Ludum Dare 2014 Part 2

I was going to draw tonight but it turns out the particular cable I need to run my tablet and charge my phone on has gone missing. This makes the third or so one that has vanished into thin air. I have one more floating around but it doesn't seem to have any effect on my tablet. So here we are
Just so we're all on the same page, if you haven't had a look at the Ludum Dare site yet, the theme this year was Connected Worlds.
So without further ado I present to you Shiftkeeper by Egor-idiot. It has a web version so you don't need to fiddle around with downloading anything.

it's a simple concept, the screen is split into two worlds. The left is a medieval fantasy while the other is a sci-fi future. You move between the worlds as either a wizard or a future soldier, defending the portal from attack from both side. You have to survive three rounds to win. The first two rounds pass quite quickly and any semi competent person will get through them without even realising. The third wave makes you work for it though. The wizards spells are slow moving, so you can cue up a whole row of them to kill anything that comes from that direction while you go to the future soldier side and wipe out the quicker moving enemies with your machine gun.
The animation is minimal and everything kind of slides around, but for 48 hours it's a solid little concept. Like something you'd find at Newgrounds. You can also jump, something I never really bothered doing.

Next game up is Rest In Peace by Kenrickrilee if that is your real name. You sound more like... THREE people. To be honest I don't know if I could be bothered telling you the rules because the game tells you it so succinctly.

There's something inherently cheeky about shooting someone, swapping to an alternate dimension, evading their ghost, and burning their body. It's like a massive F you to the sanctity of human life and the respect we should show their corpses.

If you're wondering why the screenshot is cut off, it's not, the game is literally this shape. It's all made in javascript and is run via a browser, so once again, no messy downloads. It's a little annoying to restart the game after you die, needing to refresh the page, but other than that it's a fun little cat and mouse game.

Also the 2 frame animations are kind of charming and cute. Look at that little ghost go! Ha ha, he's probably angry about me shooting him and then desecrating his corpse. Dumb ghost.

Ludum Dare 2014 Part 1

It's way past my bed time but if I don't do this now I never will, so here goes.
So I've been getting into Twitter recently. I've surrounded myself by devs and artists and now I see the appeal. Before when it was just random dumb comments by celebrities it sucked. The creators of little worlds and images are the real celebrities for me.
Having all these dudes around has made me aware that the latest Ludum Dare just went down. There's so much friggin inspiring art out there now! So I decided I might as well spotlight what I play as I play it.
First up is Legacy of Lamas. I'm not sure how the main character is a lama, but who am I to judge? I'm not an expert on Lamas. It kind of squidges around shooting red lasers before moving on to new and bigger islands. The whole thing has a slightly dreamy ploddy feel to it.

At first I wasn't sure what the game even was. Although once I started to see the consequences of my random slayings it all started to make a whole lot more sense. I didn't do any reading up about the game when I dived in so it was interesting picking up the mechanics organically. I feel like there are still secrets I don't know about.

I didn't make it to the end of world 1, which seems pretty daunting. It doesn't take long to cut through each level though, a few seconds at most, so you get into a real groove until you get overrun by flashing red music notes(?). There are a lot of question marks about pretty much everything in this game, but I guess that's why I like it. It's all so ambiguous. I wonder what world 2 looks like? I guess I'm gonna have to put in the hard yards to find out. Or just look up someone else's screenshots.
I'd recommend giving it a go, just for the experience. Tell @Cellusious I sent you.

Next game up is Wormhunter by @SmallGaming. I let Girlfriend Becky take over for the first part of this one. As soon as she started playing I was already likening the game to Dune in my head. Then a little while later I was thinking about Tremors. The game sets you out as some sort of Zulu warrior who's out to kill Giant Sandworms that pop out of the ground. It's a lot less arcadey than it sounds, and you can spend quite a while trying to track down the worm. The suspense freaked Becky out and she eventually made me take over.




The worm is pretty brutal and can wipe you out in one shot, so you have to be real limber when attacking it, rolling away and then running in for a hit. Playing it just now on my third try I managed to find and kill the worm pretty easy. Maybe It's because I found the "R" key that helps you track the direction of the worm.

The game feels a little unfinished at the moment, but from the looks of what's coming up I'm pretty excited to give it another shot in a couple weeks:

Overall I recommend it, the initial feeling of scale and mystery is sweet. And also the character just feels cool. I like to imagine he's on some quest or rite of passage. Also it's got Co-Op. I haven't tried it out yet, but it's definitely something we'll probably do.

Elena Fisher - Uncharted 8Bit

As I have previously mentioned, I had a bit of a crush on Elena while playing through Uncharted. It's probably the only game where everyones happy with the characters. Becky had Nathan Fillion Drake & I got a make believe person. Well no let's be fair, she was voice acted and Mo-Capped by Emily Rose. Although watch how you google that one. You might get the exorcism instead of the actress. Stink naming there.
Unfortunatly she's a stink one to pixelate, since she isn't particularly iconic looking. No clevage windows or giant swords in other words. But that doesn't make her any less deserving of being added to the pantheon.
Time to go watch Liam Neeson run around on a plane.

Fio Germi - Metal Slug

I'm a huge Metal Slug fan. Well, fan enough to have had it on Xbox, then occasionally trying it on other platforms but eventually deciding that they all sucked in comparison to the original arcade ones.
The other morning I woke up to find a whole pile of Twitter notifications. This humble place got found by Mazeon, a kick ass pixel artist, whose Tumblr I had been following for a couple months now. It's rad to know that someone who's been inspiring me along also digs my shit. It's like an infinite feedback loop. You should check out his games and stuff. Also his oldschool fonts are sweet as well of course.

This video is awesome both audibly and visually. It exudes far too much funk for it's own good. Hopefully work eases up and I can do more of these during the week. Unfortunatly I've been told by someone who's never done my job before how long it takes to do. As is to be expected their estimate of how long it takes a week long job has been dwindled down to two half days. I was told that we could "probably expect maybe a few late nights. But that's only 3 or so days a month."

I usually leave this sort of ribbing and worklife woes to some of my more shadowy compatriots, but when a manager tells you that you can expect overtime, it has more to do with mismanagement and bloated workloads than it does to do with a single persons productivity.

Other than that, more pixel thighs in a tick!

Hipsdeer Print

Buy a Shirt! Or a print! Gimme your disposable income!
I needed to practice drawing deer so this is what eventuated.
He's a Hipsdeer. He knows all the best watering holes that you probably have never heard of. You see you think you're watering hole is good, but this one I found was dammed by this beaver who only uses local timber. It gives the water there this really nice texture, it's the oak you see. You probably wouldn't notice the difference though if your used to that common pine dammed water. I mean it's ok, it's cool you have your thing and all. It's nice to see you trying to get into it. Maybe one day you can hear these new birds I've found. They're doing this experimental new sound that you might find a bit crazy, but like if you had read the same roadsigns as me you can tell that they're doing a critique of common commands.
also listen to this, it's the best 20 minute mix you'll ever hear in your life. It's chill, so good for background stuff.

Enchantress - DOTA 2

So this was an annoying one to do. Thanks to +Danny Sutton for asking me to do it, ya bastard. I had to do it twice. Also my first attempt had some alternate outfit with wings which I really wasn't digging.

I've recently started digging back into Maplestory with Matt after a nostalgic conversation about the game. I've also taken up my role as the Maple God. Check it out to follow my misadventures in the Maple World and also to have weird conversations with people who seem to not realise that arguing with someone about whether or not they are a god on Twitter is perhaps the most pointless debate they'll ever engage in.

Behind the Scenes Photoshoot

Tez our epic photographer took the photo on the left, I took the photo of him on the right of him taking the photo on the left.

I took it at the time because what he's using is a coke glass with a bit of A4 printer paper wrapped around it with a bit of rubber or something propping it up.

The sheet has styrophome under it, because if he took the photo right onto the glass table with only the linen on it the cloth would go a green colour when he used the flash.

Pretty amazing end result considering the Macgyver set up. The only hole with this whole epic thing that I never picked up on at the time is that there are fingerprints on the strap. Our eagle eyed Editor noticed that.

The print industry is a glamorous place.