Renaud Bédard published his second article, that highlights details of the “Trixels-technology” that they used for the game Fez. Of course, Trixels are just Voxels, but just with a more trendy name – some would say. People who count peas and know it better all the time, just go over to read the articles: Part one, part two.

Anyway. Every game-programmer is invited to read this stuff. You will learn about display-technology. And uh, Fez was made by the breathtaking Polytron Corporation.

Lawrence Lessigs latest book “Remix” is freely available as a download. I want to suggest this great read especially for people, who are interested in new economies, that are about to come. Lessig speaks of “hybrid” and “parallel” economies, that will embrace free sharing of knowledge, contribution and works, as well as commerce in certain parts. Things I often thought about in the last weeks: some sort of “hybrid economies” as opposed to “gift economies” or “full control commerce”. From the book, page 225:

The simplest but perhaps most important conclusion is that parallel economies are possible. Work successfully licensed in a commercial economy can also be freely available in a sharing economy. If this weren’t true, then there would be no commercial record industry at all: despite the war on file sharing, practically every bit of commercially available music is also available illegally on p2p networks; this “sharing” has not been stanched by either the war against it waged by the recording industry, or the Supreme Court’s declaring the practice illegal.
Yet despite this massive sharing, according to the recording industry’s own statistics, sales of music have declined by 21 percent. If parallel economies were not possible, that 21 percent would be 100 percent.

Also read my review on Gulli (in German).

Windosill does look interesting. This flash-based game is a point and click adventure, but it made the jump from being a collection of ideas to being a world full of riddles, possibilities and atmosphere. Think of games like Loom or Samorost. I even identified elements from Little Big Planet. Similar to the former games Feed the Head or Arcobots, the narrative is on an abstract level. Exploration and surprises are the thing you mainly will do, compared to use logic in order to solve riddles. The graphics are plain, clean and mostly blue, just like the other games from Vectorpark. The animation are very smooth and delicate. If you are into surrealistic worlds, subtle sound effects and well done animations, you should give this game a try. Just download this pleasure. There is also a full version available, costing only 3 dollars, so go for it! Read more about it at Jay is Games.
(via Torley)

PS: Check out other recommended game-content on Digital Tools.

The OP-1 is a new quite compact synthesizer and midi-controller made by the Swedish design team Teenage Engeneering. You eventually already have heard of them, they for example build the speaking robots at the absolute machines art-installation. And now they build the OP-1. This small synth does not only make well designed sounds. It also looks extreme good. If you are into typography only a little bit, you will definitely love that thing. Just head over to the official OP-1 website, to learn and listen all about it. Extreme inspiring stuff. Let there be more design!

“The interface is designed to inspire not to control. “

“Display test” with advanced sexiness.

Recommended reading on Gamasutra about games for social networking sites. From the designers point-of-view:

Part of the draw of games on social networks is that their asynchronous nature is highly inclusive. Friends on completely different schedules still have a sense of playing together, and essentially groups can participate just by showing up:

The average user belongs to more than one social networking site, but devotes the majority of time to only one. As such, users have different participatory rates, logging in to one social network every day, another every once in a while, and yet another, only if an e-mail beckons the user to come back.

These different participatory rates translate into different play patterns. Some players have limited time and need a game that can be played quickly whereas others are willing to spend hours on a game. In fact, depending on the day or the social networking site selected, the same user may exhibit different play patterns.

Read on the whole feature.

Glum Buster is a strange jewel. You will need a little time and patience to explore the world of this game. It is even hard to describe, what type of game it is. It contains elements of many different kinds of games: puzzle, adventure and a little shooting. Game-elements are crafted carefully, leaving a path of strangeness behind. One possible comparison would be eventually Leisure Suit Larry or the other old games from Sierra, because the overall goal of the game is to collect xxx of 275 points. The rest is up to you.

The game “Glum Buster” also seem to have a little bit of an interesting history. It took four years in the making. The developer Justin Leingang (aka CosMind) was only involved in a little community, foremost the EO-community, that always release extremely interesting indie-titles. About the game Justin says, that it is “a collection of my constant, thick-as-brick daydreams”. Can be simple as that. In an interview with GameSetWatch he said something really, really interesting:

“Glum Buster was primarily inspired by the initial play mechanics of the prototype that I built. From there, bizarre as it may sound, it was continually inspired by itself. I was constantly fueled by the development of each component – be it play mechanics and dynamics, graphics, sound effects, functionality, etc. As a result, inspiration begat inspiration. It was a pretty gratifying reciprocal process, really.”

Sounds cool, huh? Let’s check out the game. Head over to the Glum Buster website.

Today I found something really interesting. It looks esoteric, but the hack should work (although I haven’t tested it myself). If you use a floppy-disk for recording and replaying audio, you will get an “floppydisk-reverb-effect”. Interesting things. You can look at the webpage of FatManAndCircuitGirl for more esoteric, creative technology hacks. (via)