Indie Connect Prelude. One step of an effort to nurture and build the Indie Games Scene in Berlin, Germany. We will be there.

What? Developers talk (English language) and everybody plays games.

When? This Friday, starting 18:30ish (aka "like 6:30 PM") GMT+1.

Game developers will talk about developing games. For example team GameStrom will introduce their game design brainstorm events, Anjin Anhut will tell us how to "Just do it!" and Christiaan Janssen and I will talk about Game Development Jams in general.

You will be able to play the latest Nikki release and other indie games as part of an exhibition.

So if you're in Berlin or close and haven't played Nikki and the Robots yet or would like to meet one or two of the game's developers, do come!

PS: It's free of charge and no registration required.

Video: 0.4 changes [Vimeo | YouTube]

We released Nikki and the Robots 0.4.0 (0.4.1.1 actually), which you can download here or via in-game updater.

The new features are:

• New robot: Cannon! It shoots cannon balls that disappear after 10 seconds
• Players can download and upload levels in the main/editor menus
• Author name and license agreement added for saving/uploading levels
• Sounds added for menu, jumping, buttons and batteries
• Last level switch to be pressed now blinks green
• Added "transient" switches (won't stay pressed)

Some news not directly related to the release:

• There now is a Joyride Labs Reddit, a discussion forum with a social web touch
• The compile instructions on our wiki have been updated, let us know if you run into trouble!

Two of us were at BIGJam this weekend. It was fun! We produced a Haskell- and an Inform-based game prototype. Both are silly.

Video: Acrobots on YouTube

For "Acrobots" we modified our open source Nikki and the Robots Freeplay version to have no gravity and added a new floating robot. The robot is supposed to collect engines and trash that floats around the level which would add thrust and mass respectively.

The Inform-based text adventure can be played here online. It begins with:

You are in a room that looks fancy-dancy. You can see backyard door, a glass box (closed) (in which is a cat) and a unicorn here.

The Inform text adventure language is very natural-language-like and is a good learning tool for some beginner programmers.

We're looking forward to more Game Jams and the BIGJam 2012!

You can check out many BIGJam 2011 games in this thread.

The contest results are in! And a new update, which you can download or get using the in-game updater.

[video links: Vimeo | YouTube]

The winners are

• Julian (for Greed) [Shirt + Game]
• sauer2/C. Hackenberg (for lootninja, hanoi, powergrid and obstacles) [Shirt + 4xGame]
• Jukkeri (for Trick Series 02) [Shirt + Game]
• pixma (for robopractice) [Game]
• 2048 Terrabit (for Robot Race) [Game]
• Marius Ghita/mhitza (for stairway to heaven) [Game]
• 3sdras (for Geronimo) [Game]

New in 0.3.3:

• Added 30 levels from the first level design contest (in standard levels/03-contest1)
• Jetpack robot physics tweaked again
• Level names are now sorted correctly

PS: you can download the levels without changes here.

Soon after the end of the first level contest we released Nikki and the Robots 0.3.2, which you can download here or via the update menu option of your copy.

[video links: Vimeo | YouTube]

The new features are:

• New Patrol Robots, which will make Nikki fail the level when touched
• Jetpack Robots are more forgiving and easier to control
• No more editor crashes when Nikki has not been added
• Signature checks for updates (heightened updater security - not gameplay-relevant)

A few words about the contest judging: we will announce the winners in approximately ten days. We received some last-minute levels and are very thankful to all level builders who shared their works.

Patrol Robot

We hope that the Patrol Robot is fun to work with. You can get in touch with players and builders on IRC and the forums.

PS: The robot compendium has been updated both in our tutorial and on IndieDB.

At the time of writing, there are approximately 64 hours left if you want to submit levels to the level design contest to win one of three T-shirts and pre-orders of Nikki and the Robots.

We received 23 user-made levels so far (get all of them here or here) and I took a look at how many robots, switches, batteries and objects in total are in them.

Contest Levels 2.5 - See as real table here

My feeling was that robots were under-used in the contest. The statistics show that I'm wrong. What surprised me however is the average 530 objects per level (the current average object count in levels shipped with Nikki and the Robots is 170). Makes me feel lazy. :)

We have been tweaking physics and controls lately in preparation for the next release. (check out this horrible recording of horrible jetpack test physics :) ).

I'm curious if the last days of the contest will spawn many awesome levels. I guess I have to hope for bad weather..

Context: Our level design contest (rules are here) will be over in about three days (a timer is here).

Something caught my attention when I last went shopping: butter. The packaging and name inspired me to design a level.

• ROOMBOTER ("butter" in Dutch) sounds like the kick-kraftwerk word ROBOTER ("robot" in Germany). Robots are important in our game Nikki and the Robots..
• The packaging design aesthetics remind of pixels and tetris; blocks in a grid. Many of the existing levels in Nikki and the Robots are similar.

You can download this level [mirror 1|mirror 2].

Copying existing designs is not how I would usually create levels. The instant inspiration I got compelled me to do it in this case though.

When did you last have spontaneous inspiration for game locations/levels lately? Do you rather get ideas from nature or man-made things?

On June 6th we started a level design contest. July 7th is the deadline and everybody is welcome to submit as many levels as they like via email, webchat or forum. Text and video tutorials are available.

Since releasing the first batch, we received nine levels (one of them in two versions):

To test them, you have to unzip the archive [mirror 1 | mirror 2] to the following directory:

WINDOWS: %APPDATA%\nikki-free-levels\userLevels\

LINUX/MAC OS X: ~/.nikki-free-levels/userLevels/

Just copy the path into Explorer's (CTRL + L) or Filer's (CMD + SHIFT + G) location bar to enter that directory.