by ·Comments Off on Monday Morning Fuel: The Stanley Parable

Making a habit of coming in late to any party, last week I was clued into The Stanley Parable, a fan made mod for Half Life 2.

Playing this has the potential to redefine what you think of as a game, and its very existence as an entry to the medium makes actual definition of what a game is increasingly difficult.  It’s an exploration into the nature of free will, of fate, of futility, and of the way we are conditioned to respond in certain situations.  At least, that’s what I got out of it.  It’s also grimly rather funny.

There were also moments where I identified that the narrator was starting to sound a lot like I do after GMing for Dungeons and Dragons with a particularly inventive group of players.

The mod can be obtained here.  It is possible to play on Mac and PC through Steam and you require the Source SDK Base 2007 (If you have Half Life 2, you’ll have this).  Further instructions can be found on its download page.

In their words, the game is best if you don’t know anything about it before you play it, so actually, sorry for telling you something about it, but my original post of just a link and a name didn’t seem like enough.

by ·Comments Off on Monday Morning Fuel: Desktop Dungeons

Here’s a beautiful little time eater for you.

Desktop Dungeons is a free turn based dungeon crawler game that is astonishingly difficult to stop playing and can be a challenge to the point of aggravation.

Each play through will be randomly generated meaning you’ll never quite play the same game twice and in order to get through it, you’ll need to think on your feet and use every available option to you.

The best part for me is that although it’s horribly addictive, each session will only last around 10 minutes, so you can play a quick round before you go and do something else if you’re willpower is up to scratch.

Of course, one of the other reasons I probably like this so much is because I’m such a sucker for pixel art.  By default, it looks something like this:


This is the sort of light-weight-with-substance game that is rare and effective.  You can have a quick bash around on it at lunch time or you can accidentally lose and evening to it.

Although still technically in beta, Desktop Dungeons is fully playable and already highly polished.  You can download it for Mac or PC at the Desktop Dungeons website.

by ·Comments Off on Monday Morning Fuel: The Humble Indie Bundle 3

This week’s Monday Morning Fuel is a collection of amazing indie games.

The outstanding Humble Indie Bundle, where five indie games are offered for the incredible price of whatever-you-want-to-pay, has returned for its third instalment and now includes the following games:

  • VVVVV
  • Crayon Physics Deluxe
  • Cogs
  • And Yet It Moves
  • Hammerfight
  • Steel Storm
  • Atom Zombie Smasher
  • Free access to Minecraft until August 14th
If you pay more than the average amount (currently around the $5-6 mark) you also get:
  • Braid
  • Machinarium
  • Osmos
  • Revenge of the Titans
  • Cortex Command

This is an outstanding deal and you can decide how much of your donation goes to the developers and how much will go to the EFF or Child’s Play.  The games will run on Mac Windows and Linux systems but the deal is only available for the next day and a half.

Braid, VVVVV and Machinarium are my personal favourites on this list and would warrant a significant donation on their own but all of the titles here are truly inspiring pieces of work from highly talented developers.  The Humble Indie Bundle is good for you, good for hard working artists, good for digital rights advocacy, and good for sick children and can be found by following the link below.

The Humble Indie Bundle 3