One Video Game - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

One Video Game is Oded Sharon's (@Soundguy) first foray into Ludum Dare, and after playing this one I really hope to see more! He managed to get this game thrown together within the last four hours of the compo, and it's as creative as it is hysterical. Okay, maybe it's more hysterical than creative a bit, because it's REALLY funny!

Yep, that's the official screenshot!

The game is, as Oded puts it, "is a FMV 'choose your own adventure' type meta game about making a video game." The entire "game" takes only a few minutes to play. And the end... Oh the end! I'm not giving anything away, just play it! Oh, and you can check out the Ludum Dare page for the game as well!

One Game a Month (#1GAM): Year Two

There's always an awesome monthly revamp of the site, this one celebrates making it into #1GAM's second year!

Christer Kaitila (@McFunkypants as he's better known) - an incredibly prolific indie game developer - came up with One Game a Month (#1GAM) last year and it's currently celebrating the beginning of year two! If I remember right, I first heard about it mid-December-ish 2012 and was so psyched! As someone who loves a good challenge, the idea of having a great excuse to come up with 12 video games in a year was too much to resist. Oh, and there are achievements and experience points to earn, two things I simply can't resist! I did make five games myself out of the 12 months, although two were in the same month.

The challenge is as simple as the name itself: make a game every month! Unlike many game creation competitions there's only one rule (taken from the website): "There are no rules. This is a personal challenge. Have fun and be nice." I unfortunately didn't note exactly what the count was on January 1st, but as of Jan 3rd there are currently 5,399 games from over 7,000 users! If you're a game developer, you've got no excuse not to give it a try (even if you just make bigger games, you can simply submit each one in the month it's completed), and if you're a video game lover you'll be able to play thousands of games from one place, all searchable by keyword or tag!

Each month, an optional theme is posted, and Christer often does a keynote speech or video. This month's theme is "Respawn", and it's absolutely perfectly fitting for a new year. You can checkout the keynote speech below in the video while you watch countless games going by.

Are you taking part in January's #1GAM? What are you working on?

Goblyrinth - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

Goblyrinth by Mlle Eole (@ebezolli) deserves praise for not only being funny, done well and even making a post-LD version (a version that's edited after the 72 hours and therefore not technically part of the jam), but also for succeeding in something that I tried previously myself with 10 Seconds Alive.

Goblyrinth puts you in the shoes of one of ten scouts, each with one matchstick, lighting up the dark and trying to plot a path out of a trap-riddled cave. Each round, a new scout is sent out from the same space, and once you hit space you light the torch. From that point on, each time you press an arrow key to move, the match moves one bit closer to extinguished. Your shaman uses his astral vision to keep a map of anything lit up, so each newly-lit space helps whether you die or not. You can also simply kill your scout at any time with the "Splorch!" button in case you run out of match and get stuck...

WOOHOO! The exit is found, so no more goblins must be sacrificed!

The game is quite funny and, since it's randomly generated, it's fun to play over and over. If you REALLY want a challenge, you can play the post-LD version that generates much more complex, dangerous mazes.

See? MUCH more dangerous!

You can play the Ludum Dare version here or the tougher (but more fun) post-LD version here. If you took part, you can also rate it here. The game/page is in both English and French; if it's in French and you want English, just click the yellow "En" button across the top.

Choose Wisely - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

Choose Wisely by zconnelly13 is the first platformer I've tried during this Ludum Dare. For those who haven't tried making a platformer, it's one heck of a challenge in 48 hours, and so it's quite common for Ludum Dare platformers to be pretty rough around the edges. While Choose Wisely isn't flawless by any means, it's definitely more polished up than expected. Plus, the art is really fun - I love hand-drawn art, and you can really see how each and every thing in the game was drawn by hand.

Hand drawn art for the win!

What makes Choose Wisely fit the "You Only Get One" theme is that you often have to choose between three choices, and you only get one of them. You get to choose your pet (mouse, kitteh or doge), your jump (wall jump, double jump or strong jump), etc. The choices you make throughout the game will make it (im)possible to get some stars but not others, so if you want all 52 you absolutely have to play through numerous times with different choices.

You only get one jump. Unless it's the wall jump. Or the double jump. But you can only CHOOSE one, so there!

You can play the game free in your browser here, and if you took part in Ludum Dare 28 you can rate it here as well!

A Pantless Man with a Clueless Plan - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

My third Ludum Dare 28 game review is, in a way, very similar to One Way Out (if you get why, that's awesome, way to go!). A Pantless Man with a Clueless Plan by @Detocroix is a very silly, short little game where you lose no matter what you do (unless you simply refuse to do anything, and if you really want to play that way then you've lost anyway...).

Go ahead, find something and hit the enter key, I dare you!

The game can be completely played in less time than it will take you to read this post, but I really felt compelled to write about it anyway. The game has only eight possible outcomes (seven things to interact with and "don't ever interact with anything, despite the fact that nothing ever happens"), and you only use up to six keys (up, down, left, right, escape and return), but the game is hilarious and has some really fantastic art for being made in 2 days by 1 person! Heck, the dude even recorded the sounds himself by tapping his fingers on a desk and using an ocarina.

The only ending where you, the pantless man, don't die yourself!

You can play the web version for free right here or download it for Win/Mac/Linux from here (you can also rate it if you took part in Ludum Dare 28!) Which ending was your favorite, and did you find all seven?

Tower Zoo for iOS - A Wild Puzzle Game

Note: I don't own any of the available platforms for this game, and am therefore unable to review it. It's not that I don't want to play it, trust me!

The creator of Tower Zoo reached out to me a while back (almost two months ago... Geez am I behind!) about this game, and once I checked it out I figured I had to give it some coverage. Plus, it's one of only three games that was nominated for the Media Innovation Awards, so that's saying quite a bit too!

Kindle Fire HD Giveaway & Free eBook from the Kilenya Series!

This site was not compensated in anyway for this post. This site is not responsible for the giveaway prize. However, this blog writer definitely thinks Kindle Fire looks awesome, and although I don't have one myself, helping to give one away is pretty frickin sweet :D

In Celebration of the release of The Golden Symbol, the last book in the Kilenya Series, author Andrea Pearson is giving away a Kindle Fire HD and eBooks 2-6 in the series. Are you asking what happened to the first book? Well, that is FREE Until January 18th and the second book, The Ember Gods, is only 99 cents until January 18th as well. What a score! Head over and download your free copy of the first book, The Key of Kilenya, now.

Free Copy Of The Key Of Kilenya - KINDLE Version

Free Copy Of The Key Of Kilenya - Nook Version

If you love reading and happen to just love these books, sign up for her email list to stay up to date on everything she has coming out. SIGN UP HERE

Check out the Kilenya Book Series Website.

Maybe you'd like to read up on the author or other books and products she has to offer. Check out her BLOG HERE.

Now for the giveaway

This Giveaway is open to US Residents Only. 18+ or older. This giveaways ends January 18th at Midnight EST. The winner will be chosen and given 24 hours to respond VIA EMAIL. If no response is given another winner will be chosen. I am not responsible for prize fulfillment or shipping mishaps. KINDLE FIRE HD is what you will win along with eBooks 2-6 from the Kilenya Series. Don't forget to download the first book listed above for free. After January 18th, it'll go back up in price.

Sponsored by Kilenya, LLC Hosted by It's Peachy Keen and Sweet Southern Lovin Co-hosted By; Bugs and Beans, Everything MommyHood, Budget Earth, Submissive By Design

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Game Institute's Huge Game Developer Package Sale!

Yes, this might sound like an advertisement or something, but I wrote every word of it and I believe every word. I was not asked to write this, I was not paid for it, I didn't even get any free samples or stickers or anything! This entire article originates from being on their email list and just being genuinely excited about it!!!

One of the biggest problems with getting into game development, aside from the time required, is the high cost. If you've ever looked around any book store (or amazon.com, etc) for game programming books of any sort, you know all too well that $50-$60 is just an acceptable price for 300-400 pages of knowledge. That assumes, you know, that you did your research right, picked out a book that will actually work for you, doesn't assume you already know things that you don't, doesn't teach you the same things all over again... I seriously have at least $200 worth of books that are useless because I just couldn't get behind the way the author was putting the knowledge out there or had already learned those exact same things in another book (usually there's one or two chapters of goodness, but seriously, $60 is waaaaaay too much to gamble!).

Oh, and if you want to go to school for game development, unless you live near one of the few schools that teach it, you'll be going online, and that's ridiculously expensive too. I really love the looks of some of the schools (Digipen was the first I'd heard of and I drooled over the website for months), but there was no way I was affording it, and I don't believe in getting huge student loans that will take years (or decades) of my life to pay off.

The other day, I received an email from The Game Institute (I'm on their email subscription list) saying they were having a big sale. The Game Institute hosts a humongous array of game development training materials for wanna-be game developers of all sorts - it covers C++ programming, art/animation, math (yeah yeah, no one likes math except me, but you'll be using a LOT of math as a game programmer), AI (always one of my favorites, it's such an awesome field to learn) and even building your own game console (although if you want to actually build it, it's another $230 for the kit...). What's amazing is that all of this comes as one huge package, including online textbooks (you can purchase physical, but the price is unknown) and around 150 hours of presentations for only $99, but through January 1st it's only $49! That's less than gambling on one single book most of the time! Plus, apparently you also get any new stuff put out for a year. There's also the option of actually getting a professor to guide you and getting college credit for it, but I couldn't find a price for that anywhere without buying the package (and it's not payday yet...). You can actually find the huge, detailed list of everything here as well.

I wish I would have known about this sooner so I could have shared it as a Christmas gift idea for everyone, but it still makes an excellent gift idea for any game developers (or someone who would like to learn to become one!) in your life (or yourself!).

Top 10 Indie Games of the Year 2013 From IndieDB

The votes are in and IndieDB has amassed their top 10 voted indie games of the year! What amazed me was the sheer variance in genres, although apparently it's the year of outer space love (maybe because the US canceled it's space program?) so there's something great for everyone here. Here are the winners:

• Starbound is a "2D space exploration sandbox game" that actually has a story and main goals to accomplish (if you want)!
• Contagion is a "cooperative survival horror FPS where players are forced to watch their ammo and aim carefully otherwise be overrun by the zombie hordes." The game is also randomly generated, but your fear won't be!
• I've heard a lot about Kerbal Space Program in the past, and was always curious, but now that it's #3 highest voted I'll definitely have to check it out! KSP is a "multi-genre game where the player can create his own space program, [... and] build a space-worthy craft capable of flying it's crew out into space without killing them
• Space Engineers is "a sandbox game about engineering, construction and maintenance of space works. Players build space ships and space stations of various sizes and utilization (civil and military), pilot ships and perform asteroid mining."
• The Stanley Parable is another game I've heard quite a bit about, and it's probably the one I know the least about after reading the pages! From the IndieDB page: "The Stanley Parable is a simple game about storytelling. You will be told a story and then you will be asked to make a choice, except that the choice will not matter. No, sorry, my mistake, the choice matters a great deal. Or maybe...is it that the story doesn't matter? Wait, let me check my notes..."
• Into the Dark is, succinctly enough, "a playable B-Movie, a trash Experience composed out of 60% humour, 30% horror and 10% technical flaws."
• Path of Exile is the first action/RPG on the list and it's free to play! It involves a slew of character customization as well as PvP.
• Tales of Maj'Eyal is another RPG, but this one is a roguelike that also happened to win Roguelike of the Year 2010-2012!
• Outlast is another horror game, this one takes place in Mount Massive Asylum, which sounds like a combination of two creepy things!
• Rogue Legacy rounds it all up, and it's a "genealogical roguelite." I can't pick just one sentence to copy since it's so well written, but here's from the developers: "You must traverse a procedurally-generated castle to uncover the secrets of your cursed heritage. You have only one chance though, as there is no redemption from death. Fortunately your lineage spawns like bunny rabbits, and there are plenty of successors willing to pick up the sword. Unfortunately genetics aren't a perfect science, resulting in children who suffer from a variety of different traits, such as blindness, dyslexia, and even irritable bowels syndrome. Do you have what it takes to uncover your family's history and redeem its honor?"

There were also Editor's Choice awards, all of which were for games not listed above except for Rogue Legacy, which placed #1 overall and "Best Singleplayer Game". And if you're wanting to know what awesomeness is being made as you read this, there's also a "Best Upcoming Indie Games" section.

Which game are you most excited for? I'd thrown a concept around in my head before similar to Rogue Legacy, but coming up with the basic concept and carrying it out to awesome completion are two totally different things!

SOL Republic Tracks Air (Wireless Headphones) Giveaway!

This blog did not receive product samples for this post and is not responsible for the giveaway.

SOL REPUBLIC was founded back in 2011 by Kevin Lee, Scott Hix, and Setch Combs. They share a vision of getting rid of all of the worlds hollow-sounding headphones. SOL REPUBLIC is a global consumer electronics company that was also dedicated to enhancing the lives of people through better sounding headphones and accessories. They are also striving to create a community where music fans, athletes and all dreamers can voice their opinions, ideas, and share their sound and be heard. The SOL REPUBLIC Tracks Air Wireless Headphone is an amazing pair of headphones for only $199!

The Tracks Air headphones are extremely durable thanks to the FlexTech headband. They can be bent, twisted and nothing will happen. A feature on these headphones which is extremely popular is that the ear cups are removable. This allows you to customize your headphones exactly how you want them. You can switch up the wires, ear cups, and headbands to make them exactly how you want. The ear cups also feature an expanded cushion, making them extremely comfortable. They feature: A2 Sound Engine. A larger amplifier that produces a sound that is equal to or better than wired. This is the best in its class. Listen In Comfort & Isolation. The noise-isolating ear cushions lets you enjoy your music for tons of hours in the comfort of your home or on your couch. Multiple Device Connectivity. With the wireless headphones you are able to watch a movie on your tablet, then take an incoming call with only a touch of a button using the crystal-clear noise reduction available on the headphones. All wired headphones are unable to do this. Super Power Wireless (Air). The wireless headphones can also be used on the road or roaming around your house. They can carry their amazing sound without wires for up to 150 feet. Batter Life. The headphones are a USB re-chargeable headphone that will provide you with up to 15 hours of playtime when it is fully charged. A lot of smartphones can't even provide a charge for that long.

Interchangeable Headbands: The headphones had a revolutionary design which allows you to change your headband whenever you want to!! Headbands will be available starting in 2014. SOL REPUBLIC Tracks Air Wireless Headphones are the only wireless headphones that are interchangeable. NFC/ Bluetooth Pairing. This makes it really easy to listen to music or take calls within seconds using the Easy Pair Bluetooth and NFC compatibility. SOL REPUBLIC has many different styles of headphones starting at $39.99 for the JAX In-Ear Headphones.

For The Giveaway

One winner will win the SOL REPUBLIC Tracks Air Wireless Headphones. You have never heard music until you have heard them through these headphones. These headphones retail for $199. US Resident only 18+. Winner will have 24 hours to respond or another winner will be chosen. Ends January 15 Midnight EST. Check back on It's Peachy keen For the winners post

Co-Hosted by Submissive By Design and Sweet Southern Lovin

Sponsored by SOL REPUBLIC

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Treasurebear: Humor, Exploration, Platforming, Treasure and Food!

Treasurebear combines two incredibly awesome things: good platforming action and LOTS of treasure! The game focuses on a duo of unlikely "heroes" - [From the Kickstarter page] "The greedy and unpredictable Chester, a charismatic treasure chest forever condemned by the treasure hunter's guild, and his sleepy sidekick Barry, a hungry bear who prefers sauce battles over boss battles." The story is driven as such: "Barry teams up with Chester following the promise of visiting foreign lands in order to locate and sample exquisite and tasty foods. Determined to locate his blackmailer and exonerate himself, Chester utilizes his uncanny talents for finding shiny and potentially valuable items while upholding his promise to Barry."

While the story is humorous and intriguing, it's the gameplay concepts that really sold me on the game. See, because of the way the two team up, you're able to do some really awesome things together! As you can see from the image below, Bear & Boar (the developers) have had no shortage of creative ideas! And this goes far beyond abilities, the depths of the story, crazy levels and treasure hunting all appear to go just as deep.

Concepts for upgrades. Why hasn't anyone come up with the gold coin machine gun before?

The Offspring Release 8-Bit Versions of "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid"

I'll admit to having been a much bigger fan of The Offspring in my youth than now, but after finding out about Dexter's hot sauce (Gringo Bandito) and now their three 8-bit versions of "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (which you can download free!) my interest is piqued once more!

Like I said, there are three versions - Rudolph, Mistletoe and Eggnog. Rudolph and Eggnog are my favorites - Eggnog has a really fun beat going with it, whereas Rudolph feels more it belongs right on a good Game Boy soundtrack. All in all, I loved them though, and it really was a fun surprise to come across randomly in my email! Most bands would have added them to a new, special re-release of the original CD instead of just saying "Hey, here ya go!"

In case you missed the link above, you can download the .zip file right here: http://www.offspring.com/xmas2013/youre-gonna-go-far-[xmas-2013].zip

Party of One - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

My second Ludum Dare 28 game review is of Party of One, a fun twist on puzzle warfare by Jan Marcano/@AldianSolkai. The premise is simple: your party of heroes has to protect the town from invading monsters! The twist? The evil wizard behind the invasion has cursed your party and turned you all into one person, so now it's just "one" of you against all of them! Good luck!

Definitely fitting of the "easy to learn, difficult to master" phrase.

IndieGameStand's 12 Days of Christmas for Charity!

IndieGameStand has set up a genius - and awesome! - collection of free games that are being sold 100% for charity. Each day from December 18th to the 29th, two new games are revealed for "sale" for you to name your own price on (minimum 25 cents). Just like any of their other game sales, whoever contributes the most on a particular game will get a free t-shirt, and they don't even take the t-shirt price out of the donations - they pay for those out of their own pockets!

All of the money contributed - $1,555.38 as of today, December 20th at 11:45am - goes to Child's Play, one of my favorite charities, which makes it even  more awesome! IndieGameStand has put a good amount of work into this one, and it really is for an awesome cause, so check it out! Worst case, you'll find out about a whole bunch of games that you can get for as little as 25 cents each (or probably Google to find for free, but hey, it's charity!).

The DLC Quest Duology - Earn that DLC!

DLC has become something nearly every game has available these days. Heck, some companies even have season passes available before the game releases! Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, for example, was boasting extra missions for Adewale, the Jackdaw's first mate, before the game itself came out, and I wanted it! DLC can not only add to the game, it can make the game easier, unlock things quicker, change the graphics around or simply give your avatar something cool to wear. The DLC quest games manage to not only mock all of this in a genius manner, they're a load of fun!