Posts by Eitan

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Tomorrow I’ll be participating in the Crappy Game Complaining Marathon, a charity fundraiser being held at the Singapore MIT GAMBIT Games lab. I’ll be playing Kaizo Mario with Ichiro Lambe of AAAAA! fame and Geoff Pitsch from Harmonix. Watch me on their website or on the Ustream video above!

For those of you who don’t know, Kaizo Mario is one of the most hardcore, insane, and hilarious mods of Super Mario World ever made. It’s basically nigh impossible to beat, and it’s amusing as hell to watch as a result. The three of us will be hitting our heads against the game from 2-3pm Eastern Time and it should be a lot of fun, tune in and check it out!

If you’re feeling generous then please consider donating to our charity, the Cambridge Boys and Girls club. It’s for a good cause!

Here’s a clip of Kaizo Mario to whet your appetite:

Lately Congress have proposed two bills that are extremely harmful to the internet as we know it, SOPA and PIPA. If you don’t know what these are here’s a great one pager explaining it all from the EFF.

A lot of the internet has decided to go on strike against these ill conceived measures, and so we at Fire Hose have decided to express our support of this protest. We’re the people this bill is supposed to protect (after all we’re IP owners) and even we don’t want this… so why is Congress trying to pass it?

Got an XBox 360, and want a fun old school platform puzzler for $3? Then go onto the indies channel (XBLIG) and download Escape Goat, the latest offering by Magical Time Bean.

In escape goat you star as an inexplicably purple colored goat who has been imprisoned for witchcraft. Teaming up with a small mouse with a taste for magic hats you have to navigate and escape from 64 puzzle rooms using a relatively simple rule set of jump, dash, push button, avoid fireball. The game shines because the level design is fairly tight and most of the levels are fun and interesting to play, and the few bits of dialog you encounter are relatively amusing.

My gripes with the game are few; the graphics aren’t very impressive, some of the critical elements blend into the background too much, and the game elements all have a similar look and feel (for instance, keys and magic hats look almost identical). However none of these points are damning, and we found ourselves coming back to this for more on a regular basis until we beat the game. The title even comes with a level editor that is surprisingly easy to use and fun to make your own levels.

If you are an indie fan and want a puzzler then this is certainly one to get. And for $3 it’s pretty damn cheap. Go on XBLIG and grab it now!

Oh yeah, and if you like the game’s music (composed by the dev, mixed by Chainsaw of Twisted Pixel fame) then you can grab it for whatever you want here.

We just got back from PAX, and the show was AWESOME! We had an absolutely amazing time, and I’ll follow up soon with pictures and stories from the show. But first let’s talk GO HOME DINOSAURS! Or better yet, let’s start off with with a video shot by Stephen Totilo, the rock star reporter over at Kotaku that gives voice to all the small indies with awesome games. Take a look and you can see the game in action!

As you can see we’ve been busy – we’ve already got a few levels and the art style locked down, along with most of the core functionality. It’s been a crazy few months! We’re still going hard, and we’ll be adding in tons more content and features over the months to come. So if you live near Boston now is the time to start bugging us about coming in to try it out!

It was incredible seeing so many people playing and enjoying our game. Especially considering how nervous we were about putting it out at the show too early! We had tons of kids mesmerized by dinosaurs, hardcore gamers who were determined to protect their BBQ, and couples who wound up playing together. SO COOL. I can’t wait to post pictures.

And let’s not forget the press! Here’s what other people are saying about the game:

• Kotaku – Tetris Plus Tower Defense, But Better This Time
• Destructoid – Hands On: Go Home Dinosaurs!
• Joystiq – Go Home Dinosaurs Preview – Steak ‘N’ Shake

Dinosaur fans, rejoice! We’re incredibly excited to announce our brand new game, Go Home Dinosaurs! We’ve been working really hard on this for the past few months and we can’t wait to show it off for the first time next week at PAX in Seattle. Gonna be attending the show? Then be sure to stop by our booth and try it out! We’ll right in Indie Alley and next to the PAX 10 in booth 6408.

But what’s this? You want to know about the game? Well wonder no more! Go Home Dinosaurs! (GHD! to the cool kids) is a fun new take on tower defense where players fit together puzzle piece shaped weapons powered by small, cute mammals to defend against invading, mischievous dinosaurs. Gophers shooting lasers! Pterodactyls attempting to crash your BBQ! METEORS RAINING DOWN FROM THE HEAVENS! Oh, and did we mention that you can level up your character and gain new dino destroying abilities by collecting and trading cards? It’s true!

This game has it all, blending short, simple, easy-to-get-into fun with deep mechanics that keep things exciting and new. Pack your bags dinos, ’cause you’re going home!