Archive for October, 2006

Dead Xbox 360 part 3 – It’s alive!

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

 

Well I have got my 360 back :) And it seems to be working perfectly! I have stopped playing Enchant Arms while I get stuck into a bit of Dead Rising (lvl 45 now and onto Overtime Mode).

 

I’m really enjoying Dead Rising and will try to do a write up of my thoughts sometime soon. Hopefully before I get my hands on Gears of War (which is looking to be a fine game).

 

-Nic

Bit Generations – Dotstream

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

 

So I wrote the whole overview to Bit Generations a couple of weeks ago and am only now managing to get round to writing up my thoughts on Dotstream (who knows when the next ones will come along…).

 

Premise

Dotstream is Bit Generations take on racing. Simple in both gameplay and graphics (perhaps paired down is a better phrase). You control a coloured square which, from the word go, is always moving right leaving a glowing line of colour in your wake. All you can do is; steer up or down, turbo or collide with stuff. You have to do a number of laps (usually 2) and come first to win.

(more…)

Blast Milestone 3 complete

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

This Wednesday we finished Milestone 3. Unfortunately some of the one of the items we wanted to do was just too much for this milestone. We made the tough decision of pushing it onto Milestone 4, when we originally planned it the item seemed like a 2 day task but we were being silly and it has now grown to a 2 week one! The rest of milestone 3 passed well tho’ so we now have full levels working.

(more…)

Bit Generations – Overview

Thursday, October 5th, 2006

I’ve had the whole Bit Generations series for a few weeks now and thought it was about time I wrote a little bit about them.

 

Premise

The whole idea of Bit Generations is: really simple, pure yet modern games (think clean graphic design, electronic music and clean game play). There are 7 games in all with each one coming in its own beautiful packaging and on a Gameboy Advance cart. Its a liitle bit expensive seeing as they could all fit on one but then you wouldn’t be able to have a significant other playing one while you play the other. Each game focuses on a popular gaming type: puzzle, racing, adventure, audio and simplifies it to its core. Dot stream for example is Bit Generations take on racing, think Tron light cycles, you can only steer up or down, you leave a light trail, crossing another trail slows you down and you start with 3 lives/turbos.

 

Happiness

As someone who is going through prototyping at the moment and trying to set up his own games company these games reinforce why I am doing what I am doing. Each of these games shows that a simple concept with simple yet beautiful graphics can still be fun and purchased by games players. They are in essence, to me, what our prototype should be like. If I can get our demo(s) to be as fun and as pure as this then I will be very happy.

 

More to come

I hope to do more writing about Bit Generations in the coming weeks.

 

-Nic

Blast™ Milestone 2 complete

Thursday, October 5th, 2006

On Tuesday we finished our second Milestone! In this we prototyped our AI, bad guy patterns and such. So we can now play about with the player and the bad guy side of things (still no hints on what it is tho’). The great thing is because of the xml files we are using we can place and script what they do and how they react.

(more…)

Pokémon Mysterious Dungeon: Blue

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

I just got Pokémon Mysterious Dungeon – Blue and I’m really enjoying it. Sure there are flaws to it but man its nice to play a different take on the whole Pokémon gameplay and universe.

 

Gameplay

You start as a Pokémon, or a human turned into one, who has to find a way to turn back. You get a few psychology type questions at the start which seem to determine which Pokémon you will play as, I got Mudkip! Then you get to choose and name your buddy, well doh Pikachu obviously.

(more…)

Dead Xbox 360 part 2

Monday, October 2nd, 2006

Well MSoft have my 360 and it should be repaired soon and back in my paws hopefully by the end of the week :)

 

I can’t wait as I now have Lego Star Wars, Dead Rising and finishing of Enchant Arms. That combined with all the great downloads from TGS and X06 and I need it now (I hope the downloads are not removed by the time I get it back).

 

I will definitely be checking out Need for Speed Carbon, the Banjo and Kazooie movie, Doom, FEAR and just for laughs Sonic.

 

-Nic