Ahhhh crayons. Remember the neatly curled paper wraps? The slightly greasy-fingered feel after a session of hard-core colouring? The poignant smell of a tin of melted crayons left in the sun too long?
Crayon memories have been percolating to the surface ever since receiving a few crayon colours in the Everything game on Facebook. I remember getting a rocket-shaped plastic tube once, full of
more colours than I'd ever had before! I was fervently proud of my rocket ship of Crayons, and I still remember how monumentally pissed off I was when one of my neighbour playmates dropped it during a shared colouring binge, breaking the case and snapping some of the precious little nubs of colour. Lucky none of the purple ones were broken or it would have been WAR!
Anyway, if you remember Crayons too, check out this article about the shift in crayon colours over time at Weather Sealed. It includes this awesome chart.
I want a huge print out of that on my wall, stat!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Screenshots from the Spiral Knights game
As promised here are a few screenshots from the Spiral Knights game.
Here I am laying some smackdown on some wolf characters (this shot shows the full game screen):
A close up of the character screen:
Some chroma lizards feel the bite of my sword:
The entrance to the Adventure Boards, showing other players:
And lastly, the peril of taking screen shots while in a room of hungry jellies (and I'm glad those delicious looking wobble-bodied jellies are still in the game!):
It looks like the game will work on the 'free if you wait for your energy to build up, or pay if you can't wait' model used by so many Facebook games, and that there will be survey offers just like the Facebook games.
The gameplay is fun and simple, and I found it pretty smooth. Oddly I found the multiplayer, where you can play with four other people, even faster than single player. You can play levels solo, but the game makes it easy to play collaboratively, and there are a lot of elements in the game where you have to co-operate to get through (such as buttons that only work when all players stand on them). The characters are almost too cute for words, especially the little whirly helicopter-winged birds that infest the lobby levels. If you're after blood and gore and are afraid of all things 'cute', this game is not for you, but if you want a simple, absorbing and visually pleasing game where you can also run into and play with other people without much hassle, this is your game.
Here I am laying some smackdown on some wolf characters (this shot shows the full game screen):
A close up of the character screen:
Some chroma lizards feel the bite of my sword:
The entrance to the Adventure Boards, showing other players:
And lastly, the peril of taking screen shots while in a room of hungry jellies (and I'm glad those delicious looking wobble-bodied jellies are still in the game!):
It looks like the game will work on the 'free if you wait for your energy to build up, or pay if you can't wait' model used by so many Facebook games, and that there will be survey offers just like the Facebook games.
The gameplay is fun and simple, and I found it pretty smooth. Oddly I found the multiplayer, where you can play with four other people, even faster than single player. You can play levels solo, but the game makes it easy to play collaboratively, and there are a lot of elements in the game where you have to co-operate to get through (such as buttons that only work when all players stand on them). The characters are almost too cute for words, especially the little whirly helicopter-winged birds that infest the lobby levels. If you're after blood and gore and are afraid of all things 'cute', this game is not for you, but if you want a simple, absorbing and visually pleasing game where you can also run into and play with other people without much hassle, this is your game.
Spiral Knights
A long, long time ago, I accepted an invite from one of my favourite game makers, Three Rings, to playtest a game in development. For several hours I ran around as a cute little knight character squashing jellies and running away from bronze giants, then filled out a little survey form, and heard nothing more.
Today I stumbled across the game again - but this time in more open testing! I'm currently waiting in the queue to log in (because it seems only a certain number of people are allowed on at a time) but I think my readership is low enough that I can afford to share ;) So go check out Spiral Knights - it's java based so you'll have to download a client, but from the screenshots and promo videos it looks like it's developed hugely from the limited 4-5 level demo I played all that time ago (and even then it was incredibly smooth and gorgeous).
Oh - did I forget to mention? It's free!
Today I stumbled across the game again - but this time in more open testing! I'm currently waiting in the queue to log in (because it seems only a certain number of people are allowed on at a time) but I think my readership is low enough that I can afford to share ;) So go check out Spiral Knights - it's java based so you'll have to download a client, but from the screenshots and promo videos it looks like it's developed hugely from the limited 4-5 level demo I played all that time ago (and even then it was incredibly smooth and gorgeous).
Oh - did I forget to mention? It's free!
Monday, January 4, 2010
Ok ok a real post. I've been making stuff!
I had a tremendous time over the holidays making things for Whirled, mainly furniture for the Kawaii theme including some trees that I'm quite happy with (one had 70 purchases in the first 24 hours so I guess I'm not the only one!).
I also made a backdrop that I'm very proud of, because despite my allergy to coding I sat down and played with Actionscript long enough to code some randomly generated clouds. They are very relaxing to watch, and the result is much smoother and less laggy than anything you could do with normal animation.
You can view the room here:
Launch the full version of Whirled
And if you want to play with Actionscript, you can see the code I used here (because I did have to ask for some help to get it working! but happily I got most of it done on my own).
I also made a backdrop that I'm very proud of, because despite my allergy to coding I sat down and played with Actionscript long enough to code some randomly generated clouds. They are very relaxing to watch, and the result is much smoother and less laggy than anything you could do with normal animation.
You can view the room here:
And if you want to play with Actionscript, you can see the code I used here (because I did have to ask for some help to get it working! but happily I got most of it done on my own).
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