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Indie developer Derek Yu finally gave Spelunky fans a preview of his acclaimed roguelike/platformer's upcoming XBLA port with four screenshots from the project. These images show off the game's new high resolution, hand-painted graphics, dynamic lighting, and other visual effects that you won't find in the original PC version.

What you won't see in these screens, though, are all the other additions planned for the port: achievements, leaderboards, new game modes, new audio, new items, new monsters, and more. I presume we'll hear more about those as Spelunky XBLA's release later this year approaches. Jump past the post break for more images!

[Via @attractmode]

I spent far too much time playing Guns of Icarus this morning after seeing it on IndieGames's convenient link-round-up. Developer Muse Games (Elementia, Extreme Sledding) recently entered the title into the IGF 2010 Main Competition, and released a trial version that you can play in your browser.

The Unity 3D-powered game has you manning an airship in "an apocalyptic steampunk future", shooting down pirates and repairing your craft. If you make it to your destination (you'll have multiple branching paths with varying difficulty to choose from) with enough undamaged cargo, you can upgrade your ship's armor and weapons (e.g. cannons, tesla gun).

Guns of Icarus's full/paid downloadable PC and Mac editions feature 19 levels, 8 gun types, an "Into the Breach" mode, and a fullscreen and high resolution player. Both the free and paid versions also have a four-player mode, which I unfortunately didn't get to play due to the current lack of open games -- this looks like a really fun multiplayer experience, too.

Full versions of The Graveyard (both Windows and Mac OS X builds) are available as free downloads for today only, so if you've played the demo earlier and liked it, then you might want to get a copy before the offer expires.

In other news, Wolfire is discounting Lugaru down to $4.95 on Direct2Drive and Mac Game Store (normally $19.95) until the 4th of November. The D2D version also comes with a HD texture pack that makes the game look slightly better on PCs with high resolution settings.

Related:
Are indie games too cheap? (Tale of Tales) Continue reading

Photographer Jennifer Lyseng recently shot a photo series of game disks and manuals from Infocom's classic adventure titles, presenting them with relevant objects (e.g. like a sword and a stone for Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur).

The images were commissioned by Rick Thornquist, who is writing a book on the history of Infocom's games. He plans to use the photos in the book and as backdrops for interviews he'll conduct with Infocom developers, which will be featured on a DVD included with the book.

You can see more of Lyseng's series below for titles like Journey and James Clavell's Shogun, with high resolution versions available on her Behance page:

To promote the upcoming PSP/PS3-exclusive Gravity Crash, the Geometry Wars-esque "retro evolved blast-em-up", Sony and developer Just Add Water are have released two music remixes from the game's soundtrack, composed by Tim "CoLD SToRAGE" Wright (Wipeout, Project Moonbounce).

The two tracks, "SCARFACE X-TEND Mix" and "CLIFF DIVER BIG LEAP Mix", are available as a "virtual vinyl single" on CoLD SToRAGE's Bandcamp site. You can stream them for free or download the songs (with high resolution packaging and vinyl images) in your format of choice by purchasing them for ₤1.59, or $2.60.

With the release of these songs and the soundtrack for Sidhe's Shatter recently, I'm really enjoying PSN developers putting out their music for fans to listen to through Bandcamp. More studios should do this!

Canabalt is a simple one-button action game where you are in control of a well-dressed man who can't stop running, leaping from the top of one building to another as the city is being attacked by giant robots and futuristic-looking ships.

You can control the height of your jumps by holding down the button for a longer or shorter period. Running into obstacles will slow you down, and they could be dangerous to crash into if you need all the speed you can get to clear a long gap between buildings.

Canabalt was created by Adam Saltsman for Experimental Gameplay Project's August theme, 'Bare Minimum'. Music was written by Daniel Baranowsky. (source, screenshots, 3x mega version for 1080p and high resolution displays) Continue reading

I knew SNK's original Neo Geo mascot G-Mantle, who looks an awful lot like V from V for Vendetta but with a less detailed mask, appeared in several of the company's games (SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash, The King of Fighters 2000), but I had no idea that he was lurking in the backgrounds of at least a dozen Neo Geo titles.

French fansite Neo Geo Spirit has collected screenshots of the floating figure's many cameos -- it would be kind of fun to print out and bind a few high resolution shots of the different scenes, putting together a small "Where's G-Mantle?" book. The site also has promotional flyers and illustrations featuring G-Mantle.

[Via Insert Credit, which is sadly now on hiatus]