Voting opened up a couple of days ago for TIGSource’s Commonplace Book Competition and downloads for the games (and voting) are available now. Embedded below is a video that includes some footage from quite a few of the entries, so you’ll have some idea of what to expect from them. Have fun!
(subliminal message: vote for Eversion!)
saw this over on neogaf
http://gigazine.net/index.php?/news/comments/20081210_dragonquest/
Gigazine is covering a mysterious Dragon Quest Press Event at Tokyo’s Park Hyatt hotel. It’s due to start in 30 mins or so. :o :o :o
Based on the schedule, it looks like they’ll be announcing a new game, including staff, etc.
Edit:
Okay… Dragon Quest IX will be hitting Japan on 28th March 2009, for 5980yen. The game finally has a release date! Yay. Looks like the announcement isn’t really major………
HOLD UP!
HORII SEZ DQX IS FOR THE WII! IWATA SAYS THANK YOU! OMG!!!!!!!
Oh, and some independent confirmation from famitsu would be nice, given that gigazine is down, ostensibly from the ridiculous traffic because of the announce:
そしてさらに、次回作『ドラゴンクエストX』がWiiで開発中であることも明らかに！！
Apparently it went down something like this:
Wada: Iwata’s appearances are rare, so I’m really happy. Completing DQIX is a big relief. A “thank goodness” kind of feeling
Iwata: Thank you for developing DQX on the Wii
Well, that about wraps it up for the PS3 in Japan, doesn’t it.
Started playing Persona 4 yesterday. Great fun. Well-written dialogue which is quite serious when it needs to be, and quite funny when it doesn’t; found myself bursting into laughter quite a bit, especially at the few bits of absurd humor in it, although the un-bear-able puns are a little much. Kudos to the original writers, and the translators/editors too. The voice acting is a bit on the lackluster side, though the lack of subtitles will probably make playing an undub pointless.
How enjoyable the game would be came as a complete surprise to me, since I absolutely hated Persona 3/FES. The story, scenario, characters and dialogue I found much to be much more interesting and much improved over p3. The story which is a basic supernatural murder mystery is actually intriguing and compelling, with “solving the mystery” as an actual game-driver, rather then whatever non-memorable crap it was in p3. The dialogue-pathing and subquests are mostly the same as in p3, so expect to need a FAQ (or the excellent doublejump guide) if you want to get 100%.
Oh, and the combat system has been revamped so that you can take direct control of the other characters in combat now, which makes combat much more tolerable now, too. Haven’t really played enough to say whether or not the actual gameplay has improved much, but, if the first couple bosses are any indication, the game will probably not disappoint me.
I know the guy who wrote this game, so I’m gonna plug it. :D
Eversion is this random little platformer made by Zaratustra (who has a bunch of other indie games to his name already) made for TIGSource’s Commonplace Book Competition. The concept behind Eversion is that to get past certain obstacles you have to press the ‘everse’ button at certain spots in the game causing the entire game to change with everything getting progressively darker, initially starting from a happy cheerful platformer to ending up eventually at oh-god-why-is-everything-trying-to-kill-me. The entire game transforms as you go, with enemies (and the scenery!) getting replaced with more dangerous versions, entire levels taking on gloomier feels, including the nice touch of the cheerful music from world 1 (gleefully ripped from Cocoron) just turning downright grim as you go through the game.
The first couple levels mostly ease you into the various ways the game expects you to solve puzzles and navigate obstacles with the eversion mechanic, with the game getting harder as it goes on (along with a near-pixel-perfect jump in world 4 that people have complained about). The last couple levels are great platforming action though and going through the game again to collect all the gems for the real ending (which is great, btw) gives it an extra bit of replayability.
The TIGForums post for the game is here, if you want to leave feedback for Zara.
Saw Fat Cat (flash game) over on MetaFilter (also, a writeup on jayisgames, which I haven’t read yet.).
It’s actually quite fun. Enthralling even. You play this Owl, who’s apparently been tasked to protect a Cat of questionable stature. Hold down the mouse button to shoot enemies down, while the difficulty comes in using Owl to rescue Cat from harm’s way (literally, dragging Cat out of the way or walking right into bullets to stop them, while Owl is impervious to damage, and Cat can only take three hits). Scrambling to feed Cat to power up Cat’s ‘burp’ attack is required to get through certain parts (or, just use it take out swarms of enemies at once! - Although, sometimes trying to get it to trigger in the heat of battle is kinda hard).
The interesting part is that most of the levels are broken down into individual segments which serve mostly as puzzles. Most of the puzzles are the twitchy-action kind, but, they are certainly puzzling/interesting enough to make the game worth playing. Some stages will take multiple tries, as the puzzles will need to be solved by trial-and-error occasionally. There are also epic boss fights that are strangely reminiscent of japanese bullet-hell shooters (Touhou, anyone?), where Cat invariably dies almost immediately, until at least you figure out where to stash him while Owl takes down the boss.
Anyway, it’s a good way to waste an afternoon (or a night, if you can’t go to sleep for some bizarre reason, and I can’t think of anything better to do right now anyway). (Lemme go hold down that mouse button some more – *pew*pew*pew* – Oh, the music and the sound effects are great too, especially, when Cat gets hit, and you hear that meow!-i-got-hit-meow! :)