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The Bard of Valiant posted about a note-worthy RogueLike – an anime-ish, graphical RogueLike with some network capabilities. It even looks accessible to boot too (something most rogue-likes are nefariously bad at)! Who says you can’t teach an old dog new trick? Old genres can be brought back to life again!

XNACommunity has released the source code to a couple of full featured games, such as a 3D hack/slash style RPG known as Dungeon Sorrows, a 2d scrolling game, a Guitar Hero clone and more besides. Want to see how those games are done, and perhaps learn a few new techniques at the same time? Head over and find out then!

Dungeon Sorrow

XNA Rock

Casual games are in the rage nowadays. Diner Dash, Bejewelled and those mini-games shunned by ‘hardcore’ gamers but embraced by a majority of the demographics. They cost half, or perhaps one-quarter (or even less) of the normal development time of mainstream games but have so much return.

I think there is a certain confusion about casual games and the people who play them. Intuitively, by the word ‘casual’, it means ‘no committement’, something you do ‘as an aside’. But what happens when there are people who are addicted to casual games? Are they hardcore casual gamers, and is that something of an oxymoron?

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The Flagship has sunk – the ship in question here refers to Flagship Studios and how even ex-Blizzard greats could make mistakes. At GDC 2009, there a session which goes through at great length what independent game developers could learn from the mistakes of this sinking of a titanic proportion.

CoolBeat and me collaborated on ClickTris; I was responsible for the original game concept and CoolBeat expanded on it and implemented it using Game Maker 7. The result? Watch the video below

Here’s where you can download ClickTris

Comments and suggestions are welcomed!