Kloonigames

View the full sized image at Flickr

Wow, I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of this blogging thing: 7 posts this month, updated wordpress to the latest version, wrote a headline directly from a blogging guide. Those professional bloggers all say that the headline is the most important thing about a blog post and nothing drives traffic more than “Top X Y things” -headlines. Professional blogging career here I come!

Seriously. This is the link. I updated this blog a little bit and created this page that lists all the games that I’ve created. The order is chronological so it’s not really a “top 24″ list of my games, because it’s so hard to judge your own babies. (No it’s not, but the real reason is that this was much easier to do from the technical point of view. It keeps it self updated and everything.)

The fine people of kokoromi just announced Gamma 3D. Gamma has now become this yearly awesome indie art game party held in Montreal as a part of the Montreal International Game Summit. This year’s theme is stereoscopy and they are calling for games that use stereoscopy as part of their gameplay, instead of just being a purely visual trick. It’s an interesting challenge.

Last years theme was low resolution (256×256 was the maximum) and the results were surprisingly beautiful and inspiring. A lot of really good games came out the last year’s challenge: Mr. Heart Loves You Very Much, Passage and StdBits are the first to pop in to my mind. My entry was Bloody Zombies, which wasn’t exactly the most artistic entry of the bunch… So needless to say, I’m really looking forward to what will come out of this year’s Gamma.

If you’re interested in participating the submission deadline is October 15th. And the Gamma3D party, with the selected games, beer and 3D glasses is taking place on November 19th.

A while back I was watching this 1UP feature about Killzone 2 and I thought to myself that I should do a similar studio tour here at Kloonigames office (a.k.a. my apartment). It would have been this parody with these fake motion capture studio shots explaining how the physics of Crayon Physics Deluxe are being made. Stuff like that. Unfortunately the brilliant guys at LoadingReadyRun beat me to it with their Making of Geometry Wars video. Damn.

[via newretro.org]

Well, I went to the store and bought a Xbox 360 so I could play Braid today… (Read the previous post.)

I just finished playing though the first world (collected all the puzzle pieces), and I’m totally blown away by it (pun intended). My congrats to Jonathan Blow and David Hellman and everyone involved. You’ve created one beautiful game.

Also I’d like to repeat what Chris Hecker said about the game. If you enjoy the game (which you will) spread the word. Tell your friends, blog about it, digg about it. Independent games, like Braid, don’t have the marketing power that big studios have. They really need the word-of-mouth to be successful. And if there is any justice in this world, Braid should be a huge commercial success. Put your part in and make sure that Braid doesn’t end up being the Psychonauts of indie games.

Now I’m gonna go and solve the rest of worlds…

Jonathan Blow’s beautiful game Braid is finally available on the Xbox Live Arcade. If you’re an owner of Xbox 360 you should go buy it. Now. Seriously.

It’s the best game I’ve played in years. I’m predicting that the Internets will go nuts about this game. I know that I went nuts after playing the game. The game made me realize that I didn’t know anything about game design and after playing the game I got some what depressed because of it. So if you’re an aspiring game designer and you think you know something about game design, don’t play this game. You will get depressed, sad and fan boyish towards Jonathan.

(Btw. I don’t own a 360, so I’m actually really tempted to go out and buy one just to play Braid. Jon has promised that the game will be released on PC later this year, but still I’m really tempted to go buy one so I could play the game right now.)

Summer Assembly 2008 was held during the weekend. Unfortunately I could only be there for the first two days

Choke on my Groundhog, YOU BASTARD ROBOTS was my game development competition entry. I came in third! Which is cool since there were some really nice games in this year’s competition.

Here are the top 5 of Assembly game dev combo:

1   3692p   Dave the Ordinary Spaceman by Lasi Interactive
2   3056p   Kiuasturvat feat. VastaIsku by SX cracked by tAAt
3   2867p   Choke on my Groundhog, YOU BASTARD ROBOTS by Kloonigames
4   2636p   Pakoon III - First Blood by Mayoneez, Osmic & Kani
5   2107p   FlipOut by Mikkosoft Productions

Link to the full results

As you can see my archnemesis Jetro beat me again this year. His entry Kiuasturvat came in second and beat Groundhog by 231 points. Last year my game was fourth and Jetro beat me with just 10 points…

Also this year I held a seminar at the Assembly. It was called Making of Crayon Physics Deluxe or How I Got Lucky and Won the IGF. The talk it self went well and people seemed to enjoy it. Unfortunately the Assembly crew hasn’t posted my talk online yet (and I doubt that they ever will). But you can watch my archnemesis’ Jetro’s and Jani’s talk online in the meanwhile

Image stolen from http://www.assembly.org/

Sorry, but the monthly game is going to be a little late this time. The game is done, but I can’t upload it to the web server It’s my ISP’s fault. I can’t get a connection from my desktop computer to the web server.

(I’m writing this entry in lynx from our schools web server). Unfortunately I’m traveling during the weekend so that can cause even further delay. I’ll try to get everything up and running as soon as possible.

In an effort to show my support to point-n-click adventure games, I declare Kloonigames to be April Fools’ Day joke free!

Ron Gilbert states that every time an April Fools’ Joke is played, adventure game concept is killed. There’s no reason to doubt him, because he’s always right. And he said that Crayon Physics Deluxe is awesome and because he’s always right then I’ve scientifically proven that Crayon Physics Deluxe is made of awesome.

I posted this only, because I didn’t have enough free time to do a parody of Rod Humble’s newest game Stars over Half Moon Bay. Which is a shame because last years April Fools’ Joke worked like a charm.

Oh and this month’s game was posted few days in advance: Small-Time Scorched Earth Invasion.

I’m on the road, but here’s some quick news about Crayon Physics Deluxe, that were just too delicious to pass.

• Cama has created an amazing fansite for Crayon Physics (Deluxe). You can download level packs for Crayon Physics and there’s a video tutorial for the horrible Crayon Physics’ level editor. Crayon Physics Unofficial Game Blog
• Chris Baker wrote a great article about Crayon Physics Deluxe for Slate. He wrote that the game looks like it was designed by a third-grater. I take that as a compliment.
• Crayon Physics Deluxe is also featured in Darren Gladstone’s PC World report about this year’s IGF winners. There’s also clips from World of Goo, Fez and Audiosurf. [Via Limevoodoo's comment]

Game Developers Conference was lots of fun, not because Crayon Physics Deluxe won something there, but because I had a great time hanging out with friends and fellow developers. I wish I could have spend more time away from the booths, meetings and general “work” and spend more time checking out the lectures, hanging with friends and partying. Hopefully next year won’t be so hectic.

Anyway during the first days GDC I asked a bunch of friends and fellow game developers to draw crayon versions of their games. But I lost my crayons during the award show (I had to do the sign while running to the stage and I dropped my crayons and I couldn’t find them afterwards ), so I couldn’t get these from everyone I wanted to. Which really sucks. But here’s what I got.

I apologize for my lack of photographing skills.

A real sweet crayon Jetpack Brontosaurus by Ben Ruiz of Flashbang Studios.

Cinnamon Beats as drawn by Jani Kahrama.

Crayon Clean Asia by ever awesome Cactus looks really sweet. No wonder he got nominated for Excellence in Visual Art. 500 Bananas!

Cortex Command by pixel physics wizard Daniel “Data” Tabar.

It’s easy to see why Fez won the IGF Excellence in Visual Art award… Fez as drawn by Renaud Bédard (the programmer of Fez) .

Random dude with a Fez by fez wearing Phil Fish (the artist / designer of Fez) .

An actual screenshot of Gesundheit! as drawn with crayons by Matt Hammill.

Goo as drawn by Adam “Atomic” Saltsman.

Look behind you, a Three Headed Monkey! by one of my heroes: Ron Gilbert.

The awesome Gamma256 game Mr. Heart Loves You Very Much by Zaphos (who should really put a proper website for his games who now has a real website).

Darwinian poetry game Poesysteme as drawn by Balthazar Auger.

Crayon qrp as drawn by Sean ‘th15′ Chan (of Battleships Forever fame). I think Sean should do a kindergarten crayon version of qrp.

Crayonized Starwave as drawn by the fellow experimental game designer Daniel Benmergui.

Toblo by Steve Chiavelli.

2DBoyish World of Goo drawn by the brilliant Kyle Gabler. (I love you too Kyle!)

The IGF winners World of Goo and Crayon Physics Deluxe melt together and form this ultimate unstoppable game: World of Crayon Goo Physics… Deluxe drawn by classiest dressed IGF winner Ron Carmel.

Someone drew this and didn’t even leave a business card. It’s awesome so thanks!