labyrinth
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Maze-like chip helps spot aggressive cancer cells
It's difficult to spot cancer cells -- just one in a billion blood cells are cancerous. How do you isolate them to know the trouble someone is facing and eventually treat it? By drawing the kind of mazes you enjoyed as a kid, apparently. Researchers have developed a microfluidic chip that uses a circular labyrinth to separate cancer cells from the rest of your bloodstream and spot the stem-like cells that will aggressively spread that cancer. Ultimately, it's a creative use of physics. The curves tend to push larger cancer cells forward (smaller regular cells cling to the walls), while the corners mix things up and put white blood cells in an ideal position.
A 'Dark Crystal' prequel is coming to Netflix
Who needs new ideas when you have the genius of Jim Henson to fall back on? Following recent news that an (unnecessary) sequel to cult classic Labyrinth is in the works, The Jim Henson Company today announced it's producing a new series for Netflix based on '80s masterpiece The Dark Crystal. Called The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, the ten-episode show will be set years before the events of the film. "When three Gelfling discover the horrifying secret behind the Skeksis' power, they set out on an epic journey to ignite the fires of rebellion and save their word," a short description of the premise reads.
Free for All: Getting lost in the labyrinth of Wurm Online
Wurm Online is a game of darkness. Really, the entire world is balanced on what will happen after the sun sets. If a player isn't careful, she can find herself lost and alone without a torch to light her path. I don't mean to make the daylight out to be a haven from danger; a player can die during the day as easily as at night. But at least during the day, a far-off shelter can be aimed for. Unless there's fog, of course. OK, look. Wurm Online is a game of super-scary death things, but the night is particularly scary. That's what I meant. When an old Vanguard: Saga of Heroes buddy of mine let me know that he and his friends had built a giant maze in Wurm, one that can actually keep players occupied for hours and can possibly lead to injury or death, I jumped into a tiny rowboat and paddled my way south toward the Deliverance server. I had to see this thing for myself.
Are you a bad enough dude to survive Xsyon's Mutant Maze?
Do you feel lucky when you log into Xsyon? Do you feel as if you can go anywhere and do anything in complete safety? Then perhaps you'd like to test your skills this weekend when the game unleashes the Mutant Maze event starting at 3 p.m. EST (12 p.m. PST). Open to everyone who wishes to take part, the event will teleport all volunteers to the designated grounds at the start and teleport them back at the conclusion... but there's no certainty you'll emerge victorious. So what is the Mutant Maze? It's a labyrinth filled with all sorts of nasty mutants, hence the name. Players will be able to keep the spoils of their kills, and there's a special prize for completing a round of the maze by both surviving and finding the exit successfully. There are three total rounds, enough to test the game's most seasoned veterans -- but for the glory of a prize, won't you spend a weekend ambling through a maze filled with enormous bears? [Source: Notorious Games press release]
Portabliss: The aMAZEing Labyrinth (iOS)
Did you know that you can download handheld games now? That's amazingly convenient! The only inconvenient part of it is finding the right games to buy -- and that's where we come in, with our Portabliss column. In each installment, we'll tell you about a downloadable game on the iPhone, iPad, Android device, DSi, 3DS, PSP, etc. Today: The aMAZEing Labyrinth. When The aMAZEing Labyrinth launched on iPhone it lacked one key feature: AI players. For those who aren't chummy with folks at the bus stop or looking to get a game on with their cubicle neighbor at work, it was kind of a deal-breaker. The addition of computer players in the latest update changes all that. The aMAZEing Labyrinth iPhone delivers the wall-shifting strategic gameplay in a portable package that board game players have enjoyed for 25 years. The objective in the core aMAZEing Labyrinth game is to shift the tiles of the labyrinth so your character can obtain assigned treasures. The flow of gameplay has players sliding a rotatable tile in from the side, followed by moving their character as many tiles as desired to obtain the item, or position their avatar for the next move. Lower level play has all players focused on obtaining their objective. At higher levels, other players will try to trap their competition within the labyrinth while obtaining their items.
Vindictus is making a Titanic Shift!
The team at Nexon practiced the Galactic Empire's way of handling situations when devising the next upgrades to its action-MMO Vindictus: Make it bigger! The creators promised on their website today that Titan would be the biggest raid boss to hit the free-to-play MMO. "Only the bravest and strongest mercenaries will come out victorious," claim the developers in the announcement. This colossal boss can easily smash the bones of anyone who opposes him. Then, the creators ask if you will be the first to escape Resenlian's gigantic labyrinth. An evil alchemist filled the tunnels with gruesome creatures, and until now, no mercenary has ever escaped it. Next, Evie's staff has grown larger... in stats, that is. The new functionality of her staff allows her to perform better as a caster. Lastly, the docking system is wider. The devs have heard your pleas; they are revamping the docking system so that you may access more docks at one time. This means less wait-time assembling a party. This Titanic Shift patch goes live on April 20th! Hop over to the official website for more super-huge (OK -- I'm running out of words for big) information about this update.
Ancient acoustic engineers used stucco, drugs, and architecture to rock and confuse audiences
It's always fun when scientists discover new stuff about really old cultures, especially when it has to do with getting weird and rocking out. Recent research suggests temples built around 600 A.D. in Palenque, Mexico were designed with projection rooms that shot the sound of voices and instruments 300 feet away with the help of stucco-coated surfaces. 1600 years before that, in the Peruvian Andes, a pre-Incan society in Chavín was constructing a nightmarish Gallery of Labyrinths to play "strange acoustic tricks" during cult initiations: animal-like roars from horns, disorienting echoes, and maybe even choirs designed to produce otherworldly effects. And all of this while the poor inductees were being fed psychedelic San Pedro cacti. Yikes! To a certain extent this is all speculation, but we can tell you that if we were ancient priests with this kind of gear at our disposal we'd be using it for mind-controlling purposes too. Just because! [Photo adapted from Jenny Pansing's flickr]
Hyperspace Beacon: Homage to we hope this never makes it into SWTOR, but knowing our luck, it probably will
One of the best compliments you can give a creator is to make an homage to his work. The title of one of the Hyperspace Beacons was an homage to TOROCast articles. It's a way to tell the creator, "You're doing a good job. Keep up the good work." Not to mention, homages are a lot of fun. In fact, my first published work was an homage to the work of Charles Dickens. I wrote a story about what happened to the Cratchit children. But what happens when an homage goes too far? Every once in a while, the Hyperspace Beacon takes a side track and asks about ideas that should end up on the cutting room floor. We all know games have concepts that just don't work. Star Wars: The Old Republic will be no exception. This little humorous segment is called We hope this never makes it into SWTOR, but knowing our luck, it probably will -- or WHTNMIISWTORBKOLIPW, for short. Follow me after the break to see what "homageneous" ideas should never make it into the release of SWTOR, but knowing our luck, they will anyway.
From iPhone to iPad: Revisiting Labyrinth 2
How do old favorites hold up on the iPad? In our "From iPhone to iPad" series, TUAW revisits iPhone applications that have transitioned to the iPad. We look at their latest incarnation and see how the new measures up to the old. Today, TUAW looks at Labyrinth 2. I loved Labyrinth 2 when I first tested it for iPhone. So I was delighted when developer Carl Loodberg of Illusion Labs offered me the opportunity to try out the updated version for the iPad. As I wrote about the iPhone version, Labyrinth 2 offers a beautifully designed and fun-to-play classic wooden labyrinth with metal ball game that's fun to use, even for the manually uncoordinated like myself. Labyrinth 2 for iPad is all that -- and more. Loodberg has brought all the visual appeal that made the iPhone version a treasure and upgraded the graphics and interaction for the iPad display. Unlike many accelerometer games that are hindered by the iPad's larger form factor (that no longer quite matches the size of your hand), Labyrinth 2 HD actually benefits from the size jump. In fact, the iPad version more closely matches the real-world size of the original wooden toy. Labyrinth 2 HD hasn't sacrificed the great electronic touches that made the original stand out. You can still use magnets, shooters, ball doublers and other fancifully delightful elements to transform a simple game of balance manipulation into an arcade. I particularly love the pin-ball style bumpers and the little buttons that unlock obstacles. Labyrinth 2, in both its original iPhone ($4.99) and updated iPad HD ($7.99) form, offers a great iPhone OS game. It is priced slightly above the market but provides value for that cost. TUAW is commonly provided with not-for-resale licenses or promo codes to permit product evaluations and reviews. For more details, see our policy page. Promo code requests are not guarantees of review.
First Look: Little Metal Ball spins you right round
Some wood, some knobs, and a ball bearing: the traditional labyrinth game has spawned several digital descendants (including some of the simian sort); considering the iPhone's accelerometer is very adept at simulating a tilting table or a swaying bridge, it's no surprise that this genre is quite popular on the App Store. The latest entry in the fun parade, from the developers of the Pano photo app (Debacle Software), is Little Metal Ball [$1.99, iTunes link], available tonight in the App Store. We've got an exclusive gameplay trailer above, so you can see that you'll be piloting your steel BB around and through a wide assortment of obstacles, landscapes and challenges as you try to collect prize stars and finish each level (40 in total) in the minimum amount of time. While the original Super Monkey Ball was so challenging as to be frustrating for an average twitch gamer like myself (version 2 is a big improvement, according to TJ), I found that the difficulty level on LMB was just about right for me -- it takes a little while to get used to the ball jump controls, which are critical for navigating the early levels, but I got the hang of it quickly. The variety of environments keeps it interesting as you progress through the game, and the background music (which calls to mind the Harry Potter film theme) is soothing enough to keep you from throwing your iPhone through the window if you hit a frustrating spot on the course. If I could add one feature, it would be a calibration option so that players could adjust the zero point and not spend the entire game hunched over like a victim of mild food poisoning. LMB may not have all the bells and whistles of the popular Labyrinth 2 [$4.99, iTunes link], but it's certainly a worthwhile addition to the tilt-to-play landscape.
Hands on with Labyrinth 2 for iPhone
Illusion Labs has just released Labyrinth 2 in App Store [iTunes Link]. Beautifully designed and fun to play, Labyrinth 2 transforms your iPhone into a classic wooden labyrinth/metal ball game, but it's a lot more than that. Labyrinth 2 isn't just about manual coordination and keeping the ball from treacherous holes, it offers clever tricks and twists including gates with button-based controls that limit access to certain parts of a given maze, magnets, limited-access twirling discs, bb shooters that displace your ball, and more. I am not normally a big fan of coordination-based games. I personally have the coordination of a dyspeptic llama doing heavy pharmaceuticals. I love that Labyrinth 2 offered many levels without the "avoid the hole" dynamics that I could play and enjoy. The visual and sound design for this game are superb. I loved the care that went into it, from the diagonal main menus to the clicky feedback sounds to the ability to download additional levels after buying the game. That's not saying that the GUI was perfect. I do wish that the clicky interaction was universal throughout. UI sounds for the back button and tab bars were notable in their absence. Also the tab bar buttons ("Official","Downloaded", "Faves") were way too tiny in height for practical use. Also, I have no clue what the little Pac-Mac ghost button at the top-right of the screen was for. Those quibbles aside, the game design is really tight. The simulated physics were fabulous, the game twists (like magnets, rotating wheels, and so forth) welcome, and the entire app (retailing for $4.99) a very good value for the money. Even with my limited motion control abilities, I found Labyrinth 2 to be an enjoyable game to explore -- and my kids gave it thumbs up across the board.
Illusion Labs wants you to Sway with them
Illusion Labs is probably best known for their first app, iPint, but have been making splashes since then with interesting apps that make great use of the iPhone's features and touchscreen. I tried out their Touchgrind app, and while it was a fascinating demo of how to combine an in-game physics system with the sensitive touchscreen controls, it was a little too tough for me to use (you have to really be a skateboarder, since the app really is a fingerboard, basically).But Sway looks much more casual, and still puts the touchscreen and tilt abilities to great use. Like Rolando, it's a cartoony, physics-based platformer, but unlike Rolando, the mechanic here isn't rolling, but swinging. You swing the little characters around, and then use the touchscreen to grab onto various parts of the environment while exploring it.Very intriguing. Like Touchgrind, the controls might be a little too sophisticated to appeal to all players (it looks tough coordinating which hand is which and exactly when to grab and let go), but we'll have to see how it works out -- if it starts out in an accessible way, Sway might be really impressive. Illusion Labs didn't tell us a price yet (their two other paid games are $5 and $7), but the game is set to hit the App Store soon.
Wooden labyrinth made cooler and more frustrating with Balance Board controls
Some geniuses from Kansas City's "Cowtown Computer Congress", with the help of an Arduino microcontroller and copious amounts of SCIENCE, have added Balance Board controls to a wooden labyrinth toy. Leaning on the board controls the servos attached to the game's two dials, causing the game to tilt in response to the board. It's like The Incredible Maze, but actually incredible! It can also be controlled with an Xbox 360 controller, though that lacks the representative motion element.The whole thing cost about $60 in parts, not including the Balance Board. Of course, that's if you don't already have a couple of servos and an Arduino lying about, which, if you're electronics-savvy enough to carry this out, you probably do. %Gallery-23928%[Via Engadget]
Wii Fit and Arduino bring wooden Labyrinth game to robotic life
Ah, yes. Nothing like some robotics to shake all that pesky quaintness out of a well-loved, time-tested game. In this case, some folks from the Cowtown Computer Congress used a couple of servos and the ever so useful Arduino to connect a wooden Labyrinth game to a Wii Fit, which appears to up the difficulty of the game while still requiring as little exertion as possible. At just $60 total (not including the Wii Fit), the project is also relatively inexpensive, and it seems that it's a fairly simple process to swap out the Wii Fit for the controller of your choice. Head on past the break for a video of the setup in action, and hit up the link below for the necessary details.[Thanks, Steve]
VC Friday: Tetris Party drops in PAL regions
A port of casual PC title Home Sweet Home (succumb to your IKEA nesting instinct) and The Incredible Maze (succumb to possibly the worst game on WiiWare) would struggle to get noticed in most weeks, but on the day Tetris Party finally lands in Europe and Australia? Poor things don't stand a chance, cos' there ain't no party like a Tetris Party! Tetris Party -- WiiWare -- 1200 Nintendo Points Home Sweet Home -- WiiWare -- 1000 Nintendo Points The Incredible Maze -- WiiWare -- 500 Nintendo Points %Gallery-18122%
Wii Fanboy Review: The Incredible Maze
The Incredible Maze is based on a simple, solid game concept: the wooden "labyrinth" toy. You know the one: you turn dials to tilt a wooden maze so that a ball rolls to the destination point without falling into strategically-placed holes. This concept is the basis for Super Monkey Ball, Kororinpa, and even (sort of) Mercury Meltdown Revolution. The Wii Remote, which can be physically tilted to control gameplay, seems like a natural for this sort of thing.It's harder than it looks to implement good tilt control on the Wii, however. And The Incredible Maze's tilt controls take what would otherwise be a pretty benign game and ruin it.
Vertigo: Super Person Ball
Racing. Sci Fi. Labyrinth levels. Balancing. Upgrades. Balance. Human bowling. Playlogic's Vertigo doesn't look like the greatest game ever or anything, but it's damned weird. "Upgrade your Xorb, seek hidden shortcuts and collect power ups to help you survive, to become the fastest and most envied Xorber in the Universe!" How can you not get excited? They pretty much just told us to get excited.Games like Vertigo, which is slated for both PC and Wii before the end of the year, raise interesting questions. If the controls are decent, particularly with the Balance Board -- which Vertigo supports -- does it become worthwhile? What does something like this really need?%Gallery-32555%
Marble game accessory modeled after Goatse
If you've managed to get this far in your internet life without running into Goatse, congratulations! Do yourself a favor and keep it that way -- trust us on this one.It has been months since Chinese accessory manufacturers last entertained us with inane Wii remote attachments; we were beginning to fear that they had run out of wacky ideas! But here comes the Ball Bearing Maze Special Salver [sic] to cure our accessory doldrums!With this handy, Kororinpa-branded product, all you need to do is drop your remote into that center compartment, and you'll have more exciting, immersive experience playing marble/labyrinthine games such as Kororinpa: Marble Mania and, uh, that's it. Similarly designed games like Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, Mercury Meltdown Revolution, and Dewy's Adventure all require easy access to the controller's buttons, so this accessory wouldn't work well with those.Couple that limited support with the Maze Special Salver's pricing, $27.99 plus shipping/handling, and this attachment looks almost as unattractive as the terrible image its design alludes to. You would be better off taping your remote to a cafeteria tray![Via Go Nintendo]
Dewy drops to $19.79
If these ten reasons weren't enough to motivate you into grabbing yourself a copy of Dewy's Adventure, try considering this argument: Amazon has the cutesy labyrinthine game on sale for $19.79.Despite the control issues many reviewers cited with Dewy's Adventure, we have to commend Konami for taking a risk producing an original title, and it's a Wii exclusive at that! It's a shame that it didn't sell very well in any of the three major territories. As usual, we can't guarantee that this deal will be available for long, so take advantage of it while you can.
Labyrinthine games with the DS Motion Cart
Looking back at the game now, Super Monkey Ball: Touch & Roll's stylus controls can't compete with the level of immersion and intuitiveness we're seeing with the Wii's labyrinthine games -- Mercury Meltdown Revolution, Dewey's Adventure, and Kororinpa: Marble Mania. Thanks to homebrew hardware like the MK6-Motion and the DS Motion Card, though, we can now emulate the same motion-sensing features on our handhelds. It's unlikely that any commercial release will ever acknowledge these unauthorized add-ons, but homebrew developers have already put out over twenty games and demos that use the data gathered from the accelerometers/gyroscope. Check past the post break for videos and screenshots of three puzzle titles that've been rigged to detect your tilting DS.
