Press M For Murder.

Hey, so we haven't had a game for a while. To be honest it's because nothing has really grabbed me. No matter how nicely polished or deep, every flash game I play recently seems to be a variation on a familiar theme.

Then finally something held my shrivelled attention. Ironically it was a game made as part of an indie game design contest called Ludlum Dare 48H, which tasks entrants with making a full game in just 48 hours. The game I'm about to show you was created by a guy called Adam Saltsman who created the previously-plinked Canabalt and it really shows that he has mastered the 'simple concept makes compelling game' trick.

Taking place on a single, unmoving screen and lacking in such luxury features as a play button or any instructions, this game is minimalist to say the least. However, it gets very hectic very quickly.



It's called Grave Robbers but you do not play the eponymous thieves. Rather, you play the unseen omnipotent force that is trying to thwart them using a number of carefully laid traps, each mapped to a key on the keyboard.

As the little animation-free swines swarm through your dungeon, you'll be hitting S to drown them, K to squish them and U to burn them (amongst others). Don't be squeamish though, the spartan graphics ensure there is no gore.

They will try every different direction and the 'cool-down' time on each trap means you will quickly start flailing about trying to rain death on your puny yellow foes before they can abscond with your loot.

It's frantic and fun. Give it a shot:

Grave Robbers.

The Fake Sound(s) Of Progress.

Evening.

We humans are a pretty sophisticated bunch. Some people dedicate their lives to working out how we tick. They study behaviour and stick electrodes into squishy pink brains. They probably do other stuff too but that's technical enough, right?

Anyway, we like to strut about this planet like we own the place. As if we are masters of all we survey. We have built incredible machines to perform menial tasks for us (by we, obviously I don't mean you & I. I mean clever people) and we perhaps not unreasonably regard ourselves as in control of the machines.

Turns out that the artificial bastards might be pulling one over on us.

Collected HERE is a list of 5 ways in which machines lie to us to make us feel better. The most unexpected one for me was the cash machine. I'll never look at one the same way again, and I suspect you won't either.

POST ENDS.
*whirr. clunk. beeeeeeeep*

Let Slip The Sprogs Of War.

Hey, get comfy and watch this video.
It's just your average clip of a bunch of kiddywinks larking about with plastic guns. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happens.

Y'know, this charade would be a lot easier to keep up if it weren't for the preview frame of the video giving the game away below.

Ah well, just watch it. Cutesy carnage ensues.



GET SOME.

Exhibit I.

Hey so Facebook is pretty neat, huh? It's handy for keeping in touch with friends and for sharing pictures, videos and links.

Once you've created your profile, anyone can come poke about in what is, essentially, a shrine to you. Everything you say, everywhere you go, every picture of you. It's all there. A treasure trove of information about you that would make the most committed stalker look sheepish. It's almost like a museum

That's exactly what you'll find here at the Intel-sponsored Museum Of Me. To tell you any more would spoil it. Just click through and grant it access to your facebook profile. You won't regret it, promise.

Hairy Man Shows Internet Findings.

Hey there.
A decent movie needs a snappy title, right? Or at least a memorable one. Zack Snyder is much more likely to be remembered for Watchmen, 300 & Sucker Punch than for Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, I'd wager. So the title is pretty important.

Now almost all movies get released all over the world and it turns out some of the people in foreign lands don't even speak English? Madness. So the flick gets translated, including the title. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.

An example:



An excellent film with a no-nonsense title. Not so in China. No. There it's called 'This Hitman Is Not As Cold As He Thought'.

Yeah. Turns out this is pretty common. In Germany; Airplane became The Unbelievable Trip In A Wacky Aeroplane and, incredibly, China never got to experience The Shawshank Redemption, but instead got the stupefying title 'Excitement 1995'!

Want more? Well check out this list of 50 Funny Movie Translations to see how films can be completely undermined by having their title translated. The one for Sixth Sense is incredible.

One of my personal favourites though: 'Leaving Las Vegas' becoming 'I'm Drunk And You're A Prostitute' in Japan. Hyuk hyuk.

Plinx Quickie.

Hiya.
Just wanted to call your attention to a webcomic series that's just been started by my pal Alex. It's a simple 3-panel type affair and the concept is explained in the title:

Setup, Beat, Puke.



Yup, each comic ends with Alex himself dropping a barf. It may not seem like much on its own, but when you see them all together... well it makes me laugh. And hey! it's not like there isn't a success story out there which uses repeated panels each comic, right?

Oh, also; Alex kindly put up a guest comic created by yours truly. Check that one out Here and click Here for the whole shebang.

Yay! *pukes*

April: A Retrospective.

Hello there.
I didn't get much plinking done in April, perversely this seems to be because I had too much free time. I had a fair bit of time off work and I never really felt like it was the right time to sit down at my computer for a spell. Now things have returned to relative normalcy, I'm going to sum up the last few weeks in bullet point format.

> Running
> Portal 2
> Barbecues
> Thor
> PlayStation-induced Fury

Starting at the top, I did a run! Yes, another one. In Prague this time. It's a beautiful city and I had a great time. The run went OK, better than the last half-marathon anyway. Y'know, the one where I lost consciousness? Here's a victory snap:



Whee! Medals!

Then, a while later; Portal 2 descended from on high to bring me joy unrelenting. Well, not quite unrelenting but I'll get to that later. If you're unfamiliar with Portal 2, here's the trailer:



Having waited for it for so long, I was concerned it wouldn't live up to expectations but I needn't have worried. It's brilliant. If you play games, you've probably played it already or plan to do so soon and if you don't play games... Portal 2 has you covered there too.

It's clever, it's funny and... erm, I'm sure the co-operative mode is really good too... grumble mumble bloody PSN.

What's next? Ah yes, GRILLFESTS. Yeah, it's barbecue season and we kicked things off in sensational style by having one every bank holiday. I couldn't possibly consume any more charred flesh until, well the next barbecue on Monday. I hope you're chowing down similarly.

Another, less videogamey, event I had been anticipating for some time was the release of the movie adaptation of Thor. I love the character and had been watching trailers and looking at screenshots with increasing alarm. I really didn't want the movie to suck, and guess what? It doesn't! It's not any sort of breathtaking step forward for the genre but it was a nice slice of super-powered fun. They still missed a trick in not casting This Guy as the main man though.

AND in case you were wondering if I had totally jettisoned the plinx format for this post, never fear. Here's a surprisingly awesome promo game released on the Marvel website to coincide with the film release: Thor - Bring The Thunder. It's got charming, retro style and is surprisingly deep. Give it a go.

Things can't be uniformly great though. Something had to rock the applecart and tip over the boat. April's sunny skies were darkened not by a thunder god, but by... Sony.

Yeah, you've seen it on the news, the PlayStation Network or PSN is down. STILL. After an absence of over a week, I'm still waiting to play the supposedly excellent co-op mode in Portal 2. It's been infuriating as there aren't many occasions where I actually want to play online, then one comes along and I'm denied that right. I know it's very much a first-world problem but shut up, I want my fancy space toys!

So, to sum up. If April had to be represented by one image, it'd me of me taking a run up before hurling a mythical hammer fashioned from burnt meat through a set of portals right into the face of Sony president Howard Stringer.

It'd be nice if I had the talent to draw that, but I don't. Sorry!

See you next time.

Carrion My Wayward Son.

Hello, sorry I haven't updated lately. These are busy times.

Today's plink is a game about some animals seeking vengeance on cars and other vehicles for their squished brethren. Essentially, you have a jet-propelled mechanical raccoon which you can launch into traffic with the aim of doing as much damage as possible.

And why not.

It's got a neat line in optional 'bonus challenges' that will keep you clicking the replay button and is generally some harmless, explodey fun.

Roadkill Revenge!

Slow On The Uptake.

Evening.
I'm back from Prague. The half marathon went well and it's a delightful city. There may well be a blog post in it when I get some photos, but for now I'd like to share a video with you.

I'm pretty much a sucker for anything cool filmed in slow motion, there's some great footage out there taken on high speed cameras that blows my mind. I could show you the water balloon exploding in slo-mo, or the bullet going through things schtick, but you've seen that already.

Here's something a lot more restrained. It's footage of jugglers, unicyclists and other assorted ball manipulators *ahem*. Circus skills, essentially but sloooooooooow.

Check it:



Nice.

Plinx Quickie.

Hiya,
I'm off to foreign lands tomorrow to participate in another half marathon because apparently I didn't learn my lesson last time.

So to tide you over, let's have a quickie.

How To Explain The Internet To A 19th Century Street Urchin: A Flowchart.

See you soon!

Park In It, Man.

There's a chance that you're reading this at night. A smaller chance that it is night-time and you can see the sky from where you are and a smaller-still chance that it is night-time, you can see the sky and it is clear enough for there to be stars.

But if you DO meet all those criteria, have a gawp at the twinkly devils now. Nice isn't it? Wish we could see more of what's going on up there. My limited knowledge of the cosmic ballet is such that I know that celestial bodies are forever spinning around each other. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could watch. Or, at the very least, see a simplified representation in our browsers.

Well friends, your prayers are partially answered! Peep this:

The Solar System.

Hooray for space! While you're there click down in the bottom right to convert to a Tychonian representation. Now you can have it trace the orbit of any planet you choose. Essentially creating a galactic spirograph.

Twirly.

Sugar Daddy.

Hiya.
You're a sensible person, right? So that means you drink tea. Or, at a push, coffee. How many sugars do you take? Oh really? That's interesting. Those of you who gave an answer greater than zero, how many grains do you think that number of spoonfuls would consist of?

Essentially, what I want to know is, would you put 100 grains of sugar into a cup?

Sugar, Sugar is a game that will task you to do just that; put 100 grains of sugar into a cup. Simple. I mean, you'll face the same challenges you would if you were making a cuppa at home: transport the sugar from where it is kept to wherever the cup may be, make sure you're putting the right type of sugar in the right cup, etc. Obviously, just like at home, you'll also need to drop the sugar through a hole in the floor so that it will fall from the ceiling and sometimes you'll need to flip gravity on its head.

Basically, you've been training for this your whole life.

So go. Go and draw those lines necessary to ferry the sugar from the comma it lives in to the waiting cups. Go play Sugar, Sugar.

Plinx Quickie.

*pops head in*
I'll just leave this here:

Alphabeards!

OK Mr. Sunshine!

Hello, this post presents a bit of a quandary for me. On the one hand, I don't want to over-explain the concept because it would strip away some of the joy of discovery. On the other hand, as you'll see in a moment, the more words I can put on the page, the better. I suppose one solution would be to talk at length about this dilemma so as to solve it in such a way that retains the mystery while creating enough raw material for you to enjoy.

Also, I suppose I could squeeze a few sentences out of the fact that this miraculous thing you're about to see may not work depending on the browser you're using. I can vouch for it's effectiveness using Google Chrome and I'm assured that the newer versions of Firefox run it fine, but I haven't tested IE. Maybe if you feel like you're missing out, you could convert?

Ok, that's enough blurb. Just click below to Katamarify this very page!

NAAAAA NA NA NA NA NA NAAA NA.

Visit the Site for more info.

Sty Stallone.

Evening all.
It's game time. I hope you're ready, because it's the bottom of the ninth, the bases are loaded and I've run out of baseball clichés. Should probably have picked a sport I know more about. Or just not persevered quite as far with this tawdry introduction.

Either way, you're about to play a game where a pig in a bandana uses an arsenal of weaponry to take out other, presumably evil, pigs.

It's a 2D physics puzzle game, like so many that have gone before but the quality is elevated by the variety of weapons and intelligent level design. Also, if you run out of levels to play, there is a whole gallery of user-generated ones.

It's good, wholesome, cartoony, pig-murderin' fun for all the family.

It's Hambo!