The Marriage

How can you describe The Marriage and give it justice? Electronic Arts' hot new franchise can be broken down like so:

Do you remember the first time you fell in love? Remember how she rammed into you and devoured part of yourself to become bigger while dodging falling circles? No other game has come this close to recreating what it's like to have a relationship. Definitely the best EA Sports game since Tiger Woods '06.



OH MY GOD



masao kitamura engineer

Ahhh, Passage. What can one say about Passage? As platform games go, this one could be more challenging, and the enemy variety needs work. As it is, it's fairly bland and I didn't feel any satisfaction at the end when I finally killed the boss girl. No powerups, no achievements, and no joystick support make this passage one you might not want to pass through. A+.

Opinions aside, the BINGO never lies, so BINGO we must turn to:

Today I Die

Today I Die, from Daniel Benmergui, was an obvious choice to run through the B.I.N.G.O. It dives deep into the human subconscious and challenges players to make their own poetry, through a rigidly scripted and linear means. You start out with only negative phrases to choose from, and throughout the course of the 5 minutes of playtime you pick up lightbulbs and chase shadows away to become happier. I'm not an intelligent man so I'll leave it up to the scholars to dissect these deep, confusing metaphors.

In the mean-time, the results are in!

All Our Friends Are Dead

You know when an indie game has a complete sentence for a title that you're in for a treat. All Our Friends Are Dead is a hot new Game Maker title from hot new ingaloper, Amon26. The combination of 2-bit graphics, long levels, one-hit kills, leaps of faith and unavoidable deaths are sure to give you goosebumps in this new horror classic. I, personally, know I will not be getting any sleep tonight (Also, fuck the ocean! So much scary shit down in those murky depths!).

For our second "Boolean Index for Navigational Gameplay Observation" test, I feel we came very close to getting a solid 5-point line. Were a solid line ever to form, I would probably get so excited I would yell the B.I.N.G.O. acronym out loud. Someday...

Fathom

For our first test of the B.I.N.G.O. system, I chose a recent flash game by the name of Fathom. It only seemed fair, as it served as partial inspiration for this new data-gathering service.


Without further ado, here are the first results:



As you can see, the finished product has nearly blacked out the board! Fascinating...

Introduction

To understand the average independent game-developer's (Commonly "ingaloper" for short), I decided to attack the task from the side rather than its impenetrable front.

A simple grid system, nicknamed Boolean Index for Navigational Game Observation, or "B.I.N.G.O." All one would need to do, then, was take an array of common features and apply them to specific games that have clearly risen to the challenge of gaming as art.

As anyone can see, the information is now easily cataloged with a clear visual presentation so the most lay of men can now start to grasp what it takes to create interactive art.