LudoScience

Attack of the Screen Scrollers reviewed by Youtubers Dr. Ludos | 01-13-2015 | 19:53

Behind the challenge of creating an original game from scratch in 48h, one of the main features of the Ludum Dare competition is the user community: people participating in this competition are able to give a very good feedback on the thousands of games created during the event.

 

But sometimes, the feedback comes from people not participating in the competition,  as it happened with Attack of the Screen Scrollers: it was reviewed by a Youtuber called KokoStern in his "Concept Hunter " show, dedicated to "games with an original concept":

 

 

The game was also featured by two other Youtubers, first TechValleyGameSpace:

 

 

then Ythmeve:

 

 

If being featured in a Youtube video happens to many games everyday, for me it was the first time that one of my games got such an honor, and I can't tell you how happy I feel about it! I think it's one of the best feedback a game designer can have. So thanks a lot to these three Youtubers and to all the Ludum Dare community for the incredible feedback during this event - and count me in for the next edition! :)

---

Leave a comment | Category : News, Game Design, | Keywords : attack of the screen scrollers, youtube,

Attack of the Screen Scrollers - a new game is released! Dr. Ludos | 12-15-2014 | 20:41

Again, I participated in the Ludum Dare 31 competition, where you have to create a game all by yourself in 48h on a given theme. This time, it was "Entire Game on One Screen."

 

The game is called "Attack of the Screen Scrollers". It's a top-down shooter, where you'll have to protect the background image of your single game screen against the deadliest enemy of pixels: scrolling! "Screen Scrollers" will invade the screen border, and force the image to scroll toward them. You'll have to shoot them all down before your image gets completely scrolled away!

 

 

Use the arrow keys (or WASD) to move, and click on the "Screen Scrollers" to shoot them with your laser. You'll earn points for each kill, so aim for the high score!

 

The game, created with Flash, can be freely played on our website. And if you are looking for a challenge, my personal record in 1292 points !

 

Enjoy!

---

Leave a comment | Category : Games, | Keywords : ludum dare 31, entire game on one screen, experimental game,

The history of Carmageddon Damien Djaouti | 09-04-2014 | 13:50

Carmageddon. A video game known by people even if they never played it, thanks to its scandalous reputation. However, this game is far from solely being the "nasty racing game where you have to crush pedestrians" that many media and politicians wanted to ban. Carmageddon is first and foremost an excellent game, featuring many technological and gameplay innovations that deeply influenced the racing game genre.

 

 

We interviewed Neil Barnden, co-founder of Stainless Software game studio, who told us in great details the birth of this unique video game. Influenced by their passion for "Banger Racing", the studio designed a game where the main goal isn't to finish the race, but to crush the opponent cars. An attempt from their editor to get the rights from the movie "Death Race 2000" lead the studio to add pedestrians that can be run over into the game, and they will stay even after the movie adaption cancellation. The young studio then pursues the creation of the game following a philosophy of "if it sounds like fun, let's try and do it." Therefore, they will, among others ideas, ask one of their friends to film him while being hit by a car to "get some reference material", hire a genius programmer who don't have a driver license to program vehicle physics, or get "inspired" by some famous celebrities to create the wild game characters. We have even found the first game created by the studio, BRoom, a 3D shoot'em up inspired by Descent (1994), that shows how much Stainless Software is passionate about cars.

 

 

All these stories, and much more (how did Carmageddon manage to fight censorship after release?), can be found in an 18-pages long article published inside the 26th issue of Pix'n Love magazine, a French magazine dedicated to the history of videogames.

 

---

Leave a comment | Category : History of videogames, | Keywords : history, carmageddon, stainless software, violence, scandal, censorship, fun,

A Data Mining attempt over GameClassification Damien Djaouti | 07-01-2014 | 10:51

"Data mining" is the science dedicated to the creation of knowledge through the analysis of large quantities of data, such as establishing customers habits by tracking how they use their loyalty cards. A few time ago, we were contacted by a computer science student, Axel RB, who desired to perform such analysis over video games, using the data about 38.000 video games collected on our website GameClassification. Thus, we gave him a dataset, and he just published his first findings on his website (in french):

 

 

For now, his main finding is the fact that browser-based games tend to be analyzed way more often than the other kind of games on our website, with a striking example coming from the Cooking Mama series. We are now eager to read about his other findings using this method! :)

---

Leave a comment | Category : News, | Keywords : data mining, game classification, research, computer science, video games,

Your educational games for Research Ludoscience | 06-22-2014 | 20:41

 

Ludoscience is a non profit organization aimed at studying game and its uses. In the context of research and conservation of heritage videogame work, we collect edutainment titles, edugames and other educational games from all eras and all supports.
If you have such securities and that they clutter up you... Think about us! :)
Please contact us to send your titles.
Thanks also to bring the announcement around you...
 
Ludoscience Team

---

Leave a comment | Category : Misc.,