Get The Endless Forest Fan Art calendar!

The Endless Forest 2009 Official Fan Art Calendar

On our request, long time player, forum moderator and The Endless Forest Club leader Jennifer Stuber has edited together a lovely calendar exclusively featuring artwork created by the talented players of the game. The pictures were freely submitted by their creators and democratically selected by the community. The calendar clearly testifies of the amazing creativity that can be found among the players of our little free online game. And the print quality courtesy of Deviant Art is very decent, indeed. All proceeds of the sales go entirely to further not-for-profit development of The Endless Forest.

Get it here!


Thank you!

New EVIL music from Jarboe

Mahakali

The Path composer Jarboe is releasing something of a Magnus Opus today: a 4 CD set entitled Mahakali.

My new album entitled “MAHAKALI”, ( Kali is the feminine of “kala”- “darkness”, Maha is “great” ) is named after the mythical indian goddess of death and destruction, as mentioned in the Mahabarata and other indian epics.

The idea of a ‘goddess of destruction’ is one that I’ve cherished for a long time. Cedric (Victor, bassist and visual collaborator) mentioned Kali when we were recording because of the thematic similarities to the songs I had already written. As we progressed with the recording, everything seemed to come together around this theme of respect/reverence for strength and simultaneous repulsion/fear of power. Kali’s narrative also discusses Nietzsche’s old adage that ‘in fighting the monster, one must be careful that one does not become the monster’ which seems to be a relevant message.

Get it here!

This Is Indie!

A little video we made last year because Celia Pearce asked us to. 😉 Its about our thoughts on Independent game development, sort of. It was never used (I believe her response was “what did you make that with? a cell phone camera??” ha! little did she know we don’t HAVE mobile phones!) But we found it so delightfully silly that I’m posting it now in honor of the (first annual) IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games which starts today 10/10/2008. And in which The Graveyard is nominated for an award!

…see also…

Pathologic

Pathologic

We’ve been wanting to talk about the Russian studio Ice-Pick Lodge for a while now. Their 2005 game Pathologic is truly fascinating, even if it is “broken”, as John Walker put it.
Thanks to Rock Paper Shotgun we can now enjoy the game by proxy, through a grandiose triptych of a review, divided in Body, Mind and Soul.

A good read, especially with the new game, Tension, on the way.

Ice-Pick Lodge is one of those very few studios that make games from a deep artistic motivation. They don’t mess around with clever control schemes or gathering points. They have a story to tell and they use the interactive medium to tell it. Even if that means sacrificing the overrated “fun factor”. If games are ever going to become a mature artistic medium, this is where it’s going to happen.

How I wish Pathologic wouldn’t crash on my PC…