Once again, Pingmag has a delightful feature, this time covering the amazing world of pop-up books. There are some great examples there and some videos, including some detailing the astounding Alice in Wonderland pop-up book (thats one christmas present sorted). I think that what is so enchanting about pop-up books is their ability to conceal a hidden world, to compress surprises and wonder into what appears to be a mundane object. You feel an amazing sense of discovery as you turn the pages, pull out strips of card and pull back flaps to explore the hidden treasures - the sort of responses usually only triggered by a much more active experience yet packaged into a children’s book. As an aesthetic its also very appealing, and has been used to much success in games like Paper Mario.

Counterclockwise from 16×16 is a remake of “Knot in 3D“, created as part of the Retroremakes competition. Essentially taking the TRON Lightriders/Snake mechanic and applying it to 3D with a bit of shooting, this has unhinged me from my previous belief that 3D snake was completely unworkable (generally due to some poor implementations). Its slick, fun and an intense experience. Great work for a 1-man band.

Download here. Found via The Ludologist

Don, of Bitter Films has some more of his work on YouTube (I hope he approves). You may have seen his “Rejected” animation a couple of years ago. This time the candyfloss/grape characters enter a Jacob’s Ladder style trip into the third dimension. The second half is much better than the first. Is that the voice of the old perv from Family Guy?

There are a lot of systems / simulations / techniques that have come of age and been embraced into the folds of gaming once the environment has been made fertile for them to go mainstream, usually when the required power or technology becomes widespread enough to allow them to go stellar. When CPU’s became powerful enough, we saw Wolfenstein/Doom with their faux-3D raycasted environments, and the move to true 3D graphics was led by Quake among others. For rigid-body dynamics it was HalfLife 2, and for A.I. we had games such as the Sims series, Halo, and Black&White.

If theres one simulation thats just crying out to be exploited and incorporated into a game mechanic, its fluid dynamics, something that has been practical to use for years. Its one of those things thats been sitting on the sidelines, crying out for a poster boy, a landmark game to realise its potential. There have been occasional commercial games to incorpate Fluid Dynamics (the Wave race series, particularly Blue Storm come to mind) and a few indie/homebrew games (such as Liquid War and Plasma Pong), and here comes another from Soylent Software, name Ichor.

I love this game. It plays like the stoned cousin of Geometry Wars - laid back, ambient, abstract and fun to just play. The rules are starkly simple and instantly understandable and it creates a play-space that feels genuintely refreshing. Download, play, enjoy. And perhaps even peruse the (open-source) code so that you can get the ball rolling and create the amazing fluid-dynamics-based landmark that lurks around the corner.

You can download Ichor here. Thanks again to fun-motion for the link.

Apologies for the lack of decent updates - been busy on a bunch of different projects for a while now. Heres a few titbits from the world of Flash:

Roxik

The personal site of Masayuki Kido, a Japanese freelancer. Only a couple of things up there now - a nice Mario64-esque deformable 3D head (presumably his own) within a TV, and a beautiful ragdoll-in-silhouette piece (linked) that reminded me of ICO mixed with the TORNADO! Could this be the next monocrafts?

http://roxik.com/toy1.html (via bit-101)

Papervision3D
The creation of Carlos Ulloa Matesanz, a Spanish Interactive Designer currently working at Hi-Res, this is certainly the most impressive Flash-3D engine yet released. The demos have been floating around for a while now, but the project is due to go open source soon, and he has already released a version to allow you to plug-in your own MAX-exported ASE files here.

Papervision3D “Room” Demo - http://www.noventaynueve.com/lab/room/

Cyberchase Inventors’ Workshop

Created by Keith “bit-101″ Peters, this Physics-centric game reminds me a little of Armadillo run. Each challenge provides you with a specific goal and a construction kit of various objects which can be joined-together and placed on the “Playmat”. I’m not a fan of it visually - the visual area is tiny and the graphics are unpleasant - and I’m not sure why the goals are not displayed during the construction phase - but its definitely an interesting and engaging online game.

http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/inventions/

Well as of tomorrow, I will have officially moved on from SCEE. Instead I’ll be diving into the glistening ocean of self-employment - consulting/freelancing in the interactive world. Its going to be an exciting new start and means that I’ll be able to concentrate on personal projects in-between contracts - particularly focusing on creating game titles to take advantage of electronic distribution.

On top of that I’ve also just made the switch, moving over to a MacBook Pro now that the Core 2 Duos are out. Got to say I’m so impressed. Not only does it look pretty but its blazing fast and has enough under the hood to totally geek out to.

The Wilberforce flash framework is also getting close to being usable now. I’ve switched to using Pixlib for the event handling and core functionality (Delegate, Queues etc) and focusing on building Wilberforce as more of a toolkit of common interactive elements as opposed to attempting to replicate any of the numerous RIA-centric flash frameworks.

The insane glut of high-quality games is upon us, that time of year where a multitude of polished original titles compete for out attention, inevitably resulting in some of the less-well-published among them falling through the gaps. I’ll try and post details of some of those titles for each platform in the run-up to xmas. For the DS there is an excellent selection of titles this year - despite the loss of Zelda until early next year. Heres a few to look out for:

Elite Beat Agents
Touted the US release of the cult hit Ouendan, Elite Beat Agents is actually much more of a sequel. Like Ouendan, it is a rhythm-action game played out on the DS’s touch-pad. Eschewing a straight translation for a complete replacement of all songs, this localised release has instead focussed on creating something palettable for Western Audience… using more familiar settings for our cheerleading heros, and swapping out JPop for western stars such as David Bowie and Jamiroquai. Fortunately the localisation task has been performed with much success, retaining the original illustrators and creative direction, and critically succeeding in applying the surreal humour of the first. A genuinely funny game, and highly recommended.

Cooking Mama
Strange one this. The US release of Cooking Mama has been localised in-so-far as the language is now in English, but all the original recipes are still in there. Theres no hotdogs and jellied eels here. Its a simple premise : Take the wario-ware formula of short attention-span minigames, and apply them to format of a TV cookery show. Each short game takes the form of a single task you might perform in the process of producing a dish: Peeling potatoes, chopping onions, kneading dough, peeling a boiled egg. This might sound a bit rubbish but it actually works very well, its compelling, addictive, and genuinely nurtures the desire to cook in the real world as a result of play. While not being strictly instructional it does give an idea of the steps required in producing any given dish.

Mario vs Donkey Kong 2
An update to the GBA action puzzle-game, this new edition is enhanced by the implementation of stylus control for the little Marionettes. It works well, and the game is polished and compelling with numerous nice little touches in terms of the puzzle devices they’ve employed. The level editor (for use in Nintendo Wifi connection) is particularly well designed, although it appears that you can only share levels with friends - a great shame considering the potential for a global design competition. I guess the potential for e-pervs to write their number in iron blocks and plant heads is too much of a danger. Never mind. Anyway, the game is fun but relatively short, by the time you reach the later levels, the game is just hitting its stride with more challenging complex puzzles. It never really provides complex enough puzzles to compete with classics like catrap/pitman or sokoban , and theres not enough action to compete with action-puzzlers like lemmings. Still I’d definitely pick it up after xmas when the price drops.

Rollover Jackanory. Step aside Punch & Judy. Pingmag has a wonderful piece up about Kamishibai-Shi, the Japanese tradition of street storytellers. It centres around an interview with 78 year old Tameharu Nagata, who has been a street storyteller for 50 years. Combining performance with illustrated tiles, the storyteller narrates the tale to groups of enraptured children

Inspiring early Manga illustrators, the artwork is beautiful and wonderfully surreal, as you can see from the images below. From the Klu-Klux-Clan member wearing a gasmask-infused hood, to the Blue and red-eyed cat menace, they are not only peculiar but strangely menacing.

I think its hard to underestimate the power of one-on-one storytelling. Although we have become accustomed to increasing sophistication in the structure of stories, an increased ability to realize fantastical imagery and instant access to an archive of thousands of tales, nothing can emulate or replace the storyteller. The storyteller within a story is quite common device in games and films as a way to absorb some of the endearing qualities of such a delivery, but it is seldom done well (usually as a voiceover or a character recounting earlier periods of their life). The only exception to this that comes to mind is Peter Falk’s excellent turn in The Princess Bride.