Oh, the 4-th dimension. Not really easy to understand – but why not make a game of it? Miegakure does so. It is a puzzle-platformer, where you have to explore the rules of the 4th dimension to solve the stages. Only some screenshots and this gameplay video is available until now, but the game should be available for PC/Mac and consoles later on. It seems, that XKCD already had a play with it.

(via)

redScratch is an upcoming game from Hungary, that looks quite promising at the first glance. This game will be a “fast 2D action platformer with 9 unique stages“, the author Balázs Sabransky tells at the pixelinvoke-blog. It will somehow focus on essential things: It should no be very long or won’t have an epic story, but it should be a challenging game, with tons of secrets in it. Yummy. If we look at the first demo-video, than we can detects an emphasis on style and gameplay as well. redScratch should be free and availble for PC later this year.

Ecological-themed games are still some sort of exotic thing, I wonder why. Lately I came across the iPhone-game Kovoclak, where you have to fight waste in the form of an “businessman”. This game Big Tree Defense is a casual, gameplay is derived from “Desktop Tower Defense”. Your mission is to grow a plant in a wasted environment. To grow you must fight evil insects and support the plant with water. What makes the game remarkable is not only the topic, but also the style of sound and grafic is some decent. Worth a try. (via Superlevel)

The game 1924 has a nice twist, besides in being in pure grayscale colors. I don’t want to spoil you here, but if you play the game, just look out at the interaction of the game-mechanic and the (potential) storytelling attitude. This can get much further. And ah, the music is also great at 1924. Happy tune, happy play. Like it.

(via Flixel.org)

Robot wants Kitty is a well made little arcade-plattformer. You play a robot, that wants the kitten. While playing, the robots collects more and more items that gets him better abilities like shooting, jumping or double jumping. There is nothing outstanding about this game, but everything that is, is solid made. A solid gaming experience. I like it! Flash-browser ready (and it totally looks like made with Flixel). (via)

Nitrome are back with once again a nice casual game with polished graphics and a little bit more of gameplay, like other simple casual games have. In Rouble Trouble you have to destroy. Yay. Destroy buildings for your boss. Every tiny bit you destroy will get you a little bit more money. The nice thing is, that this game do not rely on one (simple) game-mechanic, but every of the first level introduce new “weapons of chioce”. There is a bit of stories involved, adding to making this a nice casual for the meantime. Only the music is really annoying. I also think that the game is a little bit too easy – it should get challenging much more faster. (via)

Devil’s Tuning Fork: Not only beautiful, but also innovative.

The student winners of the IGF 2010 student competition were announced. As you can imagine, there are high quality works among them, some have really innvative things to show.

My interest went to the game “Devils Tuning Fork“. It’s basically a game in the style of a “first person shooter”, but the interesting detail is provided by the texturing. The game is inspired by works of M.C. Escher and the echo-sounder / echo-location communication (like dolphings and bats do). You strife through blackness, until an “sound-event” is taking place. From there a lightwave is illuminating the scene. One of your tools is a “tuning fork”, that dispatches sound waves. The goal of this game was to “explore a new mode of perception through sound visualization.” Like if you were playing with your ears.

The game was made in about six months by a bigger team. The result looks cool, polished and that new visual perception really scores! They also had some kind of storyline, not too original, but also something “above the line”:

As a mysterious epidemic causes children everywhere to fall into comas, one child wakes up in an alternate reality. It is up to this child, the player, to determine the cause of the epidemic and save the other children trapped here. By way of the devil’s tuning fork, a magical instrument that allows the player to perceive sound waves, the player must find all the children and successfully escape this alternate reality, thereby waking up from the coma.

Update:
I found just another cool making-of: