Tag: games

Science Week 2009!

It’s that time again! From August 15 to 23, it’s Science Week here in Australia, our yearly celebration of all things scientific. Among the major events are the light pollution survey and “Hello from Earth“, a project where you can send brief Twitter-style messages into outer space, courtesy of NASA. I have to say that, cool though the latter is, some of the press coverage has erroneously claimed that this is something that’s never been done before. I have already signed up for more or less the same thing as part of a promotion for And Another Thing…, Eoin Coifer’s forthcoming sequel to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. But there are differences, and no doubt the Science Week effort will be a little less tongue in cheek…

While I will be out and about, enjoying the activities on offer, sadly I won’t be performing or speaking at any events this year. I do have a few projects on the boil, though, and I promise to update here more often; I have six unfinished draft articles lying around, all of which are now badly dated! Watch out for something new appearing here before too long…

Despite my lack of Science Week involvement, I am putting in a public appearance this weekend.  This year Freeplay, Melbourne’s computer games festival, returns, and tomorrow at the Victorian State Library I will be moderating two of the panels: Games and Screen Culture at 10:30, and The Black Sheep at 3:30. Both aim to offer different perspectives on how games function in the larger and more traditional culture of  film and television. Freeplay continues on Saturday, and if you have any interest in computer games beyond just playing them, I encourage you to check it out!

A Braid History of Time

I first heard about Braid last year when I attended Free Play 2007, the independent games expo here in Melbourne, in my capacity as Planet Nerd‘s roving reporter. Braid creator Jonathan Blow was the keynote speaker, though I missed his address and only caught him on an excellent panel about game design. The key thing that piqued my interest was repeated mentions of its “rewind” feature; this isn’t really a new idea – it’s been used in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, for example – but for it to be included in a game by an independent developer of Blow’s calibre certainly piqued my interest. Having been thinking about  recently, I was doubly interested in the game when it was released this week for Xbox LIVE Arcade.

Once you get past the lovely prose and gorgeous painted visuals (by David Hellman of one of my favourite web comics, A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible) you quickly discover that this game is like an art-rock version of Super Mario Bros. You jump from platform to platform in a series of “Worlds”, jumping on the heads of diminutive enemies (who resemble Grug more than anything else), and trying to collect the pieces of puzzles which illustrate the game’s backstory. Read more