2 articles Tag ludum dare

Dance Dance Dance

August 23, 2010, 0 comments

Dance Dance Dance

Here’s another Ludum Dare 18 gem – and by the way I’ve played through over 100 entries so far so you don’t have to, and my eyes are starting to fuzz over.

Dance Dance Dance from Nyarla (of the nightmare-inducing Magnetic Shaving Derby on iPhone) is a pixelated ‘dancing’ competition. You don’t really dance: you twirl. And you don’t really compete: you smash your rivals’ faces in by catapulting your partner towards them, steal other women’s men, and knock waiters to the floor so that they die. It’s fun.

It’s a genuinely challenging game, and the little pixelated hearts go some way to helping you forget all the stupefyingly poor sportmanship displayed by these tiny dancers. It also unlocks the reminiscence compartment in my brain containing 1984 Konami coin-op Mikie, which is no bad thing at all. Play Dance Dance Dance (Flash)

Metagun

August 22, 2010, 0 comments

Metagun by Notch

Gah – I’m just off to bed and the really awesome Ludum Dare 18 competition entries are starting to arrive. Curse the rotation of the Earth causing the staggered arrival of sunrise and sunset around the globe!

Anyway, didn’t want to go to sleep without highlighting Notch‘s superb Metagun. Seems pretty cute when you stumble across pint-size enemies firing their adorable little guns at you. Becomes fairly amazing when you pick up a ‘grenade’ launcher where the ‘grenades’ are actually those same enemies. Suddenly you’re looking an action-puzzler where you fire your own adversaries out of a gun, then position yourself so that those angry little basts destroy the very blocks that are blocking your escape path.

Also: you get your fedora knocked off if you’re shot. You will mystify both yourself and students of human psychology and motivation by actually caring about your missing hat, and always going back to fetch it.*

This is all exactly the kind of madness you’d expect from a man who’s been live-streaming a video of the actual creation of the game. And it is 100% guaranteed to make you smile as you sprinkle a room with scores of pistol-toting pixel-men. They might want you dead, but they really are quite cute. Play Metagun (Java)

*Update: ‘Course, turns out the fedora works like Ghosts ‘n Goblins’ armour – lose it, and you’re vulnerable. Neat.