Toronto Thumbs

Tribes of Mexica:
Makeover for a Cipactli

Toronto developers Incubator Games is giving its upcoming game, Tribes of Mexica, a makeover. Over at their official site, interested parties (that’s you!) can vote on a new look for the Cipactli character (that’s the green guy up top). Cipactli currently looks pretty cool, admittedly. But the poll includes some very awesome and quite different renderings from various artists – all of which are even better than the current version.

I won’t post those here, as I don’t want to unintentionally influence your vote, but I do urge you to head on over to vote. It’s not every day that a games developer asks the community for such direct feedback. How cool would it be if the design you chose made it into the game? Think of the indie cred you’ll gain!

Speaking of cred, Incubator Games is a small team comprised of former project leads from Capybara Games. They’ve worked on some titles you probably love, including Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes and the original Critter Crunch.

Posted in Art, Canada, Indie, TORONTO | 2 Comments »

First Trailer For
Guerrilla Gardening: Seeds of Revolution

Today Spooky Squid Games released a teaser trailer for Guerrilla Gardening: Seeds of Revolution, a game I’ve been following the development of somewhat closely. Even though the trailer contains footage from an early build of the game, it still looks like a lot of fun to play.

In it, Molly Greenthumb is a revolutionary who tries to cheer up oppressed and depressed citizens by planting beautiful trees, flowers, and the like. The isometric game has a heavy puzzle element to it, where certain plants need to be placed in specific locations to provoke a desired result. For instance, and the video shows this, you can use a screaming flower to draw the attention of patrolling officers in order to make a run for another section of the map. Other flowers emit bursts of pollen, attracting citizens to the area. It’s a good way to gather up protestors in key locations.

Check out the trailer »

Posted in Art, Awesome, Indie, TORONTO, Videos | 3 Comments »

ART
General Bauhaus

Meet General Bauhaus. Kick-ass name, isn’t it? As expected, he’s quite the baddie in Guerrilla Gardening, the upcoming PC strategy game being developed by Toronto’s own Spooky Squid.

The colouring is by Miguel Sternberg of Spooky Squid, and the character design is by comic book illustrator and homegrown hero Eric Kim. Great to see this game’s progressing nicely, because I’m looking forward to playing it.

Check out the full-size artwork over at the Guerrilla Gardening dev blog.

Posted in Art, Awesome, Comics, Indie, TORONTO | No Comments »

INDIE:
Frozen Synapse by Mode 7 Games

Mode 7 Games, a UK indie developer, is in the midst of developing a rather stylized tactical game called Frozen Synapse. The title has an interesting play mechanic: moves are selected and paths are plotted beforehand, and once the “execute” button is pressed, the scenario plays out. Players have to anticipate enemy moves, in other words.

An official teaser trailer released for Frozen Synapse shows it in motion, and even though it depicts an early build, things are looking sharp. The combination of the art style and music chosen reminds me of the magnificent Defcon.

Posted in Art, Indie | 2 Comments »

THROWDOWN!
DJ Finish Him Vs. Oxvylu

If you missed the DJ Finish Him vs. Oxvylu live set this Saturday at Hard Luck Bar in Toronto, here’s a photograph Terence Cheng took of the set. Now just picture really loud blippy music and sound effects where half the crowd is into it and the other have is mostly confused. Now it’s like you where there!

Evidently parts of this performance were filmed, in HD, no less, so I’ll try to track that down and post it here for all to enjoy.

Posted in Awesome, Indie, Music, Photos, TORONTO | 2 Comments »

A W A R I S C O M I N G
- Y’all Been Warned.

Zack Kotzer of Steel Bananas fame posted a vague but intriguing note via his Facebook page tonight. Along with the above image, he wrote:

A war is coming.
It brews between conventions
Concepts
It will take your tears and sweat
It will take your hands and blisters
It will take your quarters
It makes strange noises
And it will come
Once it is inside you it lives with you forever
You won’t hate the invader
You will love the invader
No matter what
Isn’t this terrifying?
I’m terrified too
Soon you will know

But what does it all mean? He most likely has created something awesome that he’s waiting to unleash upon the world. Will Toronto or its gaming-loving citizens be the same? We shall see. I just hope he’s not planning on beating everyone up for lunch money again.

Posted in Awesome, Indie, News Bytes, TORONTO | 4 Comments »

REVIEW
VVVVVV

VVVVVV is a game that made me angry. I mean, really angry. Ten minutes would barely go by when I would see a challenge game maker Terry Cavanagh set up and hate his goddamn guts. But I also couldn’t keep from giddily laughing to myself. The clever bastard always had another twist, another devious bit up his sleeve. It is one thing to be beaten up, but quite another to respect the person for doing it.

VVVVVV has you playing Viridian, the captain of a ship that gets caught up in some weird space anomaly; it’s the way these things often seem to happen in space. His crew is spread out all over this little dimension and it’s up to you to rescue them. The most basic of platformer abilities, jumping, is off limits. Instead, you reverse gravity. Every level can be, and will need to be, viewed two ways to solve it.

Cavanagh doesn’t play with too many other elements apart from the gravity reversal. There are some genre staples (conveyor belts and disappearing platforms; dumb pacing enemies; the ever menacing spike, rarely seen in the singular) but the game is lean, eschewing the Metroidvania’s habit of relying on new abilities to keep the gameplay fresh. Instead, Cavanagh uses clever level design to inject a surprising amount of variety into the game. The gravity flipping is used to its fullest, and no opportunity is wasted or missed. Occasionally, Cavanagh plays with ideas, like a vertically scrolling bit ominously titled “The Tower,” but these stages are built on the solid foundation that up can be down at the press of a button. They serve as temporary pleasant distractions, not game changers.

Read the rest »

Posted in Art, Awesome, Indie, Pics, Reviews | 5 Comments »

MADE OF SOAP (AND WIN)!
Peter Project’s “FRESH” EP

I’m a huge fan of people doing things differently. Take Toronto-based hip-hop DJ/beat maker Peter Project, for instance. His new Fresh EP is not only fresh in the sense that the cuts are new, but also in the sense that it’s a download embedded into a bar of soap! Granted, the EP is also available sans-soap, but how cool a play on the oft-used term, “Fresh!”

I’m not sure I’d want to use the soap just to get to the download code. But this is more a reflection of my pack rat/hoarder mentality and less because I don’t like being clean. The soap itself sounds like it’s pretty awesome. It’s handmade and naturally scented. Given the fact that there are plenty of sweaty dudes at Toronto shows who don’t appear to realize how horrible they smell, getting people to clean themselves by any form of trickery seems like a great idea to me.

While I have yet to hear the entire Fresh EP, I can guarantee you it’s awesome. Considering I had nothing but praise for Peter Project’s self-titled album when I reviewed it for Popshifter earlier this year, I have the utmost confidence that the Fresh EP delivers the goods despite its short length. But don’t take my word for it; just listen to “Unorthadox,” a preview track from the EP that features More or Les throwing it down over Peter’s beats. There’s also this sampling that features a mix of sounds from the Fresh EP. Then there’s the video Peter recently posted that shows him cutting up some beats with a newly broken arm.

The Fresh EP can be purchased online at the Fuzzy Logic Recordings shop.

Posted in Art, Awesome, Canada, Indie, Music, TORONTO | 1 Comment »

DEERTASE 2: REINDEERTASE
Production Notes and Some Art

On Monday, we launched our second game, Deertase 2: Reindeertase. With it, we also released a few extra bits of content related to the game, such as the soundtrack, the instruction manual, and the desktop background downloads. Today, while cleaning up my files, I came across some early notes I had jotted down to help understand some of the functions that needed to be built into the game.

The notes are a little disjointed, and focus heavily on the item inventory system, but they also include mention of a few things that ended up being dumped from the final build of the game. If you’re into seeing handwritten notes, feel free to check out the scans of them.

On the subject of the actual game, it appears that no one has found this secret character yet.

Deertase 2: Reindeertase notes »

Posted in Art, Gallery, Indie, TORONTO THUMBS ORIGINAL GAMES | 2 Comments »

Tiny Cartridge Interview
Capybara Games talks about Clash of Heroes

The crew over at Tiny Cartridge recently had the opportunity to chat about Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes with the game’s developers, Toronto-based Capybara Games. Co-founder/President Nathan Vella and co-lead designer Greg Georgiadis had a lot to say about not only the game, but a variety of other interesting subjects. Their discussion covers topics such as the industry’s movement away from pixel art, developing for the DS versus the PSP, and being an independent studio working for a bigger publisher. It’s a great read, so go check it out!

Posted in Canada, Indie, Interviews, News Bytes, TORONTO | No Comments »