About six weeks into the flight, a few days before New Year’s Eve, the Skylab 4 crew hit their breaking point. They announced an unscheduled day off, turned off the communications radio, and got some rest. They reportedly spent the day relaxing, taking in the stunning views of the Earth from orbit.

The first and only instance of mutiny on board a spacecraft.

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The player aide comes in four pages; it’s intended to have pages 1-2 printed on either side of one sheet, and 3-4 on another.

Pages 1-2 are essential information. There’s a tech tree, a list of ships, a guide to you can do each turn and victory conditions.

Pages 3-4 contain more advanced and specific rules which aren’t as necessary. The strategy cards included here are personal preference and I would avoid using the leaders with first-time players.

Download the player aide here

A few months ago I decided to recreate this website’s favicon to support retina-caliber displays. I found this trickier to accomplish than I anticipated, mainly due to a dearth of good ICO-savvy icon creation tools.

There’s certainly some black magic in making things look good on a retina screen. Gruber works it out for the rest of us though.

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One of the fundamental elements of any game is how the player learns to distinguish useful patterns from environmental noise. Without a mental model of how a system works, most games appear random or at least arbitrary.

When you use randomness as an opportunity for mastery over noise, I think you’ll find that games of luck become highly meaningful games of skill.

Yep. Moderation in all things.

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I’ve released a new game. It’s called Gravitat, and is the result of my thinking a month or so ago, “I wonder if I can design a new twist on match-three games, or is that seam of gameplay barren of interest”. No, it turns out there’s still a sliver of life and interesting design left. The result is like most match-three genre games; really addictive for something so utterly mindless.

One of my favorite things about this game though is my cousin Dan’s awesome music & sound FX. You can download an un-looped version of it here. It’s all just made through a guitar and a whole bunch of FX pedals.

I’m really loving Dino Run, the new game from the guys who made Gamma Bros. It’s a simple concept — a game designed for speed runs. You just need to sprint away from the incoming asteroid-based doom, picking up eggs, eating smaller dinosaurs and avoiding the flaming shrapnel crashing down around you.

Click to see the Automatic Monet.

Press SPACEBAR to see a new image. They’re from a trip to Hong Kong & Macau last year.

Inspired at least partly by Michael Battle’s Impressionist Image Renderer. Though my version is less fancy it does have a textured brush!

This version turns a little pixel-art drawing into a painting.

The new game! Play it here.

Dirk Valentine is developed by Nitrome, so its beautiful pixel art is only to be expected. It also has a really cool steampunk setting. The gameplay is pretty fun too, with a nice mix of action and puzzles. You play as Dirk Valentine, a commando on a mission to rescue Queen Victoria. You are armed with a gun that shoots a chain that can be used for both attacking bad guys and building platforms that are used to traverse the levels.

You Have to Burn the Rope

You Have to Burn the Rope is a wonderful antidote to today’s 80-hour games.

Ikariam

Ikariam is a nice little online web-based strategy game. It’s like Civilization, but with the micromanagement turned way down. You basically decide what buildings to make, what jobs your citizens should perform and wait around for things to happen. Its the kind of game that only takes a few minutes out of your day, which is quite nice.

I’m playing on the Iota server, as player name mademouse if anyone feels like joining me.

Finally, Paul Robertson’s (the guy who made Pirate Baby’s Cabana Street Fight Battle 2006) new animation is here! It’s probably the most stupid thing I’ve seen all week, and the most awesome.

Grab it here! Also, watch the trailer if you’re feeling unsure. And here’s a torrent for when Paul’s hosting goes down.