Vox Populi Vox Dei: A Werewolf Thriller

Werem (Pablo Weremczuk) es el creador de Vox Populi Vox Dei: A Werewolf Thriller, uno de los juegos independientes más interesantes con que me topé en un buen rato. OK, es un juego con pixel art, y qué. Es un juego de plataforma, y qué. Es un juego con hombres lobo, y qué. Y sin embargo, se genera algo muy particular, innovador, simplemente nuevo, desde alguna parte, que se siente como un cosquilleo en la punta de los dedos mientras lo jugás. Y esas cosquillas nunca mienten: siempre que aparecen, sabés que se trata de un juego único aunque no tengas palabras para explicarlo.



Werem estuvo en EVA 2009 diseccionando el juego en un postmortem lleno de intuiciones, descubrimientos y hombres lobo. Espero en poco tiempo poder traer más info acerca de sus proyectos y persona --todavía tengo que photoshopearlo al lado de un hombre lobo. Y bueno, che, lo acepto: soy fan de VPVD.

Fan update:

Y esto no sé de dónde salió pero realmente me gustaría tenerlo a resolución de fondo de pantalla: un fake de VPVD2

Boxhead: The Zombie Wars

BTZW es un juego de Arena de Combate con Lego Zombies. Qué más hay para decir? Tiene algo que es muy original, pero es difícil ponerlo en palabras. Simplemente es esa sensación en la punta de los diez dedos de que se juega muy bien.

Neon Maze

Cada vez veo más neón en los juegos indie de naves 2D (ver x ej el Dodge y el rRampage) y cada vez me gusta más. Este es de naves, pero puzzle.

CurveBall

Un poco de deporte, por Paragon. Había un Tetris 3D hace mucho, cuando el 3D era esto o menos, y esta sería su versión de Pong. Muy estilizada, simple y clara.
Hoy es inimaginable. Quiero decir, aquel futuro. O sea este presente.

A Crow In Hell 3

Me gustan los juegos con siluetas. Hay algo muy realista en las siluetas.

Fly Me To The Moon

Será por el título o por la gráfica con toques de la época de oro de la radio, de Super Ratón, pero me pone nostálgico este juego. No es fácil encontrar juegos de un solo click mejores que este.

Kutuke

De los creadores de Little Robot, OneClikDog, un puzzle original sobre secuencias que requiere de una buena memoria y cierta capacidad de lógica. Reflexión sobre reflejos.

Pixel

Durante los 3 primeros segundos de juego, parece un shooter común y corriente, hasta que pasa algo y es magia. En realidad, partículas, pero también una idea muy sencilla y muy original... y eso, en juegos, es magia.

Little Robot

Es como jugar en un corto animado. O algo muy cercano. Una obra de arte de entretenimiento. Este tipo de juegos (ver Samorost, Machinarium) hace rozar juego con narración de un modo muy logrado.


Little Wheel

De OneClickDog, visitenlos para más cosas como esta.

Dyson/Eufloria

Árboles, semillas, y la batalla por el universo, en otro juego ligero del mundo flotante. Dyson fue finalista del último Independent Game Festival y cambió su nombre a Eufloria (mediante competencia pública de nombres, estuvo bueno) para la versión completa. Se llame como se llame, es uno de los juegos más interesantes y frescos del 2009.



Demo

Aether

Juegos ligeros del mundo flotante.
Hay algo delicadísimo y atractivísimo que existe en esta clase de ligereza. La liviandad que proponen juegos como este, o como Flow, Osmos, Blackberry Garden (o hasta juegos mucho más platafórmicos y/o puzzleanos como Frozzd o World of Goo o este mismo juego, Aether) le da una forma de gameplay interesante, que hace no tanto tiempo se empieza a ver en juegos, que en los mejores ejemplos suplanta el frenético "jugar hacia afuera" por una inercia reflexiva, vuelta hacia adentro, un gameplay casi íntima, casi interior.

Dodge

Simple y perfecto.

Platypus

Platypus enfoca el mismo juego que siempre jugamos (y que muchos ya no podíamos jugar más) de una manera tan distinta que la vuelta de tuerca de arte que el gameplay mismo se renueva.

Space Game: Missions (aka TSG)

Pocas veces se ve que tanto se ofrezca por tan poco. (Gratis, de hecho). O un juego tan bueno, con un título tan malo. Hasta TSG suena mejor. Otro golazo de Kongregate.

Pasen y vean, o jueguen desde acá.

Flow

Quién no quiere a Flow? De verdad, hay juegos que se dejan querer. Este es uno de esos pocos. Recomendado jugar en pantalla completa. Acá sólo se muestra una fracción del juego.

Avoider

Simplísimo, dificilísimo, y todo eso. Otro gran toque japonés.

Phun

2D physics game-like sandbox
O sea, esto.

Kafkamesto (El castillo)

Kafkiano. Justo como me gusta.

Este es uno de los primeros juegos de esta clase que encontré, allá lejos y hace mucho tiempo.





















¡En la imagen! ¡El click es en la imagen!

Fun Fun Animals

A veces el mismo juego de siempre, con otra gráfica, es como la rosa que dice Julieta, por más errada que esté.

FUN FUN ANIMALS

Cursor 10

Single player cooperativo.. ¿cómo es eso?
Sobre todo, brillante.




http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html

Shrink

A game is a better game by any other control, or whatever.
I could play like 2 hours at this. FOr a casual game, that's an 800% playability!



More comments coming soon. Just enjoy.

Fly Guy

Before I begin the first Casually Games article ever, let me say that beginnings are always a thing. Where to start from? There's obvious topics, from blatant talents such as Petri Purho or Daniel Benmergui, to brainstorm posts of the kind "Can you think of a game controlled only by X?", to writing about how some games still intrigue me when I try to pinpoint what exactly makes them tick so nicely on the screen.

There will be time for all that. The best way to start this first piece is the beginning. "First things first" I always seem to say (at least that's what I've been told). So here's a little something about the first game I remember playing that made me think "Hey, is this really a game? Shouldn't games be more like this?" A game where you can't lose. Without goals. Yes, I know there's conceptual games previous to this one --this is just MY first.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Fly Guy.



"Who could forget Fly Guy?" That's how the wise guys at TVM Studio have blurbed their game. Not conceit at all: it's 100% true. There's something unforgettable about Fly Guy.

So what is Fly Guy? It is a game developed around 2006 by Trevor Van Meter (Art), Jason Krogh (Code) and Van Kottas (Main theme) about an office guy who flies. And you can't lose. I said that already. But that's about it. Yet, it's all you need.

Yep, not even a goal. (But I've said that too, already).

The playing character looks very much like your average dog-tired low-grade office stressed-out worker after a hard day. ("It has the look of an elaborate, interactive New Yorker Cartoon" writes Ron White, PC World editor, in his review). As you take off flying away from your daily bus stop and your daily worries and exploring the weird and fascinating things that inhabit the streets, skies, outer space, deep seas, the game succeeds in making the player enter that frame of mind as well. That is, skipping home, carried by the purity of wanderlust. And I say purity because it's just that: no goal or ticking bomb to carry your mind in another direction. Plain old wanderlust.

That's an untold goal, I'd say. "Let's make a game that makes you enter a different frame of mind": a creative goal for the developing team, something not said in words to the player, somethign that rather happens to the player.

There's a lot left untold in this game and that's the level at which this game works best.

There's an untold story, for instance (that of the after-office-tired everyman, suggested by details: the open collar and lack of tie and the implied idea that no one is waiting for him back home), that translates into what no other game had done for me until Fly Guy: the story of Fly Guy runs untold, as subtext, at a feeling level, wordlessly yet palpably. Fly Guy flies away into another frame of mind with all the time in the world to explore and marvel and enjoy --and to defy the very notion that games need a goal to be considered games, since there's not even a starting premise. And when you play (especially after the first time) that's where the game takes you too.

The music has a lot to do with it, but it's not all. Same with the graphics: very suggesting, yet supporting something else that's not exactly there. There's something running at a conceptual level that I'm trying to pinpoint. There's no tension in Fly Guy, and I mean that as praise. There IS something that Fly Guy compels the player to do. Wander. That's aimlessness as a positive trait, as goal even. How do you build fun into aimlessness?

Fly Guy is a different kind of game. I've played others (somewhat) like it over the years (I think of Cloud, Flow, Coil, Samorast, only to mention a few of the best known ones), and over and over they make me realize how far these games are subtly or not breaking the ground rules of conventional games in all simplicity... and unraveling new gameplay experiences while they do so.

Imagine yourself at TVM Studios. "Hey guys, I've got this thing going in my head... Think Mario gone vertical, yeah like a scroller, only different. You... you fly, y'know, yeah, that's it, you fly and relax and you go to strange places and have fun."

"Hey, wait, I know. A flying saucer suddenly pops up and..."

"Yeah, and it's a Heavy Metal Fest with you and the alien".

"Well, that's not what I had in mind. But it might work."

Thanks, TVM Studios, for creating Fly Guy.

How to Play (this blog)

Being a writer, and a game designer (though not a native English speaker, sorry in advance for the WTF factor in mywords), one of the most sensible options for me seems to be to write about games. Duh. As happens with most obvious answers, this didn't seem obvious at all until very recently. Too busy writing stories and thinking up games, I missed this for a long time. But well. That's me.

I am one who casually games. ("Casual games" was already taken as an url, and I like this title better anyhow).

I am also one who thinks this is one of the most exciting moments in gaming history, especially from the Web 2.0 agenda: make it, upload it, share it. New strange concepts ariise nowadays for a new strange gaming generation --and for previous strangely changed generations as well. It makes me very happy to be a witness of all this.

I guess you can figure out already the focus of this zine. I'm interested in strange game concepts, in reflecting about games could do, in what's out of the box. I hate the phrase "gaming industry" when used by game creators and I hope it's the last time I use it on this blog ever.

I am one of them. Hope you're too. We who casually game.

This blog, blogzine, textcast, gamesilo or whatever you want to call it, is meant as a tribute to those who are writing and dreaming what games have never been until this day. To them, hats off.

WARNING! As with the rest of my life, I don't think there will be any regularity in these posts. Even that I can't figure out in advance. Let me tell you how it'll most likely be: Due to my work, I spend long hours researching the web, looking for these gems. When found, I play them, look at them, allow myself to be marveled by them, think about them, think about others like or unlike them, seep in some more draughts of their beauty... and then I should be ready to post. I'm not after novelty, either, in the sense of "the latest thing": good things are timeless. I say that again: Good things are timeless.

You can press Play now.