Italy towards election day: Italian indies react pronto

Election game

As Italy is getting close to an uncertain election day in troubled times, Italian indie game scene – which is quickly getting more and more lively – releases a series of short games on the theme. The games can all be found here, but be warned: both introduction and contents are only in Italian.

The game we review below is an exception both because it has an English presentation page and because it attempts to go beyond political mockery (which, don’t get me wrong, is already a non trivial task for a game released for a jam).

The Wrong Lizard

The Wrong Lizard game by Urustar  allows a very short gameplay, still the current indecision of Italian voters and the uncertainties of an arrested-development society are very well represented – a non trivial task. Environment and gameplay are Pedercini styled, and there is a well integrated soundtrack. In its minimalism, I consider this a small gem.

The game is in Italian only, but it is presented in a site in English. An English version is coming soon.

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Humor in videogames

Plants and zombiesIn designing a videogame, using humor stunts is a great temptation. There is a core problem with that: funny things are funny once, and videogames are made of loops and must allow for several game plays of the same game. [Read more…]

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Interview with Federico Fasce of Urustar – DAG Pod 8

Urustar

In this Design a Game podcast we interviewed Federico Fasce, game designer at Urustar, a small video game factory based in Genova, Italy.

The audio quality of the podcast is not perfect, but it gets better after a while. It is also a quite long interview, but we touch several different topics. Here is the podcast:

Design A Game POD 8 Federico Fasce

 

Some of the links quoted:

The Urustar game Anheuristic done at Global Game Jam 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

On the Bosch art game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.visitproteus.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Proteus-2013-01-04-96uPuB63525082-0002.png
The Proteus game.

For the various game design books that we quoted I’ve put together a public list on Amazon.

Premio Archimede is here: http://www.studiogiochi.com/en/p/premio-archimede.html

You can find Federico Fasce on Twitter here, and Pietro Polsinelli on Twitter here.

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