A big welcome to another foreigner in the big crazy pond that is China: Looking Glass Vet Joins Vyk Games | Edge Online
Tom Sperry, former director at revered (and now defunct) Thief developer Looking Glass Studios, has joined Shanghai, China-based outsourcing firm Vyk Games, the company said Wednesday. — We used Vyk to build 100% of the art assets that went into Grimm, and were always pleased with their quality output, reliability, and pricing. Now with special ingredient Tom – even better than ever!
Monthly Archives: September 2008
GameTap Merges with Metaboli | Edge Online
Exciting news for GameTap this morning as they merge with one of France’s leading online game and digital entertainment platforms: GameTap Merges with Metaboli | Edge Online
Turner Broadcasting’s U.S.-based games-on-demand service GameTap has merged with European counterpart Metaboli in an effort to create a “global gaming brand,” the companies announced Wednesdsay.
Episode 8 – Beauty and the Beast
The Nefarious Beast
Woot! Episode 8! The final episode of this first chunk of 8! This time Grimm is visiting the classic tale of “Beauty and the Beast“. And boy is this episode a cool one. First off, it is BIG. Second off, it features a ton of PIRATES. And lastly, did I mention the pirates? Yeah, I know, I know, Disney’s version didn’t have pirates in it. But then, Grimm really likes pirates. (Looking at the P2P networks it seems the pirates like Grimm too!)
Amazing to think we’ve gotten through the first batch of 8 episodes. That’s an episode every week for 8 weeks – 2 months of cool episodic game content. That’s some kinda video game history, right? Hmmm… well… Maybe when we release *another* 8 episodes, and then another.
Speaking of, Grimm’s going on a little break. I can’t say for how long exactly – but more than 1 month, less than 2 months. Then he’ll be back with 8 new episodes, all new game mechanics, power ups, and FUN.
Be sure to check out Episode 8 on GameTap.
Grimm Episode 7 – “Devil Hairs”
Just like clockwork we released the latest episode of Grimm. And like a broken clock, I neglected to mark the occasion in my usual fashion – with a blog post. Oops. Truth is, I took a much needed break from the computer, Internet, and work in general. This weekend was Mid-Autumn festival in China. A time to eat moon cakes while celebrating abundance and togetherness. It also gave us at Spicy Horse a solid 3~4 day weekend. Yay.
Anyway, back to “this week’s” episode (by which of course I mean last week’s episode), “The Devil and His 3 Golden Hairs“. A harrowing tale which Grimm transforms into a filthy mountain of vomit, starvation, Satan plucking, and King bashing. Best of all, there’s NO WEDDING in this tale!
That’s a funny thing we noticed as we began designing episodes to fit around well-known fairy tales: Almost all contain a wedding. It’s as if getting married was the penultimate moment in a person’s life way-back-when. After achieving marry-dom, it was all over. No more adventure, no more goal, just pop out some children, wait for them to run off on fairy tale adventures ending in marriage, and die. Non too appealing. Grimm never really thought so either.
Almost from the start we got bored with the concept of “weddings in fairy tales”. So we did the only thing we knew how, got surreal. So don’t be surprised to discover some odd goings-on at the various weddings you encounter in Grimm episodes. Invading pirates, ghostly strippers emerging from cakes, and so forth.
Anyway, be sure to check out “The Devil and his 3 Golden Hairs” over on GameTap this week. And prepare yourself for the mid-season finale on Thursday, September 18th – “Beauty and the Beast”. This is one truly gigantic, beautiful, awesome, and funny episode. You won’t want to miss it.
After this week’s episode we’ll take a short break, then be back before you know it with 8 all new episodes!
Play With Spider – Flash 3D – OneMotion.com
A cool Flash demo to create a natural spider. Needs more blood, but fun nonetheless:
Play With Spider – Flash 3D
Grimm Episode 6 – “Godfather Death”
Dogfather Death
Grimm episodes just keep coming! Another week, another episode. This week, Episode 6, “Godfather Death”. This happens to be one of my favorite episodes. It features a solid and amusing story, great character interaction, some awesome game play, and really cool visual effects. Also, you can turn nuns into demons – what’s better than that!?
Be sure to check it “Godfather Death” over on GameTap in the first 24 hours after release, because well, you know, it’s FREE! Seriously, what beats turning nuns into demons for FREE? How about doing all that and then watching them push their own nunnery into a lake of lava? Mmmm… Lava. You can check out “Godfather Death” on Gametap by following this LINK.
When you’ve played the episode be sure to let us know what you think. You can comment here on my blog, visit the forums on americanmcgee.com or head over to the forums on GameTap.
Next week – “The Devil and his Three Golden Hairs”!
UPDATE: Big Download and IGN have both already posted their reviews of Godfather Death. They’re both really positive in their own way (Jimmy seems to be enjoying this one despite himself, poor thing). Here’s some of what they have to say:
David Craddock @ Big Download: “Personally, however, I found Godfather Death’s seven levels to be among the most unique featured in the series yet. God’s domain, a place of green pastures and frolicking do-gooders, becomes ravaged by lightning bolts hurled by the big man after Grimm’s diseased presence invokes His fury at not being chosen by the father. Animals, humans, and the land alike are struck by God’s sizzling vengeance as the sky becomes dark and wrathful, birds burst into flame and fall to the ground, and God’s cheeks blush red with rage.”
Jimmy Thang @ IGN: “I‘m glad to say that this episode is arguably the best in the series so far. New weather effects, like snow, have been added and it offers a cool, visual dynamic. This episode also has some really cool light-to-dark transformations. Cactuses will split open to reveal decapitated human heads within. One level has you butt stomping nuns to turn them into flying demons. In the level where you encounter God, after you stink up enough area, God will be enraged and rain down lightning bolts down from the sky to wipe out some of the enemies who clean up after your mess.”
Yep, Grimm just keeps getting better. At this rate, by the time we get to episode 24, we should be getting scores of 10!