I download the basic/demo version of the Spore Creature Creator Labor and had some fun with it. Here some creatures I created with it:

It's fun. I am looking forward to test them in the complete game.
What about you?

Maybe you already saw the plenty of ads everywhere about GarageGame's new gaming portal called InstantAction. I think it's very well done. Most of the site is HTML - only some areas do require flash and of course the games are using an extra plugin. Installation of that plugin in firefox was very smooth - very nice with pictures for each step. The website design is trendy and makes it already stand apart, but also the fact that you can quickly play multiplayer 3d games in your browser - after registration and installation of the plug-in.

On the negative side I found, that after downloading a new game, the process does often hang. Leaving and rejoining the game fixes it. I also had to give internet-connection rights to each game separately. In addition to that, in the lobby you don't see ping times thus lag or disconnection might occur often in some matches. If you want to try it yourself, I'll suggest "Marble Blast" or "Think Thanks". The others are less interesting. A Tribes-Like title is announced called: Fallen Empire Legions.

As we are talking of GarageGames, there is maybe something else interesting especially in regards to the topic of one of my recent postings. They have a 2D-Game Authoring environment called TorqueX Builder. It's layered upon their for their new XNA based engine called TorqueX. They now announced that they added 3D support on the engine level - the editor will be 3D enabled in the future. TorqueX allows deployment on Windows and Xbox360.

Matthew and his team released a new 3d web game made with Unity3D:

Off-Road Velociraptor Safari

Hunt dinos in a car while doing the best stunts you can  ….Very funky game idea !

Maybe you know Matthew. He was a very active Virtools user for many years and also published some casual games using it. Roughly a year ago he started to use Unity (for diverse reasons) and ported 'I hate clowns'. Now he released a new game using Unity, called Splume. It's a color-match game with a springy physics aspect.

While  having a short look at it, I see some usability problems - it's a bit off-topic as it's partly due the Unity webplayer

• I can't see a quick way to mute audio
• it tracks mouse clicks outside the window or even when I am in another browser TAB
• I can't pause the game or even better the Unity player. Thus it takes resources while I am at other web pages
• where do I adjust fullscreen resolution and AA?

Me addicted?? Noooo !!!

What about you? 

Warning ! Don't go to this site and don't play this game: Desktop Tower Defense 1.5

Wow, have a look at this game concept video:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=13937&type=mov&pl=game

Today I found a newsletter from GameSpot announcing a World Premiere:

 Visit GameSpot on Friday and be the first to download the DarkStar One demo

The thing is, it’s already on my hard disk and I already played through the story part of the demo. After checking two sites and running the game once again, it got clear to me: I have the german version, downloaded from a german site. So its probally the world premiere for the english version - but that’s not mentioned.

About the game: if you like games like Elite, Free Space and Freelance then you can download it and give it a try. I liked it. It’s very colorful which one may like or not but at least it stands apart from other products like EVE online (very beautiful)