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The analogy is inexact; Harold, after all, lives on a blank page and everything in it he draws, including the environments he traverses. In Max and the Magic Marker, the levels of the world are pre-existing, and Max draws only to traverse them. Yet it seems clear where the game's inspiration comes from.

The mechanic of drawing for traversal is no longer novel, though it is fairly recent; but it's still a mechanic that hasn't been deeply explored, and Max comes up with quite a variety of puzzles in its demo. What perhaps is more novel is the children's book feel to the game; in addition to the debt owed Harold and the Purple Crayon, there's also a nod to Where the Wild Things Are. Max's quest is to capture a monster he drew, and when you stop time (with the spacebar) to draw over moving items, a crown appears on Max's head, much like the one the Wild Things use to crown that book's Max.

Max and the Magic Marker is developed using Unity 3D, with both Mac and PC versions as well as a Wiiware version; the Wiimote is not a bad drawing tool, at least for relatively crude objects. The demo is web-playable, since there's a Unity browser plugin.

It's charming, polished, and with an unusual sensibility; indeed, the only other game I can recall that finds its inspiration in children's picture books is Loop.

Trundle's release last week by Mobile Bros. was well received by iPhone users looking for a fun and free puzzle-platformer (with downloadable level packs), but it also was the source of online quarrels over whether it "ripped off" Nicalis's NightSky for WiiWare, also a puzzle-platformer with silhouetted graphics, gradient backgrounds, a serene soundtrack, a ball as the main character, and other similar elements.

Some argued that NightSky's ideas are common in many games, but others like Canabalt developer Adam Saltsman called it an obvious clone: "While there is admittedly a fine line between inspiration/homage and clones/ripoffs, this is CLEARLY the latter. ... Selling level packs based on how much people like someone else's designs is immoral and regrettable." He then called on Mobile Bros. to take down Trundle immediately.

The studio has since done just that, pulling the game from the App Store to change those similarities. "By some form of coincidence, both games decided to use a ball protagonist against shadowy levels; because of this we feel that it would be better to differentiate our character a bit more and try to eliminate any similar level elements from Trundle," Mobile Bros. commented.

The developer says it expects to have Trundle back on the App Store "quite soon." In the meantime, you can play some of Mobile Bros.'s other iPhone releases like Pachingo and Energy Harvest, which look an awful lot like Peggle and Auditorium.

Announced just over a month ago, Desura is ModDB's take on the digital games distribution service. Yet whereas the likes of Impulse and Direct2Drive have kept their shops mainly browser-based, Desura follows in the mighty footsteps of Steam and takes the form of a downloadable client, nesting itself in your system tray.

Desura is currently in private beta with regular ModDBers and developers getting the run-around with it. The big question is, given that Desura will launch with the ModDB's community backing of hordes of users, and its intent of bringing a big community focus to the system, will it have a chance of living along side the almighty Valve juggernaut?

I've been playing around with the client for a few days now, and although this is just a beta build at the moment, it's already looking like interesting stuff. My concern is that it maybe takes just a little took much inspiration from Steam (although, let's be fair, it's not surprising given Steam's success and appeal). After the cut I'll go into some detail, and you can decide for yourselves. Continue reading

"Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful, and very dead. It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels' mind whirled. It couldn't change things. Killing one butterfly couldn't be that important. Could it?" 

So wrote Ray Bradbury in the classic short story "A Sound of Thunder," the roundabout inspiration for The Clumsys 2: The Butterfly Effect, the second game based on the adventures of the time-traveling Albert Clumsy and his family.

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At first glance Time Still appears to have taken inspiration from cactus' upcoming Tuning - graphically, at least. Yet the ability to freeze time makes this a different kettle of fish altogether.

Over 24 levels the task is to collect these floating shiny things without getting squashed/shot/electrocuted etc. However, while there are a number of obstacles to dodge, these hinderances can also be used to your advantage via the Z key, freezing them all on the spot and possibly creating yourself an extra platform or two. It's pretty clever stuff, although it never really gets difficult and you should be able to blast through the whole game is a relatively short time.

Apparently some people are having graphical problems with the game - in this case, pressing 1 to disable some of the effects may help. Download or Quick Play from your browser at Gamejolt. Continue reading

Loren Schmidt (Sparky) is the developer of Star Guard, a retro-style 2D platformer that is also a finalist in the IGF's Excellence in Design category this year. He worked on Star Guard part-time over the course of sixteen months while still studying in Laney College, and the game was eventually released as a freeware download in October 2009.

Let's start with a bit of self-introduction, where you're from, and what you were doing before Star Guard.

I'm from the United States- I live in Oakland, California.

Before I started learning to program I wanted to find work doing visual art for games. I did art for a small space MMO once. At a certain point I started taking classes and playing around with the programming side of things, because there were things I couldn't make otherwise.

What was the inspiration for Star Guard?

I keep a log of game ideas, and every so often I get really excited about one of them. Other times I don't end up making the games at all.

What are some of the cooler ideas in your log that you do plan to make into games in the future?

One of my favorite ideas isn't really a game. I've always been interested in things like the game of Life, and I'd love to play with simple simulated creatures that evolve over time. Continue reading

Been meaning to post about this for a couple of days now. Following in the footsteps of the likes of Steam, Direct2Drive, Impulse et al, the ModDB team recently released details on their own digital distribution service, codenamed Desura.

While they claim that the platform is 'far from complete', they also go out of their way to make sure everyone knows that this isn't just another 'shop with little to no interaction between the community and the content available'. What they hope will set Desura apart from the competition is the strong links between the games and the community.

It appears much of the inspiration for Desura comes from ModDB itself, with a good portion of the platform being dedicated to user-created mods and community features, including user reviews and uploaded screenshots. The service will also be very developer focused, with tools and functionality provided to game devs.

So what does this mean for the indie gaming world? Seeing as this is a new distribution service based on community, we can safely assume that indie developers are going to get a look in - in fact, there's a link at the bottom of the introduction article for those devs who want to get a piece of the action. Looks like a number already have, including the Wolfire team.

Right now it's in private beta and only available by invitation - you'll want to head here if you're looking to get yourself invited. Continue reading