Official Minecraft LEGO
Phil Nelson In which Minecraft comes full circle. My friends and I have long referred to Minecraft as “Grown-up LEGOs” and now it’s regular LEGOs, too.
Spelunky For Xbox Live Progress Report
Just a reminder to you, the Extra Future reader, that one of my favorite games of last year is coming to Xbox Live Arcade and it looks great.
Lost Garden on Video Game Heroes and Fandom
The article is games-specific, but I find that it applies to any creative media: Games, film, music, web development. Many points and questions worth digesting, especially the central question: Are the games you have fandom for WORTH your time and love?
Much of modern fandom is mired in what appears, to me, to be an abusive relationship.
Plants vs. Zombies for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
One of my favorite games of 2009, released for one of my favorite devices for the slim price of $2.99. Worth every penny.
TIGSource User Oryx’s 8-bit Fantasy Graphics Tiles
These are all absolutely gorgeous. They include tiny (8×8) first person dungeon crawl tiles!
Epic Games Releases Unreal Development Kit
The hyper-expensive and sometimes-maligned Unreal Engine gets a free / indie version. The Unreal Development Kit is free for non-commercial use, and $2500 per-seat for commercial games.
With Unity making a similar offering last week, the independent games scene is only going to get better.
2d Boy: Results of the “Pay-What-You-Want” World of Goo Sale
Great detail and some analysis from 2d boy. Points of interest:
- A not-insignificant portion of purchases were for less than 30 cents, which PayPal took all of.
- There are a lot of charts and stuff in the post, I love them for the amount of detail they’ve gone into and shared with the rest of us.
- They say 57,000 copies at about 2.03 per copy. By my math, that’s $115,710, not counting PayPal fees OR the spike in their Steam (+40%) and WiiWare (+9%) sales over the same period. Not a bad chunk of change.
- They’ve extended the sale to October 25th. If you haven’t bought it yet, the only way to redeem yourself is to do so now, and pay more than $2.03.
Overall, sounds like a win for everybody.
World of Goo Birthday Sale
For World of Goo’s 1st birthday, 2d Boy are having a “pay whatever you want” sale, for the PC, Mac and Linux versions of the game. There is no excuse not to buy this.
TIGSource on Indie Brawl’s First Public Release
The independent games answer to Super Smash Brothers. Featuring 16-bit art, beautiful chiptune music and your favorite indie games characters.
@Play: 2009 7DRL Winners, Part Three
John Harris concludes his look at the 2009 7-Day Roguelike competition.
Invaders! Possibly from Space!
A video game based on the “Raiders of the Lost Arcade” segment of the Futurama episode “Anthology of Interest 2“.
Braid Released for Mac OS X
Jonathan Blow’s 2008 independent games masterpiece is now available for the Mac. If you haven’t played it yet, you are missing out, and you no longer have an excuse.
Amazon.com Now Selling Xbox Live Arcade Games
This is a pretty big deal. Amazon selling download codes for XBLA games is a good step for retailers getting in on the downloadable action, which will get more exposure to download-only games, which will get everybody paid more. I hope.