I’ve put off talking about the new Nitrome games for about two weeks. Why? I’m not entirely sure. But in the mean time I’ve found some other great games which I’ll talk about first.

Wake Up The Box

Wake Up The Box is a cute little physics game, where you have to place objects to move a little box enough to wake it up. Overall it’s not too hard, but it’s quite a lot of fun to play.

The Company Of Myself

Another simply amazing physics game, The Company Of Myself, was another game that I felt the need to draw specific attention to. The plot is incredible, and the music touching - not to mention it actually being a very good game in terms of physics and playability. I highly recommend playing it if you’ve got time (and come on, you do; it’s the holidays, after all).

Cold Storage

Cold Storage is probably the main reason I’ve been putting writing this off. It wasn’t too hard - in fact, it was quite easy. I just didn’t like it. Not really much… at all.
You play as this friendly character to the right, and you swing on poles (very slowly, I might add). There are a few types of poles: Ice pole, rust pole, super-pole, and hince pole. These are all fairly self-explanatory - if not, just go and play the thing.
There aren’t many enemies, either. This flying bug, which will hurt you, this pole bug which will hurt you, a falling… thing, which will hurt you (come on, all enemies hurt you), the strange spikes. You’ll also find rings which will speed you up. Handy.
To gain extra points, you’ve got to hit and thus unfreeze these cute enemies to the left. They also come in a big size. You can also find lots of creatures stuck in the ice: fish, different fish, octopus, and even hands (too hard to screenshot though). And that’s really all there is to the game. Play it if you’re reeeeally got nothing else to do… it wasn’t that great.

Ice Breaker: The Gathering

Ice breaker is back in this new game. It’s mostly the same as the old one, except in this you get to use bombs. Hoorah. Later, you also encounter objects that move along poles, which I guess is kind of exciting, but not really that unexpected.
It’s also notable to mention two things: this video icon which has some incomprehensible meaning, and the fact that they’re releasing 8 levels every week. See, if I wanted to play a little bit of a game at a time, I’d do that. But when I expect a game… I expect a game. It’s a self-stating argument. It would be like getting to Windows 7 by upgrading DOS one step at a time. And that’s not even possible anyway. Point is that I find them releasing the game bit by bit horribly irritating. Much more so than B. C. Bow Contest, because in this there’s not a whole lot of stuff to start with. More to come in a month when it’s all out.

Avalance

Avalance just came out today. You play as a small penguin who goes along on a toboggan and avoids the avalanche that is right behind him. Kind of creepy, really. And very similar to some of their previous games… but don’t let that bother you.
Thus far I’ve encountered boost rockets, as well as enemies and food, but they’re pretty simplistic. I also found it strange that when you complete a level, you see the penguin’s family get crushed by the avalanche. But maybe that’s just me, right? Who knows. More to come when I play it for a little bit longer.

Site Stuff

Hosting issues with the podcast have been resolved, however the domain has been changed. A new podcast will be released as soon as possible, though unfortunately it will need to be subscribed to again (separately) via iTunes or a similar program.

Misc. Funnies

Google has released some videos to go along with mail. Or, should I said, Maill. Yes, because that’s how it’s spelt. You’d think that with so many people working at the company, the person who published sites would have a decently spell-checked page. But apparently not.

That’s all for now, as far as I know. More to come soon to do with APOD (woo!), the podcast, and games.

Lenny