links for 2007-10-27

“The uni­verse tends toward max­i­mum irony. Don’t push it.” A guide to back­ups. Via Tom Armitage.

Saf­fer­’s pre­sen­ta­tion on the appli­ca­tion of game struc­tures to web apps. Good stuff. Via Armitage.

Unusu­al­ly deep puz­zle action plat­form game that won the 4th casu­al game-play com­pe­ti­tion at Jay is Games. Good fun.

Oliveira dis­cuss­es Oink’s demise and what he thinks online music stores should learn from it: price, com­mod­i­ty and (most impor­tant­ly) choice.

“Any­body think­ing of social soft­ware as a spe­cial cat­e­go­ry of soft­ware design needs to wake up and smell the friends list.” — Hin­ton on the ubiq­ui­ty of sosowa.

Point and click adven­tures are far from dead. Black­well Unbound is an indie game that makes me nos­tal­gic for the good old days of obses­sive Gabriel Knight play.

Upcom­ing ‘vir­tu­al world’ by Mind Can­dy. Noth­ing much yet here but the teas­er trail­er shows some high-qual­i­ty char­ac­ter design and animation.

Game-play footage of a dis­turb­ing indie game in which you seem to be in semi-con­trol of some Love­craft­ian mon­ster wreak­ing hav­oc on a forest­ed hill­side. Weird but wonderful.

Weird plat­form puz­zle game where you play a black blob. Nice graph­ic style, fun music.

“inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts come from com­pa­nies with one impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic — willpow­er: The per­se­ver­ance and com­mit­ted resources to see a break­through prod­uct launched”