Design Design Design

September 5, 2008 · Filed Under Articles, Featured · 2 Comments 

I’ve mentioned an awful lot of times recently my love for the more simplistic vector approach to graphics, clean lines and high speed gaming is something I utterly adore. When I were a lad and the humble Speccy were in its prime (enough of that - Ed) there was a pair of companies that were responsible for me developing this love.

Whilst I’m sure a lot of people got hooked on the vector look courtesy of Battlezone or Star Wars, this wasn’t for me. For a start, there wasn’t really that much in the way of arcade action to be had in a crumbling industrial town with unemployment on the rise. There was only really the one leisure centre in the town anyway and that had Scramble. We did have an arcade, I might add, but it was more the kind of place parents warn you away from than encourage you to dive inside.

For me it was the games of Realtime Games and Design Design that got me hooked on vector graphics. Now, Realtime’s 3d Tank Duel I still claim is the most impressive home port of Battlezone that existed during the eighties but Design Design? I’ve just realised that I don’t think I’ve mentioned the beauty that is Simon Brattel’s Dark Star on this blog before which is quite forgetful and unforgivable of me. The sheer speed of the fucking thing at the time was (well, I guess still is) fucking amazing. No, don’t just listen to me here - have a go yourself. (I’d normally do a WoS link, but I can’t get the site to load right now so have something a bit more competitive).

One of the truly wonderful things about Dark Star (aside from just being plain phenomenal) was the amount of control over the game Simon Brattel built into it. As much as is possible is user configurable. You have 4 game variants, 6 difficulty levels ranging from easy to “pretty damn devastating”, you can configure the brutality and frequency of the enemy missiles all the way from none to (again) “pretty damn devastating”, varying levels of sound effects and even have different display modes. It also features a wonderful high score table and one of my favourite sets of instructions ever:

Fly around the universe. If it moves shoot it. If it doesn’t, shoot it anyway. If it’s square - fly through it.

Utterly fantastic. Even if the tunnels were cunts.

Anyway, the purpose of this post isn’t just to eulogise over how fantastic Dark Star, Design Design and the work of Simon Brattel is/was (although that is something more people should mention, honourable props to the Good Reverend Mr Campbell for his YS Top 100 write up many moons ago) but to also mention that Mr Brattel has now dug out a ruck of his old source code for the games and put them online. Which is awesome.

Also, have some related links:

Design Design Source Code
Crash Interview
Noddy’s Guide To Game Design

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Strange Attractors 2

September 3, 2008 · Filed Under Featured, Reviews · 1 Comment 

It’s national sequel week on this blog it would seem. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, especially with two incredibly high quality sequels released within 7 days of each other. People of the gameiverse, you spoil me (and cost me a fortune).

Strange Attractors 2 is, weirdly enough, the follow up to Strange Attractors. For those not in the know, the product of a previous Retro Remakes competition** to produce a one switch game - naturally enough I have a special interest in this for the aforementioned two blatantly obvious reasons*

Set in a series of Tron-esque glowing arena’s (you can see I’m half sold already at this point, can’t you?), the aim of the game is really quite simple. There are a series of magnetic objects placed about the arena and you use the left mouse button to draw yourself towards them and the right mouse button to repel yourself away from them. Using these you have to collect a series of stars and make your way to the exit.

Whilst it’s a simple concept, the depth comes from the level design which gets increasingly devious and mind bending as you progress and trying to wrap your head around rooms filled with different sized magnetic balls in order to achieve your goals can take a bit of thought. Finally getting that tricky series of manouvres correct in order to throw yourself out of the door and into the next arena is quite the satisfying thing indeed, which, of course, is what matters in this sort of thing.

Whereas I found the original game a bit lacking in the fun department, SA2 more than makes up for any issues I might have had. Although I do have one pissy gripe and that’s it takes a good minute to load on this box, which is quite cringe inducing and I dread to think of the time it would take on a lesser box than the Bobbeast.

I can’t leave this review without giving special props to the great soundtrack either, it certainly adds to the slight headfucking nature of the game, especially when the little laser shooting twats first start to appear.

All in all, it’s a damn fine effort from Ominous Dev and one of the most polished one switch/three switch games that I’ve seen in a long time. For that alone, I’d applaud them. The fact they’ve pulled a rather sterling game out of the bag to boot means they get a small standing ovation. Small because I’m only one person, obviously.

Strange Attractors 2 is $14.99 and available through Greenhouse it would seem.

*In case you’re a bit thicky, I run Retro Remakes and I organised the competition in association with Barrie Ellis in the first place.
**Incidentally, our latest competition is running now. If you haven’t joined in the fun, do so!

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War Twat Hi(gher) Vis

August 20, 2008 · Filed Under Development Log · 6 Comments 

[update: apparantly, something went fuck with the packing and upload - that'll teach me to keep plugging at things till I'm beyond tired. Hopefully, should be fixed now.]

A womans work is never done…

After a request from Silly Tuna over at NewRetro I thought I’d have a go at putting together a hi-vis version of War Twat. The original request was for a version of the game that could be played by folks who are colour blind, but I figured whilst I’m at it I’ll go the whole hog and do a high contrast version of the game.

It would have been a five minute job just to make a few changes but with the visuals tightly bound to the game then some changes throw the balance right off. Essentially, I had to tinker with War Twat so that you could actually see more things but it was still War Twat.

The game should, in theory, still be as difficult and blinding as ever. Or at least, I hope so. If not, it’s back to the drawing board. Anyway, none of this will make it into the next official version for a while so in the meantime if you want a version of War Twat that’s high on contrast and low on polyunsaturates then clicketh the linketh below:

War Twat Hi-Vis Version

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