CATAGAMAZINE

Nerf Cooking in Vegas (.p8)

2021-12-13T16:57:09.571Z

pico8 videogame about a sleepy Chef and his Manager. We must not let the cook fall asleep in order to have time to prepare dinner in the late evening.

This Game was made by PICO-8 engine: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=45678

Art by @cathvader

Shane Yach - Explorer in The Surreal Horror Worlds

2021-07-23T19:41:01.602Z

Game Designer who creates magic by mixing sound design, old-school shaders and horror atmosphere into a cocktail that excites your mind.

«Approaches» by Shane Yach

My name's Shane Yach and I'm currently in Minnesota.

We have seen your work. Do we understand correctly that in addition to development, you are also engaged in sound design? So from the very beginning you got into game development from the sound experience? Is that true?

Yeah, I'm game developer and music/sound designer. I don't think I necessarily got into game development through sound design, but I definitely started learning music composition a lot earlier than I started learning games, mainly because I had been in band classes throughout my youth and because I had access to Garageband. There were just more music making tools available to me at the time. Something like the Unity game engine was still only available as a trial or something and I didn't know anything about programming. Game development seemed like this far out endeavor until it came time to choose a college.

«Snowy Castle Game» by Shane Yach (in development)

So, you chose an education that helped you develop games on your own. Apparently a college with programming? That helped? Or did self-education provide more knowledge?

I would say it helped me develop games on my own. It was a programming degree and a game programming degree. I definitely acquired a lot of programming knowledge from college, but largely, even during college, a lot of gamedev-specific programming, like learning how to work with Unity, was learned through self-education and collaboration.

A lot of college was actually the encouragement from other students and friends who were so passionate about games. It really grew my interest in the field.

«Dissonantia» by Shane Yach (in development)

I want to ask you about your author's style. One of your first public works was a Dream Catcher game made during a jam. And with each new project, your author's style begins to manifest itself. Why did you go to an arthouse with compressed pixelated textures and acid colors? Do you just like this kind of visual or is it a trend and fashion among indie developers?

A lot of my earlier games on Itch.io are collabs with a bunch of other devs, so it would have been more of a collective author's style for those. After college, though, is when I started dabbling more into solo development and got introduced through Twitter to this fledgling lofi pixelated art style in indie games. I found tutorials from 98Demake and the renowned dsoft20 PSX shaders and played around with the aesthetic, using the parts of the shaders that I liked. I think I gravitated to the style because I wasn't very good at art, but decent at design, and I preferred 3D game spaces over 2D, so it was the best option. As for the colors, I just like vibrant colors and color schemes are hard, so a bunch of my stuff sticks to a single color or some complementary colors. I feel like a minimal color palette can more easily make a game more cohesive.

"I'd just call myself a gamedev."

Also, I do very much enjoy the 3D lofi pixelated look. And it's certainly been a trend in the past few years. 98Demake, HauntedPS1, and DreadX have definitely helped it along. I also just think the aesthetic/style was inevitable just like pixel art was. Console limitations breed a certain aesthetic. That aesthetic is later abandoned when fancier consoles come along. We later miss that aesthetic and realize it had certain qualities that made it great. For lofi pixelated graphics, for instance, it works great for horror.

«A Game With a TV in It» by Shane Yach (in development)

Most of your work has demons or horror energy. If any artist has something to say to the world, what is your art trying to say to the players through the prism of dark forces? Also, i want to ask: you're game designer or media artist mostly, how do you think?

I just like surreal horror. I find it comforting in its oppressive atmosphere and I want to create those types of spaces for others to enjoy as well as myself.

I'd just call myself a gamedev. I like to do a little of everything, at least in my solo work. It's fun for me to be able to craft every bit of an experience, to an extent at least. I especially love just making 3D environments with little sounds and ambience everywhere.

I want to ask you about shaders. Do you work at Unity and code them yourself, or do you use ShaderGraph? And also are you using a blender for 3D modeling?

I do work pretty much completely with Unity. I haven't done anything with ShaderGraph, but I'd maybe like to try and learn how it works at some point. I don't code any of my shaders. I get them all from the Unity Asset Store and Github thanks to some amazing developers making them available. I use Unity's ProBuilder for all my modeling. I'd like to use Blender more, though, so I can have more control over textures and because it has a nicer interface. I just need to learn how to do some things like UV mapping.

«Untitled» by Shane Yach (in development)

Do you have your own list of favorites game designers and media artists who are making equal stuff or maybe different but still interesting?

I don't have a list, but some cool people that come to mind that directly inspire me are Tobias Mihura, colorfiction, Moshe Linke, Jessica Harvey, nonoise, and Kitty Horror Show. I also think Nathalie Lawhead, droqen, and Ian MacLarty do a lot of interesting stuff. I take inspiration from a lot of different people, whether or not they match the kind of style that I like in my games.

"I don't code any of my shaders. I get them all from the Unity Asset Store and Github."

«No One is Here» by Shane Yach

Is game design an evolution of cinematography or a completely separate branch? And what drives us as game designers to create new worlds? Why is the real world not enough for us?

I think they're separate things. Though, cinematography is definitely very useful in games since most games represent things on a 2D plane (your screen). Game designers create new worlds for so many different reasons. To imagine something better. To craft a cautionary tale. To just make something that looks aesthetically pleasing or triggers some kind of emotional response. Maybe we just like being gods over our own little worlds. Personally, there's just something special about creating a unique world to explore. It feels like decorating a room in your house but much more involved. It's a space you create and then invite others in to look around and admire.

The thing about the real world is that we can't possibly see all of it - only if we devote our whole lives to it. Video game worlds are less a replacement to the real world, and more of an extension of it based on our collective cultures and experiences. We play video games to get transported somewhere else that can make us appreciate the real world more.

«Godforsaken Hole Called» by Shane Yach

Shane Yach's games: https://tipsheda.itch.io/

Shane Yach's twitter: https://twitter.com/tipsheda

>>> CLICK TO SUPPORT CATAGAMAZINE ON PATREON <<<

Top 10* Interesting Games A MAZE./ 2021

2021-07-24T08:51:03.371Z

The festival A MAZE./ BERLIN of arthouse games and playfull media featured 250 projects from indie developers and midcore studios. Our team has selected 10 of the most attractive and interesting for the casual players. Most of them are still in development.

*- by catagamazine

YOU SUCK AT PARKING

Genre: extreme parking simulator

You Suck at Parking is the world’s most EXTREME parking game, and the only racing game where the goal is to stop (probably). The game is all physics based and you drive, drift, jump and teleport through tricky courses and can even make your own tracks!

Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, XBoxOne, XBox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch

WAYFINDER

Genre: Animation, Generative Art, Natural World

Wayfinder is an expression of our connectedness to the natural world. It's an opportunity to renew a damaged ecosystem through discovery and verse. The calming, contemplative gameplay is symbolic of the cause-and-effect relationship humans have with nature. It underscores our role in both affecting, but ultimately remedying, the effects of climate change through action and a greater appreciation of the environment.

Small tokens of memory, time, and life dot the landscape. When activated, they reveal words hidden in the wind. Strung together, they express something deeper, inspired by haiku poetry and the desire to capture nature’s fleeting moments in a handful words. Collecting these moments helps bring balance and biodiversity back to the decaying landscape.

The art is generative. The visual assets and poetry are assembled procedurally and algorithmically through code, creating different combinations for each new visitor. The textured, hand-illustrated aesthetic is delivered in real-time, and the poetic verses are created with a mix of artificial intelligence/machine learning and generative processes, providing thousands of possible combinations. As such, Wayfinder is an ever-changing, emergent artwork with infinite possibilities. Each time it runs, it produces a new and individualized world.

Platform: Web, iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Android Tablet

VENICE 2089

Genre: Explorative and Narrative Game

In Venice 2089, you'll explore the city through the eyes of Nova, a bored teenager who has currently no clue about what to do in life and just wants to relax from the stress of their usual routine. Ride your hoverboard and interact with your toy-drone, in a city affected by tides and climate change.

Platform: PC

SAY NO! MORE

Genre: Indie, Story-driven

Say No! More is the world’s first NPG (NO!-Playing Game). Play as an intern with a burning desire to say NO! to everything and everyone. Customize your character, say NO! in different styles and languages, clap back at mean colleagues and change the world!

Platform: PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Nintendo Switch

PAPER TRAIL

Genre: Puzzle Game

Departing on a journey of self-discovery, Paige must fold and tear her way through an ethereal paper world. Meet unforgettable characters, solve mind-bending puzzles and piece together the Paper Trail as you travel far, far from home.

Platform: PC

NUTS

Genre: Mystery, Adventure, Narrative

A single-player surveillance mystery set in a remote forest. Record the squirrels, report your findings… and uncover the secret that the curious creatures are hiding.

Platform: PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch

MILITSIONER

Genre: first-person surreal immersive runaway simulator

Plan your escape from the Giant-Policeman.

Militsioner is a first-person surreal immersive runaway simulator. Use your voice to speak to the Giant Policeman and other characters and plan your grand escape before you are sentenced to jail.

You’re arrested on this ordinary day in the provincial town where the Giant Policeman lives and works. You haven’t broken the law, have you? Of course, someone must have been telling lies, but absolutely everyone thinks you’re guilty. Don’t stick around for too long.

Platform: PC

I AM DEAD

Genre: Adventure, Exploration, Hidden Object, Puzzle

I Am Dead is a charming puzzle adventure game from the creators of Hohokum and Wilmot’s Warehouse about exploring the afterlife.

Morris Lupton is the recently-deceased museum curator of the tiny island of Shelmerston who is reunited with the ghost of his dog Sparky, only to discover that a disaster is about to destroy his beloved island.

Together, they must uncover Shelmerston’s ancient mysteries, prevent the island’s volcano from erupting, and save the place they call home.

Morris and Sparky must unearth a number of Shelmerston's lost and scattered ghosts. To find them, the duo must visit the places they spent time in, dive inside the memories of the people who knew them best, and learn the stories of their lives.

To help with their mission, Morris uses his newfound power that allows him to peer inside objects and people to reveal their contents and memories, like a supernatural X-Ray!

Platform: PC, Nintendo Switch

GENESIS NOIR

Genre: Adventure game

A noir adventure spanning time and space. You play as No Man, a watch peddler caught in a love triangle with other cosmic beings, Miss Mass and Golden Boy. When your affair turns into a bitter confrontation, you will witness a gunshot fired by a jealous god—otherwise known as The Big Bang. Jump into the expanding universe and search for a way to prevent or destroy creation and save your love.

Platform: PC

INUA

Genre: Narrative Puzzle Game

Inua tells the story of the great polar bear, Nanurluk. Separated from her cubs by the madness of men, it is up to the player to help her in her quest to restore harmony to the world. He will follow Taïna, Peter and Simon, 3 characters separated by decades but whose destinies are mysteriously linked.

To do so, he will have to unravel space and time to solve puzzles and guide the characters. Each level is composed of several scenes taking place in the same place, but at different times. Supervised by an Inuit author, the original scenario of Inua is inspired by Inuit mythology, and based on the story of the Franklin expedition: a real British expedition sent to explore the Arctic in the 19th century.

Platform: PC

Smile, please! - AMAZING RUSSIANS

2021-07-23T14:03:38.551Z

My name is Vova (Vladimir). I was born and still living in Russia, in the beautiful city of Noginsk, in the Moscow region. I make cartoons, write music, discover something new for myself.

Your art has a very cool style. You're more of an artist than a game developer. Why did you want to try something new for yourself? What inspired you to study AR technology?

Since childhood, I love animation and video games, I have always wanted to do both. I started creating animations at school, but game development always scared me with programming languages, the amount of work, and the like. My university forced me to overcome my fear of developing games) We had a task to make an "interactive digital project" or something like that, and I chose Unity as my tool. I'm not looking for easy ways :( I had to delve into the principles of Sharp, Unity and a bunch of things with which I was unfamiliar in a month. My first builder on Unity was supposed to be a simple rhythm game built entirely on boxes with collisions. All the player had to do was click to points on timing and fill "combos" to be the best. After a while, it seemed to me that it was very boring and not very dynamic, after which the idea came to me to make a controller by the Player's head. This would make the game more dynamic and more interesting. Augmented reality has become the easiest and cheapest way out from the situation.

AR is still a primitive and crude technology. I ran into a bunch of problems during the development phase, which were either not solved at all, or were solved in a not very smart way, which I thought on my own.
YouTube AR guides in Unity are limited and describe just a simply creating a mask on the front-end :(

So you immediately decided to send your very first interactive media project to the A MAZE festival. Why did you choose this festival? How did you know about him?

Yes exactly. This is my first project) I often send my stuff somewhere, because it's better to try than not) My friends and mates took part in the festival, it seemed that I was on time and decided that I should try.

What festivals or competition programs have you participated in? Are there your victories and awards?

This year I won in Typomania and also passed the selection for the "Tired man" exhibition, which should be in this September.

Typomania 2021

"Tired Man"

What friends and mates also took part in A MAZE?

This year, none of my close friends took part, except that we are a little familiar with Leo, the author of SUNA: RED.

Do you often play video games in general? What genres do you like the most?

Sure! I fell in love with video games from the age of 5-6 and I like all sorts of hardcore such as souls-like, rogue-like, slashers, doom and quake games. Sometimes I get stuck into indie art projects and just "narrative-pleasant things"

What kind of indie projects can you highlight? And what is the "narrative-pleasant things"?)

There is a man in the videogame industry, Danya Ermakov (Mr. Pink, da_neel). About five years ago, he did a lot of interesting projects on gamejolt. Since that time, almost all games are still playable.

By narratively pleasant things, I mean some kind of games or projects with an unusual and creative presentation of the story. From such examples I remember Death Stranding (by Hideo Kojima), Bound (by Plastic), kamni and Miffhuff (by Mr. Pink, da_neel).

I really like content with atypical storytelling, where the story can be told through imagery, feelings or gameplay.

Why are gaming products that bring new thoughts and unique visuals left out?

Such games are not interesting to a mass audience. People love the replayability and shipping between bright and colorful characters. Often, unique gaming products set themselves the goal of transforming a feeling or event into gameplay or story, as I tried to do with "Smile, please", for example. Such a technique can cause a WOW effect to a player when he tries the product, but the game needs much more than a cool idea and narrative to catch the player's attention for a long time.

It seems to me that most of the projects on the A MAZE are just experiments, tech-demos and prototypes that can take for a while, if not for the evening, then for 10 minutes, for sure.

How much time do a person need to spend on games? 10 minutes? Hours? Weeks? Months?

More the better

Having tried developing a game with the Augmented Reality on yourself. Would you like to make a new game and become a game designer? Or is it better to stay as an executive artist and stay with a team?

I have a bunch of ideas for my own ten-minute games and I would probably die by happiness if one day I could bring them to life. In general, I am for any activity, so if an interesting project comes along, I am always ready to take part in it)

Who do you think media artists are? Do you consider yourself like that?

Media art – is our everything. It seems to me that any person who creates visual content for media these days is a media artist. And there are a lot of such people! And this is so cool!

Now art has no limits, like even 10-15 years ago. Minimalism, curved forms and any trash are also accepted with love.

If something is done crookedly – this is style. And these attitudes help people – to be heard.

Curved forms and any trash. It turns out that anyone who is not able to do beautifully and aesthetically is already considered an artist? If art is supposed to inspire, then how does "senseless trash" create spiritual uplift into beholder?

I like to divide art into "romantic" and "naive". Romantic is all about aesthetics. The artist takes his idea and epically reproduces it, as if adding hype.

And naive this is exactly what was once considered trash. It may be ridiculous, but there is a lot of honesty. And I love these things terribly. I envy people who can tell stories through such forms.

What drives naive Game Designers to be honest?

Wanting to be heard? I don't know, everything is situational here. But if he draws curved sprites as best he can, makes eye-catching icons for the game on a topic that is very important and interesting to him, what is this if not a cry from the heart?

The Lisa trilogy looks very repulsive, but there is such a wow in the plot, in the story

Are Video Games Art?

- Is the grass green? Yes, sure!

Links:

Smile, please!

Vladimir's VK

Vladimir's INSTAGRAM

>>> CLICK TO SUPPORT CATAGAMAZINE ON PATREON <<<