Public Domain Horror for Halloween | Top 5

Begun anew these streaming wars have!

With the VOD landscape once again becoming fractured as every media conglomerate attempts to wall off their own little garden of content, it has become a whirlwind of inconvenience (and expense!) to get eyes on a bit of pop-culture schlock with which to get your shiver on for Halloween. Well, be afraid, dead reader! Be very afraid, for your enterprising (and cheap!) friends over here at GUO have compiled a Top 5 list of horror movies anyone can watch.

This Halloween, GUO is proud to serve up five horrible tales of terror and the macabre whose copyright has, either due to age, bankruptcy, or incompetence, slipped beyond the grasp of corporate bean counters. All of these titles can be freely downloaded from The Internet Archive and can be owned and shown without fear or reprisal or DRM. No trick, these are a real treat!

Take your blood pressured medication, dig your nails into your favorite armchair, and join us on a journey into the dark.

5. Spider Baby or The Maddest Story Ever Told

This gem of a film is, depending on your past experience, either a dark, gritty take on The Addams Family or a lighthearted peek at the family freak show from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Toss in a delightfully whimsical theme song crooned by Lon Chaney Jr. himself, and you've got a fun-filled fright fest from a family you'll be dying to spend time with.

Following the death of the patriarch of the genetically cursed Merrye family, distant relatives arrive with legal council in tow to take the children away. It is up to the family's loyal manservant Bruno to straddle the line between these folks from the city and his murderous wards to do what is best for the family. What follows is classic Old Dark House story featuring this macabre family attempting to... entertain for the night while Bruno wrestles with what fate is best for his adopted kin.

Lon Chaney Jr. (Larry Talbot (aka The Wolfman)) is charming as ever as the morally torn Bruno. Sid Haig (Captain Spaulding of The Devil's Rejects) gives a mesmerizing performance and the mute man-child Ralph.

Part humor, part horror, all fun, Spider Baby pulls off an ending most will be unlikely to see coming. This one certainly has the cred to pull of its subtitle of The Maddest Story Ever Told.

I Am Dungeon Master - Building game Concept Demo

I've had this little guy kicking around for a couple of years now and, with things in my personal life being as they are, it seems unlikely that I'll be putting much work into him for a while longer (Unless it happens to catch fire and everyone wants more, of course ;) ). Anyway, while not full-up on content and still shy of a couple major features, I Am Dungeon Master is an enjoyable romp and it is long past time to share.

In this one you'll be constructing your own dungeons, stocking it with treasure and critters, and attempting to balance Threat and Fame to keep the place hip and happening without allowing visiting heroes to destroy the magical Tether that anchors your dark wonderland to reality.

Download for Windows

Feedback is always appreciated. Just mail any address @GrowingUpOtaku.com or comment here. Donations to support this and our other projects can be made at PayPal.me/GrowingUpOtaku

I hope to come back later and add info, tips, and insight into the design process to this post. Things are just a little bonkers right now ;) In the meanwhile, almost everything has two-stage tool tips (Mouse over longer for more info) and learning via experimentation is half the fun!

Christmas Infinite Flyer Kringle Krunch Updated for PCs and Ported to Android

 Ho ho ho, I come bearing gifts!

*Addendum: This post came out a little dry. For something more in line with my usual style just go here.

The Mrs. encouraged me to re-release last year's Christmas game again this year. Definitely a good idea as Kringle Krunch ended up being released a whole two days before Xmas last year when it was played by, approximately, no one.

I took advantage of this opportunity to give the ol' gal a fresh coat of paint in the form of up-scaled or retooled graphics, a parallax background, hi-score tracking, widescreen support, and, most exciting of all, an Android port.

Kringle Krunch is free on all platforms.

A WebGL browser based version is available at MikeyKae.Itch.Io/Kringle-Krunch
Stand alone versions can also be found at MikeyKae.Itch.Io/Kringle-Krunch (Scroll down to the Download Now button). The .zip file contains versions for Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX operating systems.
Finally, the all new Android edition can be downloaded from Google Play.

Thanks for your support and have a magical holiday season!

I Made This for You for Christmas: Play Kringle Krunch

Well, I actually made two Christmas games this year, but the other one was a whole lot more ambitious than I was able to get done in the two weeks I had left. Maybe next year. Still, I managed to burn some midnight oil and craft you this fine little arcade sugar plum I call Kringle Krunch!

Dodge the local air traffic and drop presents down chimneys in this high-skill arcade adventure staring Santa Claus!

Play in your browser or download this .zip file containing stand-alone build for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.

I Survived Ludum Dare and All I Got Was This Crappy Game I Made in 48 Hours

After a great deal of hemming and hawing, I elected to throw my hat into the ring for the Ludum Dare Compo Game Jam this time.

For the uninitiated, Ludum Dare is perhaps one of the most grueling events known to game-making kind (Well, the "Compo" division is anyway. There is a much more relaxed "Jam" division, but those guys are wussies ;) ). Supplied with a Mystery Theme, contestants have 48 hours to create a complete game from scratch by themselves. All of it. Concept, code, art, audio, UI, control, gameflow, and, of course, working, standalone binaries (An extra "Submission Hour" is allowed to complete publication tasks such as compilation, screenshots, and descriptions). That's it. One person; Two days; Mystery theme; Go!

So, how did it go? I achieved my goal: I finished! Honestly, I didn't actually expect to. I've fussed over particle systems for more than two days, lol. Moreover, I elected to try a ton of stuff I've never even tried before. This was my first purely 2D game, my first vector drawn character, my first runner, my first go at hand-animating sprites, my first look at Unity 5.4, etc. I stacked the deck pretty heavily against myself (That way I had plenty of excuses ;) ), but, somehow, Runty Raptor's Rock Roller happened.

It is charitable to say the game came out... all right. The physics are pretty busted, balance a little too generous (Yes, I made an 'easy' game for once :p), options are non-existent, and all the sound effects are voiced by yours-truly, and I'd die of embarrassment if anyone looked at the source code (Ludum Dare requires the game's source to be submitted alongside the finished product). But, ya know what, it ain't half bad either. Moreover, it's done!

There were some rather unfortunate stumbles along the way, such as having to throw out the entire first draft of the game because it completely broken in every way, or the revelation that dinosaurs ride skateboard, not unicycles (Duh! I'm such a moron. But at least the unicycle physics actually WORKED).

There were some great achievements as well. For someone who's spent their life making a mockery of the term Art, I'm rather pleased with Runty and his Rock Roller. The animation and implementation of skateboarding tricks all got done in the last two hours, with time to spare!

...and I just noticed the typo on the title screen. Sigh... And the fact that the front leg z-sorting in wrong. Now I KNOW I fixed that at some point. What I didn't fix was that the leg is made up of two "lower leg" sprites because I grabbed the wrong one and missed the actual "upper leg" part.

Er, what was my point?

Anyway, I made a game. While I'm more proud of the circumstances and constraints it was made under, you can play it here (Zip download for Win/Mac/Linux). I also managed to plop down a few, quick blog entries on Ludum Dare. You can read those over there.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta get away from this damn keyboard for a while.

No Tricks, Just Treats: Arcade Home Defense Game ‘I Hate Halloween’ is Now Free for Android and Kindle

They’re back! Those pesky Trick-or-Treaters are once again stomping across your lawn demanding candy. Dig into the candy dish and fling the correct treat at the ToT before they grow impatient enough to egg your house.

I actually wanted to do a nice, big update to Hate Halloween this year, but… Well, ya know, stuff happens (In my case this year, lotsa stuff happened), so I’ve done the next best thing: Setting it free.

I’m happy to announce that my family friendly arcade score chaser from last year is now available absolutely free for PC, Android, Kindle Fire, and non-Chrome computer web browsers. No ads, no in-app purchases, no tricks; Just a treat from me to you!

Download Installer for Windows – Download for WIndows (ZIP) – Run Web Browser Edition

Check it out now on Google Play for Android phones and tablets running version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or later.

Here it is on Amazon's AppStore for all Kindle Fire Phones and Tablets except the original, 1st generation Fire.

With this action, all the games I have released are now freely available for everyone to play. I hope they bring you joy and happiness. Check out the complete collection of GrandPop Games here.

Come play with My Magnificent Balls!

Bad Things come from Holes. Master the ancient art of Swinging and break Bad with the might of Magnificent Balls!
My Magnificent Balls! is a high-speed, high-skill, physics-based, top-down, arcade, smash-‘em-up modeled after the classic quarter-gobblers of yore, but with that ‘special twist’ GUO & Grandpop Games have become known for.
Additionally, it includes a long list of descriptive terms in the description, complete with many commas and hyphens, AT NO CHARGE! We’ll even throw in these screenshots!
Now is the time! This is the place! Grab My Magnificent Balls! prototype/alpha/demo/proof-of-concept edition here:

Windows – Mac – Android

Features include:

• Ten levels with a gentle learning curve to showcase the core gameplay
• Real physics determines not just where you Swing, but how Hard
• Eight unique power-ups ranging from Incredibly Useful to Outright Stupid
• Toe-tappingly terrific music from CDK
• Musically driven effects that enhance the visuals without blinding the player
• A ‘combo decay’ system designed to allow everyone to achieve high scores while still rewarding experts
• Mouse, Touch, and Gamepad support
• Unlimited continues so everyone can enjoy the entire game (At the cost of their score)
• And, as always, a fabulously overproduced title screen

This project is currently ‘on hiatus’ with further development to being considered in 2016. If you would like to help shape the future of MM Balls! (or, more appropriately, decide if it has a future at all), send comments, criticism, and feedback in the comments, email anywhere@GrowingUpOtaku.com, Tweet @ryte2byte, or Facebook the GUO page
We love you! Thanks for playing..

You can finally get you hands on My Balls this Sunday

So it turns out that I might have had a game lying around since March that I didn’t let anyone play. Well, the start of a game anyway. I mean, it’s complete, just not very long. I reached a… What’s the game designer equivalent of ‘writer’s block”? Anyhoo, My Balls has been hanging out waiting for someone to play with it. It’s time to rectify that! Well, it’s not actually time. Yet! But soon it will be! Oh, yes. Very soon it will be the time! For the future is coming.

And the future shall reveal My Magnificent Balls!

“As Hard as Atari’s E.T.” Bored Breaker Now Available in Your Browser via WebGL

Man, I’m sooo gonna put that review quote on the back of the box! If I had a box. Remember when software came in boxes? Good times! I remember busting open the shrink wrap and taking a deep breath of New Game Smell. Oh, the intoxicating aroma of fresh cardboard mixed with the air of far off packing plants! Er… What was I talking about? Sorry, me memory’s a little shot from decades of breathing toxic paper plant fumes.

Oh, right! Bored Breaker has busted beyond its touchscreen confines and is ready to break boredom (and boards!) in web windows worldwide! It took a little longer than expected due to the whole Chrome plug-in issue, but it’s ready and we’ve got some exiting new tech to talk about to go along with it.

Play Bored Breaker in Your Browser (Firefox performs best)

So… The plug-in issue. As you might imagine, Google’s roadmap to remove NPAPI from Chrome has caused quite a kerfuffle in the game hobbyist community. Many developers actually relied on the Unity Web Player plug-in to post their work to the world, especially following popular game jams such as the famous Ludum Dare. Fortunately, Unity engineers have not been resting on their laurels. While it is still considered a “preview” Unity 5 can build out programs in an entirely new format: WebGL.

Bored Breaker–The Little Game I Made on Accident

Much to my surprise, I seem to have a new game to tell y’all about. Here’s the pitch:

An instant to learn - A lifetime to master! Break from boredom and break boards with Bored Breaker - a quick reaction game designed to challenge your reflexes complete with HD graphics and realistic physics to delight your eyes. Refine your skills with the predictable Zen mode in preparation for a real test of skill in Ninja mode.

In unprepared, marketing-free talk, it’s a tap-tastic quick-reaction game. 2x4s are being chucked at your space ninja’s head and you need to tap the screen to karate-chop them in half before being clonked into unconsciousness. (The spellchecker is okay with “clonked”? Huh, go figure).

Anyway, this one is available for free from Google Play or Amazon AppStore for Android devices. I’ll try to get a web player build up here later this week. I don’t feel that playing with a mouse does it justice, but I know you folks don’t all have ‘Droids. Also, PC FTW Anyway, watch this space for more versions “soon”. Update: Browser based version available here.

So, anyway… Yeah, made on accident. I was taking a break to learn some new skills (ie. avoiding working on some of the larger game projects I’ve got lying around here) and decided to play with IK animation in the new 5.0 release of Unity. Games are great fun to make; Content for ‘em… eh, not so much.

Break Out Your Dead v2–Updated 3/23/2015

One year ago, I set out on a crazy experiment to make a video game from scratch with naught but two clues to rub together. The result was a lengthy series of articles about the joys and despair of making your own game. After three months of hard work, the experiment bore playable fruit in the form of a quirky little 3rd-person brick-breaking shooter I dubbed Break Out Your Dead.

While I’ve released a couple other titles here (and have a few more ready to pop out any day now), BOYD remained my pride and joy. The release of the new, fifth version of the Unity engine was a perfect excuse to revisit the first of my little digital toys and sprinkle a bit of newfound knowledge and Unity 5 magic upon my first-born.

So, what’s new? Tons! Here are some of the highlights:

• New graphical effects including soft shadows and bloom effects.
• Tweaked lighting, colors, particle systems, and materials for both performance and pretty.
• Rim lighting added to tombstones for increased visibility while creeps have more natural lighting to better match the scene.
• Holy Ball now has a new targeter effect to for better aiming of this expensive nuke.
• A new implementation of the ‘Poly UI’ system that renders without perspective warping and features better effects.
• More dynamic pathfinding for creeps.
• Scaling UI so our friends with big resolutions and bad eyesight won’t need to strain so much.
• The player now moves faster while time is slowed. (Note: This does not affect casting time)

• Tons of performance optimizations and bug fixes.

I’ll be happy to build out a Linux version if requested. I’ve also tried to keep BOYD running on all the systems it did before. I haven’t done much benchmarking with the new post-process effects, so if I’ve blown you video card out of the water, let me know.

Update: v0.21 is now available at the links below. This update includes fixes for wizard pose in Mystery Boxes level, a new program icon, and cosmetic tweaks on the main menu.

Download Break Out Your Dead v2

Windows: Installer or Zip

Mac: Zip

I hope you enjoy this ‘remastered’ version of my humble pet project (Because diving back into your first attempt at any endeavor is a mess!). We love you! Thanks for playing.

Get SimCity 2000 for Free from Origin

Widely praised as the best (or at least fan-favorite) of the Sim City games, Sim City 200: Special Edition is being given away for free! Grab it directly from EA’s Origin service.

While you’re at Origin, you may want to check their New Year’s Doorbuster sale going on for the next couple of days. New games like Dragon Age and Sims4 are $20 off and there are a few other tempting deals like Titanfall for $10 (Scratch that. GameStop has Titanfall for $5!).

Play Santa Ready for Takeoff! | My Christmas Game

Happy Holidays, Otakuteers! I baked you up something special this year. Don’t worry, you can unwrap it early. Enjoy my latest experiment in crafting digital toys, "Santa Ready for Takeoff!”

It's Christmas eve and Santa is ready for takeoff!  There's just one problem: The Elves forgot to clean up after their snowman building competition!

Help Santa steer the sleigh and knock down snowmen to give Rudolph enough time to reach 88 clippity-clops per second to get airborne.

Download for Windows: Installer or Zip

Play in your browser

Have a wonderful holiday season! We love you! Thanks for playing!

Play My New Game: I Hate Halloween (v1.1 Update)

It’s Halloween and the Trick-or-Treaters are coming! They want candy and are prepared to egg your house if you cannot satisfy their demands. Defend your home on this endless night of arcade mischief!

Done! On time and under budget! Welcome to my second video game release, I Hate Halloween, an arcade adventure all about eggs and candy! No ‘alpha’; No ‘demo’. One and done. Have fun!

Looking for a stand-alone Windows version? Grab it here. I even wrapped it up in a shiny little installer this time as well.

Don’t feel like installing anything? I’ve created a web player version you can crank up right in your browser. This will require the installation of the Unity Web Player if you don’t already have it (the game page has a link to it). If you still see a grey box after the Web Player has been installed, check for an icon at the top of your browser to unblock the plug-in (Chrome is notorious about blocking plugins and only showing a little icon). If you get a black screen after after all that, just reload the page.

A few other caveats about the web version: The resolution options in the setup screen are only applicable once you switch to fullscreen. The quit button doesn’t do anything because you can’t force close a browser tab from Unity. I also had a few crashes when pushing the graphics quality up past “Good”. Might have been a fluke (I’m stupidly using a beta version of Unity right now), but heads up. Still, the web player version is the full game and runs pretty darn well.

Happy Halloween, everyone! It’s a treat!

I Hate Halloween

Download Installer for Windows – Download for WIndows (ZIP) – Run Web Edition

for mobile versions, please visit this post.

Feeling nostalgic enough to go play my first game again? You can grab Break Out Your Dead here.

Update: I Hate Halloween has been updated to version 1.1 on 10/13/2014. All of the above links are still correct and functional. Changes/fixes from the original version include:

• First time startup black screen fixed
• Rare chance of double knockdown fixed
• Score now counts up by 10 rather than 1 due to late game high combos
• New company name! Welcome GUO’s game publishing arm GrandPopGames!
• Twitter integration! Tweet your latest scores!

5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Freely Downloadable from Wizards of the Coast

Man, can you believe I almost typed “from TSR". Gettin’ old does stuff like that.

The new 5th edition of the legendary role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (DnD) is here. Curious as to what’s in it without popping $50 on one of those beautiful, new rulebooks? Boy, are you in luck! Publisher Wizards of the Coast has made the basic rules for the new system available to anyone with an internet connection and a case of curiosity.

The free PDF version of DnD 5 weighs in at 115 pages and contains all the goodies you need to get going: 20 levels of advancement, four classes with subclasses, four races, and 120 spells. And that’s before you include the free, basic edition of the Dungeon Master’s guide!

So why has WotC decided to release a free e-book version of their rules for gratis? Julian Murdoch of Gamers With Jobs interviewed lead designer Mike Mearls and came back with the answer in GWJ Conference Call #409. Mearls citied both the video game free-to-play business model and the buying habits of decades-old DnD groups as primary reasons. New players expect to get the first taste on the house. As for existing players, we all know that there’s usually only one or two members of any given gaming group who buys the books for everyone to use anyway. Wizards could either go with the flow or fight the winds of change.

Will this new free-to-play model be as successful for a book publisher as it was for MMO and mobile game developers? I guess we’ll see when the 6th edition of DnD is ready for release. In the meantime, Wizards seems genuine about supporting ‘freepers’. Shortly after the release of the DnD 5’s first major adventure, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, an online supplement was made available to ensure compatible with the free editions of the rulebooks. Additionally, WotC is expecting the PDF basic editions to be continuously updated with more information and player suggested rule changes until December of 2014.

Check out all the latest happenings in the world of Dungeons and Dragons at dnd.wizards.com.

The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection and Peggle are Free via Origin.com

We’re all big fans of Maxis’ little computer people here at the GUO homestead. Despite this fact, most of us kinda bounced right off of the third iteration of The Sims. Good news then that EA is offering a digital version of our favorite version of this groundbreaking franchise, complete with eight giant expansion packs, for free until July 31st.

Interested in grabbing your own copy The Sims 2 Ultimate edition? Head on over to Origin.com, create or login with a free account, select My Account/Redeem Product Code. Enter the code “I-LOVE-THE-SIMS”.

Afterwards you’ll need to download and install the Origin app. Once Origin is installed you should be prompted to add a complementary copy of Peggle to your library.

World of Tanks Blitz | I Played That

Game Profile: World of Tanks Blitz

• Genre: Slow Motion Multiplayer Team Deathmatch Arena (Online 3rd person shooter)
• Developer: Wargaming.net
• Publisher: Wargaming.net
• Service Requirements: Online connection, Game Center or Wargaming.net account
• Available For: iOS
• ESRB Rating: Not rated. No blood (or even people) are present. No swearing.
• Price: Free
• Amount Completed: 8 hours. Tier III for all nations.
• Played On: iPad 2

 

Personal Bias:

Played a bit of World of Tanks on PC. Didn’t like it, but I could appreciate the game.

 

In a Nutshell:

World of Tanks (WoT), the slowest online deathmatch arena in the world, beloved by old men, Russians, and old Russian men, comes to mobile. The Blitz variant of WoT scales down the action to smaller (yet still large) maps, 7-man teams, and a single capture point in brisk, seven minute matches.

 

Defiance: Free-to-Play | I Played That

Game Profile: Defiance

Genre: Borderlands MMO. Or Firefall if it worked and had content (3rd-person shooter MMO)

Developer: Trion Worlds

Publisher: Trion Worlds

Service Requirements: Online connection, Trion Glyph account

Available For: PC, PS3 (goes free July15), Xb360 (free date TBA)

ESRB Rating: M for Blood, Drug Reference, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence

Amount Completed: About 30 hours. EGO level 500ish.

Played On: PC 

 

Personal Bias:

None. I don’t know the show this is based on. I’m not familiar with Trion Worlds.

In a Nutshell:

Online open world run-n-gun shooter full of random folks wielding randomly generated guns in a constant stream of spontaneous events.

Released in 2013 as a retail MMO product with no subscription as a marketing tie-in to the SyFy television show of the same name, it debuted with the problems typical to online game launches such as an aimless design and a dearth of content. Fast forward two years and Defiance jam packed full of missions, public quests, co-op/competitive instances, and drops the price tag to boot.

Explore All The Sounds On Earth

That’s right, All The Sounds!

GlobalSoundScapes.org is the pet project of one Dr. Bryan Pijanowski, a soundscape ecologist (Yeah, I dunno either, but Wired seems to think it’s a real thing) with Purdue University. Dr. Pijanowski’s dream? Gotta catch ‘em all! Sounds, that is.

The good doctor explains his latest plan in an interview with Wired:

“I’ve been on a campaign to record as many ecosystems as possible, but there’s only so many places in the world I can be. I thought about how I could get more recordings into a database, and it occurred to me: We have a couple billion people on this planet with smartphones!”

Enter the Global Soundscape Project and its associated smartphone app, the Soundscape Recorder.

By crowdsourcing the work of recording and geotagging Bryan hopes not just to categorize the world’s soundscapes, but create a living database that will provided scientists with mountains of information about various ecosystems and their dynamics as well as a historical record that could be used to track changes to those ecosystems.

Even if you’re not looking to chip in on the project, why not take your ears on a vacation around the world, three minutes at a time, using the Global Soundscapes interactive map. This being GUO and all, I’ll just refer you over to the happy sounding trains in Osaka, Japan.

“We should get a sense of whether and how we’re making this a noisier planet, which I think we’re doing,” Pijanowski continued. “And it should increase awareness of sounds. Hopefully it will make people stop and listen.”

That’s sound advice!

Release Day! Come Get Your Alpha Build! | The Brick Dead Project

Woo-hoo! On this penultimate episode of The Brick Dead Project, we’re once again giving away video gaming goodness! Through the miracle of hard work and Search, Grandpop has manage to combine classic arcade action with modern game styles, all without resorting to pixel art or chip tunes.

I did it! And, lemme tell ya something, if you think you know everything that’s inside this latest build from reading these articles, you’re in for a great many surprises.

We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and I’ve reserved myself one last article in this series as a wrap-up, so let’s get started. First thing’s first. Below you’ll find download links for your platform of choice. Complete instructions covering controls, gameplay, and technical issues can be found after the page jump.

Break Out Your Dead Prologue – v0.11 Alpha

*Updated 5/1/14*

Windows – Mac OSX – Linux

*Update 3/5/15 – v0.2 Alpha coming soon with improved graphics, code optimizations, and more!*