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| SHOOTIN' STARCADE | |||||||||||
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Calamity Anna's Shootin' Starcade was assembled for the Indie Games Arcade at 2009's Eurogamer Expo. Over 10,000 people visited the arcade in Leeds and London at the end of October. My Shootin' Starcade collects six games that were each made in one or two hours. The games are satirical - Bibleshock is a critique of "moral dilemmas" in contemporary videogames, Adventured Servants of the use of item manipulation as a narrative device - or are inversions of established games - Dodgeball is a Pong where players try to avoid touching the ball, Space Escapers is a two-player shooting game where one player is the shooter and the other is shot. Read about the six games that comprise Starcade in Jordan Magnuson's review at Necessary Games. Magnuson writes, "These games are not 3D games, they are not long games, they are not games to tell you a complicated story; rather, they are short, small, to the point, and meant to be that way....They are another kind of expression: creative flares, sparks of individuality from another person out there. That is why I like them, that is why they are needed, that is why you should play them, and that is why you should get up off your seat and make your own." Also see fellow presenter Rob Fearon's retrospective on the Indie Games Arcade, with photos. |
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| WHEN PIGS FLY | |||||||||||
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When Pigs Fly is my first Flash game of this length - fifty screens plus three additional game modes - and the first Flash game I sought a license for. It was ultimately licensed by Newgrounds. The music in the game was written by the fabulous Amon26, author of All Our Friends Are Dead. While on a stroll, a little pink pig tumbles into a cave. To escape, she wills herself to grow a pair of big, feathery wings. But learning to fly is no easy task: those wings are delicate, and flying too close to a wall could mean disaster! In these twisting, turning caves, staying aloft requires careful steering. When Pigs Fly is a challenging game: players are encouraged to try and finish the game as quickly as possible and with as few accidents as possible. The game saves the player's fastest time and fewest number of accidents, and players can earn six different medals on Newgrounds by playing the game skillfully. Here's a video of the game being completed in just over three minutes with no collisions. The Onion A.V. Club gave the game an A, calling it "the best test of your 2-D run-and-jump skills since Super Mario All-Stars." And Play This Thing wrote, "...The combination of fiendish level design, cute avatars, piercing piggy squeals, and sheer game design chutzpah carries the game." |
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| OCTOPOUNCE | |||||||||||
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Octopounce was created for artxgame, a joint project between Giant Robot and Attract Mode, and debuted at opening night of the Game Over / Continue? show at the giant robot gallery. Giant Robot artist Saelee Oh provided the game's watercolor backgrounds. Octopounce is a game for up to four players, each of whom is an Octopus. Players attempt to catch fish as they swim by by bouncing off of other players' heads. The game was designed in consideration of the context in which it would be experienced: at a social event with controllers constantly changing hands. The game runs continuously during the event regardless of how many players there are. An octopus whose controller isn't being used will fall asleep and drift around the screen, acting as obstacles and launching pads for other players. When someone picks up her controller, the octopus wakes up again. A message scroll on the bottom of the screen updates players on their standing and welcomes new players to the game. The game was mentioned on the Co-op webshow following the Game Over debut. A showgoer took this footage of the game being played that evening. Octopounce was later selected by Indiecade for inclusion in their 2009 showcase at E3. Crispy Gamer called it one of "the sleeper hits of E3," and Joystiq wrote that it "beats New Super Mario Bros. Wii to the jump." |
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| CALAMITY ANNIE | |||||||||||
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Calamity Annie is a freeware game I built over the course of two months. It's a cowboy quick-draw contest in the style of 8-bit games like Wild Gunman, except that instead of a light gun the game is entirely mouse-driven. The player squares off with twenty-five different gunslingers as she travels between five different locales, intercut with bonus stages and scenes that advance the story. The story persists between plays and what the player does and sees in one play will affect what she sees her next time through the game. All of the game's scenes, whether gunfight or romance, are built around the same, single verb: shoot. Gregory Weir writes that Calamity Annie "manages to do the impossible: provide a cruel skill challenge and still have a long, ongoing game story. It's a groundbreaking lesbian cowboy fast-draw romance where every game ends with the shot of a pistol....Here is a game with all the hallmarks of the ancient skill challenge games: limited lives, no health bar or continues, and a posted high score at the end. However, unlike those games, it allows for a story that continues past the player's failure. This technique may be the solution to the challenge versus story dilemma." Here's a (slightly choppy) video of the game in motion, courtesy Andrew Grey. More screenshots on MobyGames. |
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| MIGHTY JILL OFF | |||||||||||
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Mighty Jill Off is a freeware platformer built in January and February of 2008. I collaborated with animator James Harvey to create the illustrations that bookend the game and with Andrew Toups to create the game's chunky background music. Jill Off is an homage to Tecmo's Mighty Bomb Jack, and attempts to explore investigate the jumping mechanics of that series more thoroughly. It's also a queer, kinky send-off of the rescue-the-princess theme, which attempts to trace the masochistic quality intrinsic to the play of many 8-bit games. Jill's received some positive words from the press: Game Developer Magazine named it one of the "top ten indie freeware downloads 2008" (as of August), PlayThisThing called it "a textbook example in good level design," and Eegra called it "a very small and very perfect game." And feminist blog Feministe observed: "It’s long been noted by game scholars and humorists alike that there’s a masochistic quality inherent in many games. Hemmed in by the demands of an almost arbitary system of constraints and rules, you willingly submit to the system in search of an elusive and transitory experience of “fun,” to the extent where you let most of your thought processes be taken over." |
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| OTHER GAMES | |||||||||||
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Tombed Created in forty-eight hours for the fourteenth Ludum Dare competition, "advancing wall of doom." Took first place in fun and second place overall. Video. |
Mind Fuck Based on "Mind Chess." Each player wants to press her button before the other, but to wait as long as possible before doing so. The game encourages players to read their opponents. |
Chicanery A game for two-to-four players that encourages players to interact physically outside the digital space of the game. Do whatever you have to do to win. |
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This Little Piggy There are no computer characters in this two-player maze chase. Player one tries to collect all the fruits, player two tries to collect player one. |
Nicole's Game An abstract platformer about building a tower. Made as a gift for my sister. |
All Roads Lead From Home Created in forty-eight hours for the 13th triannual Ludum Dare competition, in which it took second place in the "fun" category and fifth place overall. |
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Snake Heart Apple An asymmetrical two-player game in which the players have different controls (player one uses the keyboard, player two the mouse), different goals and different losing conditions. |
Jill Off with One Hand A one-switch variant of Mighty Jill Off that challenges the player to survive as long as possible using Jill's unique jumping abilities. Video. |
Robot World Arena A Joust-inspired webgame for two to four players on the same keyboard. A single key is used to move - hold to ascend, release to descend - and a second key fires at opponents. |
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| MODS AND LEVELS | |||||||||||
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Mario Goes Underground A rom hack that inserts a new story into Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. This short tale comprises a series of small platform setpieces in Mario's subterranean world. |
From the Summit This Oblivion mod attempts to replace text dialogue and immersion-breaking mission updates with architectural and landscape cues that guide the player in exploring a mysterious, forested island. |
We Like it in Rubber A campaign for Matteo Guarnieri’s Rubber Ninjas starring a rubber-clad dominatrix and her whip. Five levels require the player to wield the whip with increasing accuracy. |
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The Chalice of Goldcastle A scenario for Alx Dark's ascii puzzle adventure game, The Tombs of Asciiroth. The player searches for truth in a Disneyfied version of Warrin Robinett's Adventure. It can be played online or downloaded. |
Under the Crack A level for Nicklas "Nifflas" Nygren's freeware jumping and climbing game, Knytt Stories. It's a simple landscape to explore in a Gameboy palette. Video. |
Torchlight An experimental story where the player navigates almost total darkness, feeling out walls and avoiding enemies. |
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The Oubliette A trap-evading adventure in a Prince of Persia vein. The environment is cast entirely in silhouette. |
The Lighthouse A portrait of loneliness, The Lighthouse juxtaposes the protagonist's stark outer life with her inner life in the Lighthouse. Video. |
Fossil A surprising story set in the underground, which manages a few twists despite a complete lack of exposition. Video of an earlier version. |
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| GRAPHIC DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION | |||||||||||
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Game culture and apparel store Attract Mode hired me to design their logo and mascot, Helena the broglin. |
Casual Encounter and Star Perv are Truetype pixel typefaces that look neat and clean at their native resolution and good and chunky close up. |
This pixel illustration of the Shadaloo insignia from Capcom's Street Figher games was originally drawn for a desktop wallpaper. |
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Studies based on pulp magazine photos. Intended to "read" well both at original and blown-up sizes. |
A portrait of Anthony Carboni and Jon Rivera for their web show, Bytejacker. | A reimagining of Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel painting. Made with galleryNES. | |||||||||
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Sprites of Nintendo princesses edited into romantic entanglements. |
A NES portrait created with No Carrier's galleryNES and a limited palette of tiles. | A double-sided business card illustrated with ANSI art. | |||||||||
| WRITING | |||||||||||
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Level Design Lesson: In The Pyramid From my Auntie Pixelante blog "The lower route’s entrance is only one block tall - Little Mario alone is short enough to enter. This is interesting because Little Mario is, most of the time, an undesirable state to be in. Little Mario can’t break blocks, is only one hit away from death, and must find two power-ups to be able to wield the 'superball' weapon. Here, Mario is given access to a special place as a kind of compensation for this otherwise weaker state - and the bottom route is in fact the most lucrative of the three." |
Level Design Lesson: To the Right, Hold On Tight From my Auntie Pixelante blog "These first two screens teach the player almost every crucial rule of the game. How? Let’s take the very first screen: just Mario under an open sky, a flat landscape beneath his feet. This is the first thing a player sees on starting the game. So what does it teach her? The first and highest concept in the game: that Mario's goal is to the right!" |
Level Design Lesson: The Face of Mars From my Auntie Pixelante blog "In contrast to the irregular surface that the first three screens have sold us as the craggy, natural surface of Mars, a symmetrical shape strikes us as the opposite: an artificial structure, not a natural formation. See those octogonal holes, one on either side, each containing a robot? The player can’t ever enter those areas: they’re completely walled in. They exist just to create symmetry: two identical rooms, two identical metal columns." |
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Rise of the Videogame Zinesters From The Escapist, Issue 161 "...Demon-shooting is a single theme, a tiny blip in the vast cosmos of what clever people could do with a new and largely unrefined medium. If we want videogames to be relevant to our lives - and I certainly do - the medium is going to have to push beyond the endless retelling of the same story by the same privileged authors. I want to play different games, but more than that, I want to hear different voices." |
Bit.Trip Beat Guest review for Tiny Cartridge "It's telling that one of our most seminal games, Pong, is named after the sound the ball makes when it hits a paddle. That sound effect is no less than one of the game’s most important elements: it announces to both players (and any onlookers) that contact between the paddle and ball has occured, that the game will continue. It punctuates every interaction in the game." |
The Princess is in Another Castle From my Auntie Pixelante blog "There was a princess, and the princess yearned. Not for wealth: for gold she had, and treasures and heirlooms, trophies and antiques, and many palaces. What the princess yearned for was love. No, not the state of being loved, for she had many subjects who loved and adored her. No, what she yearned for was the chase: the pursuit and elusion, the subtle and delicate dance of flirtation. Not being, but becoming." |
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From Darkness From my Auntie Pixelante blog "When, in 1998’s R-Type Delta, the player shoots through a DNA double helix, she is reenacting the Frankenstein ritual that brought the Bydo into being. The Bydo, it’s ultimately revealed, are humanity’s children: a terrible biological weapon grown in a moon-sized womb in space, rejected and abandoned by the parent - like Frankenstein’s “son” - when it proves too horrible to behold." |
A Blob and His Boy From my Auntie Pixelante blog "We must consider what the Blob is, and what he means to the Boy: a portal to a magic world just past his fingers; a sky more blue than any his city has seen; the means through which he can imagine himself capable of all the things he cannot do, of visiting all the places he cannot visit. To a Boy in 1989, the Blob is a Videogame" |
Interview with Jesse Venbrux From my Auntie Pixelante blog "the idea behind GAME OVER FOREVER, as it was called, was that every simple jump would feel exciting because you knew you wouldn’t be able to try again" |
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ALL CONTENT COPYRIGHT 20XX ANNA ANTHROPY
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