Planet Nectarius

Audiosurf is an amazing game for music lovers.. There’s an upcoming patch in beta, which adds Last.fm scrobbling support, which I dreamed of from the start.

This will make Audiosurf an MMOG. It enables a persistent record of the players path in the game. It does lack the scores next to the play counts however. For me though each play through a song is an achievement in it’s own right. To track that journey is something I crave. Perhaps that’s what makes things like last.fm and twitter so popular anyway, in a way they are social games, to be able to share and display progress is a requirement.

There really is a convergence between social networking sites and gaming like mechanics. This new patch is really a leveraging of emerging experiences that enhances the user experience of both, all through the power of web 2.0. How’s that for some buzzwords?

Lets say last.fm is a game and our profile is our character. I find it interesting that initially when playing audiosurf it I felt like I wasn’t able to ‘improve’ my last.fm character. This is the same experience I have when I use my mp3 player (which doesn’t track my song play count), which frustratingly is most of my music time these days.

PA has just announced Greenhouse. This is very positive news. I’ve always wondered why steam doesn’t have more indie games. Considering the success of Audiosurf people are certainly willing to buy them.

One problem with steam is it has some really really bad games available there, browsing is a hassle and thus browsing comes up with lots of crappy games. Greenhouse looks like it’ll have high standards.

As far as I’m concerned the more competition for digital distribution the better. It’ll force innovation.

I’ve been playing the demo of Aquaria. It’s stunning.. It really gets across a sense of exploration.

I also like that once you buy the full version you can use your saved games from the demo. Especially since the demo seems rather long so far. Once I get to the end I’m positive I’ll get this one.

Kotaku has an article about Faith and a .45. Which they summarise as gears of war with kissing. The two main characters kiss after each level.

In single player mode from what they say you play as the guy, if you die the girl will bring you back to life with a “kiss of life”. This seems fairly typical gender roles wise, but I wonder if they’ll let you play as the girl and have the guy be the one to give you the nurturing kisses. I’m guessing no. The thing I really want to know is, in multiplayer do they have the same dynamic? Can you play coop? Do the characters kiss after each level in coop? Honestly I think that would be awesome. It would provide many sexy moments of awkwardness in lounge rooms around the world. Would two boys fight over who gets to play as the guy?

Personally I’d want to play as the gal. She’s a redhead! Though from the screenshot her outfit does look a bit out of sorts with the time period. It’s supposed to set during the great depression. If I play this with a gal, I’m positive we’ll both play the opposite sex. I’m not even sure this has multi player. This is the first time I’ve heard of the game and I may never play it, but it’s certainly added a spark to my day. Just think of the teenage boys squirming as their characters kiss each other, while they secret enjoy it. I’m sure it would happen with two girls playing too, but I get the impression boys are extra squirmy and reactionary at highschool age.

I just finished playing the demo of the upcoming indy game Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble. I don’t usually finish demos, so when the ending snuck up on me in this I was suprised. What’s better is it wasn’t one of those jarring “gah, an ad screen” telling me my time was up. It was more like the end of a chapter in a book that leaves you wondering what happens next. I think I definitely buy it when it’s out. I highly recommend the demo if you want a couple of hours of sass, wit and fiesty teenage rebellion played out on a mock old school board game.

It’s really really fun and funny.

This is just another version of my take on Portal. Ported from a comment thread.

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