It doesn’t take much to convince me that mixing things together is good. After all, I know this from experience: mixing toast and marmite together, for example, gives possibly the tastiest snack in the entire history of the world. Ever. Delicious foodstuffs weren’t on Markus Persson’s mind, however. Instead, he thought what a tremendous laugh it’d be to do a “mashup” of two classic 8-bit games, Bomberman and Gauntlet. The result? A brilliantly outlandish creation called Blast Passage which desperately needs the obvious tagline “Bomberman needs food badly!”

The mix goes like this: basically, the gameplay is identical to Gauntlet; run around a selection of levels collecting keys and dodging monsters as you make your way to the exit. Collect treasure to boost your score, food to increase your energy and see if you can get in the hall of fame at the end of it all. Here, replacing the Wizard, Elf, Warrior and Valkyrie are… Bombermen. Don’t ask why, but somehow it just works - dashing around dropping bombs to kill the generators off seems perfectly natural after a minute or so.

Everything in the game was created from scratch and is authentic to certain 8-bit limitations, such as using a Sega Megadrive colour palette and a sound system similar to the SID chip from the Commodore 64. It’s undeniably retro, and what’s more, you can play it online in your browser without having to download a single thing! Well, as long as you have Java installed on your computer, I guess. If you don’t - you’re missing out on all the fun!

Interestingly there’s also a 4-way online multiplayer facility included, but for whatever reason it didn’t work when I tried it just now. Shame, really; I can imagine that’d be quite fun. Still, the single player is more than enough to keep you amused for a long time. Another strong contender for some RRC prizes!

Links: Markus Persson’s homepage :: Blast Passage homepage
Download: from its homepage :: from the Retro Remakes competition listing

EDIT: No, I don’t know why I categorised this as Commercial, either. I blame the evil Wordpress gnome.

I watched the first public preview video for Owlboy yesterday after it got a mention on the IndieGames blog and Destructoid. Having not known about it before then, this took me by surprise…

I absolutely love the music - heroic and sweeping with a great mix of 8-bit blippiness and orchestral accompaniment, something any modern indie game would be proud of. The sprites and pixel artwork is superb, too. Even at this early stage a lot of polish is showing already, so I’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on this!

Check out the D-Pad Studio homepage for the dev team’s news.

Perfect! Just in time for all of us to have a nice, comfy playthrough before Christmas, the 2008 Retro Remakes competition entries are now available to download! A big congratulatory slap on the back must go to everyone who got something together during the three months of coding time, and special thanks to the RR staff for braving the piles of paperwork and getting it all organised.

A quick note, though. Keep in mind that RR’s bandwidth is limited and goes through the roof at times like this, so try to avoid hitting refresh every couple of seconds if the page isn’t loading for you. Go have a nice cup of tea, perhaps with some digestive biscuits (or even ginger nuts if you’re so inclined), then try again

Over the next couple of weeks, I hope to make time to have a proper hands-on with a few of the entries. Blast Passage, Mini Saboteur, The Kiwi’s Tale and Revenge of the Punched Tape immediately catch my eye - Retroman and Cosmic Prison Commando might get a look too. Bonus points for the most bizarre combination of two 8-bit games has to go to Tetroid, however… it’s Metroid, with Tetris blocks in it! What on earth is going on there?!

On a closing note, this is the second time that (for various reasons) I didn’t have chance to put an entry in for the compo myself so I’m a little sad, but come hell or high water it will be third time lucky when - indeed, if - the competition rolls around again!

Until next time… let’s retro!

Those nice people at Bit Blot have updated Aquaria to version 1.1 including lots of added goodness! It now supports widescreen and has an improved world map and cooking interface, amongst other things. Best of all, if you didn’t buy it already, there’s a price reduction - get Aquaria for Windows now in exchange for just twenty of your United States dollars!

Check out the full information on the Bit Blot blog.

I would have posted a video to go with this post but, unfortunately, the movie is so amazingly incredible that this puny excuse of a webpage couldn’t handle it. Er… okay, what I really mean is that it’s too wide to fit Still, wander over to YouTube or Vimeo to feast your eyes on the Aquaria trailer featuring extra high-definition pixels.

Update: As of the 16th, Aquaria is now available through Steam! Better still it’s being sold for a measly $16 until the new year.

There aren’t very many games out there that can boast a twenty year history so I want to give a hearty clap on the back to Qwak by Jamie Woodhouse, a quintessentially retro platform game that has recently seen a long-awaited PC release. It’s so brilliant I really am going to give it a serious plug - please, visit the homepage and give this game a try! You won’t regret it, I promise

I’ve got some very fond memories of playing Qwak from a coverdisk on an Amiga magazine many moons ago, and this new version’s demo has gotten me addicted once more. In a similar spirit to Bubble Bobble, two players can team up - or maybe even compete - in collecting a whole spectrum of fruity goodies and bopping enemies on the noggin to progress through the levels.

The gameplay is still as fast, simple and horribly morish as ever. But keep in mind… bright green ducks are for life, not just for Christmas…

Millenipede v1.2.0 is now available!

It’s been ages since the last major new version of Millenipede but now you don’t have to wait any longer - version 1.2.0 for Windows is now available! Yippee!

After all this time, what is there to make a fuss about? Well - first and foremost, there are now online highscores (known more grandly as the World Leaderboard) so you can compare your scores with Millenipede players everywhere. It’s limited to the all-time top 100 scores right now but I have a couple ideas for improving that side of things in the future.

There’s also a selection of rockin’ powerups which the teaser video earlier in the week showed off, including missile volleys, smartbombs and railblasts - all of which can be devastatingly effective if used correctly!

To give things a final spit and polish, there have been many other refinements to give higher scores, smoother gameplay and more varied visuals. Blasting evil space insects has never been so much fun!

I hope you all enjoy the new version. I’ll be waiting for your scores

Waaaarrrgh! Bah, sorry. I guess the temptation to buy Warhammer Online is getting to me a little. Must… resist… Anyway. I haven’t done an indie round-up for quite a while so let’s see what has caught my eye over the past few weeks.

First we have Gravity Hook [pictured right] from Adam Atomic and Danny Baranowsky. Based on one of Arne’s prototypes, it’s an addictive rope-swing-climb simulation with a bit of a catch - the only objects your droid can latch on to are explosive! How high can you go? I could only manage 720m…

Continuing the colaborative theme, Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel worked together to produce the surreal Aether - help a lonely lad and his newfound alien friend solve puzzles in the stars before heading home again to Earth. (Note: if the Flash version doesn’t work very well for you, a standalone download is available that plays more smoothly.)

Fans of fast-paced shoot ‘em ups will probably find Techno Sylph by KBZ to be right up their street (since its homepage is Japanese, download it easily from this link). It’s not a bullet storm affair like a lot of recent shmups, but you should visit the IndieGames blog entry first to get an idea of how the controls work.

An extremely odd game took my fancy after watching its preview video [below]. Imagine being stuck in a world that was completely white, with no shadows to help you figure out where you where. That’d be really awkward unless, oh, you had some paint to throw around, or something. Well guess what! That’s exactly what The Unfinished Swan is about. A very eery atmosphere - check out the moving pictures to see what I mean…

As always thanks to Tim and the IndieGames.com Blog for being my source Oh yes, and a mention to the rather watchable Bytejacker, a regularly updated vidcast of game reviews. Sweet stuff. ‘Til next time…

These days I find it a little hard to call Introversion truly “indie” - where do you draw the line between successful independent developer and small commercial software house, if in fact there is a difference? - but for the sake of argument I’ll call them that for this post, and you certainly can’t argue that their games do try to break the mould in some way.

In any case, the PC version of Multiwinia was released a little over an hour ago and does a sterling job of adding a frantic multiplayer element to the world of Darwinia. Sadly the demo version doesn’t allow any online multiplayer, which is a bummer (bah - even Defcon let you into some hot netgaming action in its demo), but there are still some competent AI opponents to test your mettle against.

2D Boy announced yesterday that the Windows version of World of Goo has gone gold! Yippee! There’s no word on an exact release date, but with this news it surely can’t be too far away. Mac, Linux and Wii versions are also on the ever-approaching horizon.

It’d be cool if there were a demo version, but perhaps that will appear at some point in the future. Meantime, should you feel like spending your hard-earned dosh in support of a clearly quite talented indie developer duo, there’s still the option to pre-order and get immediate access to an introductory chapter of the game.

Hmm… I wonder what would happen if any of that goo got into CERN’s new particle accelerator? Something even worse than a black hole, I reckon!

They don’t happen all that often, but when they do, boy do they push the boat out…

Dust off your whitewall keyboards and don your finest coding goggles! The Retro Remakes 2008 Competition is now running and you’ve got just over three months to create the finest pieces of modern retro gaming known to man. As if the fame of competing in such a prestigous event wasn’t enough, there’s a fortune to be had as well - the selection of prizes is bloody stupendous, if I do say so myself, and I fear for the sanity of all those who have organised the event.

However, as always, there’s a real-world benefit to the competition; one of the six categories into which you can enter your game is aimed directly at helping SpecialEffect, a UK charity whose goal is to help young people with disabilities to enjoy computer games. The competition has a category for their “A Game for Helen” project and you can find the rules for that, and the other 5 categories, by following the links below.

• The Main Rules (very important!)
• The Categories and their sub-rules (something for everyone, I’m sure you’ll agree)
• The Judges (see who you’re trying to impress)
• The Prizes (once more, ‘cos you can never have enough loot)
• The Forum (the place to bandy ideas about with fellow entrants)

I’ll be hoping to enter - with what, and into what category, I still don’t have much idea. But I’m sure a bolt of inspiration will strike at some point

Anyhow, the clock is ticking… good luck to all who take part!