18 Jan 2012

Flip's Adventure, a platformer by DigiPen


Hello! I'm taking another break from my study to make a short post about Flip's Adventure, a new adventure-platformer made by the Singapore DigiPen's students. If you would like to know something more about what I've just said, I suggest you to check my old post about Nitronic Rush HERE.

Unfortunatelly, on DigiPen's there's basically nothing about the developers, and the game does not even have an official site. So, I guess we could already skip to our usual gameplay analysis.

Here's the game!



The plot is fairly simple, we are in a world where a huge war between humans and machines is started. As the name suggests, you impersonate Flip, a blonde guy sent by the humans to sabotage the robots' central core. The visual concept is quite simple, so is the gameplay, the only thing that I enjoyed particularly a lot is the achievement system which is strangely various, considering that we're talking about an indie game.
Flip's Adventure is composed by 20 levels and, as far as I've played, they are structured in numerous 2D parts where you have to find an object (which is a puzzle piece) that, at the end of the last level, should make the player realize what's the true Flip's identity. Though, I don't know what does this mean, heh, finals have their priority :(.



I also have to apologize for the short post and the lack of information, but I just wanted to say that I'm still here! And in about 2 weeks, I'll restart to write detailed posts like before.

Here's the official, AND FREE, download page: Flip's Adventure download page.

8 Jan 2012

Loved Portal? you can't miss Q.U.B.E.


Hello hello!
It's definitely time to present Q.U.B.E. which was released few days ago on Steam, for something less than 10€ (that means, a little bit more than 10$). I bought it yesterday and, I really started to feel the excitement that the first minutes of Portal 2 were giving. Sure, I know that this one lacks a bit of environment when it comes to compare it directly with the master of every 3D puzzle adventure, but it is still a good alternative in terms of gameplay and difficulty.


What about the authors?


Toxic games is an indie game developer team founded in the UK by three classmates in 2010. Exactly, this team has one of the most common stories among indipendent developing teams, they started to produce Q.U.B.E. as a student project that, after the graduation, became something that could be considered a full lenght game. During the last year, the game managed to become a finalist in several awards, but the most interesting part is, none of them already knew something about programming, they just had to learn from the beginning to the end everything about UDK engine. This is just another example of where can the true motivation bring you.

The gameplay




Let's just start by saying that you wake up in a white room made by cubes, after climbing the first stairs you find a pair of gloves, you will be able to go through the levels just by their help. And here's how, on your way you fill find some cubes with different colours and functions, you'll need your right hand to pull out those, and guess what? with the other hand you push back them. These two simple functions will give you the possibility to climb the walls in order to get out of that place. Sooner, you will face true logic challenges that are nothing but literally hard to get. I've also loved the ambiental music that makes your travel even more enterataining, unfortunately I couldn't find the name of the artist anywhere. If you don't feel like spending instantly the money that this game totally deserves, theres also a playable demo totally for free on Steam, so, what are you waiting for? give it a try!

Official site: qube-game.com

4 Jan 2012

New Template!

New year new template!
It took me hours to find another that was close to the old one, in terms of colours and simplicity, but finally I've chosen this one. Please, let me know what do you think in the comment section below, I can still switch this appearance with the old one whenever I want, I just thought that maybe some changes would've been cool.
Anyways, back to study, there are 19 days left to economics exam, and it feels like I'm forgetting more things than what I'm learning day by day :\.

1 Jan 2012

Nitronic Rush, and of course HAPPY NEW YEAR!





What's up everybody!
Had a great time yesterday's night and I hope you guys too :D so happy new year to everyone!

Today I'm taking a break from my endless studying to share something about Nitronic Rush, it's definitely a game that reminds me of Tron, yes, the movie you've probably seen last year at the cinema.
Had an incredible and unexpected fun playing, even though I'm not a huge fan of cars and "run for your life" games so, here's first of all the official trailer:


Something about DigiPen

When it was founded, in the far 1988, DigiPen was just a company focused on computer animation and simulation, as things went on, it turned into a real university of computer technology.
Now, it provides several degrees and in 2008, thanks to the growing applies, a new campus was estabilished in Singapore. That's why it has all the rights to be defined the leader in the field of digital interactive entertainment education. DigiPen students have also placed the largest number of student projects in the Independent Games Festival student showcase every year since it began, with a total of 23 winning game projects, but this statement may be just outdated.
Team Nitronic, composed of 11 people, along with their phenomenal game come actually from there.

And the game?

Right, first of all I totally have to admire the way they built Nitronic Rush, it is totally coded in C++ without any help of pre-existent engines, just look at the graphics, aren't that a sign of the tremendous effort the've put in it? Personally, back when I used to study IT at high school, I always wondered how could this was possible, I wasn't even able to code something harder than the usual tic tac toe, well, probably it wasn't the right life path for me.
Anyways back to the game, the controls are a bit tricky, that's probably why the developers recommend an xbox 360 controller, but it goes enough fine even without. And, here's the music section, the one and only! so, Nitronic Rush has a totally different concept of soundtrack, first of all, because you won't hear any 8bit music like we are used to find in every indie game, and, it is totally dynamic, I mean, it speeds up along with the car you are controlling. So, here's the problem, the developers are having some issues trying to create a real digital album, probably because they don't have those tracks at all.
Unfortunately, the story mode is quite short, but the other modes such as hardcore, stunt and challenge should keep you enteratained for a while.

You really want to know why do I know already that you're going to try it? BECAUSE IT'S TOTALLY FREE, DOWNLOAD IT AND HAVE FUN!

Official site: nitronic-rush.com  just do it!