Taro Omiya

Taro Omiya

Software Engineer, Game Designer

Month: November 2011

  • Weekly Game Music: Lights (Lumines)

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    As far as I know, we only have one J-Pop music in this series (and the first one is more J-Jazz than -Pop), so lets bump that one more. Here’s Lights, sung by Eri Nobichika. The song appears in the excellent Tetris-based puzzle game, Lumines. Like Tetris, Lumines involves placing 2 x 2 blocks of…

  • Strange Free Games: The Stanley Parable

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    Last time, I introduced a game that provided an innovative narrative by allowing you to freely decide which way the story should go. Here’s a game that does just the opposite: The Stanley Parable tells you what you should do, then sees if you’ll comply or not. The Stanley Parable is a Half Life 2…

  • Weekly Game Music: Kingdom of Ixataka (Skies of Arcadia)

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    Since Thanksgiving is fast approaching, here’s a game music themed after the Native American’s (or arguably, African’s) instruments. Here’s the theme from the game, Skies of Arcadia: Kingdom of Ixataka, composed by Yutaka Minobe and Takayuki Maeda. This tune is only one of many drastically diverse cultural tracks the game has. As you can probably…

  • Collapse! Blast Review

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    I have fond memories of Collapse!, by Gamehouse, back in high school. It was a simple and fun game during the rise of flash games. Playing Collapse! Blast on Google+ brings back many of those memories, but I find it difficult to find the original charm the old game had. The directions to play Collapse!…

  • Strange Free Games: Façade

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    Here’s an old but extremely unique free game. Façade is a game created back in 2005, with ugly graphics, terrible animation, and shoddy cell-shading all intact. Despite these problems, though, Façade‘s terrifyingly original game concepts is often used as a pinnacle of Video Game narrative, where you, the player, ultimately guide the story. Façade is…

  • Strange Free Games: The Cat and the Coup

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    On Google+, I started a new series of posts called #StrangeFreeGames. Each post will introduce a game that is free, and a bit strange. I hope by introducing these surreal games, the theme will be better explored by game developers in the future. With that said, the first game is The Cat and the Coup,…