Some lovely work from the guys at Sony London Studio – Nintendogs meets AR on the PS3, using some of the latest R&D from Richard Marks’ group (the guys responsible for the original EyeToy tech).
(theres a video embedded above for those on RSS)
Out last Wednesday, this is the first of several prominent indie titles to be released that really inspired me to go for it with HandCircus (as opposed to faffing around indefinitely making prototypes and playing great games with moist eyes wondering “what if?”). The others are World of Goo and Little Big Planet (although LBP probably doesn’t count as indie anymore seeing as its probably the most anticipated AAA title on the PS3 but damnit it had indie origins).
And its stunning. The art direction is gorgeous, the concept unique and the game feels very fresh. Its been getting 9’s and 10’s everywhere (even a 9 in EDGE). Go and buy it on Xbox Live Arcade now. Its a complete validation of the indie-games model, having been almost entirely created by two people (design and code by Jonathan Blow, art by David Hellman. In a similar vein to the way portal took your notion of spatial relationships and tore it into tiny pieces, Braid will do the same with your temporal assumptions, with a brain-wrecking collection of puzzles.
It was about time that I split my blog in half, so this is the place for all things personal, unprofessional, unusual and generally unconnected to the career side of my life/brain, HandCircus. As HandCircus has all grown up over the last couple of months, the HandCircus blog will be where you can find out all kinds of news and information about the games and other HandCircus offspring, while this is where you’ll find observations, commentary, code and nonsense.
I look forward to regular blogging again! I’m about to get some serious Rolando time over the coming weeks so should have goodies to share.