitar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gravitar.png
This Adventure Time episode rip is just a screen-recording of someone's desktop as they watch it in a QuickTime Player window.
"Why is it all these references to cat vomit have been scrubbed from the historical recordâŚ" *theme from National Treasure starts playing*
"The people go to the polls in 2 minutes. I think I can turn this around. Megaphones get louder the more batteries you put in them, right?"
"This campaign has been a shambles of fibs, bribery, reverse psychology, crocodile tears, door-to-door pleading, and base hypnotism!"
Man correctly recites first million digits of pi in base pi: "...Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero... zero... oh god... zero?"
Pass-The-Buck Tetris: you make just four moves, then pass the game to the person next to you. Whoever loses the game loses in real life.
Smug Tetris: constantly reminds you how many turns it's been since you last laid blocks on those unfinished bottom rows.
"Beyond the city gates, our laws are stifled into silence. The monsters beyond will devour you, lest you make yourself monstrous as well."
"Why rely on coarse, natural air, which no one can control or regulate, when you can rely on a successful, globally trusted corporation?"
Advertisements for bottled air become more aggressive. Proponents deride "public air" as "the same dusty goop your dog breathes."
A wealthy dog-breeding family reveals their patent on pugs. Thousands of owners begrudgingly hand over their dog show winnings and ribbons.
We burst into the room, only to find a five-foot-tall ant. "Damn, she must've stolen this ant's smallness. We'll never catch her now!"
Woman hesitant about promotion to Chief Spider after last four mysteriously resigned to pursue new careers in the dungeon industry.
Man asks coworkers to refer to second pair of arms as "articulated moles" for health insurance reasons.
30-foot-tall girl tries to get the magic to wear off while a shoe company chases her to airbrush a competitor's logo off her giant sneakers.
It's a bit of a shame that the Gradius and R-Type series don't really explore the de-coupling of player position and firing position.
Obsessive giant monster cannot rampage past skyscraper without carefully breaking each and every one of its windows.
"A few can wall-jump a single wall. But only I can wall-jump with zero walls." *hops up and down fruitlessly* "Darn, the timing is hard."
"Look at these equally-spaced hip dents going up this concrete slab⌠Looks like the perp's a wall-jumper. And a single-waller at that."
Yes, I'm working on the OS X port of Hotmail Niamey, the spam-soaked tale of masks and murder in late 00s Niger by indie heartthrob Saguaro.
"No matter how you play, each game eventually ends the same way: kicked in the nads while trying to grab a quarter glued to the sidewalk."
"The victim died wearing a live motion-capture suit. Would the court now watch the screen as Hatsune Miku re-enacts his final moments."
I wish Konami had made a Parodius version of Contra so I could see what this fellow would get turned into.
Contra III having an explicit "pose for the camera" action makes me wonder if I should use it in all my GIFs.
http://l.j-factor.com/gifs/MM2-HeatMan.gif - Wait a second... Mega Man is a robot. Why does he need to blink?
Secret passage in Mega Man 6 level leads to vast peaceful open-world exploration adventure. You never see the Stage Select screen again.
I'm not sure whether I should record Mega Man 7 GIFs using the SNES version or the Famicom-style demake: http://www.indiegames.com/2008/06/remake_game_pick_rockman_7fc_m.html
ALL OF A SUDDEN, YOUR MONITOR CRACKS APART, REVEALING A FEW SHEETS OF PAPER AND A LIGHTBULB. ALL YOUR COOL INTERNET PALS WERE JUST MADE UP.
Why doesn't the PLAYER ever get to stomp the ground to cause random debris to fall from the sky and smash enemies?
http://l.j-factor.com/gifs/MM4-MetDaddy.gif - I'm a fan of giant versions of tiny enemies. The comical upending of the natural order!
Their solution to piracy was to make their software terabytes large, 'too big to copy'. Their users could afford another hard drive anyway.
The red 'Santa' sheep's design was owned by one company. Its genes, patented by another. It was illegal for Santa lambs to live to maturity.
What I want to know is why anyone would bother with the other 1199 games when this cart has TEDIUM 8.
I love how Kid Dracula's first level has all these iconic Castlevania areas contiguously connected like this.
The developers of Magical Doropie really, really wanted the NES to have translucent layers. (Alert: flashing.)
You fall down a pit into Hell Zone. You fall down a pit into Tartarus Zone. You fall down a pit into Ghoul Zone. You fall down a pit into De
http://megaman.wikia.com/wiki/Appearing_Block - I admit I find it interesting when an insular series keeps repeating little setpieces and ideas. Videogame mantras.
I'm impressed at how intelligent these Mr. Gimmick and Trip World bosses are. Enemies that _dodge your attacks_ and _wait for your moves_.
I love that this Mega Man low-gravity code incidentally affects the Robot Masters as well. The duels have become really interesting.
Seeing the geography of your partner's body. Noticing the Place Where You Discovered Happiness as they walk. Hallowed ground in plain sight.
"This city needs to get on the problem of monetising walking. These sidewalks aren't going to privatise themselves."
"In a unanimous verdict, it turns out that filtering conversations for movie quotes and inserting ads after them is, in fact, free speech."
"As you know, money is very important for our company. If you aren't genuinely excited about money too, then, well⌠you see your problem."
"We examined your tweets and we feel you aren't 'money-positive' enough for this position. I'm sorry. Here's the bill for this interview."
The criminal is led into the courtroom, finds the judge is an auctioneer - dozens of prison wardens stride in and start placing bids.
"A number of seeds have escaped a timber farm and become 'wild trees'. Do not approach them until it is determined whose property they are."
"An uproar arose when the world Q*Bert champion was found to be a team of 4 chimpanzees, each a savant in the use of one arrow direction."
"Gentlemen, until we figure out how to tax birds for their use of our power line infrastructure, we're all being massively swindled!"
My very next tumblr update (http://animatedscreenshots.tumblr.com/) will mark 365 days of screenshot GIFs! That's almost a year, and usually is.
Whatever became of the person who did that Red-Yellow-Blue CYOA forum thread anyway? http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2842418 (Note: all illustrations broken)
Game jam idea: sequels to Nintendo games, set in the timeline where the player lost the original game.
http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/4378 - The complete list of games in the 1200-in-1 NES cart.
I like how the 10000000-in-1 cart's menu has multiple pages of romantic tropical background art: http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100521134336/bootleggames/images/c/cb/Uncmelody_sequence.gif
The 9999999-in-1 pirate NES cart's ROM is just 196,624 bytes large. That means it has⌠six videogames⌠per binary digit.
"The first Famicom lacked a lockout chip, instead binding a tiny demon to each console. The demon could be easily eaten by a level 10 cat."
"Apple followed up the Apple I with the Apple ][, Apple ///, Apple |\/, Apple ><, Apple |_, Apple (, Apple |), and finally the Apple ^^."
"I speak without words, with only rules. I craft a message in their negative space, and inscribe it in a castle, the Player's first trial."
"Can you believe how many animals are out there, just sitting around, not contributing to the economy?" he shouted. "It's driving me crazy!"
"The dry world is a nightmare of oppressive, crushing gravity, which only leaping into the ocean can wake you from."
How much do you want to win this fight? >999 You enter a trance and execute a flawless, inhuman offense that scares you when you wake up.
How much do you want to win this fight? >A HELLUVA LOT You desperately attack and make loads of mistakes. You win, but die from your wounds.
"And with that latest, awfulest pun, he suddenly transformed into a giant pearl, as if encased by the immune system of the entire universe."
"He remembers a time when rain naturally struck him as a wonder, a miracle. Now he feels grumpy that he has to explicitly remind himself."
"This opulent plant says that it should receive the entire watering can, and the 'trickle-down effect' will provide for the pots below it."
"These upper-crust plants have subscribed to Rain Premium⌠Each drop has a rich blend of nitrogen, calcium and a single grain of gold dustâŚ"
"Suddenly an invisible block strikes Mario out of nowhere, as if manifested ex nihilo by the collective malevolence of the universe itself!"
Puzzle-based boss fights that are so esoteric and conceptual that they mostly resemble performing a sketch you don't have the script for.
"Do something complicated to stun the boss, then something else within a time limit to actually do damage" just doesn't feel like fighting.
Game idea: You're married to an architect. At the end you bitterly gunfight through the building your late spouse designed in the beginning.
"This'll be a dangerous mission. Better bring all the spare limbs." *walks toward morgue with 'armoury' crudely painted on the door*
Those cozy backwater internet forums where everyone has either one-digit post counts or five-digit post counts.
-Yes, this is gorgeous, but it was immediately followed by what may be the most tedious boss fight I've seen this year.
You crawl into the grimy tunnel. The mud grips your hands like a parting heartbroken lover. Your mind really needs to stay on track here.
You descend into a 6 feet by 6 feet chamber. The feet are all rubbing each other and curling their toes in a truly debaucherous fashion.
You see here a cannon pointed at you, a duck, and a duck! >EXAMINE DUCK Since you ignored my order to duck, you died. The duck flies away.
A man perusing eBay for cheap coffins⌠A steam train suddenly entering a wider track and being ripped in half lengthways⌠Tearful imagesâŚ
Sad images of the passage of time⌠A wall clock replaced by an iPad⌠A sandcastle condemned by the city⌠A dog eating his own birthday cardâŚ
So it's been a week and you still don't know what's underneath the thick clump of moist hair at the end of your newly-sprouted mystery limb.
"Fill that gaping void in your heart, AND your face! Our new French fries are shaped like French kisses."
*raises fists* "Zombies. Time travel. Each old, stale and hated, but what if weâŚ" *slowly moves fists together while making car noises*
A wild feeling of stomach-tickling glee comes over you, knowing you are doomed to a slime attack, and no force in the universe can save you.
You knew when you engulfed your future self in slime that you'd relive it from the other side, but you never knew how diabolical you were.
"Art game. Interactive fiction. Music game. Rhythm game. Role-playing game. What art forms remain that the videogame has yet to intrude?!"
"The people of the future will be endowed with so many labour-saving powers that what little labour remains will seem bizarre and alien."
#IPlayed The Jetsons for NES. http://l.j-factor.com/gifs/TheJetsons-PackingFactory.gif Kind of cute and lively. A bit like Disney's Magical Quest.
Game jam idea: go to @increpare's website http://www.increpare.com, choose a game, then make a game based off the accompanying "screenshot".
"The walls stil hold up the roof. The roof still casts off the rain. All other machines have lost their purpose, come to naught."
"The grand edifices are but skeletons, their ornaments crumbled, their bones picked clean by looters. The ugly stone hovels intact remain."
Recommendations of media are an act of investment in the media. Buy into a success early to earn the most cachet.
Recommendations of media are an act of claiming ownership of the media - of becoming, to just a few people, the sole curator of the work.
If you favourite this tweet, you're just buying into the quirky indie underdog narrative it's subtly cultivating around itself.
"Staircases have a symbiotic relationship with flagpoles. They help animals grab the flagpole's stamen, and are groomed by their tiny feet."
"Question blocks are parasitic plants that grow atop trees, and then kill them. The tree rots away, leaving just the block sitting on air."
"Bottomless pits are not a separate species, but are just common or garden pits whose roots have grown down into the bottom of the screen."
"Spikes are virulent fungi that fear sunlight - hence their dominance in pits. Checkpoints are territorial plants with vast root systems."
http://l.j-factor.com/gmhtml5/Crater_Bulb/ Here's the HTML5 version of my new game if you missed it. Hopefully the rapid clicking action works in your browser.
http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/4368 - Here's a new Leongame! I was inspired by a certain iOS game I've been playing recently.
"Every creature in this game is your enemy. Imagine, a world where you're the main interest of every other being⌠What shocking narcissismâŚ"
Murder mystery where each time the lights go out, another person is missing and the unexplained omnipresent marching band gains a member.
Things that might be in my next browser game: pogo sticks, parachutes, tractors, Flubber, skyscrapers.
"People who say you can't teach an old dog new tricks haven't tried putting sellotape over their dog's write-protect notch."
I kind of wish that videogame diegetic timers and threats (like The Pit's ever-advancing tank) had become collectively known as Zonkers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Pit.png - What I like about The Pit is how its environment has all these little adventure setpieces all bundled together.
If you begin a tweet with "@ " it gets sent to the account of the Nameless Thing at Language's End whom only silence can properly describe.
You're sure if you stab this anthill enough times you'll hit the Self Destruct Ant and then you can go in and collect your missing flesh.
The healer says that people who don't perpetually carry swords have a life expectancy of 75 years. You're so surprised you stab yourself.
You ready your sword as you step into the bone-white Room of Waiting. Skulls gaze at you from inside the heads of fellow patients.
"The dream: to stand in all 7 puddles of Legendary Mud. Impossible? Maybe⌠unless you follow your spirit!"
"Here's a rejected product of luxury firearm breeding - a gun the size of a bear, carefully foraging this quarry for rocks of its caliber."
Nightmare sequence where, as you walk around, you turn and notice the location you just passed through has turned into a matte backdrop.
You unpack your luggage only to find your possessions have changed into black cubes marked "This content is unavailable in your region".
Renegade ROM hack of Ocarina of Time where you never leave Kokiri Village and have to navigate immortal forest kid politics for 5 hours.
An inversion of Bubble Bobble - you must prevent enemies from slowly collecting all the letters in the words "GAME OVER".
And so you search for the statue whose lips are parted just enough to admit a tongue. You dim your lantern in case someone arrives.
"Concreting our national parks will be an arduous task, but it is vital for protecting our street-lamp and parking meter based ecosystems."
"Our scientists are leading the pack in creating street-lamps that grow from seeds. Our denuded woods shall be reborn, modern and safer."
"Worldwide, trees are launching into the heavens. Do they seek the sun above our polluted skies? Have they found a world with richer soil?"
I really love that in the arcade game The End, the game ends when the aliens arrange the bricks to spell out the words THE END.
"Maybe I shall be visited by a dream that is utterly insensible, where my career failures invite sympathy and pity instead of bitter scorn."
"I pray, for one night, my sleeping mind will accomplish what my waking mind cannot, and envision me successful and liked by all I respect."
"Oh, would that this night's sleep bring fanciful dreams of wealth so vivid and strong that my shabby room brings me to tears when I wake."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ07fNq4rGA - "The Most Underrated Super Mario 64 Track"
More iPad games need a "kill player" button on the top of the screen that a passer-by can quickly slap for the purposes of pranks.
"Corporations make a huge profit off money, and lots of money goes into making people believe that money is valuable⌠Just think about itâŚ"
I can't help but feel I'm being subtly mocked by the chirpy menu music in Shiren the Wanderer being the first thing I hear after dying.
"Yes, I admit it - during heated iPad gaming sprees, I do use forehead grease as emergency finger lubricant."
JRPG where evil is represented by numerical/statistical density, and you slowly remove visible stats from the game as you progress.
>DIVE IN FRONT OF ESCORT Sadly, the bullets kill you instantly, preventing you from delivering Heroic Final Words. Death Rating: 85% Noble.
"He tried desperately to convey his innermost feelings of turmoil and anguish, but not so clearly that people would ask what was wrong."
"Sadly, the Final Chamber Victory Exit was deemed a structural weakness, and is now sealed. The ending sequence will instead be narrated."
Giant footprints appear invisibly in the sand, advancing towards you. You pray the sand is soft enough to absorb you beneath the final step.
"Since becoming unemployed, all of his clocks had become novelty ornaments that magically looked different every time he glanced at them."
"Surgery revealed he had a second circulatory system, a 'darkstream' by which his cells exchanged pirated nutrients and anti-brain screeds."
The crackle of dawn gunfire, each keystroke a bullet. The opening salvo in a daily war against silence and oblivion.
That brief repose between the time you wake up and the time when the distant howling wail from your own mind becomes audible again.
"This combo-fueled escape craft can only launch in 5 min. if you shoot a zombie and it rolls over 4 other zombies on the way down."
"God gave us the moon to test mankind. And now we've learned to land on it, we must blow it up to keep our enemies from doing the same!"
ZiGGURAT cleared! I admit I'm grateful that an endless score-attack game has a specific point which, if surpassed, counts as 'winning' it.
"This," he hisses, "is a gun! And guess what?" He grins. "It's loaded!" He pauses. "With bullets!" He drops to a whisper. "Made of metal."
*footage of liquid flesh overflowing from cauldron at great speed* "No! The reaction is out of control!" *flesh flows over camera* "Arggh-"
"Every frogger who looks at this road in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever amphibian."
A coffin-shaped hole⌠leading to a tombstone door⌠into a hall wallpapered with obit columns⌠with carpets resembling giant willsâŚ
"The iconic scene where the side of a building is falling on a guy and the big sheela na gig carving just happens to line up with his bodyâŚ"
"You know, that scene where there's a car chase, and two workers are carrying a black deathsoul crystalith across the roadâŚ"
"If two people with hookshots shoot into the sky and the hooks connect in midair, could they both fly upward and do an airborne kiss?"
Watching these Halloween usernames go away is like seeing the monsters change back into humans at the end of the movie.
"âŚAnd when I walk away, I can look back on a head ten times my size, beaten like an egg and snoozin' like a baby, and think: I did that."
"I love giants⌠That jolly smirk they get when I bury a man-killing punch in 'em⌠That growing surprise as I keep outrunning their fistsâŚ"
"Weird 11-finger gesture on iPad reveals strange alien-looking screen? 'Earth Invasion Console'? I told my son not to jailbreak this oneâŚ"
"Oh, but I love fighting giants!⌠The slow thudding of their footsteps makes my knees shake like jellyâŚ"
ZiGGURAT observation: Switching off the music makes it very easy to tell the gun's charge level just by ear. Sorry @mistertoups.
Kinda wanna make a Twine game that's just a series of #NaNoWriMoOpeners, and the only options are "delete & start over" and "roll with it".
http://catandgirl.com/?p=3980 - "People deserve to make a living from what they do! So I'm 'Liking' Doritos."
I think I have reached the part of season 2 of Twin Peaks where it unabashedly turns into Legend of Zelda.
http://animatedscreenshots.tumblr.com/post/34721190464/ghostbusters - I like that they made the head super huge so as to assure the player that it is indeed Dan Aykroyd.
Conventional typographers titter and fret about the injection of queer viewpoints into font sample text⌠"queer glyphs doth vex" writes oneâŚ
"The relief we must have felt when we realised that neither of us was going to fix the other - that the 'help' was never going to come."
"All our lives we'd been trying to cure ourselves⌠and when we met, we discovered we were always well from the start."
http://www.auntiepixelante.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/slanted.png - There's something oddly melancholic about this font sample text @christinelove wrote.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcrypzMI431r7x82no1_1280.png - These Cave Story+ seasonal reskins are wildly oscillating between horribly embarrassing and amusingly kitsch.
Odd anecdote: someone once mocked xkcd by the unusual method of making a Comic Sans-esque font out of its lettering. http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com.au/2009/03/xkcdsucks-is-proud-to-present-humor.html
Game where, once you win, all the characters go on a three-week real-time vacation, and loudly complain if you try to play again during it.
In addition to permadeath, here's permawin: once you beat the game with a particular character, they become locked permanently.
I feel like for this sort of survival game, an "average score (last 5 games)" stat would be more clarifying than just an average score.
"Earth has had many owners - natives and visitors. It has always belonged to whoever is foolish enough to briefly think it worth taking."
I do sort of like how ZiGGURAT's aliens are as much skeletons as they are spacesuits - reminiscent of 80s science-fantasy game themes.
#IPlayed ZiGGURAT. Hmm. Somehow, it gives me the idea for a roguelike where you must simply survive for 256 moves.
"Children of wealthy families are known to borrow the educations of their lower-class brain-servants in place of receiving one themselves."
"In the future, the poor will loan their brains as extra processing for executives. CEOs will guide companies with 200-brain hyper-minds."
Amnesic protagonist who pawned all of his memories to pay off a debt works hard to buy them back, only to find them disappointingly mundane.
Cycle through 10 different Yous to solve puzzles and unlock new worlds, including: * Student You * Employee You * Customer You * Debtor You
Werewolf escape tips: punch the block that they are on; become Fire You and throw fireballs; become Invincible You and walk into them.
Vampire escape tips: claim you "left all your blood in your other body"; bite them first and see if they turn human; claim to be a hologram.
"Ah yes, Earth, 'the prison of the cosmos'⌠every soul on that orb is haunted by two impossible dreams: destroying it, and escaping it."
Dueling tip: It's impossible to lose if you grow to super-size, stand in front of the tower your opponent's on, and slowly wave your fists.
Alas, burning the thorns encircling the castle has allowed the Muscle Weeds to finally sprout. Their tendrils wrestle you into submission.
When http://mspaintadventures.com comes back up it'll just have the final page of Problem Sleuth and Hussie will feign ignorance for a full week.
"I'm the only guy who can do THIS-" *arms shrink and vanish into torso, re-emerge on opposite sides* "-and, well, the money just rolls in."
She leans over you, cheeks bulging with slime. "Better not make me laugh" she mindspeaks, as she begins tickling you and watching your face.