Talking to People: Promotion for Indies
“Andreas Zecher holds a presentation on how indie game developers should try to work more on the promotion of their games.”

Extremely Exlusive Preview of a Super Secret Game
“Petri Purho (of Crayon Physics fame) presents a super secret game that he has been developing on-and-off the last year.”

I don’t care about your input: Making games that play themselves
“Martin Jonasson tells us about how he’s exploring games that takes none or little input from the player. Martin has created a lot of flash-based games that he puts online on his Prototyprally site.”

Oxeye Game Studio Preview: DaisyMoon
“Jens Bergensten, programmer at Oxeye Game Studio, describes how their prototyping engine DaisyMoon became their main engine, and what kind of games they’ve created with it.”

Niklas Åkerblad on The Art of Kometen
“Niklas Åkerblad has created an iPhone/iPad game called Kometen together with Erik Svedäng. Niklas held a presentation at No More Sweden explaining how he worked out the style for the game, as well as discussing the topic of game art in general.”

Ciro Continisio on UFHO2
“Ciro Continisio presents his new game UFHO2 and his current plans.”

Painting backwards: Anders Ekermo and Juha Kangas on Backworld
“Anders Ekermo and Juha Kangas presents their project Backworld, its conception and the technical solutions that puts it all together.”

Bernhard Schulenburg: Designing Where is my Heart?
“Bernhard Schulenburg describes how he designed his new game Where is My Heart? and the difficulties he encountered.”

Stuff I learned about making big games after making small games (direct video link)
“Michael Todd held a presentation about how he learned how to do big games after doing a lot of smaller games.”

A few months back, I mentioned Game Seeds, the card game created by Utrecht School of the Arts, Monobanda and Metagama to help game designers brainstorm both character design and entire games, by playfully combining their specific mechanics.

The post quite happily got far more attention than I would’ve imagined, and (especially after I’d posted that Monobanda had sent me an early deck of the cards) I was a bit deluged with people wondering how they might also get their hands on the Seeds. So I’m happy to report, then, that as of today the decks are now available for worldwide purchase at €10 a deck.

The team have also put together the ridiculously adorable video above to explain how the system works, and have created a new official Game Seeds site for more information on the project. Let us know if and when you create anything with it!

Game Seeds [Monobanda]

If you’re sick of your bland old M’s, try this other one. We have showfloor awesomeness for you to watch with a hands-on demo of Metroid: Other M. It’s hot, it’s sexy, it’s salty, it’s everything you could hope for and more. Yes, I am very tired and I’ve let my hyperbole gland completely take over my writing.

So, watch the video, be happy. That’s all I can tell you, son.

You’ve already seen an extensive breakdown of the concept art behind Double Fine‘s nü-cult-classic Brutal Legend right here on Boing Boing, but above, interface designer Joe ‘codeloss‘ Kowalski goes awesomely in-depth on work he put into the menu and title screen systems — a system brilliantly aping the wonderful yesteryear of gatefold sleeves and ballpoint-pen scrawled notebooks.

If you’re still a stranger to its foreboding metal world, see our Games To Get page for links to newly discounted copies of the game, or visit Double Fine’s own shop for autographed copies & ephemera.

Says Alex Varanese of his stop-motion animated shoot’em’up:

I’d like to think I’m the first person to be inspired by Michel Gondry and R-Type on the same project.

And I’ll be damned if it’s not dying for a collaboration with Crayon Physics creator Petri Purho.

the art of alex varanese – my desk is 8-bit

His calm and smooth tone shows us that it’s not just a Darth Maul thing. Is that a result of like a weekend class at the Corruscant Community College or just a byproduct of giving into your hatred?

Simon Cottee (who we last saw creating something wonderful via Sleep is Death) has filmed a short documentary which delves into the world of pixels and pixel art. It features interviews with a number of indie developers, including SiD’s Jason Rohrer.

The main argument is that while some developers try to give gamers a sense of nostalgia with their pixel art graphics harking back to games of old, they’re actually creating a “warped” version of the past, with clear, blocky images that look far from what we used to play with. It’s pretty interesting stuff, and if you’ve got a spare ten minutes, it’s well worth watching.

Caution: loud music.

Here’s a preview clip of Super Meat Boy in action, showing bits and pieces of the new levels designed for Team Meat’s upcoming XBLA platformer (also for Windows, Mac and WiiWare). I’m guessing that the video was made to convince voters to pick their game for a GTTV feature, so we will see if their ploy really worked when the episode airs this May 28th.

Sometimes all you need is 74 seconds to convince the world that they’ll want your game, as Sweden’s Southend have just proved with their debut trailer for upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title ilomilo.

Tick the checkboxes: tiny, innocent fantasy world, puzzling gameplay on the order of underappreciated original PlayStation game Kula World/Roll Away, and I’m pretty sure I already want a toy of that floppy-eared flying dog.

That said, the two-minute-and-thirty second version of the live action Halo: Reach short “Birth of a Spartan” is just … well, it’s too much. For future reference: If by the halfway mark we’re shouting at the screen, “Just hit Powder with the muscle juice already and let’s get to shooting fools!” you know you’ve overdone it.