Happy New Year! As you pick yourself up from whatever flat surface you passed out on, mumbling and shaking your head and wondering, “Did I really do that?”, you need something to take the edge off. Something to cure the pounding head and queasy stomach. Something to help make sense of it all. Well, Where is 2010? won’t necessarily help with that. Instead, it will bring a curious serenity as you face the new year. A strange little platformer designed by Mateusz Skutnik (Submachine, Covert Front), Where is 2010? won’t cure the indulgences of the night before but will nevertheless allow you to kick off the new year in style (if you haven’t already).

Navigation through this strange little world is accomplished with the arrow keys. The left and right arrow will allow you to move, well, left and right. The up arrow key will allow you to jump and the down arrow key will allow you to interact with various parts of the scenery. Take your time and explore; for a five minute or less game there’s lots to behold. Strangely non-linear, be prepared to move backwards and forwards, up and down, and gaze in amazement at the bleak surroundings. Oh, and try to find 2010, of course.

The artwork in this eerie, deserted world is in hand-drawn black and white, reminiscent of and probably a tribute to the DayMare Town series. Adding to the chill factor is the eerie sound of wind blowing through this deserted space. Yet, despite the bleak atmosphere, in the end this is some rather uplifting casual gameplay.

You might ask, for such a short game is it fun to play? The answer to that is in two parts:

(1) It’s Mateusz Skutnik, and

(2) Duh! Is 2010 something real or just a state of mind?

You’ll have to play to find out. Have fun wandering in all directions, back and forth, up and down, and see what you can find. It’s amazing what can be packed into such a small space and there’s lots to see and do before it’s all over. Atmospheric, moody, and yet surprisingly cute while simultaneously sending a chill down your spine, Where is 2010? is a perfect way to start the new year right.

author : Grinnyp on jayisgames.com

Three coins on the first screen. Pull the lever to raise the platform on the right so you can reach the highest one.

While still on the now-tallest platform, jump far to the right. You will need to land on a mid-air platform.

Four coins on this screen, for a total of seven. Pull the lever and go left to return to the first screen.

A door to the left should be open that wasn’t open before. Enter it.

Three coins on this screen, for a total of ten. Pull the lever and return to the first screen.

Climb back to the tallest platform and jump right to return to that mid-air platform.

Jump onto the platform attached to the building and jump onto the window ledge. From there, grab the hidden coin by the little flag. You should now have eleven coins.

Two coins on this screen, for a total of thirteen. Jump onto the bottom platform and pull the lever. This will raise the platform and allow you to collect the coins. Do this before you get on the other platform.

Pull the lever to move to the right. Now jump far to the right. You will need to land on another mid-air platform.

One coin on this screen, for a total of fourteen. Pull the lever to go right so you can collect the coin, then go right onto the next screen.

Three coins on this screen, for a total of seventeen. They are embedded in that thing hanging on the right-hand side.

You’ll need to climb back up the side of the building to get all of them, unless you’re clever enough to get more than one at a time, unlike me.

One coin on this screen, for a total of eighteen. Get it before you go down the well.

Three coins on this screen, for a total of twenty-one. They’re all in a vertical line on the right.

Go all the way to the left before you go down the chute.

One coin on this screen, for a total of twenty-two. Pull the rope.

Now go right and down the chute.

Go left. A door to the left should be open that wasn’t open before. Enter it.

Two coins on this screen, for a total of twenty-four. Turn the wheel.

Go right, climb to the top of the building, and go left.

Down below, a door to the right should be open that wasn’t open before. Enter it.

Three coins on this screen, for a total of twenty-seven. Pull the lever.

You found 2010!

written by: ray9na, found on jayisgames

– Ramasser les trois pièces (utiliser le levier pour faire monter la plateforme). Sauter vers la gauche depuis la plateforme montée, ramasser les quatre pièces et abaisser le levier.

– Retourner à gauche et passer la porte ouverte. Monter à l’échelle et ramasser les trois pièces, abaisser le levier.

– Ressortir et aller tout à droite (en passant par la plateforme levée) et passer par la porte ouverte en haut.

– Ramasser les deux pièces et abaisser le levier pour se déplacer avec la plateforme. Aller à droite en sautant depuis la plateforme en haut. Aller encore à droite en utilisant le levier de la plateforme. Aller vers la droite et attraper les trois pièces sur l’espèce de lustre en sautant.

– Prendre la pièce derrière le puits et descendre dans le puits. Prendre les trois pièces, aller à gauche et prendre la pièce et tirer la corde. Aller à droite et descendre dans le puits.

– Aller à gauche et entrer dans la porte ouverte sous l’espèce de lustre. Prendre les deux pièces et faire tourner la roue.

– Sortir, remonter et aller à gauche. Passer la porte ouverte, prendre les trois dernières pièces (on arrive à 26) et abaisser le levier pour trouver 2010.

posté par Lambda

Greetings from Cartoonia / Pozdravi iz Striponije
Slovenski etnografski muzej / Slovene Etnographic Museum, Ljubljana

22. Oct. – 31st Dec. 2009

I found this old sketch while browsing through some old backup cd’s. It’s a real blast from the past, but good enough to share with you. I created this in 2004 I believe, Neil Gaiman was visiting Poland back then and there was an exhibition of Sandman drawings created by polish comic artists. So that’s my contribution.

So I’ve been drawing with my daughter lately, she does her scribblings while I do mine, using her crayons. Here’s what came out lately. That red smudge is of her doing, I did not dare to remove that in photoshop.

So – here is the new issue of Stripburger special. Greetings from Cartoonia – the Essential Guide of the Land of Comics sports quite unique idea – gathering artists from different countries and asking them to write down 3 things that are crucial to their home country. Then they swapped those things between different artist and asked them to create a comic about them. Phew. That’s Cartoonia allright. So I got someone’s three things , and somebody else got what I came up with for representation of Poland.

You can see few pages of my contribution here.

Enjoy them in color, because they’re printed in grayscale. But not to worry, I’m pretty sure this comic will end up in a separate, full color album one day. Anyway – it was supposed to be a small comic, but turned out to be a 20-page story. It’s Revolutions – my main comic series. My three objects that I had to base my comic on were: wayside shrine, the neanderthal flute and Janezek of Carniola (who turns out to be the main character of the story). Can’t tell you much more about the story…

In Greetings from Cartoonia, 12 modern comic creators, half of them from Slovenia and the other half from various European countries, entered a colorful comic-book-styled intercultural dialogue. The results of this irresponsible behavior are fantasy-filled postcards from the involved countries that don’t pay attention to stereotypes. Slovene authors used their foreign colleagues’ homelands (Italy, Finland, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Romania) as motifs for their comics. Slovenia was used in the same manner by other artists. All authors have used ‘objects of inspiration’ gathered from the cultural treasuries of the involved countries. Among these are architectural types, animal species, car models, traditional folk products, mythological beings and so on. Each artist created a comic story that takes place in the chosen land based on a handful of objects typical for that country. The emerged comic-portraits of the countries quickly got out of hand and mutated to Cartoonia, a completely new, original trans-national entity. A safe haven for those that think the world lacks sympathy for comics, an art form they create or worship. The book is an indispensable guide to this unpredictable, sometimes dangerous, wonderfully bizarre and bizarrely wonderful country.

That was an official promo that I found on Top Shelf’s website. The book came to me in a nice package with lots of additional stuff:

Cartoonia postcards. Those sheets of paper were used for twitting before the twitter was invented. It’s quite the same, only in real life. People used to send them to each other from vaactions or trips to foreign countries, as in you go somewhere, buy a postcard there and send it back home to your folks to let them know how good you have, and they would get it and envy you.

There’s also this big map of Cartoonia with all objects indicated as long with names of countries they’re from (countries’ names are purposely misspelled to indicate the fantasy nature of the whole project).

Cartoonia pencils, unfortunately they came too late for being actual tools in the creation of Cartoonia comics. But they’ll probably be used in next projects, mine for sure, as well as other comic artists that took part in this project. So there will be a itsy bitsy tiny bit of Cartoonia in upcoming comic books from all over Europe. That’s what I think.

And there are also Cartoonia erasers. It’s a piece of rubber used to ctrl+Z when you’re drawing on an actual paper. But it can only remove the pencil featured above as I assume, so it’s like really old-timey ctrl+Z. But still. You can correct your errors to some extent with this item. Not that I make errors. But still.

And there was this extra package:

Inside there were 20 copies of a  poster I created for Cartoonia. There are only 40 copies in existence, and the other 20 will be available for purchase. Each artist was supposed to create one, and they printed those using an old method of screen printing (40 copies each). This method is so old that even I can’t explain you what that is. But here’s the poster:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the 10 semi-finalists in the animated short film category of the 2010 Academy Awards. Thirty-seven entries had originally qualified in the category. And the Kinematograph is one of the semi-finalists. ;)

Mateusz Skutnik is a rarity: a gifted artist who is also a skilled coder. He is responsible for some of the most beautiful casual games on the web.

There are two types of artist. The first sort can spend an age on a work of art, painstakingly, bit by tiny bit, building it up until, finally, often years later, they deem it ready for public consumption. And then there are those rare individuals who are blessed with such an abundance of talent that they can turn around wonderful artworks in the time it takes some of us to read a book.

In the casual gaming world, Mateusz Skutnik is undoubtedly one of the latter. Over the past few years, his output of games has been nothing short of phenomenal. Eight games in his hugely popular Submachine point-and-click series, no less then 12 Ten-Gnomes games (quirky takes on the hidden object genre), two editions of the much-acclaimed Daymare Town series, three Covert Front games, and that’s before we even get on to some of his lesser known works, including my personal favourites, the Squirrel games, of which there were more than 25 at last count.

And we are not talking low production value games here. His games are notable for their brilliant artwork, gripping storylines and imaginative reinventions of existing genres. Mateusz is that rare specimen, a gifted artist who also has the wherewithal to write computer programs and market his creations. Until relatively recently, he created the majority of his games single-handedly, doing all the graphics and programming himself. With growing recognition of his work, Mateusz quit his regular job a year ago to focus on his gaming business. He now runs a small game studio – Pastel Games – with Karol Konwerski.

Your output of new games over the past few years has been nothing short of phenomenal. And you do all the graphics as well as the programming. Do you ever sleep?

Umm, sure. It’s not like all those were made simultaneously. For example it took almost two years between Covert Front 2 and 4, and one-and-a-half years between Submachine 5 and 6. Besides, developing doesn’t take that long. To create a game from scratch I need about three months, so it leaves more than enough time to think all [the game] stories through, create a game and have a normal life afterwards.

Where do you get your inspiration for your games?

Everything and nothing. In 10 Gnomes it was the surrounding that I was setting the game in. Sometimes it takes just good sounds or ambients to spawn an idea, sometimes something I see in a movie or TV.

Your games are notable for their brilliant unique graphics. How did you become such a great illustrator?

Years of training. Twenty years of drawing comics, five years of learning how to program these things. There’s no way around it. Time is the answer.

Do you think games can be considered to be art?

10 Gnomes received a Storm of the Year Award in 2008 in the multimedia category. That’s an art award. Does that answer your question?

What are you working on at the moment?

Daymare Town 3 point and click game, and trying to get on track with a new Revolutions comic album, but that’s on a hold right now.

Which of your games are you most proud of?

Can’t judge. There’s no favourite, besides they’re all different and incomparable really.

Is it possible to make a good living out of developing casual games?

Yes. A year ago I quit my regular job and I’m still alive today. That proves the point.

You have recently moved into iPhone development. How does developing games for the iPhone differ from creating Flash games?

Teamwork, proper programmers, graphic and level designers, project managers. Kind of professional compared to one-man developing process.

Are their any game developers whose work you particularly admire?

All stuff made by Wada Nanahiro, Amanita Design and Ferry Halim.

What are your plans for the future?

I want to draw a full comic book next year. Concerning games – probably new Covert Front, Submachine and Daymare Town. The usual point and click trinity.

Tasha Granger

play this sketch | walkthrough | secrets guide

So this is that Submachine 2 sketch I talked about in previous post. You might know this screen grab from early versions of Submachine 1 – it was supposedly a preview of the second part. Back then I didn’t recognize the most valuable feature of the Submachine – the moving rooms system. Luckily for the game once I realised that – I started working on Sub2 from scratch, and this sketch fell into oblivion. Until now. I’m showing you this because it’s a strange thing to see Submachine in this normal pnc view version. Enjoy.

thanks so much for posting this! if you have anything else like this for the other games, i would love it if you shared them too!

No, this is the only sketch that I have. After redoing the Sub2 to the normal version, things went smoothly afterwards. Sub3, 4 etc didn’t have any early version that didn’t see the light.

Only mr. Skutnik knows what we can find behind this door.

[talking about the blood door] In fact I don’t. I didn’t get that far in story construction to create story behind that door. But it was supposed to be a mystery throughout this game. Maybe explained at the end. Or maybe not. Hard to tell really.