“The fireflies are leaving the city, looking for a new home. Let your touch guide them as they soar through the skies and dance among the trees” is the description of an experimental video game ‘Flight of the Fireflies’ by Jonathan Hise Kaldma that takes you on an atmospheric journey through places and emotions. The focus of the game is not on the challenge – but on the experience.�

Continue reading.... Flight of the Fireflies – “Atmospheric journey through places and emotions” [iPad, Games]

Here is a portfolio of a french web designer named Gildas Paubert experimenting with processing js. (go in the « play mode ! » section).

Continue reading.... Playing with Pixels [Javascript, Processing]

SpellTower is a new iPad game by Zach Gage, the name behind the titles such as Halcyon, Bit Pilot, and Unify. SpellTower is a word puzzle game that combines the traditional word making with Tetris style block physics. In the game, the task is to make long words or use bonus tiles to clear extra letters from the screen. As you work, more word tiles rise from the bottom of the screen, and it’ll take all of your word wits and tactical know-how to keep them down. If any of the letters make it to the top row, it’s game over. After playing the game for few days now, I asked Zach what was the inspiration and the reasons for making SpellTower..

Continue reading.... SpellTower [iPad, Games, openFrameworks]

Earlier this week Mozilla Labs silently opened the voting process for the 100 demo submissions. There is a wide range of entries ranging from animated gifs to javascript demos and now it’s up to you to decide on the winners.

Continue reading.... 100 Demos [Javascript]

This years No More Sweden game jam took place in Skövde last weekend and encouraged people to both make a game in two days, but also to demo the games they are currently working on. I really liked the new format – it was great to see what everyone is working on. We gave two talks as well: Mattias shared the game design process of Spirits and I talked a bit about Promotion for Indies. We also made a simple prototypish music puzzle game for the jam, which Martin Jonasson is playing on the photo above and it won the second place in the Most Interesting Use of Sound/Music category.

Here’s a small selection of the games presented at the event. Visit the event’s website for a list of all games or watch the recorded presentations embedded below.

Man Enough by Daniel Remar and Erik Sjöstrand [Game Jam Entry, Best Game]

Kung-fu Romance by Erik Svedäng and Emil Berner [Unity, Game Jam Entry]

Untitled new two-player game by Erik Svedäng [iPad, in development]

Orbs by Jonatan Söderström (Cactus) [Game Jam Entry]

Where is my Heart? by Bernie Schulenburg [PSP, in development]

The recorded presentations:

The first of four episodes of Pixelate’s Black Forest series of mini games is now available for download. Pixelate, the team behind Mr. Bounce are bringing a series of tiny, experimental games this month, one episode per week. We have had a little preview of all four and enjoyed them thoroughly. For now, you can enjoy the first of four followed by more in the next few weeks.

All episodes feature a little ghost as the main character, but have completely different game mechanics. The player takes on the ghost’s role who finds himself in unfamiliar, alien environments. There is no tutorial – only five small icons that indicate what keys and buttons the player can use to interact with the game world. Like sketches, every episode deliberately does not aim to be a “complete” game, but is rather an effort to create emotional experiences that are more personal and different from the ones traditional game design has to offer.

Have a play here and  you can follow Andrea Szecher for latest updates/releases on Twitter.

MinMe we wrote about weeks back has just received an update including a total of 60 levels that will cost you $0.99 via an in-app purchase. The first 16 levels are free and once you have completed these a message will come up to download the rest. The levels are pretty fast paced but thoroughly enjoyable. I managed to run through about 40 in an hour or so but things are getting considerably harder now.

MinMe was created by Chaim Gingold as a part of Experimental Gameplay Project.

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: Free + $0.99 (in-app)
Developer: Chaim Gingold

Wonderful ‘experimental animation’ by Andrew Morev.

You can see more of his work here and on vimeo here.

(via Looks like good Design)

Created as part of last month’s Experimental Gameplay Project, Chaim Gingold‘s MinMe is a response to the theme “bare minimum”. Made in 1.5 days, MinMe is a clean, minimal puzzler with 10 levels. The former Spore developer notes that if enough people like and download this game, he’ll happily expand it. Clean, fun, free, engaging with some pretty awesome screen transitions and sounds, I am left wanting more!

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: Free
Developer: Chaim Gingold

(via Offworld)

Continue reading.... Face It [iPhone] – Preview