Blog #10 ------------ Indie games

Growing up, all I really played was popular games like Halo, Guitar hero, Kirby, Call of Duty, basically any game that a parent would recognize as a video game if they heard the name.

I’ll be honest, I never play indie games and I don’t really like them at all. That being said, why am I going into the gaming industry? Good question, I have no clue.

So for the rest of the blog, I’ll be talking about random indie games that I’ve probably never played… But if I see one that I have tried, I’ll let you know!

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a game. <- That’s essentially all I know about it. From the amount of posts I’ve seen about it on the internet, it must be a really great indie game. I believe the player is a security guard and has to survive (Five nights at Freddy’s).

I’m currently 2 pages into google and I still haven’t found an indie game that I’ve actually played. There’s definitely a lot that I’ve heard of though, like Super Meat Boy, and I Wanna be the Guy.

I guess the only thing I have left is a crappy game that was made in 2 days that nobody wants to hear about: SwipeRite.

SwipeRite is a game created by a small indie company called Stormforged Productions, which is basically just two people. Michael Billette, who just happens to have the same last name as me, is the game designer and does all the art. Cole Pollock is the programmer for the company.

The game itself is pretty simple, each of them put in about 24 hours to create it. It’s a memory and reflex game that assigned a random colour to each direction. You have to remember which colour is which direction and swipe depending on what appears on the screen. As your score gets higher, the amount of time you have available to swipe decreases.

Jumping back a bit, I Wanna be the Guy was a popular indie game. It used music and art from many other video games. What was interesting about it is how fucking difficult it was to even get past the first level.

The game basically doesn’t care, it just wants to mess up the day of whoever’s playing it. If you want to go on a low difficulty, the game insults you and calls you a wuss. It also doesn’t even make the game easier, it just gives you more save points.

Mari0 is a cool indie game that combines Mario and portal, theres really not much else to say about this game, but I think it’s a pretty cool mix, and for an indie game, they did a pretty good job.

QWOP! The one indie game that everyone has played. It was created back in 2008, and after 8 years, there’s still not a single person that can play it properly. Actually Roshan Ramachandra managed to run all 100m in just 51 seconds.

Thanks for reading my terrible blog post.

Blog #9 ------------- 2005-2009

2005: This year was a very significant and vital year for gaming. It brought out the release of one of today’s most influential games- Kirby: Canvas Curse. Of course, that’s only what we call it here in North America. In Europe, the momentous game is known as Kirby: Power Paintbrush, and in Japan, it’s known as “Touch! Kirby”.

The day that Drawcia emerges from a strange portal out of the sky and casts a spell over Dream Land, turning into a world of paint, was the day that everyone knew what they needed to do: Follow Drawcia through the portal with Kirby, and help him defeat her as she throws Kirby’s old foes back at him.

“The best Kirby game to date”. That’s all I should need to say about that.

2006: Every year my family has a celebration because of what happened on December 4 this year. I believe that everybody should remember and celebrate the important event that occurred on this day. Kirby: Squeak Squad, “The best Kirby game to date”.

Sadly this game was only released on the Nintendo DS, and unlike Canvas Curse, the player used face buttons instead of the touch screen to control Kirby.

2007: This year was, without a doubt, the absolute worst year in all of video game history. I remember being a sad 10 year old wondering… “Why wasn’t there a new Kirby game released this year?” I don’t even know if I can continue this blog… I guess I can just talk about some other trash game that got released this year

Team Fortress 2, Portal, Halo 3, Guitar hero 3. I’ve probably only spent a few hundred hours playing these games. They’re not even really worth noting, but I have to mention something.

2008: Finally! A new Kirby game. Well, not really new… Kirby Super Star Ultra was released this year for the DS. It was just a remake of Kirby Super Star, but with new enhanced graphics, music, and included some new fancy 3D cut-scenes. “Best Kirby game to date”.

2009: This, once again, was a terrible year for the video game industry. If I can’t go a day without thinking about Kirby, how can I go a year without receiving a new Kirby game? Honestly I don’t understand how the video game industry can survive under these conditions.

This year was fairly important though, because of an amazing game called “Call of Duty: 1v1 me fgt”, which included a new game mode called “Quick scopes only or I’ll report you” as well as “g3t n0 sc0p3d k1d”

Modern Warfare 2 was my favorite game in the Call of Duty series (until Black Ops 3). I’m trying to find something sarcastic to say so it doesn’t seem like I actually like COD, but I played this game every day for about 2 years straight.

Dragon Age: Origins also came out this year, which is essentially the exact opposite of MW2, which is probably why I never played it, but I heard it was a good game.

Blog # 8 ----------- 2000-2004

This is a great set of years for me, because these years are when I really started getting in to gaming. It’s sad that I missed out on all the old classics that we’ve been discussing for the past 8 or so weeks, but there are still some great games that spawned in this era. They were good enough to get me addicted, and to spark my passion for gaming, especially my first game: I-Ninja.

Now, I know this game was released in 2003, and that I usually go in chronological order, but this game is incredibly special to me. Strangely, I had completely forgotten about it until class last Thursday, but once I saw it, the nostalgia hit hard.

This game got me in so much trouble, I got lectures and speeches about how all this gaming is gonna rot my brain and destroy my eyes, but it was worth it. I-Ninja was just addicting. Hours and hours of slicing open enemies all to save my sensei who really just needed to “stay here and try not to die again”.

It wouldn’t be fair to base this whole blog on one game, so let’s move it back a bit to the distant future, the year 2000.

Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. Now I know what you’re all thinking, again Daniel? Kirby? Wasn’t this discussed in class already? To answer that last question, no it was not, but it should have been.

Honestly I don’t have a lot to say about this game. It was a 2.5D platformer which is pretty cool, but other than that, I only included it because it’s Kirby.

2001 brought the release of Halo: Combat Evolved. This was mentioned in the powerpoint, but it was mistitled as just ‘Halo’, therefore:

Halo was my first FPS, and I was… Terrible at it. But, the fact that you could use system link to have such a large amount of players made it a large part of my childhood. We would have a TV in one room, and another in the room behind it, with a cord running through a hole in the wall. It was my first non-single player game.

I’m just gonna skip right over 2002 because I probably don’t care about any of the games released that year other than whatever 8 versions of Tony Hawk Pro Skater came out.

2003 was honestly just a great year for gaming. Crimson skies took up so much of my time, obviously not as much as I-Ninja, but it was up there. There’s about 10x more information on Wikipedia about this game compared to I-Ninja so I’m beginning to regret choosing it for my presentation. Either way, it had a difficult development due to [7 paragraphs worth of information], and was a difficult game to play (at the age of 6).

2004 brought us some MMORTS called world of witchcraft of something stupid like that. I only played it for like 11 years, it was aight. Pac Man World was also released this year, which I don’t actually remember playing, I only remember fighting over the controller trying to play it.

In conclusion, these 5 years were obviously extremely significant for gaming, and if I hadn’t been introduced to gaming during this time period, I might not be here.