Today's Pixel Love game is Displaced created by LIDgames.
We found the displacement mechanic to be interesting but what really caught our eye was the monochromatic artwork style. It's a short game but still worth checking out. Be warned, the levels in this one get very difficult quickly!
More Pixel Love to come next week!
Nitrome will soon have moderator accounts!
It is important that we keep a tight ship at Nitrome and there are just not enough of us to cope with the volume of user generated activity that goes on!
We have already put in place some systems that are doing a pretty good job of keeping things clean but nothing is perfect!
Our initial filters were a bit too strong so we loosened them a little which we feel has led to a better user experience. It does mean a few more things get through the cracks though and moderators should be able to help us spot what does and correct that.
Moderators are going to be by invitation only to start off with so please don't apply. By being an active member of the community however you may receive an invite.
Hi Nitromians,
Today’s pixel love is Scamper Ghost. It’s sort of Pac-Man mixed with a mouse avoider and it has a ton of style. Use the mouse to collect pellets and power pills while avoiding the ghosts for as long as possible!
Though the game was launched back in 2009 it recently came back to our attention because it has been involved in a news story with King (makers of Candy Crush). King have recently been hitting the news with the story that they are trade marking the words ‘Saga’ and ‘Candy’ sending out notices to developers that use those words to take down their games or change their names. King say that they are just protecting their Intellectual Property but when you have games like ‘Banner Saga’ and Candy Slots’ which bear no resemblance to Candy Crush Saga get caught in the crossfire it’s understandable why this has became a big story.
Relating to this story it seems that back when Scamper Ghost came out it was originally offered a deal from King to publish the game. When they were offered a better deal from Max Games rather than walk away King decided to ask another developer the chance to clone the game resulting in the game ‘Pac Avoid’. Not only is the game a very close clone of the game they offered to buy but it also heavily uses the ‘Pac’ from Pac-Man name which has lead people to call them hypocrites when trying to make others take their games down.
Regardless of what you think we felt that Scamper Ghost was a good game and this was a good time to feature it. If you want to play it you can using the following link: Scamper Ghost
If your interested in the back-story to this then you can read more about the Cloning debate here and Kings trade marking of common words here.
Hi Nitromians,
A lot of you have asked why we don't use our original musician Lee Nicklen anymore. We know a lot of you were fans of his music so we're thrilled to announce that we have Lee back doing some music for the swapping game that we previewed to you recently.
You can hear a rough draft of a track he is making for our swapping game here!
Have a great weekend everyone and we will be back next week with more exciting news!
Hi Nitromians,
The game of the year Icebreaker nominations just keep coming at the moment! Apple'n'Apps.com has just listed Icebreaker A Viking Voyage in their best 50 games of 2013! We came in at a respectable 39th place!
I think we need to start listing all these somewhere on the Icebreaker page :)
You can check the full list here.
Hi Nitromians,
Since we have been back, we have been hard at work on some new flash games for the website. You know about the second part of Cheese Dreams: New Moon already, but there's more.
Some of you have pointed out to us that we have been making a lot of sequels of late. So we thought it was about time to introduce some brand new concepts to you all. With that in mind, we have two of them bubbling away behind the scenes both featuring a brand new mechanic.
Well have more on them soon. But until then, take a glimpse at both games main protagonist in silhouette.
Any guesses on what they both are?
Wow Nitromians!
We just noticed that Metacritics posted their top 25 games of 2013 and our game Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage came in at number 19!
To put this in perspective....Metacritics collect all of the review scores that each game gets and make a combined average score for each game. Metacritics is generally considered in the gaming world as the most respected mesure of how well your game has performed critically.
So with that in mind from all the iOS titles released in 2013 our little game ranked 19th!!!! That is insaine!
Thank you to everyone who reviewed the game so nicely :)
There is a direct link to the list here.
Hi Nitromians,
A quick post just to let you all know that we have worked on fixing a moderation issue that was being experienced by some of you.
You should now notice that the moderation system will be more resilient in terms of accidentally flagging a comment as 'needing to be moderated' when in fact the comment was fine.
This should make the comments a little easier to use.
If your comments are still getting accidentally moderated, let us know about it via the comments below or you can email us the comment that you tried to post.
Thanks everyone!
We have been working on the blog/comments system to improve usability for our readers. As a result, we introduced a "Read More" link last week to expand the longer articles. We have since changed the link into a button.
Some of you may have noticed that we have added page numbers to the bottom of our blog today. This should make it a little easier for you to move around the blog to find our older articles. We also listened to the people that told us about the comments being restricted to only 5 reply comments. This has been fixed now and should show all replies to a comment.
We noticed that we had accidentally lost the "author" line at the bottom of our articles, so they are also back.
Feel free to let us know about any other bugs/issues in the comments below, and we'll try to fix them.
Hi Nitromians,
Today's pixel love game is Pause Ahead developed by Askiisoft. The game is filled with wonderful pixel art and it also boasts a refreshingly clever and original game mechanic. When you pause the game, everything pauses, but your velocity remains intact. This means that you can pass through obstacles and then resume the game to continue.
The puzzles are well designed too, making great use of this game feature. We really enjoyed the music in this one. It has an authentic chiptune feel yet it's also right up to date.
Join us next Monday for another Pixel Love choice!
