I just found out that the amazing physics based hammer-swinging game, Hammerfight by Russian Konstantin Koshutin and previously known as Hammerfall is available to purchase on Steam for €6.99. It has actually been available for a while as fun-motion.com reported it last Autumn. I'm gonna get the game so I can see how much has been improved and added to the commercial version compared to the free demo. I'll write a review afterwards, so wait for it (or get the game yourself if you are curious enough).

I did a feature on the Hammerfall demo on the old Alt+Games site, and now seems a good time for a re-run in the new site. Here you go:

I think that the FunMotion blog entry about this game started it. The Hammerfall v0.21 demo posted on a Russian GameNow.ru forum by a user with nickname GKosh has raised interest and inspired numerous blog post among indie game bloggers recently. I dl'd the demo and now it's official: I'm joining the bandwagon. Hammerfall is indeed a very promising and innovative action game demo for Windows machines.

Steampunk Action

The player controls a stempunk-style flying copter thingy which drags a massive rock on a chain behind it. The basic idea is to swat at enemies by swinging this rock-in-a-chain. The copter is controlled with the mouse; the rock follows behind following the laws of physics (yes, this game uses physics engine, too). The player can swing the rock into action with a circular flying motion.

A while back I posted a video of a Japanese drum arcade game that I shot in an arcade in Tokyo. That was in the old Alt+Games site, so here's the re-run.

After that incident a lot has happened in the drum game scene. Taiko no Tatsujin has been available in the western world for a while (athough I like the songs in the Japanese versions more) and more importantly the genre of band games has introduced the plastic drum sets into our living rooms.

I got the chance to play the drums on Guitar Hero World Tour a while ago at my friends Juha's and M's place. While my performance was nothing of the sort featured in the video below, I could immediately see the charm of drum-set-banging gameplay. To me the whole thing seemed to be a lot closer to the real thing than the guitar playingin Guitar Hero. Actually when I think about it the interface is exactly the same as in a digital drum set (minus the quality). 

That said, it's really hard for me to get so excited about the drum set games as to actually get a drum set controller myself. The music games are essentially recycling the same concept over and over with only a few changes. I'm getting bored with the basic concept a bit. Something really cool needs to surface for me to sacrifice the space needed for the drum kit in my living room.

But, here's the video, please enjoy. Pretty sophisticated, ain't it?

Roughly a year ago we played a game about the conflict in Gaza as it happened and was all over the news. It's a game I've returned in my thoughts right through the year (and in here, sorry about that :). Something ticked; all the players knew what the game was about, the discussions were lively after the games. And now I'm thinking if this could be a pattern that I could try to reproduce.

There are many global news stories capturing the attention of the global population each year. Last year it was the Gaza, the downturn of the economy, Obama, Afghanistan was and is still in the limelight, the climate talks in Copenhagen etc.

For me playing games about these news stories would be a way to understand and to explore viewpoints of the narrative that we consume through media. I personally often have hard time grasping the systemic view of these kinds of events through news. Instead I feel some kind of anxiety and frustration and the need to go on with other things. But I think something valuable could be learned by exploring these news events through story games.

I've started a thread on Story Games where I ask what kinds of news event people would be interested to explore with story games and what games would they use and how. You can also comment here.

Ps. News Gaming is not a new idea. Gonzalo Frasca launched the website newsgaming.com in 2003. The site contains two browser games, MADRID (about the terrorist attacks in Spain in 2004) and September 12th.