Indie Dev Moment: Hunted Forever

Cole Stryker — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Yesterday I wrote about Time magazine's Top 10 Video Games of 2008. One of the games they listed was a free flash game that I had never heard of called Hunted Forever. I spent a little time with the game last night, and found to to occupy a nice little crevice between Metanet Software's N and Pixeljam's Dino Run.

In N, the player employs all manner of gymanstics to get from one point on the map to another, collecting bits and bobs along the way. In Dino Run, the player runs from left to right as quickly as possible, avoiding obstacles as your little velociraptor attempts to escape a wall of volcanic doom.

In Hunted Forever, your dude runs around the map, avoiding an everpresent, laser-spitting, bomb-belching machine. You can run, but you can't hide, making for a consistently thrilling, if brief, adventure. With slick design and a good sense of humor, Hunted Forever surely belongs on a list of the year's best free games, though I don't think I'd go as far as placing it on a year-end list. Nice to see some indie love, though. Go play it.

Indie Dev Moment: The Glory of Thunder Lizards, Speed, and Extinction

John Constantine — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It is rare to turn on a game and be playing within seconds of its activation. Even seemingly simple games, such as Wii Sports, place hurdles between the player and action. You must press start, then select what you wish to play, then select the number of players, your skill level, and a brief loading screen that explains how to play the game or even, in Wii Sports’ case, a screen that tells you to turn off the game and take a break. The barrier is even larger in games built on a narrative foundation, where drama and exposition need to be established alongside play. (More often than not, the two are entirely separate. Even games that meld play, tutorial, and exposition in their initial moments, like Bioshock, wrest away much of your agency to allow their inciting incident to take root.) This didn’t used to be the case. Time was, all that stood between the player and the game was two buttons: power and start. It’s easy to forget how this immediacy can elicit a profound visceral and emotional reaction from the player simultaneously.

PixelJAM Games’ Rich Grilloti, Miles Tilmann, and Mark DeNardo are in the business of making games that outwardly look like little more than simplistic retro pandering, but are, in execution, remarkable examples of immersion through immediacy. Their most recent game, Dino Run, has you running from extinction seconds after you pressing start, giving you only a momentary window to process that you must run to the right and avoid everything in your way. The bright color of the tiny dinosaur you control and his pixilated surroundings are comfortingly familiar, but the game is given urgency through music, shifts in color, and distinct visual cues. It plays on extreme emotion and reflex perfectly. The game itself is exclusively concerned with momentum; you run or you die, jumping and ducking included as mechanics not to emphasize platforming but to facilitate speed. It is an essential display of videogames’ power to engage their audience in a way no other medium can.

Many thanks to Christopher of GameSpite for pointing Dino Run out to us. Check out PixelJAM’s other games here, and be sure to also try Ratmaze which is almost as insanely gripping as Dino Run.

Previously on Indie Dev Moment:

Scarygirl
Eegra Shindig
A Game a Month From Kloonigames

61 Frames Per Second : dino run

Indie Dev Moment: Hunted Forever

Indie Dev Moment: The Glory of Thunder Lizards, Speed, and Extinction