Important indie game things

I’ve let quite a few indie game items pile up, mostly non-Nintendo related stuff, so here’s all of them in one go!

First off, Giant Robot is hosting Game Night 8 at its L.A. location tonight, another collab with Attract Mode, Meat Bun, and other partners. The free event will feature Monaco, the much buzzed about stealth/heist multiplayer game — creator Andy Schatz and producer Andy Nguyen will be attending. Bring your 3DS for mad StreetPasses.

Christine Love has just released Analogue: Hate Story, a futuristic follow-up to Digital: A Love Story, which you may remember me raving quite a bit about. The full version is $15, but you can download a demo to get a taste of this “mystery featuring transhumanism, traditional marriage, loneliness, and cosplay.” Those of you interested in the Love Plus phenomena might appreciate this.

Friend of the site Anna “Auntie Pixelante” Anthropy has a book coming up called Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, in which she writes about “how freaks, normals, amateurs, artists, dreamers, drop-outs, queers, housewives, and people like you are taking back an art form.” Need to finish The Corner and 1Q84 by the time this is out — and half a dozen games — so I can pick it up on my Kindle day-one.

tags / gaming / nintendo 3ds / 3ds / game night / giant robot / indie / attract mode / christine love / analogue / anna anthropy / auntie pixelante / rise of the videogame zinesters / ec

Tiny Review: Octopounce

Created by Anna “Auntie Pixelante” Anthropy (Mighty Jill Off) and artist Saelee Oh, Octopounce was one of four indie PC games that debuted at the ARTXGAME portion of Giant Robot’s Game Over/Continue? show last April.

As Offworld’s Brandon Boyer mentions in his preview of the ARTXGAME titles, Octopounce was the only piece with an actual name. It was also the only game of the bunch that I tried out, as the other developers worked on their games up until the last minute before the show kicked off, as artists tend to do. Not that I should talk, considering I’ve put off this review for a month!

Octopounce allows up to four players to work with or against each other to catch the fish (and other sealife or birds) around them. Gulping a fish rewards you with “a blossom of sparkles” and makes your octopus brighter.

Four details that are fab:

1. The octopodes doze and drift in the sea, waiting for you to pick up a controller and rouse them. Even if only two players are around, they can bounce off the snoozing cephalopods’ heads to grab the fish.
2. Oh’s serene, cerulean backdrop and Anthropy’s pale squiggling sprites make a for a terrific scene to leave displayed on your monitor. It’s artwork (and a digital aquarium) that awakens as a game with a button tap.
3. Dozens of messages scroll at the bottom, some with instructions (“Hi, Green! Jump and catch fish!”), others inviting more players or describing the action (“Caught one!”, “Green is the brightest right now!”).
4. The ghostly swimmer that floats across the screen.

Two details that are butt:

1. I might recall this incorrectly, but the bouncing sound effects are reminiscent of Sonic the Hedgehog vaulting from a spring, which isn’t an issue itself, but hearing it so many times became annoying.
2. As with the other ARTXGAME pieces, Octopounce was available to the public for only one night! Organizer Adam Robezzoli, however, said a month ago, “It is possible that the games will be playable sometime in the future.”

Score:

• The most fun multiplayer game I’ve played all year (the only other multiplayer games I’ve played in 2009 are Resistance 2 and Jason Rohrer’s Between). My wife really enjoyed it, too!

See also: Tombed, Tiny Review: Calamity Annie

tags / auntie pixelante / artxgame / game over / octopounce / saelee oh / giant robot / review / ec