Posted in video games on 02/14/2024 05:51 pm by c5
I’d been looking forward to this game for about a year. I’d expected it to be unique and psychedelic, which it is, but it also excels in ways I wasn’t expecting.
From the sound design and music to the expansive world to the many distinctive forms of the player avatar, this is a profound step forward from Sam Atlas’s earlier Space Hole games. And abstract as it is, I found it to be oddly affecting at times.
Something like this deserves a wide audience more than many of the big-budget games with painfully formulaic design that get all the attention. But I’m glad Extreme Evolution exists and I’d recommend it to anyone who thinks it looks intriguing at all.
Posted in music, software on 11/26/2023 11:45 pm by c5
If you’ve used WinAmp to play digital music files at some point, you may be familiar with the MilkDrop visualizer that was packaged with it. MilkDrop was always impressive, but other developers have taken it to new heights in recent years.
MilkDrop3 is still in active development as of this writing, and takes full advantage of modern computers. Although I still use WinAmp, that’s not required for this version. It’s an independent application that detects any music your computer is playing, even in a Web browser.
I’ve included a couple sample screenshots here but they really aren’t representative of what MilkDrop3 is like in motion. It initially opens in a window but you can press Alt + Enter to make it full screen and then Alt + Shift to spread it across multiple monitors if you have them.
You can get MilkDrop3 here:
On the GitHub page:
- Click MilkDrop #.## under Releases in the right pane.
- Click MilkDrop3.exe in the file list.
- Run MilkDrop.exe after it downloads to extract it wherever you want.
Posted in video games on 02/19/2023 04:31 pm by c5
I mentioned a free computer game called Space Funeral in a previous post about ten years ago. The creator of that game, thecatamites, has since released several other creations that are worth a look, such as 10 Beautiful Postcards.
But what I wanted to focus on here is something new, a series of eight horror-themed freeware games that are collectively titled Anthology of the Killer.
Although they are horror games, the style is cartoonish and the games are not particularly scary or disturbing. What violence there is is mostly implied. There’s a nice, unsettling atmosphere at times but even that is tempered by the playful writing (which includes occasional strong language).
These are all short games, each of which can easily be played in one sitting. You follow the same protagonist through them all, but it doesn’t really matter what order you play them. I’d recommend the whole series, but I think my favorites are Blood, Drool, and Ears of the Killer. Hands and Heart are up there as well.
The individual download links are on the itch.io page but I’ll also include them here:
Finally, if you like the music from these games you can also get the soundtrack for free.
