Game of the year, 2010
This is a headline that I will freely admit I never thought I would write. But this is too good to pass up. It is genius. For a couple of reasons.
Let me list them for you!
But first, here is what it is. It is a youtube video or several. Also, the best twilight-themed game I have ever played. Play/watch it here:
So let’s get started. Reasons that I think it’s genius.
There is a very nice piece up on the Escapist today, about the role of bosses in modern games. It features thoughtful insights from Team Meat‘s own Edmund McMillen! Also, a bunch of random and self-contradictory statements from yours truly! But then, on the last page, we totally combine our powers for a thrilling conclusion!
Give it a glance!
For various reasons that are right and good, today’s update will be delivered in the form of several haiku.
Been playing StarCraft 2 beta a bit lately, with the fine folks at Final Form Games. I had originally been down on it since it didn’t sound like it was going to have a 2 player co-op single player game. (Unlike Dawn of War, Red Alert 3 etc.) Being a big fan of co-op, this made me sad. Then we discovered 2v2 multiplayer, and life became beautiful and full of flowers. And explosions. Actually, mostly explosions. Frequently in my base, but occasionally in other peoples’, which generally makes me happy.
One thing that I’ve noticed though, is that the game features an almost comical profanity filter. To, you know, keep people’s delicate sensibilities intact in the in-game chat. Happily it can be easily disabled or circumvented (standard tricks like putting spaces in the word work) but so far we’ve left it on, figuring that most people will leave it on by default, and we’d rather make sure we know when we’re being bleeped out. Because you see, it is a bit… overzealous… in what it considers inappropriate. Read on for our inappropriate findings!
It looks like video games are on their way to court again. In particular, a 2005 law in California prohibiting selling of violent video games to minors. It has been struck down once already by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, (on grounds that it violated free speech rights) but is on its way to be heard by the Supreme Court.
All of that is interesting, fascinating and tremendously important for the future of the industry, etc. As a programmer, the “is programming free/protected speech” issue is naturally somewhat important to me. I would be saddened to see a law that made it illegal for budding programmers (who are minors) to make crappy remakes of Double Dragon and show them to their (also minor) friends.
But that’s not the part I want to talk about right now. All of this got me curious enough to look at the law in question, and one part in particular seems really really odd to me. I realize that reading through legal texts isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time, but bear with me for a moment, and check out this part:
Neat! According to this website (Zehn.de) [google translation] Boss Rush is the 9th most thrilling action game on the internet! Canabalt is predictably #1, but it’s kind of cool to be mentioned in the same article!
We got another review (and nice placement!) on revlry.com. They seem to like it! Awesome! Thanks Revlry!
Also, somehow we seem to have made it to the top google search for “Boss Rush”! Which is surprising, but still pretty cool!
It’s Friday, and Boss Rush has been publicly available for 4 days now. What does the public think of this? More than I expected, actually! We’ve received some very nice coverage from a number of places! Here are the ones I know about!
(With a special thanks to Shih Tzu, (yes, that Shih Tzu) who found a lot of these!)
Full list under the break!
So it’s been a long, funny sort of road, but after a lot of delays, (some completely unrelated to game programming, and a few, unrelated to Boss Rush at all) but it finally happened.
Remember Boss Rush? The game about being a boss, that seemed like it wasn’t ever going to actually come out? Well guess what. Boss Rush is done. Released. And playable. Finally!
So what are you still doing here? Play it already! Go! Go!
If you’re reading this, then that means the server change has worked, and I have successfully migrated the website to a new hosting provider. Huzzah!