art posts

Most indie games has a semblance of normality about them. The ones that don't, like the games from Cactus, are usually done in such a way that they have their own internal, game-like logic. Dadaists Gone Wild takes this notion and throws it clear out the window. Combining surreal, disturbing imagery with a pastiche of amateur game making, it's a hilarious (and ultimately very playable) game that pokes fun at the sort of art games that the indie community has come to love.

You play as a photographer sent to an island in order to photograph beautiful girls. Unfortunately, rather than being girls gone wild, this happened to be dadists gone wild, and as such he is subjected to a strange, frightening, and ultimately funny world. The rules of logic and physics are bent and broken regularly, floating eyes judge his every move, and he comes into contact with everything from floating static to the personification of Death. All in all, though, it's mostly just a platformer that satirizes the art house crowd, and it does a good job while still maintaining playability. You can download it from the developer's website, and beating it takes approximately 10-15 minutes.

For the past week, the folks at GoG.com, owned by CD Projekt, have had a countdown clock on their site. Usually such a clock means that a major annoncement is coming up. Now the clock has expired and the truth can be revealed. GoG.com has now confirmed it has secured a deal with publisher Activision to offer a number of their older PC games for download in GoG.com's DRM-free format.

The deal also includes offering older games from the now defunct Vivendi Games. Activision acquired the rights to a number of these games when the company merged with Vivendi Games to formed Activision Blizzard a couple of years ago. The first two games that GoG.com is schedled add to their library of titles from this new publishing deal today are the classic Gabriel Knight adventure game and Arcanum, the steampunk RPG from the now defunct Trokia Software. Both are priced at $5.99 each.

For more info on this deal Big Download got a chance to chat with Marcin Iwinski, the co-founder of CD Projekt. Look for that interview to be posted up later this morning.

Ever want to be the sheep that jumps over fences to make people go to sleep? Well now you can! In Extreme Fence Hopping Super Sheep, you play a sheep ambling through the countryside, hopping over a solitary fence. The game is super short, so just play it briefly. We promise that, despite the lack of continued gameplay, it's a fun timewaster.

The goal of Extreme Fence Hopping Super Sheep is to, surprise, hop over a fence. You can only move right, and you jump with X. Your score is kept at the top of the screen. While it seems like the game could go forever, just keep playing for a humorous ending to the sheep's tedious task.

The theme of games at TOJam is always "prototypes". It's rare for a game to reach anywhere resembling a completed state in such a short amount of time, but some are reasonably well-finished. Alpinist is not one of those games. An incredibly short prototype, Alpinist is more of an art game to show off some truly amazing pixel work. And man, it really does. You might be disappointed by the lack of much of anything at all, but you could sit and stare at this game for hours...

Where were we? Oh yes. Alpinist revolves around a mountain climber as he scales a mountain. You can control his movement, how he runs, and his jumps. Not much else! The game lasts literally less than a minute, but acts as a showcase for some incredibly detailed sprite work. Flags wave in the wind, snow slowly blows across the landscape, and doors creak open and shut. The world seems alive, even for the minute or so that you actually play. Now that's impressive. We look forward to the continuations that the ending screen hints at!

There's a sort of minimalist art style one sometimes sees in sprites. The sprites themselves are amazingly intricate, but the color beneath it all is limited. Only greens, or only oranges, for example. Ascent is one of these games, but only in the character and "enemy sprites". And we have to say, the background art is absolutely fantastic.

Ascent, created for TOJam 4, follows a boy as he climbs a tree with traps all around. He was left alone in an unknown place, and now searches for his parents. It's an affecting and vaguely disturbing premise, as carved into the tree are phrases such as "we're so sorry". The gameplay is simple: jump up, avoid the spikes. It'll take you maybe three minutes to finish the game, but the artwork is so intricate and lovely that you might play it over just to see more detail! Here's hoping more is made of it.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

After playing games like F.E.A.R., Silent Hill, and Resident Evil, I thought I knew terror. I thought I knew the fear that wells up deep within the soul, the kind of horror that drives your heart into your throat and the breath from your lungs. But that was not the case. Staring at a surreal and human organ as dismembered, tortured limbs shoot destructive orbs at me and runes and words skitter across the screen has given me a new understanding into that primal urge H.P. Lovecraft calls the "fear of the unknown." All Of Our Friends Are Dead is what taught me this fear, and it is single-handedly more terrifying than all of the retail horror games I have ever played combined.

Welcome to the Indie Showcase, a semi-regular column on Big Download that takes a look at games we haven't covered on the site that we really think you should play.

There's just something about the surreal, nostalgic, offensive, confusing, or strange. They enchant us and draw us in despite our revulsion or confusion. There's just something so compelling that draws us in. We're back to the realm of strange, artsy, and nostalgic games, and man, have we slammed right into a selection of them. There has been a good selection of mind-bending experiences lately, and for those that want some of the action, here's a couple of the best. Here's a forewarning, though: some of these games are offensive and can possibly cause epileptic seizures. Not all at once, though. That would be scary!

This developer diary for The Lord or the Rings: Mines of Moria goes into detail about the painstaking attention that went into designing the underground world of Moria. Tolkien fans will have a chance to experience the Moria first hand when the expansion releases on November 17th.

Download HD LOTRO: Mines of Moria Art & World Developer Diary (73 MB)
Check out all Mines of Moria downloads

The idea that video games could be classified as art is a fairly recent one, emerging right around the time that we began to include narrative as a game element. All too often, the subject is brought up by detractors of the form as a way to look down upon a medium to which they feel no attraction. The underlying conceit is ridiculous of course -- if video games aren't art, then they have no lasting cultural value, and may therefore be dismissed as mere juvenilia. Yet video games are, nevertheless, quite a large part of our culture, and the lingering perception that they are made only to be entertainment for adolescents does the entire industry a disservice.

However, merely positing the possibility that video games might be art isn't enough to ensure that they are art. Part of the problem lies in our definition of what art is, and what it isn't. Once we've defined that to our satisfaction, we have to endure the much more difficult task of judging whether it applies to video games. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to ask ourselves the question "Does it matter?"

38 Studios -- a new development house working on an MMO codenamed Copernicus -- announced today that award-winning artist Thom Ang has joined the company as Director of Art. Previously, Ang worked for THQ and Electronic Arts. The Medal of Honor series is among his credits.

38 Studios was founded by professional baseball player Curt Schilling -- an all-too-rare combination of jock and geek. The company is in the pre-production stages of development on a mysterious massively multiplayer game. The game's staff includes famed comic book artist Todd McFarlane and fantasy author R.A. Salvatore. Not much else is known about the project at this point.