Irish indie game bundle

Five Irish games are up for grabs on Towerbundle.com this week with fifty per cent of the profits going to the charity, Concern Worldwide.

The Irish Week bundle includes platformer Goldbeard, recent Steam release Ku: Shourd of the Morrigan, brawler mini-game Battle of Clontarf, Batcat Games excellent twin-stick shooter P-3 Biotic, and iOS platformer Jellyflug.

You'll get codes for Steam, Desura and the App Store while Battle of Clontarf is a direct download link.

Keep an eye out for video of some of these games on Hackett Out soon.

bitSmith release new FranknJohn footage

Some of the team from Dublin-based indie studio bitSmith are at GDC in San Francisco this week - but that hasn't stopped them pushing out a trailer showing early pre-alpha footage of their upcoming game FranknJohn.

The top-down, rouge-like-like brawler should be getting a Kickstarter soon, but in the meantime you can take a quick look at the gameplay and some of the environments that you can look forward to in the final game.



In a statement via their newsletter today the developers said they'll be streaming sections of the game on their Twitch channel.

Games Fleadh 2014 video round-up

Games Fleadh 2014 took place at LIT Thurles in County Tipperary on Wednesday. This year's event wasn't without it's problems as it conincided this year with GDC which runs over the weekend.

 Many of the Irish development teams who were expected to speak couldn't make it as they prepared to fly to San Francisco.

 The annual Games Fleadh awards, in conjunction with Engineers Ireland, was posponed as a result but the student competition and industry talks went ahead as planned. And some of what was on offer was impressive.

Last year's Game Studio Ireland Challenge College Cup Champions Joseph Bentley & Ger Stone, or Alt Tab, won this year's Imagine Cup in Dublin last week. They were on site to show off their game CavernNauts. Other established developers like Exgamers Studio, with Source Control, and Atom Split Games with The Power Game were on site.

 Here's what else I saw on my travels.

Games Fleadh 2014

 

LIT Thurles team take games prize at Imagine Cup

Building 3, Microsoft.
Photo: Wiki Commons

At lunchtime in Microsoft’s Sandyford offices in Dublin this Tuesday teams of young people gathered in corners, and around half eaten sandwiches, to talk in hushed tones. This was their last chance to prepare before the judging started.

The Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s annual competition for software innovation by students from across the Island. I had come for the games but stayed for some of the extraordinary apps on offer.

After a morning spent casually talking about their ideas in the brightly lit presentation room at the rear of Microsoft’s Building 3, the reality of the situation had set in. They were here from colleges across the country to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges from academia and industry.

These were the people who could take their ideas from a pastime to a product that they could sell. This is a high-stakes competition, and despite the shy smiles you could tell the pressure was on.

Stephen Howell (@saorog) is Academic Engagement Manager at Microsoft. He organised this year’s competition and he agrees that the set up is an intimidation one - “This is the only way to really put them on the spot.” he said as he showed me into the judging rooms.

Kú goes live on Steam this St. Patrick's Day

Bit Smith Games today announced that Kú: Shroud of the Morrigan will be released on Steam on 17 March.

Kú is a top-down 2D game with action-rpg elements. Bit Smith released the game on iPad last year but now, after a protracted Steam Greenlight campaign, it's finally getting a full re-release for PC.

Versions of the game are already available on the developer's website for Android, PC and Mac.

The game is a twist on the Táin, the story of Cúchulainn, set in a future Ireland.

In a statement on their Steam page today the developers said: "What better way to celebrate St. Patricks [sic] Day than to consume yourself in some ancient Irish history."

Kú was not without its problems on iPad - but a lot of my frustrations came from the controls. The game has full controller support on PC. There's no detail on pricing yet but I'll keep you informed.

Play it: Dream of Pixels

You know that annoying person who likes to say that there's nothing new under the sun?

Well slap 'em. And then show them Dream of Pixels.

Human history is the history of innovation. We've always built on existing ideas to create something entirely new. It's what we do and it's why life never gets boring.

Dawn of Play, the team behind Dream of Pixels, took Tetris, turned it upside down - both literally and figuratively - and created something entirely new.

A wall of blocks moves down the screen. A single tetris piece appears in the top left of the screen. Taping anywhere on the wall removes that shape so long as it can fall off the bottom of the screen - it can't be blocked by a block below. Keep chopping away to remove full lines and buy yourself more time. If the screen fills up you loose.

That's it. It's beautiful. And it's great. Play it.

Dream of Pixels is available on iOS and Android for free with ads, or for €2.15 (on GooglePlay at least).

Microsoft Imagine Cup judging in Dublin today

The Imagine Cup is Microsoft's annual innovation competition. And today is D-day for the teams involved.

Each of the teams has been busy developing their ideas - an innovative piece of software running on Microsoft's platrorms and today they need to pitch their work to real judges from industry.

Submissions closed in early February and today the top teams in Microsoft's three categories - Games, Innovation and World Citizenship - will compete.

I'll be going along to see what Ireland's young tech creatives are working on.

Watch it: The Last of Us documentary

How do shadows fall in a scene? Are the characters looking at each other when they speak?

These are the questions that Naughty Dog's developers asked themselves during the development of last year's The Last of Us.

The heart of The Last of Us is the attention to detail in every scene. It's the little things that make a character sit into the world or that translates good acting into a believable performance on screen.

Area 5, the team behind the successful Outerlands Kickstarter project, made this 90 minute documentary. Originally released as part of The Last of Us's season pass you can now watch the whole thing on YouTube.

The programme also talks about how much work went into making the player understand the feelings and motivations of the characters.

Bruce Straley, the gameplay director says "What are the things that we can do on the joystick to make you feel the same way that these [sic] characters' going to feel when we get to this next pinch point in th story?"


But wait there's more. Left Behind, the single-player story DLC for The Last of Us released on . The production values here aren't quite as high, but if you're looking for more Last of Us here you go: