Game developer, Thomas "Less Milk" Palef, is currently in the middle of a self-imposed challenge to develop one new game every single week. Game development is a hobby for Palef, but he wanted to kick things up a notch and actually start finishing playable games. So, for over a month, Palef has been busy coding a producing a new HTML5 game every week."It's been six weeks now, and I've learned a lot," Palef said to Gamezebo during an interview. "I'm really trying my best to make each game better that the previous ones, and so far I think that I have achieved this goal. I know that I have only one week to make a game, so I keep my ideas and mechanics simple. This way it's not that hard to make a game in one week."
After last week's debacle involving game developer King trademarking the word CANDY, game developers around the world vented their frustrations by participating in the Candy Jam, a game jam event designed solely to passive-aggressively taunt the trademark system as well as King's other embarrassment from last week, being accused of ripping off another developer's game. The Candy Jam website sets its mantra as: "Because trademarking common words is ridiculous, because ethics matter and because it gives us an occasion to make another game jam."Developers have since been working on creating their games, and uploading them to the Candy Jam website for others to check out. While the Candy Jam lasts through February 3rd, there are a good number of games already posted.One of the more polished games posted is Discord Games' Candy Chasm Saga, an endless-faller that involves falling down an chasm filled with candy, attempting to collect as much candy as possible while avoiding crashing into the scary-looking tokens floating about. Magnets are available to scoop up and make your candy-grabbing life easier, and golden apples provide limited invincibility. Candy Chasm Saga borrows art assets from Discord Games' full-time project, Chasm.
Currently seeking for $6,000 through Kickstarter, Savage: The Shard of Gosen puts players in the loincloth of a barbarian in the world of Lor. Heavily inspired by Conan, Super Mario Bros. 2, and Castlevania, Savage: The Shard of Gosen is currently being developed for Windows PC with an estimated release window of July-December of this year. Matt Fitzgerald is the solo developer behind the game, and describes Savage as a real passion project."I've tinkered with art, music, film, animation and comics in some capacity," Fitzgerald explains on the Kickstarter campaign, "everything from amateur to freelance, and it's an absolute joy to concentrate everything I've learned and apply it to a video game project. It scratches so many itches: from logic and design to art and music!"
Parenting - it's a real challenge. Especially when you're an octopus pretending to be a man. But that's exactly the challenge you'll have to face if you're playing Octodad: Dadliest Catch -- a new QWOP-like game that's just hit Steam.We went hands-on with Octodad: Dadliest Catch today in a Twitch livestream, and have captured the goodness here for your enjoyment. If you like it, be sure to give us a follow on Twitch and/or YouTube. There's plenty more where this came from! (well… there will be in the coming days).We had some sound balancing issues on this one, but never fear! They'll be remedied before the next Let's Play.
Every now and then I love to take a break from playing all of the hot new releases in gaming and spend some time playing through some of the old faithful titles from years ago. Whether I never got a chance to play them way back when, or whether I just wanted to revisit their magic for pure nostalgia's sake, there's no denying that the lovely world of free games and sales has been making this feat all the more obtainable each and every day.This week we've got quite a few older games making the sales roundup, but just because they're old that doesn't make them any less fan-flipping-tastic! In addition to those, we've also got a catalogue-wide sale of 2K Games titles going on over at the App Store, and another Android game bundle that's truly out of this world."Decisions, decisions. Do you have any idea which games your money is going to flock to this weekend? Know about any other great deals in gaming that we may have missed? As always, don't forget to let us know by leaving a comment down below!
Wow, what a way to start off the year on a high note! We're only a month into 2014 right now, and we've already seen a number of wonderful game releases that put a big ol' smile on our faces. And not only were these games all great in their own right, but we even went as far as to call some of them early contenders for our next Game of the Year. Think I'm kidding? Well let's not forget that Gamezebo's Game of the Year 2013 was released at the tail-end of January last year, so anything is possible at this point!There's no question that January 2014 has been a month for long-awaited games to finally come to fruition: games that have been in development for so long that their names were starting to become something of a legend in of themselves. But boy are we glad that we actually got to play them now, because when it comes to an epic Viking-themed quest across the frozen tundra and a frantic multiplayer sword fight, I think it would be an understatement to say that it was more than worth the wait."So do you feel the same way as we do about January's shining stars in gaming? Were there any other strong contenders you think deserved a spot on our list? Don't be shy - we want to hear about them! And at least we can all agree on one thing for certain: if this past month was any indication, then we have an unbelievable year of games to look forward to.
When scouring the globe for the latest in gaming gossip, it's not often that a story comes out of my local paper - but hey, it had to happen sometime.On Tuesday, January 28th, a 12 year old boy from St. Catharines, Ontario decided to take his grandmother's Nissan Altima for a joyride. Unlike most kids who do such silly things and crash before the end of the block, this kid got pretty far. All the way to the Canada/US border, in fact.The Queenston-Lewiston Bridge acts as one of several gateways in Niagara between Canada and the United States, and it's a good 20 minutes from St. Catharines (possibly more depending on where in the city he started from). Not only that, but it requires some serious highway driving - including a trek over the monstrously tall Garden City Skyway that still terrifies me on every trip I take.
It faced down long-established booksellers in 1994, expanded that fight to big box retailers a few years later - and, in 2011, it took on Apple and Google with the launch of the Kindle Fire tablet. Now it has its eye on the mobile gaming market - and to win this fight, it will need to take its gloves off.The Kindle Fire is already a decent gaming device. 70% of all users play games on it - with ARPU's that are higher than Google Play and neck-to-neck with Apple. But there's room to grow. And while Amazon might be behind to the gaming world, Microsoft was also a latecomer in the console space - and it went on to be a leader.In fact, Amazon appears to be following a trail similar to the one Microsoft blazed, using a three-pronged strategy: Implement a top-down approach; invest in the necessary talent; and create a developer friendly ecosystem and platform.