Wonderland

Makies FabLab is live...

After many months of development alongside (and you know how difficult that is) Makies going into Selfridges, and ramping up for Xmas delivery, and various in-store apps, and STUFF, we are aliiiiiiive!

And it's just the beginning. We decided a while back that we wanted Makies FabLab to be an iterative, growing thing; something that we would launch early and expand upon on a regular basis.

We did this with our toys - when they went live, they were bone white, weird looking, and £100. It was horrible! But we stuck with it, and iterating with our customers means Makies are looking pretty happy right now.

(Yep, she's 3D printed!)

So here we are... Makies FabLab is a fashion game, targeted at 8-80. It's got a massive focus on creativity: while most fashion dolls are mass produced passive things, we wanted ours to be little individuals, who encourage creative hands-on making.

We've blended Resource Management with Dress Up, so far, to produce a lightly educational clothes-making game: growing materials through to patterning cloth and fulfilling orders. Next steps: player-to-player shops, if that's what our community ask for. Android. More things to create.

Would you help us?

We have fantastic 5* reviews so far on the AppStore, but as you know, absolutely the more the merrier. It's the currency of now, that, and we have a very limited window (presumably!) of being on the launch page under Best New Games (thanks Apple!). 

The game's here: if you're willing, please play, rate, review, share, for great justice heartfelt gratitude. <3

E4 sponsors Grand Master Flash award at the Golden Joysticks

There is a fine pair of Steves in my workplace, and they work over at E4, the hip non-terrestrial channel from Channel 4. Steve 1 and Steve 2 approached the Golden Joystick awards this year, with the idea of sponsoring an award: the E4.com Grand Master Flash award, with a prize pot of £5000.

This year, E4.com are celebrating the genius of game-making talent by teaming up with The Golden Joystick Awards to launch a new category called the 'E4.com Grand Master Flash Award' which will give web-based Flash game developers a new place to showcase their games, as well as a chance to win a £5,000 commission from E4.com and, of course, a coveted Golden Joystick Award.

New web-based Flash games can be submitted here and the deadline for entries is September 15th.

There are rules to read:

Your game must:

• Be built in Adobe Flash and submitted in SWF format. No FLA, FLV or EXE files, thank you, and certainly nothing more esoteric.
• Be no more than 720px wide and 600px high. We’re happy to receive smaller games, but any bigger and they won’t fit on our pages. Take a look at some of our other games to see what we mean. 
• Include the E4.com Grand Master Flash sticker symbol somewhere in the game – we suggest the loading screen is a good place to put it – and a link to e4.com/joystick. 
• Not exceed 5Mb total document weight. That’s a lot of filesize right there, so if your game requires more, consider sending us a slimmed down or shorter version.
• Comply with E4.com’s standard Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and the E4.com Grand Master Flash Competition special terms and conditions, as set out below.  Make sure you read ‘em.  We cannot stress that enough. 

I'm a judge :-D

A very long time ago - maybe 1997? - I had to run an online competition to hand out a golden joystick, and it was a polystyrene, embarrassingly penis-shaped, sprayed gold thing. It was fabulous. I think we ran a Quake compo for it, which Sujoy pwned, natch. We being Channel4.com for Gamesmaster, way back when... I am unsure if these joysticks are related, though.

Machinarium

This was doing the rounds a few days back but I was meaning to point at it: Machinarium is the next offering coming from Amanita Design, the (tiny and amazing) development studio behind some of my favourite games ever: Samorost and Samorost 2. The music alone on those two is enough to lower your blood pressure by a few bar.

(And they say games aren't art. Pfft.)

I approached Amanita Design last year to see if they could do something for us at work, but unfortunately they were too busy: gainfully so, of course! Disappointing for me though, I love these guys.

(via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

World of Goo

2 chaps, one coffee shop ..  and a few years later, one Wii game. 2D Boy have developed World of Goo, soon to be available on both PC and Wii (unusual!). It's come on leaps and bounds since entering last year's Indie Games Fest, and it was interesting enough back then, too.

World of Goo is a physics based puzzle / construction game. The millions of Goo Balls that live in the beautiful World of Goo don't know that they are in a game, or that they are extremely delicious.

World of Goo Gameplay Trailer
Uploaded by 2dboy

I like this bit on the front page, made me chuckle:

Genius!

 

Lila Dreams

Lila Dreams is an indie MMO, in development over at Kongregate (the upload-your-own games site). Developed by "three sexy men", it's obviously small fry compared to WoW or the like, but so what - have a look at some of the things they're planning design-wise.

Here's what it isn't:

There are no elves, dwarfs, or other Tolkien-derived player races. There are no dragons, orcs, or other Tolkien-derived creatures. There’s no magic. Well, there are “powers” that might be analogous to magic spells, but in terms of the setting they are psychic powers and not spells. So, there’s no magic.

There is no level grind. Level grinding is when you do boring tasks like killing cellar rats over and over to watch your game character become more powerful so you can kill bigger cellar rats. I personally do not like level grinding, and I think that it puts the focus of play on the experience of grinding rather than on the experience of the game world. I am working hard to design systems that do not require grinding so that the game world itself is the focus of fun.

And here's some of what it is:

... but there is combat: juicy, 2d platforming combat with RPG-like mechanics!

... and, gardening!

There is a kind of crafting, and it’s a central part of the gameplay. All I can say for now is that you don’t craft items–you grow them. Yes, gardening. But in a surrealistic game world where plants are not just plants. But I must not give away too much! (It’s very hard for me not to spill the beans! Oh how I fight!)

Heh. The game is set in an 11-year old girl (Lila)'s head. Here's some concept art:

I'm completely delighted by this, sketchy thought the details are. One to watch, yup.
Lila Dreams blog, from Creatrix Games.

(via the excellent Indie Games blog)