Sean Hogan one half of the awesome duo that brought us Anodyne recently posed a question on Steam I thought was pretty interesting in regard to adding a fairly simple level editor to Anodyne.

"Would anyone be interested in this?

The thing is, Anodyne wasn't coded with it in mind, so it might be hard to pull off. But if I did, it would be pretty basic:

- No doors between different maps. Maybe doors in the same map.
- No NPCs or dialogue (possibly the rocks with a single "chunk" of dialogue)
- One and song per map.
- Maybe bosses.
- Likely most enemies/dungeon things"

I am totally down for this idea. I really enjoyed plunking out a few maps in Portal 2 and loved the process. Would you be interested in seeing a simple Anodyne level editor? Sound off on the Steam community thread:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/234900/discussions/0/810922320220339724/

"This collection covers over a decade of groundbreaking work by the chipmusic bands 8 Bit Weapon & ComputeHer. After 14 years, 5 tours, and countless studio albums between them, 8 Bit Weapon & ComputeHer has amassed a healthy body of work. This album represents the best of their combined efforts in chipmusic."

If you love chipmusic and want to check out some good stuff you may not otherwise be familiar with I recommend the recent collab album by 8 Bit Weapon & ComputeHer called "Chiptopia." It is over at Bandcamp and you can pay what you wish for the music. Really enjoyed this on my first run through.

http://computeher.bandcamp.com/album/chiptopia-the-best-of-8-bit-weapon-computeher

Ratchet and Clank the movie is set to hit the big screen in early 2015. This makes sense as the game is quite cinematic already and in the "Pixar quality" realm.

https://www.facebook.com/RatchetandClankMovie

Are you interested in watching the new Ratchet and Clank film or are you holding out for the next Bob Hoskins & John Leguizamo Super Mario Brothers 2 film?

I mean they are both Bowser's minions, sooner or later something like this was going to happen? Right?

Venus Patrol has an interesting mashup of a bunch of new Indie Games on TIGSource. I realize thats two too many sources, so lets start at the top. TIGSource is a forum site dedicated to the development of Indie Games. As such many Indie Game developers post their games development status there and if you keep up with the posts, you can keep up to date with your most anticipated Indie Games. Venus Patrol post weekly issues of TIGSource devlogs and wraps it up in a really awesome infographic style post you can nab here:

http://venuspatrol.com/2013/04/tigsource-devlog-dom2ds-visual-showcase-of-awesome-new-games-issue-14/

So go and check it out. Some of the games mentioned we have covered here such as Chasm but many were new to me.

http://www.tigsource.com/

"The Realm is set in a far distant future where the world has been reclaimed by nature. Our once proud cities now lie abandoned - overgrown with strange plants and twisted vines. The locations in The Realm reflect the real-life landscapes and architecture of the North East of England.

Some humans remain, but they are now leading a more simple life based around small rural communities entirely divorced from modern technology and science. The age of magic and mysticism has returned and there are rumours of stirrings in the forests."

Realm is an interesting game about a girl and her golem friend that adventure around in a very lush artful point and click world. The art style is very interesting and point and click adventures don't always get the attention they deserve.

Gabe Newell recently gave out his Steam username and password to showcase Valve's latest identity protection. Gaben's password is moolyftw and I am wondering how many people have tried to access his account since he published it?

Space Whale: Whale From Outerspace wins the award for the coolest space name. Never realised I wanted to play as a space whale until now.

http://thecodebar.abertay.ac.uk/gameprojects/spacewhale/

Interesting new video making the rounds about someone who played 365 indie games in a year. After watching it briefly I now realize how many games are made I don't even know about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7_eAMeQfwo

Legend of Dungeon is fun new rogue-like that was recently released on the Humble Store. I picked it up and was instantly taken with its unique look and fun gameplay. It is in my "regular rotation" of games I am currently playing and I can say that, for me, it works flawlessly on Mac and Linux(so far I haven't actually played it on PC). I reached out to Alix Stolzer, one half the amazing Robot Loves Kitty Indie duo that created Legend of Dungeon and other lovely games such as Tiny Plumbers.

Since I sent out the questions to Alix, Legend of Dungeon has been successfully Greenlit on Steam and the game has continued on to garner more fans and positive reviews. I want to thank Alix for answering my questions and wish them to a speedy final game launch.

jdodson: Legend of Dungeon is a very pretty game. One thing that visually stands out to me are the shadow effects and how that allows the game such a dark and moody tone. Was this something you set out to do or did it kind of emerge when you were developing it?

Alix: The Dynamic shading on flat sprites was one of the first things we did. It was a technique that Calvin had been curious to try, and we loved the way it turned out.

jdodson: Indie Games are blowing up the video game industry right now. In fact, I can’t think of an upcoming triple A game on my radar. Being part of the current craze of Indie awesomeness I wonder how you look at the video game industry today? With that, are there any new indie games or companies on your radar others should be aware of?

Alix: We really enjoy the creativity and curiosity you see from a lot of indies, and the passion for creating worlds for others to play in. Some games/devs that we are looking forward to that are newer and less out there are Artemis by Incandescent Workshop, Delver's Drop by Pixelscopic, Mc Droid by Elefantopia, and Starseed Pilgrim by Droqen.

jdodson: For people new to Legend of Dungeon, I wonder what you recommend for them to do or remember when they are winding through the depths of The Dungeon?

Alix: Don't forget the lantern in the tavern, and enjoy your unfortunate but inevitable deaths (you will have lots of them)!!

Enjoy the journey enough that when you die, you laugh, and try again :)

jdodson: How has the community response to Legend of Dungeon been since people have been playing it? Anything surprise you about how the game has been received?

Alix: We have been completely amazed by the response we've gotten, and we feel like we've gained a bunch of friends!

jdodson: I was listening to an interview you both were part of on YouTube by thekillerbits. Calvin mentioned that one inspiration for Legend of Dungeon was the ol’ Ninja Turtles arcade hack-n-slash, which is awesome because thats an awesome game. Recently I hooked up Legend of Dungeon to my TV and was playing with a friend using our USB controllers and it was really fun. I sort of died really quickly because I was trying to be funny and ended up as a ghost, which was cool. After collecting a few pellets I came back with 1 HP. It was really hard to get back into the game after that and kept dying. For people that may just want to play with their friends who are not pros themselves, will there possibly be a “press start to continue” akin to putting another quarter in the arcade machine and your player comes back with full life?

Alix: An actual arcade style "____ to continue" version would be really cool, but it would ruin the game in a lot of ways unfortunately, especially the fact that it would be making it beatable every time you play. We are only in Alpha and still balancing things, hopefully we'll end up with a death system that makes most people happy.

jdodson: I love the dwarf and would love playing that character in the game. Will the Dwarf be available at some point to play?

Alix: We think the dwarf is great, but so far we don't have any way of using him as a character. The dwarf is too small! We'd love to have him do something more in the game, so we'll see!

jdodson: The current version of the game I am playing is the Alpha. It seems really polished for an alpha and I wonder what other amazingness will be added before the beta and the final release?

Alix: We have a ton more items and monsters to add, we need to also put in the random NPC's you might meet on your journey. We are getting close to Beta though, it shouldn't be long now!

jdodson: I wonder what the most requested set of features people have been asking you add to Legend of Dungeon?

Alix: The most asked for thing is definitely Networking. it means that we have a game that people want to play together, which is really exciting for us. It's something we just can't add to the game at this stage in development.

jdodson: Legend of Dungeon was successfully Kickstarted and as such I am wondering if you guys will be Kickstarting all your future games as part of the release process? Do you think this is the new model for indie developers to get a game to fans or just something people are doing right now?

Alix: It helped us understand how people would think of our game while it was in early development, and we loved getting all the input from backers. The freedom of funding our own projects is also very nice. So I think it's a very good way for many indies to get a better understanding of the market and we are definitely thinking about using it again.

jdodson: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, do you have any other awesomeness you want to say before we wrap things up?

Alix: It's been an amazing process, having a game that has become something so big, when it started out as a small side project that we didn't know anyone would like.

Thanks so much for all the questions!

jdodson: (to you the reader) This morning I noticed a new bit of news that Robot Loves Kitty posted to their tumblr about the state of the game making its way to steam. According to them, the game will most likely be released on Steam during the beta or final versions of the game.

http://robotloveskitty.tumblr.com/post/48442710713/heya-do-you-know-when-exactly-lod-will-be-released-on

http://www.robotloveskitty.com/LoD/

The original idea of Cheerful Ghost was simply a way to share your list of games with the world. As the idea evolved it became a place to tie all conversations about games together. It also started becoming more of an awesome game community and it evolved to what it is today.

As time has passed your game list has grown but I haven't done much to make your game list more exciting or something you might go back to curate. I have just launched the new GAME LIST 2.0 BETA and I seriously recommend you check it out.

new stuff:

• Each of your games has a flow. Wishlist -> Own -> Backlog -> Playing -> Played -> Completed. Update right on the list and it magically saves in place.


• You can change the platform as well and it auto-saves too. Magical.


• I added a new search filter, so if you button up your games list you can do some awesome stuff like share with your friends you wishlist, backlog and games completed.

Want to know how many games I have completed? Certainly.
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/games?filter=completed

Want to know what I am currently playing? Simple.
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/games?filter=playing

You can update your list by going to the drop down and selecting "Game List." From there, edit away and have fun!

In my latest Lets Play I tackle the Kickstarter Beta for Chasm. I also dial it up a notch by doing some on-the-fly in game voice dialog for the NPC's*.

The Chasm demo isn't very long but paints a good picture of how well polished the game is and what we can expect when it ships.

* Please don't judge me because I am strange. Ok well, maybe a little.