global-game-jam-2014
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Your body is a wonderland in Kinect platformer 'Fru'
Fru is two platformers in one game, with one layer of the world shown clearly on the screen, and another layer uncovered within the silhouette of a player's body as it moves in front of the Kinect camera, in real-time. The silhouette world offers new platforms, enabling players to reach the exit door in each level (with a little hopping, ducking and contortion). Fru comes from a collection of indies during Global Game Jam 2014, which prompted developers to create games with the theme "We don't see things as they are, but as we are." The team had 48 hours to create the game, and Fru ended up winning the judge and audience awards in the NHTV Breda Global Game Jam competition. If you have a Kinect hooked up to your PC, you can download Fru right here. Game Designer Mattia Traverso – previously of indie documentary game Riot and IGF 2012 student finalist One and One Story – tells Joystiq that he hopes Microsoft notices Fru so the team can expand on the idea. "We definitely have plans to bring this to the next level," Traverso says. "We are starting to work on it to make it an actual, full game and I am contacting Microsoft right now to see what we can do .... Right now we are trying to give it some visibility, to show the big M that this project is actually something interesting that people like."
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is local bomb-defusing fun
Three developers at Algonquin College in Ottawa, Canada recently offered a novel multiplayer bomb-diffusing game for this past weekend's Global Game Jam. Dubbed Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, the game has one Oculus Rift-wearing, Razer Hydra-holding player lifting and examining a ticking time bomb while at least one other player holds the manual with instructions to disarm the virtual destructive device. The accompanying video for the game shows three fellows hovering over a spread of papers, shouting instructions (and not always the correct ones) at the bomb's diffuser with choice quotes like "Oh fuck," and "How much time is on the bomb, Owen?" Developed by the team of Allen Pestaluky, Ben Kane and Brian Fetter with dramatic music by Liam Sauve, the Windows-only game is freely available for players to check out on the Global Game Jam website. Kane works with Going Loud Studios, developers of the satirical platformer DLC Quest. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes requires the Oculus Rift and Razer Hydra devices, so the rest of us will have no choice but to pray others will snip the correct wires.
