These heels are awesome!

They’re a personal project from Jamie Ferraioli, and sadly she doesn’t have any plans on making more of them. I would love to create something like this myself though, but I’m not exactly skilled at painting…

This is AWESOME:

Wow, that’s one hell of an ad. So much detail! How many game characters did you recognize? I could list them here for you, but somebody else already did a much better job at that here. I love that they used some of the actual voice actors too.

These are gorgeous! They’re designed by artist Megan Lara. I love the details in these; look closely at the circle designs at the little icons! I could easily see myself in these tees (well, the Zelda and the Samus one, the Peach pose is a bit too much for a tee for me, still a cool design though).

All the tees are available on Level Up Studios as pre-orders (Zelda, Peach, Samus); they’ll be shipped on the 23rd of February. They’re $18 for Mens size and $19 for Ladies size. I’m really tempted to get myself a Zelda one. Check out Megan Lara’s site for more designs.

One good thing that came from being sick the past 3 weeks was that I finally was able to finish Mass Effect, jump right into Mass Effect 2 and complete that too. I’m now so looking forward to the next and final part!

I’ll do a full review some time soon, but Mass Effect is a great game for sci-fi fans. I realized that for me it really fills the void left by sfi-fi tv shows. It’s like a mix of Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek, with it’s own epic world of space exploration and aliens. I know I’m way behind on this (Mass Effect 1 came out in 2007), but it’s a brilliant game and a good place to start if till so far you’re a non-gamer.

And finally here’s the trailer for the 3rd part:

One of the more interesting events of the past two years that I’ve been to has been the Playful events. Each year they manage to get a unique collection of speakers from different fields, all talking about game design (without necessarily being game designers or working within games). And each year I’ve been blown away by some of the talks given there (see my posts about Playful ’08 and Playful ’09).

There are still tickets available, and if I was you I try to get my hands on one of them! They’re only £50; a pretty good price for a conference like this.

Here is Playful’s description of what their event is about:

Playful is a one-day event all about games and play – in all their manifestations, throughout the contemporary media landscape. It’s a conference for architects, artists, designers, developers, geeks, gurus, gamers, tinkerers, thinkerers, bloggers, joggers, and philosophers. We look at what PLAY means both creatively and culturally, and put speakers on the stage who offer different perspectives on where we are currently, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. We want people walking away talking about the nature of games…what they mean to different people inside, on the periphery, outside or miles away from the industry.

So will I see you there? To see the full list of speakers, check out the Playful site.

I’ve been asked to cover a cool project called Game Runners, and it looks like it could be great fun!

Game Runners is an experimental project where PlayStation, members of the public and young people from diverse backgrounds come together to create social (pervasive) games. The project has been developed by PlayStation and Hide & Seek with a team of 8 initial Game Runners who PlayStation have picked to train as game designers and work to make the games relevant.

There are three games in development: Flags, Blocks & Hoops. The games are in prototype stage and during August there will be a series of playtests to develop the games. I’ll be attending the first playtest tomorrow, and I can’t wait to see how the 3 games will turn out to be. Knowing the Hide & Seek type games, there’s sure to be some running around and smart thinking!

Check out the Game Runners Facebook Page, where you can learn about the different games, meet the Game Runners and vote for your favourite game. The most popular game – as decided by the fans – will be selected and put forward into development and then put into action at a live event in October, where fans can try out the game for real.

I’m feeling pretty chuffed with myself right now! I just solved the postcard puzzle from Tron, without having all the pieces 🙂

I wrote about the retro arcade game postcards last week, and each card came with a black strip on the back. Under UV light each design showed a different series of dots. The idea was to layer these dots to spell out something. Up until today there were only 4 designs and we couldn’t get closer to solving the puzzle.

Today 2 new cards were released though, and I managed to figure it out with only 1 of those. The letters spelled out ENCOMGAMES-OT– with the dashes being unknown letters. I guessed that it would have to be ENCOMGAMES DOT something something, leading to some url, so started trying out different letter combos. Pretty quickly I stumbled on the solution! ENCOMGAMES.JP

It’s completely in Japanese (of course) and leads to a new Flash game: Circuit Cycles. Give it a go, it gets pretty tricky quickly. On to the next puzzle!

Want to run around the Southbank pretending to be a spy? Or solve cryptic messages to find the hidden treasure? Then come along to the Hide & Seek Weekender!

The Hide & Seek Weekend is a free weekend of social and pervasive games on London’s Southbank. This year it’s running this weekend (9th – 11th July) at the National Theatre, in partnership with LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre). Check out the full schedule to see which games will be played.

I’ve been for the past 2 years now (and to their 1 evening Sandpit events) and it’s always great fun. Throughout the weekend they hold tons of games and there’s always something cool to do. I’ll be there on Saturday and Sunday; if you’re going too, leave a comment behind if you want to meetup!

Wow, this looks awesome! I had heard about it some time ago, but that was ages ago when there wasn’t any footage available yet. Now… wow.

Initially announced as a Nintendo DS game, Ni no Kuni: The Another World is the first partnership between animation studio Studio Ghibli and game developer Level-5 (the guys who did the Professor Layton series and the Dragonquest series). Then last week it was revealed there would now be two games: Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi for the Nintendo DS and Ni no Kuni: Shiroki Seihai no Joou for the PS3.

Here’s some footage from the PS3 version:

Both versions are being developed from scratch, and each will feature different artwork, graphics and story developments, while only “retaining the same story axle”. That story is about a 13 year old boy Oliver, whose mother suddenly dies. He’s given a book by a fairy that allows him to go to the parallel world of ‘Ninokuni’, where he might be able to revive his mother.

I love the footage of the PS3 version, but the Nintendo DS version already has me intrigued. That game comes with an elaborate 350 page book that is needed to play the game. It’s part tutorial, but also part strategy guide, featuring instructions on how to draw runes to cast magic in the game, enemy weaknesses and other info, and encrypted codes to unlock secrets in the game.

I’m definitely going to get both games when they’re released there (if they’re released here, but I think they will be). And you? Are you a Studio Ghibli fan? Do you want these games?

I’ve only gotten a PS3 this year, but one of the first games I fell in love with for it was Little Big Planet. I still haven’t completely finished the standard game and haven’t even started trying out some the amazing custom levels; there’s just so much going on!

Even though I’ll be still hooked on the first game for quite a while, the recently announced Little Big Planet 2 looks amazing:

Ooh, so many cool new features! I can’t wait to see how this will turn out. I like the look of the AI/digital puppetry features; curious to see what crazy levels people come up with!

To read about more of the new features of Little Big Planet 2, check out their website.