Do you miss the days of physical magazines packed with demo discs? Would you like to see it perverted in sinister ways? PC Cursed 98 will give you the whole experience you’ve been looking for, it's free, and it’s available for PC now.

PC Cursed 98 is a compilation of short indie games in the framework of the sort of demo disc that came with magazines in the '90s and '00s. This makes it adjacent to Haunted PS1 and its variety of PS1-styled cursed demo discs. What makes PC Cursed 98 a bit different is that it comes packed with an actual maga??zine. I’m not even talking about a short pamphlet, either. It’s 52 pages of articles and twisted advertisements. That’s commitment. It’s even set up in?? such a way that you can have it professionally printed out. On top of that, there are even covers for a CD case for the demo disc.

The (free) demo disc contains 21-ish shortform horror games from a slew of creators. From the list, I only really recognize Jacob Jazz, who made the Baobabs Mausoleum games. But that??’s kind of the point of these compilations: you get a glimpse into the minds of a variety of small, indie developers. Maybe you’ll like what you see and will form a brand-new parasocial relationship with them!

The games are supposedly all horror-themed, but their style runs the gamut between lo-fi, jank pop, and retro-inspired. Typically, for these jams, a lot of the include?d games are very exper??????????????????????????imental. As such, some of them fail. Others might make you wish you could unsee them. But a few may echo in the darkest recesses of your soul. It’s worth a look. Jam games, I guess you could call them.

PC Cursed 98 is now available for PC through itch.io. It’s free, so it probably doesn’t hurt.

The post The PC Cursed 98 game jam gives you the full warped ’90s magazine experience appeared first on Destructoid.

Promoted from our Community Blogs

_{[TheBlondeBass put together a game jam and invited the jbsgame.community to join him for the journey. After all the smoke had settled, he wrote this blog detailing his experience and even shared a link to the finished product, along with the page for the other entries as well! Be sure to check them all out and let these fine folks know what you think! - Kevin]} 

2020's been a crummy year for just about everyone. Unless your name rhymes with Beff Jezos, you've probably felt it too. The stress of a situation of which we feel like we?? have little control over, or maybe of not knowing if your job is safe. The loneliness of not seeing your friends in person, while losing the motivation to d??o so online. It all around sucks to spend that much time in one's apartment, worrying about the world.

Due to a variety of factors I won't get into, the year has affected me a lot. I've been tired, unhappy, anxious, and irritable. The?? situation was showing no signs of improvement back in May, and I needed something to change. I needed something, other than work, to think about. Something like...

THE FLAMING HOT JAM

What kind of activity would cheer me up in a socially distanced world? Maybe something creative I could p?our my heart into?&?nbsp;

A few years back, I participated in the Ludum Dare game jam twice and loved both experiences. They were far from ??2020's Covid reality, of course. We were all cramped in one room slamming down sodas and coffee and working all weekend long. But, they were terrific moments that led to us creating games we might not have had the motivation to deliver otherwise. I wanted that kind of spark again, so I decided to participate in a game jam.

But, most game jams take place over a short period. Ludum Dare only lasts a single weekend. Let me tell you, the following Monday at work is rough. Ideally, I'd be partici??pating in an event with a generous time frame -- one with no expectation of performance and where I was friends with the other participants.

So, I made my own! itch.io is a truly great website with indie titles aplenty and some convenient tools to host jams. That's how I came up with the Flaming Hot Jam! It ran for exactly two months, between June 21 and August 21, and was trul??y up for people of all skill sets. I announced the theme on the morning of the very first day. It was simply: "what was lost." Yes, it was a game jam about loss.

No, not like the meme. It could be about any interpretation of the thing that was lost. It could be lost lives,? lost treasures, loss as a mechanic, etc. I wanted to see what people would create with this concept. I was curious to find out if more lighthearted games would come out of it. As it turns out, that's exactly what happened!

The jam ended up getting eight entries. That's pretty good for something that could have simply flopped out of the gate! But, most importantly, I loved the experience of playing all these creations after all was said and done. From Lost in the Woods' addicting memory challenge to Subkey's ingenious controls and Time to Go Home'?s hilarious concept, they all had something to offer.

You can play all the other entries fro??m the community here, and let us know ho??w y??ou felt about them! They're worth your time, I tell you.

MY CONTRIBUTION

Of course, I was going to participate?? as well! I registered as a team of one. Since I knew the theme ahead of time, anything else would have made things a bit awkw?ard.

While I don't have a ton of experience making games, the projects I had done so far for other game jams were always in Python. I wanted to try out something new -- something that would be convenient to play across operating systems. So Pico-8 (recently included in the itch.io bundle for racial equality) immediately grabbed my attention. For those not ??in the know, Pico-8 is a fantasy console and a development environment all in one. You get the tools to create games with restrictions inspired by retro systems like the Game Boy and SNES. The resulting title has a limited color palette, fits within a small cartridge space, etc.

Pico-8 ended up having its fair share of issues I did not expect to hit! For starters, the kind of layout I had in mind for the world of Miracles and Magic was mostly vertical. Like with Super Mario Maker, however, the map editor was meant for horizontal levels. Its bottom two rows are even disabled by default! Although, like always with programming, there are many ways around every issue. I could have made the rooms not connect logically, teleporting the player character from room to room. That was my solution of choice in Mario Maker. In the end, I opted to create levels that fit the editor a bit more, while enabling the bottom two map editor rows. That meant sacrificing space in the sprite editor instead, but I am nowhere near good enough of a??n artist to use it all anyway.

As for my implementation of the theme, I immediately thought of losing sight as a gameplay mechanic. Then it was just a matter of finding a game style that would fit limited visibility. I went with a NieR/Dark Souls kind of action game. As it turns out, I wasn't the only one with this take on loss. I'm not a Toast implemented a sight mechanic as well.

I wanted to include the theme in writing as well, making it about the loss of something important. In the game, you're in the age of magic, but you're the ones who brings it to an end. Without going into too many details, I made a story about society and structure to contrast The Bass Awards I?? released earlier this year, wh?ich was focused on people.

In the end, however, Pico-8 is not a platform made to handle having that much text. I ended up hitting the maximum cartridge space with Magic and Miracles while being nowhere near my token limit, which is the way Pico-8 tracks code complexity. Too man??y darn lines of text for the fantasy console!

I'm pretty happy with how this game turned out, in any case. You can play it below if that sounds like something that interests you! The source code is available here.

I'm planning on doing a more polished version down the line. I might call it something along the lines of MIRACLES AND MAGIC DELUXE, like the cool cats do. For now, however, this is it from me! Hopefully, you've a??lso found a way to make 2020 slightly more tolerable too.

The post How I ??made the most out of a terrible, terrible summer appeared first on Destructoid.

Promoted from our Community Blogs

_{[Manasteel88 is here to tell you about their recent excursions into game development, and it looks like they brought their kid along for the ride too! In fact, they've even been kind enough to share some links to the cool stuff that both they and their kid created, so be a pal, check them out, and let them know what you think!} 

_{If you head on over to the community blogs, slap some good words and images together, and post it for all to see, you too could find your work on the front page of Destructoid! It's a thing that happens! These exclamation marks are free, and I'm never going to stop using them! Please, understand! - Kevin]}

So, since I had such a good time with the kid making a game back in June, I figured I would enter another game jam. This time, we both would give it our all and try our ?best to create something unique and true to our core as we work on improving our understanding of game design.

The good news is we did it. The?? bad news is it sort of broke us down a bit.

It started really well actually. I built a U.I. in some free time and was looking for a project to test it on. The kid was working on story design elements. We were doing everything you would expect leading up to a game ja?m. Getting-the-ducks-in-a-row type stuff. Then the jam started, and we were just lost.

The kid lost all motivation on her Unicorn project half way through. She had an idea she really loved and couldn't find any way to express it. She eventually canned the project, with a week to go, to work on the first project we had thought to do based on The Three Little Pigs. The?? results were a rushed amalgamation of her original idea, but?? she completed it and had it ready to go the day before the Jam deadline.

As for me, I just could not focus on writing a story, which is apt because the contest is literally called the "I Can't Write But Want To Tell A Story" jam. My brain was in "do something interesting" mode, not "do something creative". So, I built an achievement system instead of writing the ending. I built a calendar system instead of working on? plot points. I was messing around with fine-tuning insignificant details instead of art assets.

All ?those little tweaks and twiddles eventually caused errors and, being a guy that is learning as he goes, I spent ??hours on problems that should take a half-decent creator minutes.

All that said however, I crunched hard on the last few days and created something I really am satisfied with. Is it perfect? God no. I have a full devlog page full of ideas and woes that I had to compr?omise or trash due to time constraints.

I was, however, satisfied with the project that I had built. After the Ugly Game, I wanted to create something just a bit more in line with what I could do, so I focused hard on the things that I struggled to figure out. I didn't know variables, so this game is almost all variables with consequences. I didn't know how to animate images a??ll that well, so I learned how to craft animations. Did I need to animate a pie with two days left and the game's four major events unwritten? No. But, it was my goal to learn, and I accomplished it.

I didn't need to create an achievement system either, but my goal was to learn how to manipulate screens, and making that achievement screen work filled me with joy. I got a story finalized during the crunch and turned in with 20 minutes to spare before it was due. The game was 99.99% complete, and I was legitimately happy with it. That extra 0.01% was a handful of bugs I found the ??next day (after some much needed sleep).

The ??fact that I spent hours combing through code to find a seven that should have been a six or an " = " that was left out of one line kinda killed me. Simple errors, but ones that make you feel a bit worse when you put so much time in to creating a system to weed out th??ose exact kind of errors.

In ?the end though, I learned a lot creating this game. Judging is still ongoing, so I have no idea how I did with it, but I felt so incomplete after the Ugly Game finished. I feel at least somewhat satisfied with this game, even though I know how much more I ??could have done.

The goal of the project was to give m??y kid the feeling of being back in school, in a world where she's not going to have that feeling for anywhere f?rom six months to a year. She really did enjoy it and the characters she gave ideas for became some of my favorites.

Also, while I'm at it, I just want to thank the handful of people who checked out my kid's game from the Father's Day blog. It wasn't a? big deal, but man did she get excited having more views and downloads than her dad. The kid jumped for joy.

Procrastination Download Page:
//hardluck.itch.io/procrastination
Procrastination Behind the Scenes:
//hardluck.itch.io/procrastination/devlog/169317/pro?crastinatio??n-behind-the-scenes

Any feedback, I take to heart. I had people with issues about the font and spacing, and I ??made a small font version and implemented code into my UI for it, so I'll have it next game. I'm trying to figure things out as I go along, s?o it really helps.

And if you want to check ou??t the ??kid's page, please do.

The Three Little Pigs Page:
//hardluck.itch.io/the-three-little-pigs

The post Game development is hard appeared first on Destructoid.

Gone Vroom

Gone Home is an emotional explorative game about a young woman named Katie discovering the trials and tribulations her family has undergone in the time she was traveling abroad. Gone Vroom is that same game, except with a car. Let's ??call it Caddy.

As part of game jam Ludum Dare 41 (and as discovered by Rock Paper Shotgun), John Remedios took the event's theme, two genres that shouldn't be compatible, and ran/drove to the best possible result. Mashing up walking simulators and car simulators, he created Gone Vroom. You can download it here if this gets your engine revving.

I dare (ha!) say Remedios nailed his assignment. These two genres ????definitely shouldn't have ever been merged. Cars belong in garages, not in houses.

Gone Vroom [itch.io via Rock Paper Shotgun]

The post Gone Home but ??with the playable car?? protagonist it always needed appeared first on Destructoid.

Fo Free

Every year in the lead up to the Game Developers Conference, a game jam is held on a 52-hour train ride that goes from Chicago to San Francisco. The jam, affectionately called Train Jam, is something I look forward to following along with on Twitter as the cross-country train ride is something I've always wanted to do and some really neat game ideas come ??out of the entries.

As with most game jams, Train Jam usually has a theme that they relate to the long journey across the country, and this year's theme was "Odyssey." A lot of unique entries came out of the jam and are available to play at itch.io. With 80 games submitted, there's about every type of interpretation of the theme that you could thi?nk of.

My personal favorites from the few that I've played so far are Card Odyssey, a strategy card game where you need to kill your enemy but only at the right time, and the ASMR action game Whisper. I don't know how Whisper could be turned into a ful?l game but just that one little bit they put up is great!

If you've had a chance to play any of the entries, let the devs know what you think of thei?r work as a lot of times these jam entries go on to become larger full-release games.

The post Play some games that were made on a train appeared first on Destructoid.

Let's play with matches

Last week, I went to the PLAY creative gaming festival, which takes place every year in Hamburg, Germany. PLAY17 was both entertaining and educational, with something for people of all ages, including workshops, talks and even a game-themed poetry slam. The highlight of the long weekend, though, was the exhibition spaces, which were filled to the brim with prototypes and new/recent releases by indie developers and students from all over Europe. I had the opportunity to play most of them, and none of them were disappointing. (Except Snake Pass. Hated the controls.)

I'm not really sure what sort of games I expected beforehand, but I vaguely imagined developers playing around with stories, engines and art styles. I don't think it had popped into my head even once that devs might design their own controllers: as a person coming to games from a consumer perspective, the concept of a game as an exhibition piece, rather than as something in the home or on the go, was completely new to me. So of course, I will now gush about all the shiny new specimens I found at PLAY17 that have their own very s?pecial controllers.

This piece involves fire, air and...er...dots.

1. BloodBank (Sébastien Beureux, Marianna Czwojdrak, Vincent de Vevey, Laurent Monnet)

BloodBank had the distinction of being the only stand in the entire exhibition hall with a bucket o??f water at the read??y. And, despite its name, you were more at risk of burning yourself than losing bodily fluids when trying out this perilous game (hey, you in the comments, stop sniggering).

The content of the game is fairly standard: man wakes up in dark spooky hall; man must try to escape dark spooky hall with nothing but a candle and a snotty handkerchief on his person. And the candle can go out...if the player's "controller" goes out. Yes, when you step up to the booth to try out BloodBank, the demo assistant?? hands you a lit safety match, which you hold up to the screen to guide your character in the r??ight direction.

Needless to say, really, I loved BloodBank, because just as the character on-screen is all alone aside from his candle, you are all alone aside from your match. You have no other way to issue prompts to the character, and as your ember fades, you even lose the ability to see your surroundings. The??re was an added element of danger for me, because I g?et very nervous around fire, so I was being extra-cautious with my match. The time taken to play the game was obviously very short because a lot of people's matches extinguished very quickly, but I suppose you could hog the booth and go through several, or cheat with a candle lighter. 

This is a game I could see myself playing on an Autumn evening, with a big bag of mini-Milky Ways left over from Halloween and some red wine, were it not for the technical limitations of releasing this on Steam. I discussed with a fellow festival-goer how this would work, and we guessed that it made use of the computer's w??ebcam. We were told later that experiments in getting this to work with a webcam were unsuccessful due to too much background interference; instead, infra-red detectors from a Wiimote were used to pick up the flame. Still, I'm going to keep my eye out for this game at other indie festivals in the future, because I definitely want to try again. And again. And again.

2. Close the Leaks (Henning Steinbock, Samuel Chapman)

I'll admit, I walked past Close the Leaks a few times, because I am painfully shy and this game requires four players. I was eventually persuaded to try it out a c??ouple of days into the festival, and while in many ways it is an introvert's worst nightmare (you need to communicate with your teammates or you will absolutely muck it all up), it's one of the most inventive and fun games I demoed during the festival.

The core game reminded me very much of Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime - use thrusters placed at 90-degree angles around a spaceship to guide yourself to ??certain target??s, avoiding enemies and fixing your battered ship. But the game does so much more on top of this.

The thrusters work by blowing oxygen out of the ship – lose too much oxygen and everyone in the ship pops their clogs; conserve all y??our oxygen and you won't progress to your goal. Each of the thrusters is controlled by a piece of tubing protruding from the display case, and you have to cover the hole with your hand (or some other body part, I suppose...?) to keep the air in, and release it in controlled spurts. You have to make quick decisions with your teammates as to who should release air and when.

Once again, my presumptions about how this game worked on a hardware level were all wrong. I had gone into it thinking that the sounds of air rushing "out of" the tubes were produced in-game, to create an illusion, and the tubing ends had sensors on them that could tell when your hand was covering them. But when I tried it out, I realised actual air was blowing through the pipes. BloodBank and Close the Leaks are both games that allow you to suspend your disbelief very easily, because they incorporate elements of the game so well into the real world – but the finishing touch to Close the Leaks's controller put ??a great big silly ?smile on my face.

3. RotoRing (Gregory Kogos)

RotoRing goes even further than BloodBank and Close the Leaks. The developer, Gregory Kogos, designed the hardware for the entire game – it was displayed at PLAY17 in its "vanilla form" (see the video above), an adorably quaint wooden box that could almost act as a travel version of the game. A dial and a push button are all that you have to control RotoRing, but it works beautifully.

RotoRing is a very stripped-down game, but that's precisely what you need some?times when you are at an event full of games plucked from the weirdest corners of people's imaginations. The display features two rings made up of LED lights. A single light is brighter than the others; that is your "dot." The button allows you to move your dot between?? the rings, while the dial allows you to rotate your dot around the ring you're currently on. You have to get your dot into the empty spot, all while avoiding the red dots of death. As you progress through the levels, the game starts to demand punishing accuracy (e.g. where it seems like every other dot is red) and impeccable timing (e.g. in levels where the red dots spin around both rings at different speeds, in an almost hypnotic fashion).

It's ?a really simple but compelling game, and one that you'll wish you could own. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until it comes to a festival near you. 

***

What the exhibits at PLAY17 taught me, above all else, is that being creative is a holistic process. It's a process that involves venturing beyon??d what you already think a game looks like, even if this means going completely back to the drawing board instead of working with e??stablished hardware. Even if it means creating something that is meant for the exhibition hall, and not so much for your living room at home.

Have you seen any weird and wonderful controllers at festivals or game jams? Have you made any funky controllers yourself? What do you think of the games I've featured in my article? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Three games that ditch standard controllers appeared first on Destructoid.

Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward returns!

Double Fine is in the midst of Amnesia Fortnight 2017. If you're anything like me, these game jams are less about the end r??esult -- four playable prototypes, some o??f which were ideas voted on and chosen by the public -- and more about the journey getting there. To that end, the first few episodes are up.

For the developers working on thes?e projects, the rapid-fire pace needed to meet Amnesia Fortnigh??t's tight two-week deadline has got to be stressful as hell, but for those of us watching from the safe comfort of our homes, seeing the raw creative process like this is entertaining and insightful.

While the public voting phase of the jam is over and done with, it's not too late to chip in for the Humble Bundle to get this year's winning prototypes (Darwin's Dinner, The Gods Must Be Hungry, Kiln, and I Have No Idea What I'm Doing)? as well as assorted games from prior Fortnight events.

The post Wa??tching Double Fine make games is fascinating as ever appeared first on Destructoid.

Vote, watch, play

So that's what was inside Tim Schafer's mystery box: Amnesia Fortnight!

Double Fine's two-week game jam is back for 2017 with a fresh batch of pitches to hear out and vote on. The winning ideas will move onto the next stage, becoming playable prototypes, and the whole wild process is documented by 2 Player Productions (Double Fine Adventure) for our viewing pleasure.

Voting is handled through Humble Bundle with a $1 bundle purchase, and that's also where you'll be able to hear more in-depth game pitches from the hopeful creators. In this year's Fortnight, there are going to be four winners -- two chosen by us, one by Double Fi?ne's team, and one by Tim Schafer.

At a glance, my favorites are The Gods Must Be Hungry, "a 3D platformer where warrior chefs make giant meals to stop ravenous gods from eating the human race," and Outside, "a game about kayaking and exploring the? great outdoors." What about you? What's sounding g??ood here?

Amnesia Fortnight 2017 [Humble Bundle]

The post Double Fine’s Amnesia Fortnight game jam returns appeared first on Destructoid.

Double scrubble

I'm anything but a neat freak. My room/office/small living space is a constant mess. Laundry litters the floor while old wrappers and junk mail compete for desk ?space alongside my computer and PlayStation 4. It's a pigsty.

Good Impression is a game I can relate to. It's about cleaning up a messy apartment really fast. Created by Ellian as part of Ludum Dare 37, Good Impression captures the diff??iculty and?? anxiety that stems from having to clean up after yourself on super short notice. 

In Good Impression, you have three minutes to throw away empty pizza boxes, hide dirty underwear, and scrub stains from the floor before your mother shows up at your apartment. Nobody wants their mom to know that she raised a disgusting slob of a human, so Good Impression dangles maternal disappointment as a catalyst for se??rious speed cleaning.

It's short and frantic as hell. Good Impression makes every second count as you move around the apartment and try to make it look like the?? kind of place a functional member of society might live. The simple task of cleaning becomes a mad-dash effort, which anyone who has ever had a visitor stop by on short notice will instantly relate to.

After three minutes, your mom shows up and inspects your digs. She grades your cleanliness and comments on any bizarre choices y??ou've made in the process of getting ready for her arrival. For me, this meant a ??few awkward questions about why I always seem to leave cold pizza under my bed sheets.

Good Impression is available free. Check it out instead of actually clean??ing your room, it's way more fun.

The post Convince your mom you’re not a slob in Good Impression appeared first on Destructoid.

'Post-apocalyptic rhythm metal'em all'

Taiko Drum Master is good, clean fun, but you know what it isn't? Metal. I mean, not just the material the game is made out of (plastic) or what actual taiko drums are built from (wood). But also the chipper J-pop just doesn't appeal to the same crowd that bites the heads off bats and ruins Rock Band pedals. Enter Double Kick Heroes.

Described as a "post-apocalyptic rhythm metal'em all," Double Kick Heroes features a raging metal band surviving on a zombie-infested highway, with only the manager's Cadilla??c and a weaponized drumset at their disposal. Check out the video; it looks rad. I love that demon train at the end, slowly creeping close??r and closer to the car. It's so ominous.

Double Kick Heroes originally began as an entry to Ludum Dare 34 and is currently seeking approval on Steam Greenlight.

The post Double Kick Heroes’ multi-eyed demon train is metal as heck appeared first on Destructoid.

Tactical Nokia Action

Grab a friend (or brother!). Snake? Snake! is competitive Snake starring Solid and Liquid Snakes. The rules are slightly different from the cellphone game you remember. There is a taunt button. Matches last 30 seconds. You can cross your own body, but running into your opponent's deducts a point from your score. Otherwise, ??go eat little pips, represented here as Fulton-extracting sleeping soldiers.

You can play it here.

Like the Twin Peaks dancing game, Snake? Snake! was made for Fantastic Arcade's Duplicade Game Jam, which is themed around quick player-versus-player games that feel like bootlegs "just weird enough to not get you sued." Fittingly, it was made in part by oldtime jbsgame.community member and my recent Facebook friend Eric Neuhaus, creator of Legend of Zeldo: Lonk's Awakening.

I just noticed, ??"??This is a snaking mission." Nice, nice.

The post Snake? Snake! is Snake but with Metal Gear Snakes appeared first on Destructoid.

Fire Dance With Me

Today, Zack told me to watch Twin Peaks. I already have, twice now.?? But I wouldn't mind going through the series a third time. It's been a few yea??rs. While I think that over, here's a silly distraction.

Fire Dance With Me is a DDR-style browser game for two players. Robert Gaither and Anja Luzega created it for Fantastic Arcade's Duplicade Game Jam, which is themed around quick player-versus-player game??s that fe?el like bootlegs "just weird enough to not get you sued."

It's not fun, exactly, but it? gets bonus points for the name, featured song, and character selection.

[Via Boing Boing]

Classic Leland.

The post Someone made a Twin Peaks dancing game appeared first on Destructoid.

Very cathartic, text based experience

Misanthropy is a very strange mindset to try and familiarise yourself with from an outside perspective. An intense dislike for humanity, at its extremes it can form the basis for many of the more upsetting personality types to interact with on a daily basis. Allowing for not only an apathy toward the suffering of others, but an increased sense of enjoyment at others expense, misanthropy is the driving force behind a new text based adventure game, Everyday Misanthrope.

Created as part of the "You Are The Monster" Ludum Dare game jam, Everyday Misanthrope puts players in the shoes of someone who derive??s pleasure from the negative emotions of others. From slowing down in traffic to harassing people online, the aim of the game is to upset as many people as possible, ??as much as possible.

Where the game gets interesting is that, once you're done, you're made to read through the stories of the faceless victims you've inconvenienced, upset or left devastated. One by one??, faces and names are put to those you took action against. It's a really emotionally heavy experience to ??go through.

While I don't ultimately think the kind of person who needs to be confronted like that is likely to ever play this kind of game, it's certainly an interesting and valuable little video game to have in the world. The emotions portrayed can be tough to experience, but it's definitely worth your time to check out. You can get the game for free on PC, Mac and Linux here.

The post Everyday Misan?thrope challenges you to make people miserable appeared first on Destructoid.

Not your typical game characters

A month-long game jam, JamForLeelah, recently concluded and the 22 participating games are available now. Leelah Alcorn was a transgender t?een who had a passion for videogames and an interest in game design. Leelah took her life at the end of last year. 

JamForLeelah spreads awareness for LGBTIQ issues and supports various transgender-based charities. Most of the games deal with gender, coming out and what it is like to be transgender; things many of us may never have to think about. The also jam includes a visual novel made by Destructoid's very own Laura Kate Dale. The games and more information are available on the jam's official site.

#JamForLeelah [itch.io]

The post Game jam dealing with the st??ruggles of being trans appeared first on Destructoid.

Progress in one game can yield unexpected results in another

Jim Crawford, best known for the notoriously strange Frog Fractions, is putting together a game jam built around the idea of creating games compatible with SHARECART1000. What's special about SHARECART1000? It is a system that allows for save ??files in one game to be read and interpreted in other games with?in the ecosystem.

Some neat interactions show up as a result. Some games may feature areas that are completely inaccessible without modifying the save file in a different game and then coming back. The best-known title that works within the system is probably Kyle Reimergartin's Fjords.

The Teacart 1k game jam is set to begin on Friday, February 20. When it is complete, the submissions will be ?presented as a collection, with each entry able to affect the others through save file communication.

The post Teacart 1k game jam to build multiple games using the same save fi?le appeared first on Destructoid.

Created for the Barfcade game jam (which I'm so glad exists)

I'm fi?ling this one under "You'd be stupid not to cover it, Jordan."

Lovesick is a simple, physics-driven two-player game for PC and Mac in which a bride and groom explode o??ut of both ends after eating undercooked shrimp. Classic mistake. The player who lands the most "projectiles" in the toilet is deemed victorious. But really, whoever wins, we lose.

I refuse to spoil the game'??s fabulous song selection, but know that it's on point.

Lovesick [Deep Plaid Games]

Excellent gif courtesy of Alpha Beta Gamer.

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But you should try some of them anyway

You remember Superhot, don't you? It's a first-person shooter in which time progresses at a normal speed only when you move. Or how about Receiver? It had somewhat ?realistic gun handling that made for a rewarding experience. Both originate from the annual 7?DFPS game jam.

This year's seven-day design challenge ended on Saturday and brought in 145 entries, which you can play for free over here. Some of the? games need to be downloaded first?, but many are playable right in your web browser via Unity.

There's a lot of junk, which is to be expected considering how difficult it is to make a good game period -- much less over the course of a week -- but there are gems. Sifting through everything made quick work o?f my afternoon. Here's the stuff I found interesting, fun, or just plain silly:

Shootmephrenia

A game where you line up a shot in such a way that it bounces back to hit you. Brilliant.

Photobomb

You play as a Media Peace Officer with two minutes to figure out who detonated a bomb in a crowded city square. People move as you scroll through a social media timelin?e and you can recreate photos from the feed to "paint" suspects. I totally chose the wrong person.

Where's Tango?

You ??have basic identifying information on you?r client and an anonymous assailant. Locate the former and stop the latter before it's too late.

Strange Gravity

A real-time strategy title like Phage Wars that you play inside a 3D world.

Paint the Town Red

This one might look familiar if you actively follow Steam Greenlight. It's a bar-fight simulator from the creators of the hilarious Probably Archery. 

Ocean Highway Patrol

One player steers th??e boat while the other makes sure no one goes over the speed limit and guns them down if they do. It's tricky but possible to play alone. The art style looks wonderful in motion.

War of Toys

An FPS with toy soldiers. Remember when they used to make Army Men games?

Frail Shells

You're dropped into a warzone and after completing your mission, you jus??t try to live normally back at home amidst the slow creep of pos?t-traumatic stress disorder.

Shift

A quick, ?dodge-heavy, super-tough little FPS with "ch?unky robots."

Squid Squad

Besides the fact that you are a gun-wielding tentacle, I love the presentation. Instead of normal WASD or control-sti?ck movement, you hav?e to physically pull yourself forward.

Mosaic

Your gun shoots cameras, not bullets. Reaching the end of the level is like one big puzzle.

grepr

You contr??ol a drone that can launch itself and latch onto surfaces. You have to jump around to find and scrape data and also take out a competitor's drone. Super cool conce?pt.

--

The first image is from GAME OF THE YEAR: 420BLAZEIT vs. xxXilluminatiXxx [wow/10 #rekt edition] Montage Parody The Game. It's real, real dumb. (But I laughed.)

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One of the crude, funny games of the 0h Game Jam

Did you remember to adjust your clock(s) on Sunday? I just slept in as always. Some game designers used the end of daylight saving time as an excuse to, get this, be productive.

There's this thing called the 0h Game Jam in which developers make a game in under an hour. There isn't a theme. No real rules, either -- "just make a game, quick!" The results a??re strange.

Frog Fractions creator Jim Crawford made Madden Crusade for the jam and the concept cracked me up: "Guide your football team on a crusade across Eurasia to retrieve?? the Holy Grail and drop it into the Atlantic Ocean before time runs out! Your team will follow God's Truth, i.e. your mouse cursor, unless you are clicking in which case they will avoid?? God's Wrath, i.e. your mouse cursor."

Frankly, I'd ?like to see a big-budget adaptation.? The industry could use more weird sports games.

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A bouncy low-poly FPS platformer by Tyrus Peace

Originally created for the 7DFPS Challenge in 2012, Cloudbase Prime is an attractive-looking low-poly FPS platformer by Tyrus Peace and is currently available for free in its 0.2 alpha state. You can download it here.

Set? on a floating mining platform above a gas giant, you'll be tasked with destro??ying robotic enemies using your energy cannon and the Architect: a gizmo that can be used to manipulate the hex-based tiles that the mining platform is constructed from. 

The game reminds me a bit of Drunken Robot Pornography, and that's definitely not a bad th?ing in my book: It's got giant robots, high-flying platforming an?d first-person shooter elements. Oh yeah, did I mention that it's free?

For an idea of how the game plays, take a l?ook at the develop??er's Walker Mech combat footage in the video above.

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Constraints often inspire creativity!

Ludum Dare 30, the indie game jam, has officially begun! For the next 72 hours, many amateur (and professional) game developers are going to hunker down and do their best to create a game focused around a central theme. The theme for LD30 is "Connected Worlds." What that means is up to each in?dividual, which is largely what makes these jams so gosh darn great!

A lot of great stuff always comes fro?m Ludum Dare, and I frankly can't wait to see what comes out of this one. Don't worry about former game developin??g experience or anything of the sort - practice is practice! Even if you don't finish but really enjoy your idea, keep going with it! Sometimes all you need is that spark. 

So, who will be participating in Ludum Dare 30?

[Header image taken from Triavanicus's stream]

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Sonic Youth and Swans on the soundtrack? Win!

Aside from videogames, music is my other big passion in life, whether it's just listening to it, going to gigs or reading about various bands or periods in music history. So when I got a message from the developers of No Wave, a short point-and-click adventure set in N?ew Yor?k music scene of the very early 1980s, I was immediately intrigued. A game with early Sonic Youth, Swans, and The Boys Next Door on the soundtrack? Yes please!

No Wave was created for the recent Game Dev Party game jam and it's a short adventure game that follows Jim as he descends into the wild and dangerous New York music scene. In truth, Jim i??s more of a danger to himself than anyone else is. Really, would you keep taking the p??ills that the bouncer is handing out after what happened the night before? 

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Admittedly less insane than previous games by developer Ultimate Walrus

The Ludum Dare 29 game jam is currently in the voting phase, with the theme "beneath the surface." Developer Sebastian Janisz of Ultimate Walrus took the theme to a decidedly less mental place than some of his past creations, where the pl??ayer controls a submersible vehicle as it travels down into the sea near a coral reef. Despite the decrease in wack?iness, it looks cool.

With its isometric view, parts of it almost remind me of the crate puzzles inside the pirate ship in Super Mario RPG. At its core, it is a shooter (poor jellyfish), but what makes it unique is that it allows for three-dimensional traversal inside its two-dimensional engine. Though his game jam entry is available as freeware, ?Janisz want??s to flesh the idea out into a larger game soon.

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Indie Game The French Movie

This is confusing, but cool. Pixel Heart is going to be a documentary that visits a bunch of talented, global folks in videogames -- Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Rez), Robin Hunicke (Sims, Journey), Edmundo Bordeu (Zeno Clash), Mark Healey (Little Big Planet), and Eyram Tawia (Letiarts) -- and then trots back to France for a?? ?big game jam.

The game jam will produce 12 games, 6 of which will be available to play online, 6 of which will use some so??rt of dedicated hardware.

To fund this wild project, Pixel Heart has taken to French crowd funding platform Ulule, which you can donate to regardless of region.

This all sounds amazing, and the crowdfunding video sells it. Seriously, at least watch the kitchen scene at 3:35. It makes A la cartridge look bad (which it obviously is or it wouldn't be #cancelled).

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These make the Wii balance board look downright boring. Er, more boring.

There was a wonderful spread of strange and interesting indie games at GDC, including a special exhibit called Alt.Ctrl, focusing on projects that made use of unusual controllers. Bill Zoeker screwed around w?ith these for a bit before discussing what it's like to play a game with pedals, kn?obs, dials, cables, sleeping bags, and a receipt printer.

If you want to find out more, I dug up the websites for all of these?? games:

• Orbitalis
• Analog Defender
• Roflpillar
• Rakete 
• Please Don't, Spacedog! 
• The Choosatron 

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It follows five separate 48-hour game jams

Filmmakers Daniel Oliveira Carneiro and Bram Ruiter are teaming up with publisher Devolver Digital for Super Game Jam, a monthly documentary series which pairs up notable independent designers for 48 hours of game making based on a particular theme deter??mined by their peers.

• Episode 1 | Utrecht, Netherlands: Jan Willem Nijman (Ridiculous Fishing, LUFTRAUSERS) + Richard Boeser (Ibb and Obb)
• Episode 2 | Berlin, Germany: Dominik Johann (Impetus, LAZA KNITEZ!!) + Christoffer Hedborg (Shelter, Pid)
• Episode 3 | Oakland, USA: Adam Drucker (doseone, Samurai Gunn) + Sos Sosowski (McPixel)
• Episode 4 | Gothenburg, Sweden: Jonatan Söderström (Hotline Miami) + Martin Jonasson (Rymdkapsel)
• Episode 5 | London, England: Tom Francis (Gunpoint) + Liselore Goedhart (Remembering, Nott Won't Sleep)

Episodes will be released each month from April through August on Steam and the games themselves are of course going to be?? playable. This right here is my jam. I particularly like how these projects are the first time the participants have worked together. Should be fun.

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'Stop trying to make procedural death labyrinth happen'

Roguelikes have seen a surge in popularity in the last few years, with some titles reaching the highest levels of indie game success, like FTL: Faster Than Light or Spelunky. However, despite the recent focus on certain game mechanics that define Rogue, there are those out there who think these games aren't enough like Rogue to be literally considered "roguelike." From there, the terms "roguelike-like" and "rogue-lite" sprouted up, and some are unhappy with those. Instead, the suggested phrase (that might or might not catch on) is now "procedural death labyrinth."

Whichever terminology you prefer, there is a game jam that might satisfy your cravings for games of this style. The Procedural Death Jam cle?arly favors the revised term, and hopes to curate new games with the unifying ideas of the procedural death labyrinth: procedural generation of some game element, permanent death, and existence within a semi-contained environment.

The Procedural Death Ja?m is set to run between March 8 and March 15. Ending on the Ides of M??arch seems fitting, considering the game jam's focus on death.

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Someone please make a Ramones Vs. Terminator game

Up and coming indie darling Devi Ever (Lillian Gish, Call Center Cleveland) is putting on a Cyberpunk Game Jam, and you're all invited. A lot of promising entries are already in the works by the likes of Okinawa Terminal, Bacioiu Ciprian, Gareth Pavlich, Jay Townsend, past Sup Holmes guest Sophie Houlden, and many more.

All games in the jam must be based on this image, though there is nothing in the rules saying that the term "cyberpunk" couldn't be otherwise interpreted. Personally, I'd love to see  a game where the Borg Queen joins Joy Division, or Lobot falls in love with Glenn Danzig. The possibilities are endless. A lot of devs are using Construct 2, which is perfect for people taking a crack at their first game. You have until March 10th to get your entries in. If you've always thought about trying to make a game, there is no bet??ter time than now. 

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I hope none are watching me in the bathroom

Last year we heard that Devlover Digital would be publishing the tense, point-and-click game Gods Will Be Watching from Spanish developer Deconstructeam. If you've been waiting for the full release then, it's still a few months away arriving in July on PC, Mac, and Linux systems via GOG.com, Steam, Humble Store, and the game's website. 

Expanding on its initial form that came out of the Ludum Dare 26 competition, the game's makers are promising scenarios that are going to test your re??solve and commi?tment. From the trailer above it's going to be painful; I mean, that's a dude getting kneecapped right there!

You'll be able to get your hands on Gods Will Be Watching at forthco??ming events like PAX East and Rezzed but ??for me, June seems a long way away.

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BAD GOLF 2! BAD GOLF 2!

While it may not have been my favorite concept for a game out of Amnesia Fortnight 2014, the pitch itself for Bad Golf 2 was among the best. It was literally just Double Fine's Patrick Hackett chanting "Bad Golf 2!" four times in a row, pumping his fists while holding golf clubs. I was sold right then and there, but the project didn't make the cut as a finalist.

No matter. The community has since taken it upon itself to make Bad Golf 2 into a real game with support from Hackett. "OH MY GOD. Pleeeaaaaaaase do this," he said on the Double Fine forums. ?"I will help in any way I can. Yes y??es yes, this is awesome."

I do hope they can carry this through to the end and they might just be able to, if the screenshot above is any indication. Hackett's original idea for Bad Golf was a four-player game in which everyone plays golf like normal, only they've all got carts and the freedom to drive recklessly. "Think of it like the PGA Tour meets the demoliti?on derby."

[Via IGN]

Here's the concept for Bad Golf, which sounds genuinely good:

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