This is a fun toy. Seaquence is one of many browser tools/games which allow you to create patterns of beats, by putting squares within a looping grid, twisting the pitch and seeing what happens. It’s the only such game/tool that turns each of your loops into fish, your waveforms forming their body and each note tapping along their antennae.

It’s free, runs in your browser, and I’m sure you can do better than me. (more…)

Modern tragedies:1) That quadrophonic music never took off2) Squirrels don’t make good pets3) Dexys’ comeback album was boring4) The wonderful King’s Bounty reboot has never had a proper sequel, instead just limping from samey standalone expansion to samey standalone expansion.

So, as much as my heart still performs the tiniest leap upon hearing that there’s a new expansion out, knowing it’s just a bolt on for 2012′s ambition-free Warriors of the North kills any anticipation. Sigh. Maybe I’ll try taming a squirrel again instead. (more…)

There are times when the wait for a port can be more agonising for a PC enthusiast than it was for the passengers aboard Explorer of the Seas. And then there are the times when the wait is for the best. LocoCycle, from Splosion Man developers Twisted Pixel, looked like it might be a satisfyingly bizarre combat racing game. The story of an engineer being dragged behind an artificially intelligent motorbike (really), its live action sequences, starring the likes of Freddy Rodriguez and Tom Savini, looked as self aware as the titular vehicle. Reviews suggested otherwise, ranging from disappointment at the shoddy action to dismay at the quality of writing and humour. On February 14th, you can find out for yourself when the PC port arrives.

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So far I’ve taken about as much interest in Kinect as I have the sleeping patterns of Moldavian snails. Every now and then I’ve seen maybe an interesting proof of concept, but it really does seem to come down to other people pretending to dance while I sit in a corner wishing I were at home. But no more! Fru is a game, created by Mattia Traverso and chums, as part of last weekend’s Global Game Jam (theme: “We don’t see things as they are but as we are”), and I would very much like to play it. A twin-world platformer, where the portal to the other dimension… is you.

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Randal’s Monday is a point and click adventure starring a man doomed to repeat the same dreadful Monday over and over again. John first spotted it in December 2012 and I theorise that development has been stuck in a loop similar to the fictional one in the game’s plot since then. Now, a press release informs me that Daedalic have picked the game up for distribution and it’ll be out in the third quarter of this year. Packed with game, TV and movie references, Randal’s Monday is a “homage to geek culture”. However, I reckon it grabbed the attention of the Deponia developers by including a main character who is described as “a kleptomaniac with sociopathic tendencies who above all is a terrible friend”. Rufus and Randal need some kind of support group.

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Oh hell, it’s happened again. But this time it’s induced not only frustration but a sudden pang of guilt. Another of my SSDs has gone titsup.com and my borderline breathless fanboyism for SSDs is flashing before my eyes. What have I done? Have I been wrong all along? Are SSDs still not fit for public consumption? At the very least, it’s reason enough to re-examine just how reliable the latest solid staters are and whether the reward is worth the risk. (more…)

My first glance at Crackdown 2 dev Ruffian’s attempt to Go Indie had me muttering ‘oh great an Angry Birds clone, just what this wretched planet needs.’ Then I looked closer and instead rubbed my chin while muttering “huh, World of Goo as an RTS. They could be onto something with that.”

I didn’t mutter either of those things. I stared dumbly at the pitch video for Game of Glens for a couple of minutes, then silently opened a CMS window and began writing a complete fabrication of how I’d spent the preceding moments. I don’t know why I lie. (more…)

I don’t have the answer to my capslock question, I’m afraid. Telltale can’t quite be accused of being late with episode 2 of their rather good Fables adaptation Wolf Among Us as I don’t believe they ever gave a concrete release date. But they are late, let’s be honest. The first episode was four months ago. During that time, my baby has learned to a) sit b) crawl c) eat solids d) perform a frightening, wobbly standing up while feverishly gripping the edge of a table e) enthusiastically rip an entire newspaper to shreds in under two minutes, plus innumerable new ways to make my life both heaven and hell. SO I WOULD THINK IT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE TO CREATE A SUB-TWO HOUR ADVENTURE GAME USING EXISTING TECH AND MANY ASSETS DURING THAT TIME. (more…)

Sometimes a browser game comes along that just seems to swallow me and everyone I know. Quick to play, a challenge which measures some gaming-unrelated skill, the kind of thing you want to brag about and don’t feel bad about recommending. The last one was GeoGuessr, the game of geographic trivia. The new one is Color, the game of ffs-am-I-blind-or-something. It’s only a colour matching game, but it consumed my evening. (more…)

The first raft of people have been allowed into the beta of Steam’s upcoming In-Home Streaming tech, which enables you to stream pretty much any Steam game (and even a few non-Steam games) from your main games PC to another PC elsewhere in the house. Among those people are Graham and Alec, who’ve been trying it out on assorted hardware, and who here sit down to have a good old chinwag about their respective experiences. It’s a great idea on paper, but does it really work? Yes, obviously it does or they wouldn’t have released it. But does it work well? Sir, you are being clickbaited.

(Yes ok it works quite well, sort of, depending on your setup and which games you try, but please read the article anyway).> (more…)