Today it’s mostly entertaining videos for you. I hope you enjoy them.
Link: Sworcery A/V Jam Tumblr
This tumblr is a collection of the results of the Swords and Sworcery Art Jam. This little project was a coordinated effort to create and collect fan art for the Sword and Sworcery game. There’s some pretty stunning pieces to find in there.
Video: Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012
A great heartfelt speech from Neil Gaiman about life as a creative person or artist. Both about the good and the bad times. I primarily loved his quote:
And when things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art.
Game: Parameters
This wonderful little game is available in both english and japanese but once you’re past the introduction you won’t really need any instructions. The game is a kind of Diablo reduced to it’s essentials: Klicking for rewards to clean up the space. It’s a great example to showcase the power of rewards because the game is excessively minimal yet still intriguing. I spent about 30 minutes until I had it beat, so yeah.
Video: Crayon Dragon
An excellent little student project that manages to tell a touching story almost without words. This is something that video games often find very very difficult. We still tend to have a lot of games where the primary storytelling method is to simply tell the player. Granted, there are great examples where words are being used to great effect, such as Bastion and Dear Esther (haven’t played the latter so I can not vouch for that).
Comic: Zen Pencils
You may have seen individual strips from this comic floating across the internet before. And this is because it is pretty awesome. The artist takes famous quotes (or not so famous ones) and makes small comic strips out of them. Granted they are sometimes a bit hit or miss based on the quote but overall I really enjoyed the art and will definitely follow it.
Video: Welcome to Life
A scary-funny little video extrapolating the current internet trends into a transhumanist world of mind-uploading and restoring. The video manages to do a lot with just a little – there’s no flashy animations or even acting. It’s all just screens – but it worked for me. Granted the ideas mentioned in the video are still a far far way off (if ever possible) but the idea of such a possible future is pretty unsetteling.
Link: Insert Coin article about Tentacle Bento Kickstarter
And yet another Kickstarter link. In the article the author uses Tentacle Bento as an example why Kickstarter would need some kind of content regulation. Why? Because it’s a game about raping schoolgirls, which is certainly in poor taste at the least. This sort of thing may just be the “dark side” of crowdfunding. If people can get their desired products funded, then what about the people with… unusual desires. There certainly are enough people out there nowadays. Looking at Tentacle Bento it certainly exceeded it’s goal by over 100% extra. That’s something, right?
Video: The Art of the Instakill
An excellent little video showcasing different weapons and attacks to instantly defeat your opponents. It’s a great real-life shot that blends many different games into one another into a beautiful daisy-chain of murder.