Feature Articles
Jan 13th
Crayon Physics Deluxe is a unique game that has garnered a lot of attention in the past year. It began as another humble game posted on the Kloonigames blog, and from there it grew into the best game of the year at the Independent Games Festival (also on display were games like World of Goo and Desktop Tower Defense).
In CPD, you can play about 80 levels in singleplayer, most of which are really fun and open to a wide variety of solutions. In fact, it’s the openness of the game that really strikes me. While someone might solve a level by drawing random stuff, someone else might draw a weird drawbridge. The game’s replayability is what makes it so great. Also included in the game is a level editor, which will further promote the sandbox style of gameplay that abounds in this game. The demo will draw people in, and the low $19.95 price tag will attract customers without a big budget looking for a great game.
If you like Crayon Physics Deluxe, you’ll also love games like Fantastic Contraption and Line Rider.
Oct 2nd
In a move that represents the Million Dollar Homepage, Arthur Stubbs is giving people the chance for cheap, creative advertising by offering them ad space for only 2 dollars a spot at IntoSpace.org. Arthur tells people his about his passion for the project and what it’s about:
This is my gift to everyone who has ever dreamt of space flights but has always been unable to make it become reality.
This project is about compiling a catalog of photos and logotypes to be sent into outer space aboard a space vehicle. Our catalog will consist of 300 sheets (300 “rockets”), every “rocket” will be able to deliver up to 1000 “astronauts” by occupying the place of 25×40 cm. on a single sheet. You can book your ticket for just $2.
If he ends up selling all the tickets, which he undoubtedly will, he’ll possibly make around 3 million dollars or so, at least before shipping costs to space. This seems like a good opportunity for everyone involved in the project, and major sponsors already show up on the homepage, which should help drive a lot of traffic both ways.
Sep 3rd
I noticed that I this is actually the 9th day of the week that I’m writing the closing post, but I just had to extend the week because there is so much great stuff to talk about in Team Fortress 2. Japanerd and I had a great time writing about the game this week, and I’m pretty sure that the reason I didn’t have a post a night was because I was too “busy” playing the game with the awesome Gib$Ru$ guys instead of writing about it. I only wish I had made it TF2 month or something so I could have written more!
Just in case you somehow missed the past week of awesome articles, here’s the run-down:
- Good Grief, it’s Team Roomba
- How To: Skinning the Team Fortress 2 Characters
- An Interview With the Gib$Ru$ Admin
- Inside the Team Fortress 2 Heavy Update
- Tweak Team Fortress 2 For Max Performance
Thanks to all of you who read and enjoyed the articles, pretty soon I’ll put up a poll for you to vote for your favorite game that you want us to devote a whole week writing about!
Aug 23rd
Sometimes, just stumbling around the internet doesn’t give you your humor for the day. Well, there are some really awesome comics hosted on the web that are updated almost every day that you’ll love if you are a computer or gaming geek. Read below to check out my 6 favorite web comics…
AppleGeeks Lite is a comic featuring a guy and a girl that use an Apple laptop, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with Apple. Making fun of all the latest stuff is one of the classics of the comic, Portal and David Hasselhoff not excluded.
chainsawsuit is not a “normal” comic by any means. Most of their comics feature video games, and some of them are totally random, but most of them will probably get a laugh out of you. A good example of their randomness is TGI Knife Fights, while making fun of games Animal Crossing and Transformers shows off the writers’ gaming side.
When the art style of a first grader and the humor of a grown man combine, you get Explosm. One of the funniest comics ever to grace the internet, explosm is a true “masterpiece.” With comics featuring Bigfoot, God, and Space Invaders, Explosm updates daily, so you can get a good laugh every morning before you head out the door.
theWAREHOUSE comic again falls under the “random but funny” category. With comics featuring a shark, Mii’s, and shooting bears, theWAREHOUSE is a great comic to check perhaps once a week, as they only have a few new comics a week.
Penny Arcade is probably the most popular web comic right now (even more than xkcd), featuring video games 24/7. Some of my personal favorite comics that they’ve made have games like Portal, Army of Two, LEGO Online, Spore, and the list goes on. Every comic comes with a nice blog post explaining the meaning behind the comic and current goings-on in the creators’ lives.
Finally, if you’re reading this and you haven’t heard of xkcd, then you better get to reading the comic, because it is one of the most popular with an fanatical fanbase on the web. With stick figures doing all kinds of geeky stuff that other geeks can relate to, xkcd is a great comic to get into, with classics like rollercoaster chess and lots of others.
Aug 2nd
I’m sure anyone who has used Firefox 2 remembers Fasterfox, an addon that increased your connection speed to servers on the net. However, the addon creator still has not updated the addon to work with Firefox 3. Someone designed a modified version of Fasterfox to work with Firefox 3 however, so Fasterfox is back for the masses. If you are worried there is a virus in the addon, you can view the virus scan results. The addon is completely unchanged other than being compatible with the greatest version of Firefox yet, and here is a download link for it:
Update: I modified the file to work with version 3.6.* of Firefox.
To install the addon, just drap the xpi file (the only file) onto any part of the Firefox window, then you will see the normal addon installation steps.