 | The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines for products and services .(July 2023) |
| Zineth | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Arcane Kids |
| Publisher(s) | Arcane Kids |
| Engine | Unity |
| Platform(s) | Windows, Mac |
| Release | 2012 |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Zineth is a 3D skating freeware video game by independent developer Arcane Kids released for Microsoft Windows and Mac in 2012. [1]
Zineth takes place in a dystopian future in which the entire world has been "absorbed by a mobile game", resulting in the brainwashing of all of its inhabitants. The player controls a magazine deliverer who must deliver "'zines" to people in order to show them what real life is like. [2]
Zineth originally began development as a student thesis project in experimental game design at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, [3] worked on by a team of 7 developers. Co-creator Jacob Knipfing cited inspiration from many Dreamcast games such as Jet Set Radio and Rez . [3]
It began development in late March 2012, and was later released in early August of that year. [4] Described as "a student game made over a few months meant to celebrate speed, movement, and twitter," [5] it has the player traverse through various environments at high speeds, all the while completing missions provided by other characters in order to earn cash. A cell phone is consistently present on the player's screen and incorporated into the game, used to receive missions as well as play other games contained within the phone, with inspiration taken from free-to-play Flash games and RPGs. [3] Twitter is also prominently featured as an aspect; players can use it to take in-game pictures using the phone and tweet them.
The game's title is a play-on words of the terms "zine" (short for magazine) and "zenith". [6] Upon launching the game shows disclaimer about the controller it was intended for, which is a reference to Jet Set Radio PC remaster complaints, when players attempted to use keyboard instead of usual controller and had problems with walkthrough.
In 2013 Zineth won an award at the Independent Games Festival for best student game. [7]
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tutorials, lectures, and roundtables by industry professionals on game-related topics covering programming, design, audio, production, business and management, and visual arts.
The Tapwave Zodiac is a mobile entertainment console. Tapwave announced the system in May 2003 and began shipping in October of that same year. The Zodiac was designed to be a high-performance mobile entertainment system centered on video games, music, photos, and video for 18- to 34-year-old gamers and technology enthusiasts. By running an enhanced version of the Palm Operating System (5.2T), Zodiac also provided access to Palm's personal information management software and many other applications from the Palm developer community. The company was based in Mountain View, California.
Jet Set Radio is a 2000 action game developed by Smilebit and published by Sega for the Dreamcast. The player controls a member of a youth gang, the GGs, as they use inline skates to traverse Tokyo, spraying graffiti, challenging rival gangs, and evading authorities.
A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone, tablet, PDA to handheld game console, portable media player or graphing calculator, with and without network availability. The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994.
Jet Moto is a series of futuristic racing games for the PlayStation video game console. Jet Moto (1996) and Jet Moto 2 (1997) were developed by SingleTrac, known for Twisted Metal and Twisted Metal 2. SingleTrac then left Sony, the publisher of the series, and Jet Moto 3 (1999) was developed by Pacific Coast Power & Light in their absence. They would also go on to develop Jet Moto 2124, which was cancelled two years into development. A fifth title known as Jet Moto: SOLAR was being developed by RedZone Interactive for the PlayStation 2, but no screenshots or video of gameplay were ever officially released, and the game was cancelled in 2003. in December 2022 gameplay footage of Jet Moto: SOLAR was uploaded to YouTube.
Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a Mac OS X game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to support a variety of desktop, mobile, console and virtual reality platforms. It is particularly popular for iOS and Android mobile game development, is considered easy to use for beginner developers, and is popular for indie game development.
Clean Asia! is a freeware vertically scrolling shooter video game for Microsoft Windows. It was developed by Jonatan "Cactus" Söderström.
Jonatan Söderström, also known as Cactus, is a Swedish video game developer noted for his unusual and innovative games. He is best known as the co-designer and programmer of Hotline Miami (2012) and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015), but had prior to those games developed over 40 small freeware games, many of which were reviewed and lauded even in the mainstream video game press. His game Clean Asia! was nominated for both Excellence In Visual Arts and Excellence in Audio at the Independent Games Festival in 2008. In 2010, he won the IGF's Nuovo Award, which honours unconventional game development, for his puzzler Tuning.
Oystron is an action game developed for the Atari 2600 by Piero Cavina and released in 1997. It is one of the earliest hobbyist-written games for the console. The game, Cavina's first, was initially made available as a freeware 4 KB binary file designed for use on the Starpath Supercharger and with Atari 2600 emulators. It was later released in cartridge form by XYPE, a group of Atari 2600 homebrew developers.
Octodad is a freeware independent video game developed by a group of students at DePaul University, many of whom would go on to form Young Horses, Inc., the developers of its sequel Octodad: Dadliest Catch. The game was developed for the Student Showcase of the 2011 Independent Games Festival, and would go on to be one of 8 winners in the Student Showcase award of that year. The game features a humorous plot revolving around the central character, an octopus who is undercover as an average human with a family. The plot revolves around the player, controlling Octodad, attempting to complete various household chores and tasks while maintaining his secret. The gameplay consists of primarily ragdoll physics, turning mundane tasks into significant challenges. Dadliest Catch was released on January 30, 2014, and was one of the first titles to be given the Steam Greenlight.
Fret Nice is a platform game developed by Pieces Interactive AB and published by Tecmo. The game was released on Xbox Live Arcade on February 4, 2010, and PlayStation Network on February 24, 2010. The game was designed to use a guitar controller, but can also be played using a normal gamepad. Players control the "Vibrant Chords", a rock band duo, as they traverse side-scrolling stages while avoiding enemies and hazards. The player can defeat enemies by strumming notes that correspond with their visual appearance, and they progress through the game by earning medals through meeting thresholds in the game.
Simogo is a Swedish independent video game developer based in Malmö. The company was founded in 2010 and is best known for creating games for mobile devices, including Year Walk and Device 6. Its name comes from the name of its founders Simon (SIM), and Gordon (GO); the 'O' from the Swedish word "och" meaning "and".
Mini Metro is a puzzle strategy video game developed by New Zealand indie development team Dinosaur Polo Club. Players are tasked with constructing an efficient rail transit network for a rapidly growing city. The game's visual style makes use of bold colours and simple geometry to replicate the appearance of modern transit maps. The game uses a procedural audio system to generate sounds based on the player actions and transit network, with inspiration from works of minimal music.
Mushroom 11 is an puzzle-platform game created by Untame. The game is a 2D side-scroller where players control a green mushroom by deleting parts of cells while it simultaneously regrows. The mushroom can be split and shaped to solve puzzles.
Sonic Dreams Collection is a 2015 art game developed by Arcane Kids for OS X and Windows. It is an unofficial game based on Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise that compiles four minigames presented as unfinished Sonic games, but the game as a whole later reveals itself to be a psychological horror game satirizing the modern Sonic fandom, which is known for its peculiarities. They include the character creator Make My Sonic, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Eggman Origin, the adventure game Sonic Movie Maker, and the virtual reality (VR) game My Roommate Sonic. They are described in-game as having been developed by a nonexistent Sega studio for the Dreamcast in the late 1990s.
Bad Milk is a puzzle video game developed by New York City-based developer Dreaming Media, the working name of brothers Ted and Mick Skolnick. It was originally released in November 2000 for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Created entirely in Macromedia Director 7 and intended to be an art game, the game features a number of puzzles involving full motion video and audio clues. It won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2002 Independent Games Festival, as well as the award for Innovation in Audio.
Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective is a downloadable 3D platform video game developed by indie game developer Arcane Kids. Touted as an educational experience, it is a facetious spiritual successor to Bubsy 3D, an entry from the Bubsy series of video games, and was created as a tribute to the game for its 18th anniversary. The game follows Bubsy Bobcat as he travels through a nightmarish scenario upon visiting the real-life retrospective tribute of postmodern artist James Turrell. It was released in autumn 2013 – shortly after the domain name for Bubsy 3D's official website had expired. In 2017, in addition to making a downloadable version of the game available due to the fading support of the browser version of Unity, a remastered version of the game was made available with high-definition graphics and a new epilogue following Bubsy reminiscing over the events of the game and meeting his older self.
Arcane Kids is an independent video game studio based in Los Angeles, California. They are a collective of developers, largely known for creating surreal and humorous video games using the Unity engine. As of 2015, the group consisted of 5 members, including Ben Esposito, Russell Honor, Tom Astle, Jacob Knipfing, and Yuliy Vigdorchik. The name "Arcane Kids" was derived from a mysterious re-writable compact disc with the phrase inscribed on top of it, which was found lying in a patch of dirt.
Perfect Stride is a semi-unreleased unfinished indie skateboarding video game developed by Arcane Kids and released in an alpha form in 2013.