Treasure World from Aspyr for the Nintendo DS is an interesting new way to look at gaming.
To play, you take your DS out into the wild and roam the streets looking for star dust. In this case, star dust can be gathered from the Wi-Fi signals that are all around you, and each one unlocks a special treasure chest that is filled with goodies. Just turn the game on, wander around an area with lots of unique signals, and the game will tick off rewards like a pinball machine on overdrive.
Once you return home, the game will reward your adventure with costumes for your character and decorations for your world. Then, in another interesting twist, you can arrange those decorations in any way that you’d like, and your world becomes a 32-note music tracker, allowing you to create and share songs by just placing things in various locations.
Overall, I’m impressed with what Aspyr has done with the concept. They’ve managed to trick kids into playing outside by rewarding them with trinkets and toys, and then have turned them into composers with a unique music machine that encourages experimentation and sharing. Well done!
Grand Opening is currently trying to reinvent their space as a wedding chapel, and is using Kickstarter to raise funds for the cause.
Since big church weddings are ‘out’ this year, Wedding Chapel hopes to be a recession-proof, ultra cool solution for loved ones, friends and family.
“Wedding Chapel” will be New York City’s most fun and affordable wedding spot, offering couples the chance to have long lasting memories without a church or city hall.
The way Kickstarter works is that projects can ask for money, and then people can donate in exchange for certain rewards. In this case, any donor of any amount will have his or her name displayed on the wall of the chapel, and pledges of $100 or more can reserve Wedding Chapel for an hour or more for their own ceremony.
Sound like something that you’d want to take part in? Then hurry on over to Wedding Chapel on Kickstarter and put your pledge in!
For some video games, semi-secret items are a way of rewarding players that are advanced enough to find them. For others, their secret items are so hidden that only by chance can you stumble upon them, and even then, you’re often left with an item that has little value beyond ‘Hey, look what I found!”
Why then do designers spend the time to code in these secret mysteries?
According to Gamasutra, it’s a way of lending the game a certain quality, called “verisimilitude, where it “seems like there is a world outside the borders of the screen, happening regardless of what the player does. It implies the existence of a fully-fleshed world” and “it allows a game to better enable the player to forget that it is, really, just a game”.
To prove their point, they have put together a fantastic list of 20 Mysterious Games, including the reason for the secret inclusion, the design of the game itself, and the design lesson that the game can teach future designers.
It’s definitely a trip down memory lane for anyone that has been gaming for some time, and it does give you a new appreciation for the dark arts of video game design, so definitely check it out.
