The game is still in development but, like many serious games, it already raises interesting questions about gaming. For instance, the game implicitly argues that a game-format simulation of a possible epidemic will promote awareness, promote strategic thinking about disease transmittal and prevention, and would promote thinking about responses. These are all quality goals; however, as pandemics like Avian Flu leave the news broadcasts and as the game continues in development, I wonder about the efficacy of building a game–given the development timespan–to address these issues.

The timespan I refer to is not the timespan for the game’s relevance–after all, what this game promises could be used to model epidemics or localized outbreaks of particular diseases like STDs–but the timespan for the game to actually be released. The two primary (only?) developers are students, and this is a master’s project for one of them, so how will the project continue once the students move on to new projects? I think quality projects like Outbreak require some sort of built-in support. Perhaps an Open Source or school initiative that archives the old projects for future use, or perhaps the pairing of writing students and developer students so that the writing students can provide documentation on the project so that new developers (students or not) can then build off of past work.

Overall, Outbreak looks like a great project and I’d like to see a working game. I’d also like to see a method in place for building off of past work instead of possibly losing quality work after students move on to new projects.

That is until independent Russian developer White Elephant Games, founded just three years ago, put out a small game called RIP, featuring exactly this sort of play. The top-down view of the arenas achieved the familiarity that I think the developers are aiming for, filling a niche that is becoming less competitive by the hour.

After choosing one of three anti-heroes (Death, Halloween, or Rock and Roll), the previous installment situated players in a turret with the task of eliminating each wave of incoming enemies. The new Strike Back edition sets the chosen death-machine on foot, and only occassionaly provides heavy armor. Shotguns, dual semi-automatics, rocket launchers, grenades and other traditional arcade weaponry are all available, in addition to a few minor character-specific skills for each. Killing each enemy nets you experience, which as we all know is required to level up. You can earn additional experience by completing the boards in an accurate and timely manner, but by the time an average player reaches the final boss, they’ll have racked up more than enough for all of the armor, speed and weapon upgrades, so no hurry.

If you’re looking for any kind of story in this Story Mode, give it a rest. It is nonexistent. No explanation of the title, why the three characters are there, who they’re fighting or why, or anything of that nature. This isn’t an RPG, so an extensive storyline isn’t necessary, but something would have been nice just to give the fight some context. I’m sure it all makes sense to the developers, but this is something that should have at least been included, even if it was hasty and incoherent. Some semblance of a narrative can be found on the website, but it only heightens my confusion.

A cruel dictator, General Wildboar, has conquered the world. His evil cyber-mariners guard his lair and keep the entire planet under his control. Joyous holidays such as Christmas and Halloween were banned. Dreaming was a crime with a punishment of death. The world was falling deeper into darkness with no hope of recovery. When there are no heroes left in the land, help comes from some very unexpected places.

Who is General Wildboar? Why did he ban holidays? Why don’t you fight him? Since when does Rock and Roll care? Why the odd protagonists in the first place? Your best bet is to ignore this entire mess, chalk it up to a shifty translation and enjoy the rest of the game.

The map settings you’ll encounter have a limited and likewise familiar range: you’ll fight in deserts, snowy areas, etc. No surprises here. The aspect of level design that I’m interested in is how that managed to cram a puzzle element in there. In a game where your only choice of action is to shoot, and your enemies don’t vary too greatly, it’s fun to see how White Elephant could make every level unique. They’re not just repetitive tests of how accurate your mouse hand is, but how you make judgments regarding the type and quantity of incoming hostiles, compared to your resources and environment.

Going through the Story mode with one character will only take a few hours, but after that, and the insanely difficult and tacked-on Rush mode, the game doesn’t offer much else. I applaud the creative team responsible for RIP: Strike Back for developing a decent shooter in a time where shooters don’t make much money, and I’d love to support their cause, but the $20 price tag is a little hefty for this game. You could certainly spend that amount in less productive ways, but the same or better gameplay and graphics can be had for free on Newgrounds, Shockwave, or a half dozen other sites.

The new feature stories and news are really useful. One of the stories is about a law professor who teaches game law, and uses games to teach law, and others are more generally on games and education, games and health, and games and advertising. The site has a lot of good content and will hopefully be a useful source in the future. And, more importantly, it shows that serious games are popular enough to warrant focused mass gaming media attention. I’m looking forward to more good things from Serious Games Source.

Codemasters is a well-known game publisher, creators of the fairly interesting Prisoner of War (in which players use their wits and stealth, not weapons, to escape a Nazi prison camp during WWII) and the rally race games based on the Colin McRae franchise. So it may seem odd that they are releasing a set of games branded after the “cult” UK phenomenon The Turds.

Created by Vanessa Smith, founder of Pacemaker UK and originator of the concept, The Turds have been making steady headway in the figurine, animation and videogame realm. Codemasters saw game gold in the franchise, and has released the first of a set of free web games on its casual gaming portal, Funsta.com.

The first Turds web game is called Donkey Pong and the Adventures of Rimdiana Jones. Seriously. It is, obviously, a clone of Donkey Kong and free for the playing on the Codemasters casual gaming portal, Funsta.com. For a full description, you can’t really beat the marketing copy, so, taken directly from the press release:

Donkey Pong And The Adventures Of Rimdiana Jones sees plopular action hero, Rimdiana Jones, and agent Marilyn Muckroe, on a search for the legendary fartifact, the Lost Arse. However, disaster strikes: Marilyn is captured by giant ape-shit, Donkey Pong, and is to be sacrificed to a mysterious giant turd, worshipped by the lost Pongo Tribe.

Can Rimdy get his gal back and find his Lost Arse? To rescue Marilyn Muckroe, help Rimdy jump, run, climb and smash his way to the top of each increasingly difficult level. Watch out for those evil Islanders and pray your nostrils don’t catch a blood curdling wiff of the mighty Pong!

Donkey Pong pretty much plays like it ought to. The other games lined up to come out all sport similarly scatalogical titles: “Bogger” (sounds like “Frogger” to us) should be released in the next day or two. “Dung Bettle Rally” should leverage Codemasters’ experience with racing games. “Turd Heroes: Men in Cack” is the most unclear title, but we smell a Contra-style shooter. And the final game, “PooBert” leaves little doubt that it will be a Q-Bert clone.

All of the games are infused with Turds-flavored humor. This methodology applies to the entire Turds line, which features characters such as The Bogfather, Freddy Pooger, The Turdinator, Wayne Pooney, and characters from history, including Shat the Ripper, Brave Fart, and, of course, Adolf Shitler. The Turds also has an animated series in the works called “Tales of the Crapped” which satirizes the horror series “Tales from the Crypt” with episodes featuring characters like Hannibal the Sphincter and Joe Turd, the cop trying to stop him.

The most interesting part of the Turds casual web games is the Turd Calculator. This little application allows you to divide the amount of your annual work salary by the time you’ve spent playing the games . If you’re playing the games at work, then the resulting figure tells you just how much money you’ve been paid to play Turds.

Even if the Turds isn’t the thing for you, it at least makes painfully clear the differences in how the Brits and the Americans view their bodily functions. But after years of South Park, and the perennial resurgence of gross-out toys and gadgets, maybe the Turds can find a cult in America.

For informative content, Iser games has just released two versions of a sex education game. One is a sex education trivia game for general use in schools or to help parents open a discussion about sex with their kids and the other is a similar sex education game that’s abstinence-focused.

Black Love Interactive also has informative games, but their games tend to be focused on the erotic side of gaming rather than than being purely informative. Their games include “WTF?! Sex Trivia” and “Rapture Online,” both of which seek to offer sexually stimulating fun.

While both the informative and the sexy approaches are useful for thinking about sex and games, the Sex in Videogame conference also offers a forum for discussions on how games can address sex and sexuality more generally. Since so many games have been developed for all ages, sex often hasn’t been as major of a component as it could be in gaming. Some games have incorporated sex and sexuality into their narratives, and into their general play. But sex is still an awkward and clunky subject for many others (after all, how often do we see games with other than heterosexual player-characters). And, as more sex gets incorporated into games, gaming will need to change media perceptions of gaming such that any adult content doesn’t risk the “Adults Only” label which seems more like the movie industries “NC-17″ than the likely more appropriate “R.” Hopefully the sex and videogames conference will bring up and help improve representations, and perceptions, of sex and sexuality in games.

Plus, good design principles are about limits and allowances. Good design for games should allow players to play in fairly open ways. However, good design often limits user interaction so that users have a clear sense of what they should and shouldn’t do. This makes game play less confusing and less frustrating. Good web design follows the same principles with good design steering users/players toward the right choices while stifling users’ desires to do something less desirable. Bad design often overly restricts actions without providing a motivating factor for its constraints. Code, literature, and poetry have all explored different possibilities for working within constraints, deviating from standards and constraints, and establishing new constraints. Contests like Retro Remakes encourage game designers to do the same and to think about their players as a diverse group of folks with different needs. While the DS (and soon the Wii) offer new playing styles, more games need to offer ways for everyone to play. Retro Remakes is a big step in the right direction, and I can’t wait to see what the winning games are.

Loads of other projects (including earlier versions of Alice) have been around for years, like Logo and Carnegie Mellon has a host of older and newer projects that can be used in teaching and in learning about games. Games that teach and games that inspire learning beg for additional building tools and games that allow others to then build more games and these are just a few of the projects that help create building blocks for educational games.

Plasma Pong is a completely tripped-out version of regular Pong that incorporates fluid dynamics. In addition to deflecting the ball with your paddle, you can now use jets and vortices of fluid pressure to help guide the ball. And all of this is rendered in a super-colorful “plasma” style. If you love the visual style of games like Geometry Wars, Mutant Storm, and Darwinia, then you need to check this one out. Click here to download Plasma Pong, free for Windows PCs.

Coming up on its second birthday, and the anniversary of its completion, it’s a perfect time to take a look at Not Pr0n, play it again, and consider it as a well-established Web game.

Each level of Not Pr0n is a puzzle or riddle based on geeky web-based knowledge. There’s little that gets incredibly complicated here, but a savvy websense in needed to proceed. The first few levels introduce the basic mechanics of the game: Level One requires you to click the door in the image. Level Two requires you to change the URL in the location bar of your web browser. The player is immediately taken away from the traditional point-and-click puzzle game and required to interact with the browser and the larger Web. Some puzzles feature Google search boxes, making clear that users are expected to mine for specialized knowledge in addition to using their own smarts.

Playing Not Pr0n is a a roller coaster of difficulty. Some levels are easy, some are maddening. There is plenty of help online. In the year since it’s completion, over nine million players have attempted it. Only 101 have completed all 139 levels, which gives it a completion rate of 0.001%, putting Not Pr0n in a category of difficulty usually reserved for niche Japanese twitch-shooters. (Full disclosure: I am NOT in the elite 101 who have finished Not Pr0n.)

Not Pr0n is, in many ways, like a hardcore computer geek’s Myst. Like Myst, most of Not Pr0n’s gameplay centers on still images that give the reader a view on a fictional world. And, like Myst, there is a fairly obscure and difficult to follow narrative that emerges from the play. Even according to Münnich’s own admission, Not Pr0n’s story loses focus after level 13 or so.

But this is not a narrative game. This is a seriously strange set of Internet puzzles and riddles. It is both a gameplay experience and a tribute to late 20th Century Web culture. Incorporating javascripts, embedded ads, frames pages and generally 1995-2002 contemporary design concepts, Not Pr0n already seemed retro when it came onto the scene in 2004. At this point, the retro aesthetic and approach is working like a dream, giving the game a weird time-machine feel that enhances the gameplay. And it is easy to see that in a few years the knowledge needed to solve these puzzles will become more and more historical and rarefied.

Not Pr0n has been successful: nine million players is no small feat, but by Münnich’s own admission, most of his players drop out after the third level. It is consciously targeted to players with computer knowledge, but that fanbase has grown to worldwide proportions. Still, Münnich has kept Not Pr0n free, and has not polluted it with loads of in-game advertisements. In an interview from August 2005, Münnich said he has made as much as $360 from the Google search bars, which double as gameplay elements and revenue-makers. It is not enough to live on, but it is enough to keep Münnich happy about having created Not Pr0n, which he says he would have gladly done for free.

No plans are underway to continue Not Pr0n or create a sequel to it. However, Münnich remains busy with other game and music projects.

If you’ve played Not Pr0n, take some time this summer to work through it again. And if you have never tried Not Pr0n, it’s a must-play. Nobody expects you to finish it, but it is certainly a classic of alternative gaming.

Millions of Games is just that: A web database cataloging as many browser-based games as the collective Internet can spew forth. What a lovely thing! It’s kind of like New Grounds meets Digg with a little Shadows thrown in for taggy-meta goodness. Right now there are not quite 7000 games listed, which is more than enough to kill a few afternoons at work. A lot of these are sex games, and plenty of them are so amateur they’ll make your Stupid Internet Crap Meter go *ding*, but there’s plenty of gold to mine from this here database. Click here to visit Millions of Games.