It's been some time since I posted a blog. I've had all of these ideas and inspirations tumbling around in my head, and have been anticipating making a nice blog post which could perfectly summarise all that I've been thinking of. These thoughts? Inklings of romance, atmosphere in games, social constructions and artistic woes. Although, being the lazy being that I am, I fail to act on the inspiration of these ideas, so they are fleeting, and changing, and I no longer feel the need to share them with others; but this time I'm sharing something, straight up.


Food:
Hunger, thirst, eating and drinking; such seemingly menial yet important aspects of survival. More than anything else, I think hunger is what we most take for granted. I've come to be able to narrow aspects of life down to being either evolutionary and innate or learned and disposable. Hunger is one thing which I can most easily identify as an important evolutionary habit. I don't think anything else in the world holds as much importance, enigma and wonder as nutritional satiation does. I just finished reading an interesting book, and this particular passage stuck out at me:

I believe this to be true enough. Fasting is damn hard; you can't focus at all, and you feel physically, mentally and spiritually empty. I can understand why fasting is such a big deal in religion.

I've always thought of feasting and indulging in delicious food something wonderful, sacred even. One can look back on history and see how dining was such a relished activity. I've noticed it in literature too; reading through A bunch of fantasy novels, including the Lord of The Rings trilogy, it's amazing to see just how meaningful food is to the characters, and how in depth descriptions of feasts go.

For me, you could say that food is my religion. Every day I worship by feasting and pray by drinking. I have faith in food. Additionally, I've had countless profound experiences in my life, most of which tie into a certain kind of food I was eating, or a meal I had. Most of my childhood/teen memories are those of the milkshakes my mum would make me, the candy I'd buy from the shop after school, the hot chips I'd get on weekends, the delicious chicken schnitzel and mashed potatoes (a staple meal for our family), the cheap pizzas we'd buy every Tuesday, The 80c baguettes we'd have for dinner in France, the $2 double bacon cheeseburgers we'd buy at Jack in The Box, etc.

Food is the most reliable and lavish source of comfort and happiness in life.


Art Attack:
I won't just leave all of that, this blog needs some pictures. Art, AWAY!
Poncho
Sun
Dots

GYPSY GIF MAGIC

Shitty title. ^

My last blog post was pretty cool and well written -- I humbly attest -- and topping it might be difficult, but I can try.


Vinyl
I just went on holiday to a big city far south of where I live, because my family has a lot of friends and relatives there. An old aunt had a fucktonne of old vinyl, something like 60 records as well as 2 broken gramophones (one of them being extremely large and probably decades old). Having decided a few weeks earlier that I wanted to start a hobby of collecting vinyl records, I excitedly snatched up 13 of the goofiest and coolest looking LPs I could find. Now I just need to find something that plays them.

To be honest I was mostly just interested in choosing ones which had nice album art work and genres. I don't even really know many of the artists, but I did select a few ones I knew of...


I got 2 Bowie albums and a booklet containing all of his singles. Sk8 would be proud.


Other Music Stuff
I've been organising my music and collecting more of it.
I've found out about this Sydney, Australia based electronic duo, FISHING, who produce a sound like nothing I've ever heard.
Fuckit, the Youtube tag isn't working so here's a link.
Also, this track.

They have a series of 'mixtapes' which I highly recommend. They can be found Here.

Other music I've been listening to and like:
Cerulean - Baths
New Brother Android album
All Alone - Golden Donna
Burst Apart - The Antlers
RUFUS EP
Darwin Deez self titled album
Man Mantis
Gotye
Gomez


Life (feel free to skip this part)
I read all of FirestormX and Mega's big blog posts they did recently. I figured I'd do something similar, but it's so hard for me to collect and collate my thoughts and memories in a manner that would be comprehensible and entertaining to read. Instead I'll just do a couple snippets of recent things.

Most of my life I had lived as the naive and insentient suckling of the world, oblivious to a sense of reality and understanding of the world. This state I was in had persisted up until half way through 2010. At that point I realised I ought to do things to become a better person, that I should think more open-mindedly and pay more attention to important issues and personal hobbies.
I started thinking outside the box in terms of my art and philosophy. I had drive to become a better artist, and I really did. Because of my vivacious creative drive that I possessed then, I've got a large advantage over most people my age in terms of artistic prowess. I would say "same goes for my philosophising", but I'm not really in any position to say something as dangerously elitist as that.
In that time I had overcome most of my mental and emotional baggage and I became a better and more interesting person because of it.

On the holiday I mentioned in the beginning of this blog, I had another major jolt of reality. In the weeks leading up to this holiday, my depression had essentially dissipated and I had become more motived (possibly more on that topic later). This holiday seemed to be the reckoning, the final push towards the dispensation of my impractical sadness. This 'reckoning' was also a morbid one, though. It was one of life, death and the future.
My family and I visited my aforementioned aunt (from who I received the records) and her husband. They're very old now, and seeing my forgetful and physically incapable uncle was heart wrenching and depressing. I felt sorry for him; what kind of life is that, just waiting to die with not a whole lot left to do. I'm pretty sure I hope to die or go insane before reaching such a sad state of life. So that was one part of the realisation, my feeling and recognition of death. I used to feel very content with the idea of death, but now that I have stuff to live for, I'm more uneasy about that.
The second aspect of my realisation is that of life and my future. I honestly don't know for sure what I'm going to do after I finish school, I live in the now, and I don't look forward to the future. All I see after this is a difficult time in college, work for the rest of my life, pitiful and useless old age, and then death. I am seriously unsure and disdainful of what my life could bring.

Anyway, I could speak more on that but I won't. I should like to give advice to anyone seeking personal change or a cure to depression. I have found that the most healing things are:
1. A change of scenery and circumstances (which my holiday was for me).
2. An easy and disposable way to release thoughts. For me I did bi-daily journal entries and free-form writing exercises.

But of course that's not all that helps. I mentioned a few blogs back that I had met a girl who redeemed my esteem of women in general. I've since become well acquainted with her, and I actually owe a fair bit to her for helping me overcome my issues. She's very kind and persistently understanding, logical and literal. I have honestly never known a person who I can talk to as easily as I can talk to her. She is much more responsive than most people who I have known (relationships which were typically one-way), and we can talk about many topics at length and in-depth.

Phew. A lot of what I have said is a collective of fairly straightforward and already well accepted ideas and realisations. I intended to put my own philosophical spin on it, but I wrote this part of the blog last and I'm all used up.


Art
I've set up an all-inclusive, non discriminatory, straightforward art dump for myself on Tumblr.
You can find it... right here! Clicky! Clicky!

I'm quite happy with it at the moment, and I've uploaded about 60 pieces!

On top of that, I've set up another Deviant Art account. I deleted my old one for whatever reason, but I've got a new one. Find it here.

And for those of you who won't bother to visit any of those links, here's some easy access art for your goodification:
This one took me so very long to do, but it was also very fun.


I finished this one.
And this one which was fun to do.


And That's All of The Things
I'll be back soon, also, I really need to get moving on that black & white platformer I was talking about doing.

Everyone's posting blogs about game projects; time to board the bandwagon.
Also, this blog has content. Yes. And pictures. Ohhh yes.


So, I don't do as much game development as I ought to, but exciting project ideas always spur my creativity. The following three concepts are my goals for this year; games which I wish to have completed or made significant progress on by the end of 2012. Here we go:



Unnamed Black and White Platformer
I've always loved games that focus primarily on exploration, level design and the beauty of the world. Some of my favourite games have these characteristics, games such as Shadow of The Colossus, Knytt, Metroid, LoZ: Wind Waker, and the list goes on.

When I began making games, I worked on a game titled, Procerus Universa (Tall Complex), a platform tower climbing game. Of course, back then I sucked, and scrapped it. I had since been anticipating how I could re-imagine the idea and start working on it, and thus, in the exeunt of my phase of depression, and the revival of creativity, the re-imagining has commenced.

I was playing around with the idea of hand-drawn games (as you will see in my second game-dev project below) and I remembered how as a kid I'd draw mock-up game levels to play with using my imagination. I did some basic concept art to get me started, and I reflected on what I had made. This reflection led to my idea: An arty, hand-drawn, platform exploration, tower climbing, black and white video gammmeeeeeee.

BAM

This is just a mock-up. Hopefully the graphics will be more hand-drawn looking, possibly even using my original line-strokes as well as hand animated sprites.
To see how I reached the final product that is the above image, and to prove it was hand drawn, here are the steps I took:
Step 1: Scanned in drawing
Step 2: Filling in the space
Step 3: Background, and then the final product.

I'm already working on the gameplay, using that mockup as a test room.


Wall, an oblique art/exploration game
This one is similar to the first concept; the graphics are generally greyscale and the world is hand-drawn. I'm a'fix'n for this one to be a top-down/oblique, surreal exploration or puzzle game.

The game is inspired by the spaces created by Giorgio De Chirico, and the technique of M.C Escher. I first explored the art style in this artwork, which I slapped onto that blog I did a few weeks ago. Expanding on that technique, I started work on an oblique drawing which I created to be used as my new blog banner, but is currently unfinished. While I was making that banner, I came up with this game idea, and it's stuck, so that's what the game will likely look like.

Dealing with the logistical issues such as construction of the space, out of view areas behind shapes/buildings and visual depth (problematic due to lack of vanishing points in isometric and oblique), will be tough but fun. The most exciting thing for me about this game, is that the world will be hand drawn, meaning I will actually draw the world on a single piece of paper and then digitise it. So the game will essentially take place in a piece of artwork.


Untitled Arena Sandbox Survival Game
This is just a core concept at the moment, and could possibly be the largest and most difficult of these three projects, so I'm going to save its development until very last.

Basically, what I have in mind is a mash-up between Halo's Firefight, King Arthur's Gold and Hempuli's lovable Paradise Fort. My game is set to use pixel-arty graphics, limited to a small blue-ish coloured palette. Players will play the role of an evil dictator who is sought to be killed by many nations, and is taking refuge in a secluded place of sorts. He must defend himself against invading forces. The Game will have a cold-war theme.


And that's about it
This is all a bit ambitious, I know, but my goal is to at least prototype each one of these ideas. Tonight I'm thinking of doing an all-nighter to do creative stuff due to my insomnia and excellent productivity during the evening.


Oh! I also have some art to show
My Fav piece gets IMG'd, others get URL'd:

Sketchbook shot
Lino print
Digi-doodle


That's it! This was fun.


[edit] Woahh, subconcious Adventure Time reference in the first banner. What am I doing.

Another blogggin.

Life
The last blog I posted was done just before the beginning of my final high school year. I'm now about 4 weeks in, and things have changed since that pretentious emo blog. I'm doing pretty good at school, and I'm taking it all a lot more seriously; I've got a study plan in place, I do my work with relative speed and efficiency, and I'm able to continue to push on despite my tiredness

I think I am still depressed, but I've recognised that a lot of it is due to my fucked up mind, plagued with what is probably bipolar disorder and something like ADHD. The suicidal thoughts have (temporarily?) been put to rest. I've got insomnia; it's something so extremely frustrating, not being able to sleep due to lack of comfort and lack of tiredness. At night I can be very productive, and I generally don't have any incentive to sleep. Another issue I have is appetite; I'm hungry and want to eat, but I just don't feel like putting food in my mouth. It's as though it doesn't even have any flavour despite what I'm eating.

I found a comic which expresses very well how I felt during my super depressed phase. But! Like I said, that's not how I'm feeling now. No, now I'm just dull and pessimistic. I feel like every action is worthless and we're all fucked and nothing really matters. So I'm not self pitiful, but I do feel hurt I feel like right now there's two ways I can go; I can end the pain completely (*ahem* suicide) or I can just be happy. And, I pretty much just want to be happy. Having the pain just stop would be nice, but of course it's not a good idea in general; whereas having it healed would be great, but I just feel like I never really will be healed seeing as I've experienced this kind of thing already and it has kind of cursed me, and that's super frustrating. I've actually got a song in mind which expresses how I feel perfectly:

"I want to be well, I want to be well" "I'm not fucking around"
Those lyrics have such feeling and impact, and they resonate with what I'm going through. The Darwin Deez album is also very relatable for me.

On top of all this, I kinda feel like being depressed is just pitiful. Depression is not some kind of solemn story of sadness, it is not dark and meloncholy; it's just ugly and pitiful, and you can't really feel sorry for the person experiencing it because it's all in their head and nothing can really fix it.

For a long time I've had disdain for the people around me. It's been a long time since I've had a legitimate friend and people are just so fucking crude. Another thing; I've never met a woman who I can respect as much as they respect themselves. This has been a longstanding thing which was just broken. I've started talking to this girl at school, and she's greatly redeemed my esteem of women.

Cartoons
Enough of that bullshit!
Having gotten bored of Adventure Time because I've seen all of the episodes and the new ones are so slow going, I started watching The Regular Show. Holy shit this show is great. The character construction and design is great. Style is excellent, humour is excellent, and there are a lot of really clever references to pop culture, movies, and even drugs, fucking drugs... in a children's show. The episode that got me hooked was Skips Vs Technology mainly due to exaggeration and referencing of IT stuff. Another big hook for me was how relatable a lot of the scenarios are; the kind of pitiful stuff Rigby does, the weight of responsibility and work, etc.

Found this amazing black n' white cartoon clip. It's super freaky, too:


Games
A few weeks ago I got super mad from playing a game, and realised that shit wasn't going to help me much, so I deleted my entire collection of games from my computer and haven't played any since. I might play the V4D entries though.

This was a long blog, but I really didn't want to divide up what I was saying about depression into another blog.

It's been a damn long time. I haven't posted a blog since August/September last year, and I almost forget what I'm doing. I've still been here, lurking, +1ing and posting occasionally.

Although there is a reason due to my infrequency. I typically prefer to have content such as art, and speak little of my personal life because I've found it a bit crude in the past. But here I am:

Life
Around about the time of my last blog, I was about halfway through grade 11. At this time I was pretty severely depressed, and this collided with school, and I fucked up big time. My grades were descending, and I finished the year abysmally, failing half of my classes. Fortunately for me, only my 12th year of highschool counts towards my exit mark, and grade 11 is meaningless.

I had a major stint of depression early 2010, and it finally came back last year, worse than ever. I was doing ok in school, but I was hit with the realisation that I hadn't done much art wise, I wasn't very sociable, and I realised I've been miserable my whole life. But, most of all, I was just tired. Yes, the best way to describe my depression would be tired; I'm disinterested, and burnt out.

To this day I'm still depressed, but it's on and off. Because of my state, I've also changed a fair bit. Right now I'm very pessimistic. I used to be optimistic during days when I'd be able to be creative, and think "Oh hey, if I just stick to this routine things will turn out ok", but they never do, and as I look back on those days, and wasted thoughts, I have developed very low expectations of myself. Another thing, I don't really think there's any way of determining which state of myself is right or thinking most logically. When I'm angry or depressed, I think in the moment, and respond to that experience directly. When I'm calm or happy, I think differently to when I was angry or depressed. I think in retrospect, and am able to look back on things with a clear mind, but I am also not directly experiencing it, just as someone might say "the pain wasn't that bad", after their experience of it.

I've started school again -- my final year -- and... I'm not sure how I'll do. I know that this year is actually important, so I know I actually ought to try and do well, but I feel my personal issues will still conflict with that. I'm going to try and achieve good results, if only so that I don't look back in a few years time and think "why the fuck did I let myself fail, that was important". Because of what seems to be a partial bipolarity I posses, I can never trust myself. I think about finishing school and getting an office job or something similar, and ponder about how well I might handle responsibility, despite my motivation issues. I think that I'll be able to overcome that, because it's important, but I don't know. Like I said, I can't trust myself and have very low personal expectations.

That's enough for now. I figured writing this out would make me feel better, but now I actually just feel horrible. Good thing I wrote the rest of the blog first.


And so...

Old Art
I haven't done anything creative for several months. I haven't even picked up a pen with the intent of creativity, I haven't even drawn but a doodle; but I still have some old artwork to share:


More isometric stuff.
More.


Music
I played Age of Empires 2 again, and I paid attention to the music. It is beautiful.
I love this track.
The mystery and thoughtfulness is like nothing I've ever heard.


Games
I played Nifflas' Knytt games. They are perfect. Knytt's open platform exploration is everything I've wanted from the genre. The music chimes in perfectly, sound effects really fit, art and level design is very nice and immersible.

I also played a bunch of Hempuli games, and love his stuff.

IGF finalists were announced and I am annoyed with the selection.


And that's it. Excuse how incoherent my writing might be, it was tough for me to get out, and I just wanted to be done with it. I actually feel kind of ashamed to come back here and post when I haven't even created anything new, and haven't been working on any games. Hopefully I can pick up my act a bit, because I love this community.

So, ever heard of Tzigla? It's this collaborative art project thingamajig, that lets artists contribute tiles to eventually form a crazy awesome big picture. I've done a few tiles on a few boards, and it serves as an exhilarating creative out-let, and it's tremendously fun.

Typically, the boards have a fairly large canvas size, and the tiles are quite small. This means that they don't take too long to do, and don't require much commitment. I've realised that 64Digits has a pretty plentiful supply of skilled artists, and it'd be really neat to see everyone's talent and personality put into a single artwork. Boards generally take a long time to complete (I think the Pixelation board was under development for several months), but look amazing when completed.

I've contacted the creator of the site to see about setting up a 64Digits board. It's possible to have login integration, so that theoretically we could sign in using our 64Digits accounts. Although, I'm not really in touch with the workings of 64Digits, so I'm not sure how we would go about doing that, but maybe someone who is familiar could work something out. It's possible to have boards be private (using login integration I assume), but that probably won't be necessary.

As far as I know, this is how boards work
-Each board begins with one starting tile.
-Members will be able to reserve a tile.
-Only specific tiles will be open for reservation depending on the situation. Scenarios are as follows:
>The entire board is open, and any unfinished tile can be claimed.
>Only tiles directly diagonal or adjacent to other finished tiles can be claimed.
>Only tiles directly diagonal or adjacent to other finished tiles, as well as randomly scattered available tiles, can be claimed.
-Once an artist has reserved a tile, they will have a set amount of time to submit their finished tile. If they do not submit their finished tile within that time, it will be released, free for anyone else to reserve.
-You can only reserve one tile at a time.
-You cannot re-reserve the same tile after you have released it, for a set amount of time (but that doesn't mean you have to stop working on it).
-You can choose to give up on a tile and release it at any time during your reservation period.
-Once you have submitted a finished tile, a curator (moderator) of that board will be notified, and will decide if the tile is to be approved and added to the board, or sent back for more work.
-Once an artist's tile is approved, they are free to start on another open tile, but cannot work on any tiles directly diagonal or adjacent to a finished tile of their own.
-Once a tile is completed and added to the board, it will be either:
>Visible to everyone.
>Covered up by a black square, but the edges of the tile will still be visible.
>Covered up by a black square, but only the edges of the tile that do not join to another finished tile will be visible.
>Or covered up by a black square, but only the edges of the tile that do not join to another finished tile will be visible, but any finished tile that is surrounded on all sides by another finished tile will be completely visible.

So, anyone interested in this? I think it'd be great fun. If it were to happen, I would be a curator, along with a couple of other people (so that tiles get approved faster). Also, what kind of tile visibility would you be interested in? We could have every finished tile immediately visible, but I think having them slowly revealed, or revealed only when the board is finished is much more exciting/interesting (it also causes artists to be more creative, as they won't be able to see what a neighbouring tile is about). Also, these collabs primarily work best when the medium of pixel art is used, but is not necessarily restricted to that.

Discuss.

Just wanted to post a blog of Minecraft screenshots I've gathered over multiplayer. Some of these go waaaay back.

Marbs has come to collect the rent.


Eeeeevvviiiiillllllll


The naming of Founton.


That one time Kilin's house was on fire.


Founton's first cultist meeting place :')


Smoking not permitted.






Cooking dinner for the builders of Shepton.


Kilin, you might want to clean out that spa of yours...




THE SWARM!


Wheeeeee




A water temple.


I found a friendly skele. Made him some shade so he didn't burn up.


Found out I couldn't kill him.






Just your usual whirlwind blowing from the east.

I'm collecting more screenshots :D

Art
I got chosen along with other people from other schools in the area to partake in an art workshop oriented around lino printing and aboriginal design. After the two day workshop 5 people were chosen to proceed to a masterclass; one of those people being me. Found out that the workshop is happening over the same time of my mid semester exams. I expect that I'll be unable to go to the workshop. Bummer.

Oh, I got a DeviantArt account which I'll probably treat as an art dump. Hit me up if you've got an account, we can like watch each other... or whatever it may be that DA frequenters do.

Music
Ever heard of Wolfram Tones? Holy shit is it some brilliant stuff. I've had so much fun with it, and the riffs and melodies it's produced have given me inspiration to make music.

Feel free to share some of your tones. Here are some of mine:
-Upbeat harp lead
-Nice dance tune
-Awesome folk tune

Oh, also, I've been learning to play the harp and I'm absolutely loving it. It's so much more exhilarating to play than the piano, and sounds beautiful. Currently trying to work out how I'd go about playing Fairy's Fountain, being such the musical noob that I am.


Oh, and new avatar :3

Limbo
As some of you may have heard, Limbo got released on PC.
I kind of liked the game. The movement/physics were great, and despite the slow response jumping, it felt right. The puzzles were a bit too easy. You die quite a lot, and as the developers have stated, the idea behind the game is "trial and death". I'm skeptical as to whether I like that approach, because almost all of the deaths are unavoidable, but you tend to fall to a trap only once, so things aren't too ridiculous.

I really liked the atmosphere. The game lacked music, but the subtle jingles and audible clues were really nice, and in conjunction with some traps, very ominous. Some traps made me wow, especially when I triumphed over them on my first encounter with them. One of my special favourites is a scenario in which you are standing on a stump, and from a tree canopy a huge tethered boulder comes swinging in your direction. Should you hop over it, it smashes into a tree behind you, and the awe is even greater insilled by an orchestral tuba moan that follows, and it's just great. When I was playing, the game really made me think of what a Limbo realm might be like. It was both creepy and astonishing.

The game was short (a common complaint), and this was disappointing. For a game with such a simple concept behind it, and such basic level design, I expected lengthier playtime. I also felt that the traps and atmosphere were inconsistent. The first half of the game is great, the traps are thrilling and puzzles fresh. After that it goes downhill. There are no more traps, and the whole idea behind the game completely changes. The setting changes to a bland factory, and the game ends with you doing out of place gravity switching puzzles, making me feel like I was playing And Yet It Moves.

The game had great atmosphere, but the gameplay and length is disappointing. A game like this just needs more content (DLC of sorts would be nice). At least the price-tag on the PC version is more reasonable, but due to the game's mechanics and length, it would've been better off as freeware.

Art
A new drawing.

What it looked like before I ruined it with the contrast. Somewhat (not really) inspired by the song; Computer Face/Pure Being.

A papercut.
Have another.

Additional Miscellaneous Details
I have no friends and I don't care.
I'm finally able to be myself and do what I want and act how I want, and not giving a damn what people think. Really makes me feel free.

Greetings!

I've been researching many artists recently, following their blogs and the like, and seeing many people here talk about digital art, tablets, etc spurred my artistic desire. I decided to blow the dust off my Wacom tablet and try my first legitimate foray into digital drawing.

I don't actually know what model it is, I know only that it's 5+ years old. But it has a large drawing area which I enjoy.

I'm slowly adjusting to using the tablet, and the awkwardness is subsiding.
Like Ninji did, I had a bit of a doodle.

So, Chatroulette
I remember seeing someone here mention that they were drawing pictures for people on Chatroulette, and I've since been eager to give that a go, having gotten somewhat familiar with my tablet. So I downloaded Manycam, opened Paint.NET (hey, at least it does the job), and was ready to go.

The very first fellow I was paired up with asked me to draw a pony. After I refused he asked for duck, and that I name him Andy:


The next taker asked me to draw a woodpecker, it took a bit of referencing:


One kid asked me to draw a pony again, when I denied the request, he asked that I try to draw a Nyan Cat:


By my final request I was quite tired out, after many disconnections and several ponies later, Someone told me to draw the Mona Lisa. "Anything else?" said I, "Either draw the Mona Lisa or a dick with balls" said my partner. So I jokingly hybridised the two:

Yes, I drew a Mona Lisa with balls.

You have no idea how many times I got asked to draw ponies. If anyone asked for anything of an equine nature, I would next that sucker like they were a horny cammer.

So, yeah, that was fun. Great speed drawing practice and a good way to expand my visualcabulary.

Paper Cutting
For an visual art assignment.


I'll be making about 3 more of these, one of them being a lantern.

Genie

Drawn in 1.5 hrs.

I'll admit it looks a bit goofy.

I've never played the original DOOM before, and recently remembered that it was most imperative that I do so, so I bought the original DOOM on Steam, and tonight I'm loading up on snacks, finding a comfortable place to sit, prepping a music playlist for while I play the game, and getting ready to a gaming jam, experiencing the highly acclaimed classic.
I got Fraps installed, and will be taking some screenies of my adventure :D
I'm super pumped.

Also, I meant to continue my blog post of recently played games, yesterday, but got caught up. Expect the reviews to continue Saturday arvo.

Here's some sculpture I've done before, both fairly old, and both first attempts at the medium.

The first metallic fellow was done for an art assignment, in which we had to make a sculpture from recycled materials found at the dump.
The second, is a plaster of paris carving, done over the course of 4(?) weeks. As far as I know it was my first attempt, and even though it lacks astute detail, I think it looks ok :P

I've played a few interesting games recently, and thought I'd do a quick synopsis of a few. Over Christmas, Steam had a bunch of sales, stuff like $3 for 4 games, so I went crazy buying that shit. Many of the games have been left un-installed in my library, but I recently had the time to play some of them, here they are: (oh, not all of these games are on Steam btw)

Nightsky, by NICALIS

I remember seeing a trailer for this awhile ago, from like 2007 or something, and heard it got cancelled. I just saw this pop up on steam for like 10 bucks. I didn't even know it was released, let alone still alive; I bought it.
The concept of the game was nothing new; play as an orb and roll about physics based puzzles. But I was really surprised, the level design was really creative, and there were all kinds of new challenges, introduced gradually throughout the game, some of which I wish I got to do more. The game gave me about 4-5 hours of gameplay just breezing through it, but there are plenty of hidden secrets, and another difficulty, with entirely different level designs (this gives it extra points in my book). The game had a quaint art style, and brilliant music by Chris Schlarb (available on bandcamp). Theoretically, the game could have been freeware, but the musical score and experience make it worth it, so if you have some spare cash lying around, I suggest you go buy the game.
I give Nightsky 7/10, and you can get more info on it here, and buy it on Steam or WiiWare.


FRACT beta, by Richard E Flannigan

Heard about this game from the IGF student entries, and it won the best student game. FRACT is still in the beta stage, but has 2 playable world ready to go (around 1-2 hours of gameplay if you're slow like me). Fract is a minimalistic first person adventure puzzle game, with gameplay similar to Myst or Frictional titles. The game is set in a wonderful, hexy, technologic world. with stunning basic polygon visuals, and the game is inspired by electronic music, and has a big emphasis on sound design. The puzzles in the game aren't anything too hard, and generally revolve around problem solving rather than logic. The movement in the game is a bit stiff, but hopefully that'll be fixed soon. The real reason I like the game so far is its style; the absolutely stunning world design, animations, and brilliant sound effects are really what make this game superb. I can't really explain the game, you have to play it to know.
I'm giving FRACT as a beta 7/10, and you can play the game here

Kruunu by Jukio Kallio

I had seen this on ThePoppenkast for a long time, but for a long time wasn't able to download the game due to reasons unknown. I'd seen trailers on the game and wasn't so impressed, and wanted to give it a shot. The game is a vertical twitch platformer, with a simple mechanic. The goal is to climb to the top of the tower (that part is rather obvious) without dying (also obvious). The game incorporates wall jumping as the main method of progress, and the developer has sported the game as having smooth wall jumping; this is true, it felt really good. The gameplay is pretty typical: avoid enemies which walk left and right, spikes, and a death ray that slowly moves upwards. Kruunu will give you around a half hour of gameplay (not too bad), and perhaps another half hour once you unlock the (stupid) hell mode. The music was annoying. The graphics were ok but had some weird noisy overlay to give them a 'crayon' or 'hand drawn' effect; it was stupid. The game is also fullscreen, which is stupid, it looks so much better at original resolution. All in all, Kruunu didn't offer anything new, but it was fun, and I loved the sense of adrenaline I got when I gracefully joined together clusters of wall jumps.
I give Kruunu a 5.5/10, and you can play the game for free here

Bleh, it's late, I'll continue this with a few more games such as Cogs, Factorium and The Wonderful End of The World

I've made a few random posts here before, but never really introduced myself, and I intend to do much more bloggering :3

My user name is SMP/Grinner, and my name real name is irrelevant :3
I've been kinda active on YYG (D:) and surrounding sites for the past 3? years. I only started learning GM about the start of last year. I'm a developer/artist/musician/gamer. Recently, I broke away from my typical hardcore console gaming routine, and discovered the indie scene. What caused it all: World of Goo, a great game that propelled my mind into gameplay possibilities and the wonder of the indie world. I like to dabble in many creative mediums, and experimenting with different ideas and concepts to create unique and "cool" pieces. I strive for originality and merit of design, I believe no piece should be void of talent or effort, and I hate cliches; especially when I unintentionally incorporate them. You can expect this blog to be about my creative works (Games, art, sculpture, literature), gaming, music, and game design and philosophy.

Enough blabber, I'll post some works I've done to get myself started...

Ghoul

Continuity

World of Goo Etch-A-Sketch fan art

Bloody plug

These are all old, but I've plenty more since. I currently have no means of scanning my new works, but as soon as I do, expect carvings, scratchboards, and possibly T-shirt designs.

:D