2008-12-08

Auditorium

Now this my friends, is a truly beautiful toy. Aesthetic flash game if I ever saw one.

2008-09-21

Ninja Peas

I have participated in one of the game prototyping challenges over at DanC's Lostgarden. The game (I'd rather call it a toy) is about peas thinking they are ninjas. They climb up blocks you place for them and jump from the highest points they can reach. If they survive they'll score points for every bounce - the higher the fall better. For detailed game rules and all the elite ninja moves the peas can do visit Dan's description of the game design. Keys: - ESC quits the game - Space spawns peas - Left mouse places a block - Right mouse deletes a block - Mousewheel or arrow keys cycle through available block types That's about it. Full source is included. Depends on a couple of external libraries. Do whatever you want with it - would be cool to send an email my way telling me whether it was useful. There are a couple of known bugs, mainly that some impacts don't register properly, peas can get stuck when "overbuilt" and that peas will sometimes float through blocks until they are back on course. It's fully playable though and all basic game mechanics work as intended. Download here. cheers, BuschnicK

2008-06-26

Wanna go for a swim?

An article about plastic pollution in our oceans.
Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated—and it’s a very small amount—every bit of plastic ever made still exists.
Seriously scary stuff. Why do we wrap candy in packaging that'll survive the product and it's consumer by hundreds of years?

2008-04-13

Stephen King on video game violence

Stephen King on video game violence
Could Massachusetts legislators find better ways to watch out for the kiddies? Man, I sure hope so, because there's a lot more to America's culture of violence than Resident Evil 4. What really makes me insane is how eager politicians are to use the pop culture — not just videogames but TV, movies, even Harry Potter — as a whipping boy. It's easy for them, even sort of fun, because the pop-cult always hollers nice and loud. Also, it allows legislators to ignore the elephants in the living room. Elephant One is the ever-deepening divide between the haves and have-nots in this country, a situation guys like Fiddy and Snoop have been indirectly rapping about for years. Elephant Two is America's almost pathological love of guns. It was too easy for critics to claim — falsely, it turned out — that Cho Seung-Hui (the Virginia Tech killer) was a fan of Counter-Strike; I just wish to God that legislators were as eager to point out that this nutball had no problem obtaining a 9mm semiautomatic handgun.