Mastodawn

SetSideB Feb 12, 2025

Two Takes of Original Gaming
https://www.youtube.com/embed/u9SVCLljRx0

A double review of two of the stranger games I've seen in 2024. Both games were played with press keys while doing IGF judging.

0:00 Intro00:21 Judero3:17 Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity
https://setsideb.com/two-takes-of-original-gaming/
#indies #review #ExtremeEvolution #IGF #indie #Judero #review

YouTube

scottishgames Jan 23, 2025

Mashina: New Stop-Motion Game From The Team Behind Judero Open For Funding On Kickstarter

Jack King-Spooner and Talha Kaya, the developers behind the critically-acclaimed Judero, are back with a brand-new stop motion game – Mashina – which is now looking for funding on Kickstarter.

Jack appeared on BBC Scotland recently to describe the game and his approach to game design and creation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_w86eG7GEM

Mashina is described as a ‘digging adventure’. Players take the role of Mashina, a friendly mining robot tasked with finding minerals to help mend, build and nurture her quirky robot community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVokmAGNdys

Since it launched, a little over 24 hours ago, the game is already over 80% funded, with over £11,000 of the initial target of £12,000 pledged.

https://twitter.com/taloketo/status/1882385520883580961

Gameplay

The Gameplay in Mashina is divided into two distinct sections; a deep, mysterious underground full of trinkets and minerals and a vibrant, fully explorable 3D overground.

Underground

A lot of the game will be spent exploring, discovering and reclaiming the underground world.

Use your radar to scope out objects of interest
Dig to excavate rare minerals
Store the rare minerals safely in Mashina’s backpack
Turn those minerals into cash
Build helpful machines to aid your excavations
Find robot pals, treasures, trinkets and more!

Overground

The overground is where your pals hang out. It is here where you will find ways to enhance Mashina’s digging and broaden her horizons.

Meet the locals and get missions
Upgrade your equipment
Decorate your surroundings
Explore and find collectables and secrets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUKif2AyG8M

Art Style

Everything in Mashina is handmade out of various materials and animated using traditional stop-motion techniques. The developer then turn the animations into textures and sprites they can use in game, adding normal maps which let them have dynamic lighting and shadows.

The art style follows on from Judero which is currently nominated for Excellence in Visual Arts in the 2025 IGF Awards. Jack and Talla are building on everything they learned in Judero and aim to make an even more visually compelling stop-motion game.

Music & Sound

Music is an important part of our work. For Mashina the developers are making the extensive soundtrack using retro synths to make a sublime soundscape to chill out and dig to. All of the sound effects are made using old synths too, in keeping with the score.

Mashina will feature an exciting voice cast. Jack will be returning after his confident work in Judero. Joining him will be some of the coolest people in games such as twitch streamers BlondePizza, Vinny Vinesauce, WretchedMorgan and TheOtherFrost plus gaming connoisseurs Mechagamezilla and Jonathan Holmes.

Pledges

Funding is open until Wednesday the 12th of February 2025. Pledges start from as little as one pound, with additional tiers opening up copies of the game, soundtrack and opportunities to have items in the game – or even own one of the Mashina robots.

If you’d like to support Jack and Talha, you can find and follow the Kickstarter campaign here.

Share the AWESOME

#funding #games #indie #JackKingSpooner #Judero #kickstarter #Mashina #scotland #TalhaKaya

Talha And Jack Co

Jack King-Spooner and Talha Kaya team up to bring unique stop-motion videogames to life

Chuduuuu 🔌🍞 video editor for other people Jan 16, 2025

"The highest form of love is always something with a grain of salt." - Judero, 2024 #judero / #pixelart / #indiegame

Bluesky

Bluesky Social

Unoriginal and Uncreative Dec 31, 2024

【Yearly Wrap 2024】

I enjoyed writing my weekly game summary right up to the point Cohost died. Since then I've struggled to find a venue for the writing, and I now find it to be a massive chore.

However this has allowed me to recall the games I enjoyed over the year more easily than in the previous years.

I'll probably do it again next year in a revised lower-effort format.

GAME OF THE YEAR 2024

CAVES OF QUD

Simply the best roguelike[1] ever made. More complicatedly it is also some of the greatest sci-fi writing and world-building in video games, and some of the best blending of procedural-generated content with hand-authored material.

Congratulations to all involved for a brilliant creation.

The Top 20 Games released in 2024 excluding things I contributed to

These games, game-like stories, or collections of games, were "released" in one form or another in 2024.

Caves of Qud

1000xResist

Wilmot Works it Out

Anthology of the Killer

The Crimson Diamond

Judero

Indika

Felvidek

Midnight Scenes - A Safe Place

Mouthwashing

Psychroma

Sudden Death

Path of Achra

Webfishing

Afterplace

XENOTILT

Utopia Must Fall

Xenosphere

No Case Should Remain Unsolved

Cow Life Sim RPG

Top thing I did contribute to

I contributed to the Rabbits All-comers Mapping Project (RAMP) again this year. Map40 - This Was For the Sake of the Righteous of Course is my work. But I strongly recommend playing it for the incredible maps made by other people.

RAMP2024

Games of the Month

Each month I also named a "Game of the Month" that I enjoyed the most that month. Whether it was old, new, incomplete, or otherwise.

Swollen to Bursting Until I am Disappearing on Purpose

In Stars and Time

There Swings A Skull ~GRIM TIDINGS~

Felvidek

1000xResist

Wooden Ocean

Anthology of the Killer

The Crimson Diamond

Ostranauts

Wilmot Works It Out

XENOTILT

Caves of Qud

All roguelike impersonators also pale in comparison ↩︎

RAMPART - RAMP 2024

Unoriginal and Uncreative Dec 29, 2024

【Weekly Game Log: 2024-12-30】

I am away visiting family this week, and partaking in my usual tradition between Christmas and new year of playing a bunch of small games I missed/neglected during the year.

The Dark Queen of Mortholme is an artsy experience/game where you play as a final boss against a constantly respawning hero. A neat experiment, but one where the non-verbal imagery tends to clash with the dialogue between the characters.

Egg Squeeze is a game where you have to squeeze a dizzy-esque egg for as long as possible without breaking it, and accrue a high-score (as part of an experiment) in the process. Various, barely relevant, mechanics get piled on top as you proceed. I played about 20 minutes and enjoyed what I played a lot, though I doubt it holds much replay value.

I was recommended the game Proverbs, which is one giant minesweeper puzzle that you gradually solve and reveal a giant picture in the process. I'm enjoying this a lot, though the game cuts the puzzle into smaller regions that kind of undercuts the premise.

This is Not Your House is a short choose-your-own-adventure horror story made in ren'py, with one-bit dithered graphics. The premise is the protagonist returns home from a grocery shop to find their home occupied and the lock changed. Depending on your choices various surreal and grotesque events take place. Great writing and vivid imagery, but there is little to be "played" other than cycling through the different story options.

I finished Judero and enjoyed the world/characters/animation/music right to the end. Though it felt like a bit of a slog toward the end, it's stil an incredible effort and excellent game.

I also finally lost my Caves of Qud Sword Twink to a (literal) whirling dervish of death decapitating them with one of their eight arms. Despite being frustrated to lose my character so close to the end. It's a testament to the quality of the game and it's writing and world-building, that I just want to jump back in with a new character.

December Game of the Month

Caves of Qud

It's simply the greatest Roguelike ever made.

All Games Played

Deadlock: Good

Caves of Qud: GREAT (Notable)

Judero: GREAT (Notable)

This is Not Your House: Good

Proverbs: Good

Egg Squeeze: Good

The Dark Queen of Mortholme: OK

Unoriginal and Uncreative Dec 22, 2024

【Weekly Game Log: 2024-12-23】

An incredibly lazy week, playing basically nothing new.

Most of my gameplay this week was a ton of Caves of Qud, I have a ~10 hour run going using the "Praetorian Prime" preset build the game provides as one of its suggestions. It is the most survivable and least complicated early build. Despite this my character has slowly evolved from an armour-clad centurion, into a swimsuit wearing sword-twink who wields a crab as a shield and carries a bee hive on their back. Sadly, I gained and lost the aid of centaur and goatman wardens as allies, until they died at the hands of some racists. It's very definitely the best game of the year, even if you're only considering new stuff added in version 1.0.

I played a bit more of 10 Dead Doves. Much as with last time, I played about 5 minutes and got so annoyed with the controls I was about to quit. Then the story hooked me again and I played an hour or so before I actually stopped. Still a weird combo of awkward and profound.

I resolved my technical issues with Judero and resumed my game. I didn't get much further in it, but I did converse with a mermaid about her family slaughtering habits. I plan to finish this in the next couple of days.

I also returned to UFO 50 and Utopia Must Fall. Still solid games without being outstanding. I thought I was overly harsh on Utopia Must Fall for a while, then I had a run end because a one hit kill enemy spawned from nothing on my city and blew it up, and thought "oh, right. that."

All Games Played

Deadlock: Good

Caves of Qud: GREAT (Notable)

Judero: GREAT

10 Dead Doves: Good

UFO 50: Good

Utopia Must Fall: Good

Unoriginal and Uncreative Dec 15, 2024

【】
【Weekly Game Log: 2024-12-16】

My workplace has decided to do the "We need to work hard for the final X weeks to avoid working hard for the first X weeks next year" thing. Fortunately this upcoming week is my last one for the year. Despite this I played quite a few new and old games, mostly out of pure spite from the revolting Game Awards apologetics.

The free FPS Rose (with optional paid support DLC) decided to include y-axis inversion recently. So I decided to give it another try. Unfortunately I found it confusing both in terms of goals, and in terms of which of the things that move around and shoot me are enemies and which are just scenery. The view wobbling and narrow FOV are very disorienting and it has a double jump that sometimes doesn't work for no apparent reason.

LOK Digital is a puzzle game where you have to black out a grid of letter tiles. This is achieved by locating one of many "words" to erase, then performing a single mandatory action based on that word, and repeating until the entire puzzle is blacked out. This is really satisfying, and the "dictionary" of words provides a wide variety of puzzles, and (very) subtle clues to explain your failure. I have mostly really enjoyed this. But it's also a game where the "bonus" puzzles in each world are basically mandatory if you don't want the overwhelming majority of your time spent on pseudo-tutorial levels. I also don't think learning by doing works so well if there's constant text everywhere saying "HAY GUYS LEARNING BY DOING OVER HERE!" Also this game is apparently based on a book, but I can't possibly imagine solving this sort of puzzle in a book would be at all pleasant.

I made time to pick up my Judero game again, and the game continues to be incredible. The combat is still a tad awkward, but the music, aesthetics, and myriad crazy storylines and characters more than make up for it. Unfortunately I hit a constant crash bug at the end of the 2nd area that means I cannot complete the game until it is fixed.

I'm still playing a ton of Caves of Qud. Not much new to say, except that the game is as good as ever. And I'm still seeing both new content, and random improvements from version 1.0.

Cow Life Sim RPG is a bizarre game seemingly made in MSPaint. You play as a cow arriving via (tutorial) boat to their land inhabited entirely by queer (be it gay, lesbian, transgender, NB, or Italian) animals. While their you level up skills like walking around, scavenging, looking at things, juicing things (into juice of juice), and arson. Occasionally you trade things or do a quest. The dialogue here is both incredible and hilarious. "Arson Alligator" is one of the best new characters this year.

Another of the Kickstarter games I backed also released recently. 10 Dead Doves is a third person horror/adventure game, with tank controls, fixed camera angles, and humans with bizarre uncanny valley texture-map faces. You play as Marcus, searching with your friend Sean for a thing called "The Ant Farm" in the Appalachian mountains. I've found the mechanical act of playing this game awkward and borderline painful with a wrist-breaking (mandatory) keyboard binding or clumsy controller setup. But the actual story and vibe of the game is impeccable. A very mixed bag so far, but I look forward to seeing more of it.

All Games Played

Deadlock: Good

Caves of Qud: GREAT (Notable)

Rose: Disappointing

LOK Digital: Good

Judero: GREAT

Cow Life Sim RPG: GREAT (Notable)

10 Dead Doves: Good

The Pixel Post Oct 8, 2024

Notre vaillant Seastrom cherchait un jeu se démarquant des autres. Bonne nouvelle pour lui, il semble avoir trouvé avec #Judero :
https://thepixelpost.com/critiques/judero-critique/