Ciellus

Terry's VVVVVV has been released, and so far has received some pretty good reviews and praises despite not making the 2010 IGF finalists.

The game is actually quite fun, but the simple graphics might be a big turn-off for some people. The whole gravity-flipping gameplay is fun and challenging, but not really revolutionary. The game is still very fun nonetheless, and you should at least try out the demo.

In other news, it looks like Ciellus really won't be happening unless something miraculous happens, as can be seen both from Terry's post here and this from Annabelle Kennedy.

More Ciellus news! Actually, it was really just a new screenshot, but it's worth talking about anyway!

Since a one-sentence post isn't really fun to read, here's more info about the game...remember how Ciellus was originally made for TIGSource's procedurally generated game contest? This means some elements in the game will be procedurally generated, and in this case, it looks like the terrain/dungeons are it.

Looking at the screenshot, the terrain won't be all blocky a la most adventure games, instead there will be slopes and curves!

And that's all! Until next time.

Once upon a time, a little project called Ciellus entered TIGSource's PGC Competition. The game was made by the tag team of Annabelle Kennedy (art and music) and Terry Cavanagh (programming).

In the beginning, only artworks were shown. However, they were not simply artworks, they were AMAZING artworks, so amazing, the game's thread, with only concept arts, garnered more replies than all other game threads that came with demos, plans and whatnot. Later, when it was revealed that Ciellus would be a pixel art game, and a subsequent screenshot was shown, the crowd went wild, and expectations probably shot through the roof.

Well, well, well, the PGC, also known as the Procedural Generation Competition. is finally in its final stage. With a whopping 60 submissions, boy are there some gems among the submissions. TIGSource should really do these kind of contests more often. The only downside is the deadline--seems like many projects could have done a lot better with more time.

For me, one of the themes of this competition seems to be the unplayability of games, whether due to some stupid .NET compatibility or others...and judging by reader feedbacks in the competition forum, I'm not the only one.

I've listed some games below that I've been keeping my eyes on throughout the competition. Note I've played/tried all of the submissions (other than the ones I can't get to run, of course, thanks to crappy computers in China), and the ones below have made a pretty big impression on me.