At the Nordic Game Jam this past weekend, Lau and I chatted with the friendly guys from Game Reactor. Things got a little too silly (oops, my bad). Here are the results:
Last month, I did a long interview with Leigh Alexander for Gamasutra. We talked about the collective, abusive game design, B.U.T.T.O.N., broken games, and more. Read it here.
Here’s an excerpt:
At its best, abusive game design can create a kind of playful meta-game — a battle of wits and willpower between designer and player. The kind of abusive game design that interests me most is “dialogic,” in that it facilitates a back-and-forth — maybe not a literal back-and-forth, but something that feels like it, as if you and the designer were “in each other’s heads,” so to speak. [...] Thus, counter-intuitively, I think abusive game design can help humanize gameplay. It confronts the conventional and reminds us that play is something deeply personal.
Yes yes ya’ll, it’s time for another Nordic Game Jam Pre-Party! Last year was so much fun that of course we had to throw it again.
Nifflas will be back again to DJ, and he’ll be joined by our friend Prins Winther. Visuals by Oppe Om Natten.
We may try to run a special 26-player (!!) version of B.U.T.T.O.N. in the ITU atrium. Yes, you read that right. Stay tuned…
Check out our event page for more details. To whet your appetite, we’ve included some photos of last year’s party below.
And if you haven’t signed up for the Nordic Game Jam yet… what are you waiting for?!? It’s one of our favorite events of the year! Sign up here.
We’re hard at work on the PC/Windows version of B.U.T.T.O.N. We have some exciting news to announce about the game – hopefully soon!
In the meantime, we’d like to give the general gaming public a chance to contribute to the design. For the PC version, we’d like to include a few additional pre-race commands. What are “pre-race commands” you ask? They’re the silly things the game tells you to do before the win condition is announced. Some current examples include:
Do you have your own ideas? Send your suggestion(s) to info@brutallyunfairtactics.com. We’ll put the winning suggestion(s) in the PC version of B.U.T.T.O.N. , and we’ll thank you on our website. Hell, we’ll even mail the winner(s) a special collectible B.U.T.T.O.N. mask.
Deadline to submit is Monday, January 24.
Get to it, and spread the word!
(Eventually, if we’re ever able to work on an expanded version of the game, we’d like to allow all players to write and insert their own text into the game. Stay tuned, it just may happen some day…)
In case you missed it, we finally released B.U.T.T.O.N. for Xbox Live Indie. Woo hoo! Just in time for all the New Years Eve revelry!
Check out the game’s new website, or follow news about the game on Twitter. The Xbox Live Indie service isn’t available in all countries – or at least not in Denmark (booo!). Fret not, we’ll be releasing a PC version of the game very soon. Stay tuned.
B.U.T.T.O.N. and Dark Room Sex Game are returning to Babycastles – with holiday spirit!
Click the image to see the rest of the flyer!
Flyer design by our awesomely talented friend, Joost Meeuwissen.
More info at the event’s Facebook page, here.
Nifflas has been hard at work transforming the B.U.T.T.O.N. soundtrack into a standalone EP.
He just finished! And of course it’s fantastic. We’re so excited to release it to the public. We’ll be selling the EP along with the full game, which we’re releasing for both Xbox Live Indie and PC (Windows) very soon. Stay tuned for more info (you can also follow us on Twitter).
For now, here’s a sneak peak of one of the tracks, “Kissing Another Player”:
Kissing Another Player (B.U.T.T.O.N.) by Nifflas
Yes, it’s actually true, players have been known to kiss each other while playing B.U.T.T.O.N. – especially when playing the game in “Naughty Mode.” Man, you should have been at Dajana’s birthday party earlier this year when we playtested that mode for the first time…
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| Culver City, brutalized! |
(Part 1 here)
After our stint in NYC, we headed west to California to attend IndieCade 2010, to showcase B.U.T.T.O.N. It was our third IndieCade in a row! But as I mentioned a few weeks ago, this year had a special significance for us, given that we had met Nils two years ago at IndieCade 2008.
This year did not disappoint! The festival was bigger than ever, packed with all sorts of lectures and crazy games. And yet, for the most part it managed to retain its homespun communal feel. Still, it’s staggering to think how much the festival has grown over the last two years ago. Just two years ago, there were only a handful of us developers packed into one small room in Bellevue, WA. Yes, I sound like a wistful old man.
So we went to America. The first stop on our trip was New York City, where our games were shown at a Babycastles party in Queens. The place was a venue called Silent Barn, which is mostly known for hosting concerts. The Babycastles Arcade started out with a couple of guys showing weird games at the bar during concerts, and people that were normally not playing games really got into it. By now their Arcade has moved to Manhattan, where they’re set up in the Showpaper Gallery on 42nd street. So if you’re visiting New York, go there!
