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cryptogirlI am incredibly late updating! This is because the Saturday crowds ate me, you see. Bad luvviecrowds, no biscotti. Nevertheless, have some prose about things on stages and all that.
For the past couple of years we've been Fringeing, we've visited the EICC for Dare to be Digital, a 10-week challenge to create a video game which will be judged in a giant public playtest. Teams are from Abertay University and there are usually some big-name sponsors, this year Wacom and Adult Swim (of Robot Unicorn Attack fame :D), with a look-in from the ubiquitous Kinect (they bagged a slot in the industry talks this year too) and latest MMO turkey APB.
Last year, the dominating technologies were the Wiimote and XNA, and this year it was portable devices, with games for iPad, Android, Windows Phone and PSP, and an opensource tool called Ogre. My thoughts on the teams I flitted round:
- Dyed World. Really pretty cel-shaded platformer, where the lead character's paintbrush brought flat, 2D world objects into glorious 3D colour in order to get through the level. Very polished.
- Epoch Defense. Our favourite- a strategy game with War of the Worlds overtones. Moving steampunk tanks around, shoot alien ships and walkers, but when the clock rewinds, you need to take charge of 'ghost' units previously killed too. I don't play a lot of strategies, but this was really engaging and shiny.
- Sculpty. The iPad game, moulding a blue blob around a level using various gestures to change his shape. Worth a download if it's on the App Store already.
- Chayya. Sneak around a black-and-white town avoiding the alien investigators and stepping in the right coloured lights. It was pretty, but I found it buggy and...pointless? It didn't really hold my attention.
- Death Inc. The PSP offering sees the Grim Reaper and his admin assistants looking for souls to harvest in a 3D platformer. Pete got frustrated with the phasing through platforms gimmick; I thought it was OK, but nothing special.
- Weatherman. Wind Waker-ish cel shading struck again, this time with a tally-ho fighter pilot looking for a part for his crashed plane. Using a magic staff you play mini-games to control the weather around you, for instance lowering the temperature to freeze a lake, or causing rain and sun to sprout a tree to climb. The mini-games had a Dance Dance Revolution/Wind Waker feel, but it wasn't enough to hold Pete's interest. Then again, I like difficult platformers, and if they clear up the collision detection this will be a hit.
- Hella Umbrella. The Android game, controlling an umbrella-wielding character through fiendish platform hell, by rotating the phone to change gravity. I liked the art style, but my hands started to complain about all the rotating after a while...
- Mush. A Windows phone game, where you control a ridiculously kawaii ball of fluff by drawing emotions on the screen. He floats when happy, sinks when sad and smashes up things when angry. More rotating to be done as well, but it didn't seem to bother me this time. I really liked this one, definitely my runner-up for best game. Now if only I had a nice Windows phone to get it on :P
- Twang! This was great. Choose a character, then race to the end of the level by means of boingy ropes you shoot at platforms and swing from. The powerups were hilarious, like the flatulence one which blew your opponents backwards. Good fun, even for this Xbox controller retard. And I didn't mind the pink lady character for once, as it was all caricatured and amusing.
- Dice Rolling. Well, I watched Pete play this one, and was distinctly underwhelmed. Roll some dice around to match symbols on a board, with a very meh multiplayer mode. Oh, and gender-specific dice! Way to alienate me! I hate pink :D
- WiiKick. An Irish team- with the gift of the gab- and one of the few Wiimote offerings. This involved strapping a Wiimote to your foot and playing one of two footy-themed minigames, a 'beat the goalie' and a 'destroy things in a museum'. The latter baffled me, and was buggy as all hell, with three of us in a row getting unfortunate Windows errors, resulting in sheepish devs rebooting the game. They also admitted that not only was the Wiimote not particularly accurate (they wanted to develop this for the Sixth Sense), but they'd already broken one with a strap too big for a boy's foot. That, and the blatant 'pretending to be pants at footy to impress the girl' thing left me cold. ;)
- Inkwell Chronicles. This used either a mouse or shiny Wacom tablet to draw or erase your way to victory through some pretty levels. A nice gimmick. Sadly, the collision detection when slashing at enemies was truly dreadful, with mouse or pen, and coupled with my inherent dislike of WASD and utter inability to be Queen of Platformers with that control setup (meh, I like control pads, sue me), I quickly got frustrated at the second boss. Especially as the cue to his being stunned to hit him was more audio than visual, and even with headphones to the max, we couldn't hear it. Doh.
- Silent Symphony. Erm. Well, it started promisingly- more Wind Wakerness with a boy and his flute controlling the elements- but rapidly went downhill. First, it was the only game to have an engine designed by the dev himself because he 'couldn't get the right shaders' (his DIY effort was, well, not any good sadly). Secondly, the puzzles were quite non-obvious (and the second puzzle had to be reset by the chap next to us as we 'hadn't done it properly', but we couldn't find a solution in the 10 seconds required). Thirdly, they hadn't even bothered to finish one level, so we ran into a wall at the end of a cave and that, mercifully, was that.
- Grrr! Another Wiimote game, which initially suffered from the spotlights interfering with the controllers. Once we got into it, though, it was an enjoyable 2 player beat-em-up with fun characters like bears on jetpacks, crabs with gun turrets and emo unicorns who vomit rainbows. Really. Characters could move around individually or all at once, with the usual array of powerups, and a 'stand in front of player, autoattack' way of achieving victory. It could do with a little more to persuade me to keep playing, not least of all the aside from one dev to another that 'girls seem to be doing better at this today', with references to multitasking, then me promptly losing a battle. Guess I wasn't good enough.
In the end, we voted for Epoch Defense and tottered out before I was tempted to buy a Wacom Bamboo. D:
Sitting in SoCo, programme fatigue setting in, we were approached by a handsome chap in a long military coat and jackboots. Apparently there was something else to this, two free tickets to some kind of free-form Les Miserables-inspired show where the audience sat in a revolutionary café among the actors, while the drama (never the same every night) unfolded around you. Sights like Kenny, the nervous first-time mime who knitted me a mime neon pink jumper; or a play about the King featuring Pete and another audience member as the Prophet and monarch; or the Flight of the Conchords-esque guitar duo in French military get-up singing about pollution; the quiet stenographer in the corner who gets up to deliver a rousing speech on what it means to be revolutionary; and Ruby, the cross-dressing star of the show with a troubled past that comes out in a bar argument. By the time we were rushed out with the arrival of the 'police' to break up our revolutionary antics I think we were all a little inspired and creative. But mostly there were some lovely young men in uniforms. Go see, for something very different to your usual theatre.
Having trundled to the Pleasance, which was sardine can-like in appearance, we bailed to the Teviot in search of late night joy. About to leave dejectedly, I remembered that I saw a poster for Showstopper, a show by a troupe we saw last year improvising whatever the audience tore from the Fringe programme, in the lovely atmosphere of another Portakabin (why yes, we like seeing shows in Portakabins, why'd you ask?). This year they'd graduated to the Debating Hall of the Gilded Balloon, which was packed to the rafters and toasty hot. Every night was guaranteed unique, with the musical based naturally on crowd suggestions. The night we went, we witnessed 'The Squeeze', a musical about a Faliraki dating agency, including a Marxist Germany theme bar, a seedy ventriloquist club, orange and apple juice aplenty, and numbers in the style of Lloyd Webber, G&S, Rent and Stock Aitken Waterman. Quite how they could come up with songs which could happily sit on a West End stage off the cuff is remarkable, but the puns and rhymes were spot on. I liked the Sesame Street-style song explaining teenage pregnancy, with last-minute improvised Muppets in the background. And the pianist and clarinetist were out of this world too. This can only be a must-see, so please go before they totally sell out!
Fringe Refreshments of the Day: Unfussy giant extra hot chicken at Nando's on Lothian Road, incredibly overpriced Kopparberg at C SoCo, whose very name makes me weep almost as much as I did when the previous Gilded Balloon died, nice giant glass of Chardonnay, dahling, in the Gilded Balloon Mk II's Wine Bar.
Coming in your next thrilling installment- Comedy Manifesto, and Otherwise...!
For the past couple of years we've been Fringeing, we've visited the EICC for Dare to be Digital, a 10-week challenge to create a video game which will be judged in a giant public playtest. Teams are from Abertay University and there are usually some big-name sponsors, this year Wacom and Adult Swim (of Robot Unicorn Attack fame :D), with a look-in from the ubiquitous Kinect (they bagged a slot in the industry talks this year too) and latest MMO turkey APB.
Last year, the dominating technologies were the Wiimote and XNA, and this year it was portable devices, with games for iPad, Android, Windows Phone and PSP, and an opensource tool called Ogre. My thoughts on the teams I flitted round:
- Dyed World. Really pretty cel-shaded platformer, where the lead character's paintbrush brought flat, 2D world objects into glorious 3D colour in order to get through the level. Very polished.
- Epoch Defense. Our favourite- a strategy game with War of the Worlds overtones. Moving steampunk tanks around, shoot alien ships and walkers, but when the clock rewinds, you need to take charge of 'ghost' units previously killed too. I don't play a lot of strategies, but this was really engaging and shiny.
- Sculpty. The iPad game, moulding a blue blob around a level using various gestures to change his shape. Worth a download if it's on the App Store already.
- Chayya. Sneak around a black-and-white town avoiding the alien investigators and stepping in the right coloured lights. It was pretty, but I found it buggy and...pointless? It didn't really hold my attention.
- Death Inc. The PSP offering sees the Grim Reaper and his admin assistants looking for souls to harvest in a 3D platformer. Pete got frustrated with the phasing through platforms gimmick; I thought it was OK, but nothing special.
- Weatherman. Wind Waker-ish cel shading struck again, this time with a tally-ho fighter pilot looking for a part for his crashed plane. Using a magic staff you play mini-games to control the weather around you, for instance lowering the temperature to freeze a lake, or causing rain and sun to sprout a tree to climb. The mini-games had a Dance Dance Revolution/Wind Waker feel, but it wasn't enough to hold Pete's interest. Then again, I like difficult platformers, and if they clear up the collision detection this will be a hit.
- Hella Umbrella. The Android game, controlling an umbrella-wielding character through fiendish platform hell, by rotating the phone to change gravity. I liked the art style, but my hands started to complain about all the rotating after a while...
- Mush. A Windows phone game, where you control a ridiculously kawaii ball of fluff by drawing emotions on the screen. He floats when happy, sinks when sad and smashes up things when angry. More rotating to be done as well, but it didn't seem to bother me this time. I really liked this one, definitely my runner-up for best game. Now if only I had a nice Windows phone to get it on :P
- Twang! This was great. Choose a character, then race to the end of the level by means of boingy ropes you shoot at platforms and swing from. The powerups were hilarious, like the flatulence one which blew your opponents backwards. Good fun, even for this Xbox controller retard. And I didn't mind the pink lady character for once, as it was all caricatured and amusing.
- Dice Rolling. Well, I watched Pete play this one, and was distinctly underwhelmed. Roll some dice around to match symbols on a board, with a very meh multiplayer mode. Oh, and gender-specific dice! Way to alienate me! I hate pink :D
- WiiKick. An Irish team- with the gift of the gab- and one of the few Wiimote offerings. This involved strapping a Wiimote to your foot and playing one of two footy-themed minigames, a 'beat the goalie' and a 'destroy things in a museum'. The latter baffled me, and was buggy as all hell, with three of us in a row getting unfortunate Windows errors, resulting in sheepish devs rebooting the game. They also admitted that not only was the Wiimote not particularly accurate (they wanted to develop this for the Sixth Sense), but they'd already broken one with a strap too big for a boy's foot. That, and the blatant 'pretending to be pants at footy to impress the girl' thing left me cold. ;)
- Inkwell Chronicles. This used either a mouse or shiny Wacom tablet to draw or erase your way to victory through some pretty levels. A nice gimmick. Sadly, the collision detection when slashing at enemies was truly dreadful, with mouse or pen, and coupled with my inherent dislike of WASD and utter inability to be Queen of Platformers with that control setup (meh, I like control pads, sue me), I quickly got frustrated at the second boss. Especially as the cue to his being stunned to hit him was more audio than visual, and even with headphones to the max, we couldn't hear it. Doh.
- Silent Symphony. Erm. Well, it started promisingly- more Wind Wakerness with a boy and his flute controlling the elements- but rapidly went downhill. First, it was the only game to have an engine designed by the dev himself because he 'couldn't get the right shaders' (his DIY effort was, well, not any good sadly). Secondly, the puzzles were quite non-obvious (and the second puzzle had to be reset by the chap next to us as we 'hadn't done it properly', but we couldn't find a solution in the 10 seconds required). Thirdly, they hadn't even bothered to finish one level, so we ran into a wall at the end of a cave and that, mercifully, was that.
- Grrr! Another Wiimote game, which initially suffered from the spotlights interfering with the controllers. Once we got into it, though, it was an enjoyable 2 player beat-em-up with fun characters like bears on jetpacks, crabs with gun turrets and emo unicorns who vomit rainbows. Really. Characters could move around individually or all at once, with the usual array of powerups, and a 'stand in front of player, autoattack' way of achieving victory. It could do with a little more to persuade me to keep playing, not least of all the aside from one dev to another that 'girls seem to be doing better at this today', with references to multitasking, then me promptly losing a battle. Guess I wasn't good enough.
In the end, we voted for Epoch Defense and tottered out before I was tempted to buy a Wacom Bamboo. D:
Sitting in SoCo, programme fatigue setting in, we were approached by a handsome chap in a long military coat and jackboots. Apparently there was something else to this, two free tickets to some kind of free-form Les Miserables-inspired show where the audience sat in a revolutionary café among the actors, while the drama (never the same every night) unfolded around you. Sights like Kenny, the nervous first-time mime who knitted me a mime neon pink jumper; or a play about the King featuring Pete and another audience member as the Prophet and monarch; or the Flight of the Conchords-esque guitar duo in French military get-up singing about pollution; the quiet stenographer in the corner who gets up to deliver a rousing speech on what it means to be revolutionary; and Ruby, the cross-dressing star of the show with a troubled past that comes out in a bar argument. By the time we were rushed out with the arrival of the 'police' to break up our revolutionary antics I think we were all a little inspired and creative. But mostly there were some lovely young men in uniforms. Go see, for something very different to your usual theatre.
Having trundled to the Pleasance, which was sardine can-like in appearance, we bailed to the Teviot in search of late night joy. About to leave dejectedly, I remembered that I saw a poster for Showstopper, a show by a troupe we saw last year improvising whatever the audience tore from the Fringe programme, in the lovely atmosphere of another Portakabin (why yes, we like seeing shows in Portakabins, why'd you ask?). This year they'd graduated to the Debating Hall of the Gilded Balloon, which was packed to the rafters and toasty hot. Every night was guaranteed unique, with the musical based naturally on crowd suggestions. The night we went, we witnessed 'The Squeeze', a musical about a Faliraki dating agency, including a Marxist Germany theme bar, a seedy ventriloquist club, orange and apple juice aplenty, and numbers in the style of Lloyd Webber, G&S, Rent and Stock Aitken Waterman. Quite how they could come up with songs which could happily sit on a West End stage off the cuff is remarkable, but the puns and rhymes were spot on. I liked the Sesame Street-style song explaining teenage pregnancy, with last-minute improvised Muppets in the background. And the pianist and clarinetist were out of this world too. This can only be a must-see, so please go before they totally sell out!
Fringe Refreshments of the Day: Unfussy giant extra hot chicken at Nando's on Lothian Road, incredibly overpriced Kopparberg at C SoCo, whose very name makes me weep almost as much as I did when the previous Gilded Balloon died, nice giant glass of Chardonnay, dahling, in the Gilded Balloon Mk II's Wine Bar.
Coming in your next thrilling installment- Comedy Manifesto, and Otherwise...!
