I think I’ve found my niche!

Jeff Fulton over at 8-Bit Rocket has declared himself a mid-core gamer, and since his points match up nicely with the sort of “too hard for Bejeweled, too soft for coordinated 8-hour epic raids, gimme a 2-hour game for $20, and get off my lawn!” cane-waving rants that I’ve frequently posted here, I’ll go ahead and call myself a mid-core gamer, too. I’ll even go so far as to wildly and baselessly say that mid-core gamers are the fastest-growing video game market in the world, so big video game companies had better start catering to us if they know what’s good for them! I also suspect that Dan Cook will jump on this bandwagon as well, albeit on a different part of the wagon that doesn’t have any tricky platforms. 🙂

And speaking of baseless hyperbole, Five Short Video Game Industry Keynotes filled me with glee. GLEE!! So you should go check that out.

UPDATE: Preach it, my brother!!

UpGradius

And speaking of upgrades, Genetos is a shooting game that begins as a Space Invaders clone, but gradually “upgrades” both the player’s ship and the levels through a history of shooting games until they’ve evolved into a modern bullet-hell game. Postman from Shoot the Core has posted a youtube video of a playthrough of the demo.

I wonder if I can make a flash version of this game for the Jayisgames competition without being labeled a hack… Or maybe I’m already a hack for making Pretty Pretty Bang Bang, and I have no reputation to tarnish.

(And yes, I know that Gradius is horizontal and this game is vertical, but the subject line opportunity was too good to pass up.)

a pimp’s casual game is different from that of a square

Jayisgames.com has just announced their fifth flash game design competition, with numerous delightful cash prizes, and the theme this time is “Upgrade”. If your brain is brimming with upgradey ideas, then get to work, because the deadline is March 3rd. Jay’s previous four contests have produced some great games, so I’m looking forward to the results of this one as well.