Derek Yu from TIGSource posted about a game recently called William and Sly by a developer named Lucas Paakh. I played through it on Sunday and really enjoyed how it was put together.

It’s a platformer in which you play a fox, romping through a magical forest to reignite a series of portals for your master. Along the way you must collect “fairyflies” to enable the portal stones, and there are underground beasts you must avoid, each looking to rob you of your magical tinkerbells.

It feels like a world out of a Miyazaki film, the mood of the forest feels sleepy and ethereal, even inside a Flash player. I loved the music and sound design. For a little while, I had the game paused and the thunder sounds in the game had us thinking that the picnic we were about to go on (in real life) would be a waste. It’s a short game, but worth playing to explore the environment and have fun with the platforming controls.

So I haven’t been able to get much game time in this week at all, and won’t really be able to this weekend, either. Our wedding’s coming up on June 14th, so there’s marathon planning and preparation going on for the next few weeks until the big day. I did, however manage to get in a little bit of action this week:

• I played a couple more hours of IV during this past weekend. I’ve now unlocked all the islands and am conducting lots of “business” for the New Jersey mafia (hi, Sopranos references). I completed all of the assassin missions, appropriately adorned in my Agent 47 black suit/red tie getup. So far the only comment I can make regarding the “epic, Oscar-worthy storyline” is that it’s marginally more acceptable and tightly held together than the previous GTA’s, but not exactly the massive improvement referred to in the numerous 10.0/A+/5-star reviews.
• I’ve also been having a blast playing short bursts of many of the casual games on Kongregate. Games such as Dolphin Olympics 2, Fancy Pants Adventure, Gravitee, Chronotron, The Beard, Flash Portal, and Pillage the Village. It’s been a while since I played many games on the web. Flash has come so far that the browser can now be considered a distribution and gaming platform that’ll soon hang with the real consoles. If you haven’t played Offroad Velociraptor Safari, for example: first of all, you’ve missed out, and secondly, check out how technically advanced this game is for an entirely web-driven production. I predict all MMOs will soon be browser-based and platform-independent. You heard it here first (not really, everyone says this).
• Played a few more puzzles in Professor Layton, but not really noteworthy progress. Just played a little on our recent drive up to Atlanta for Colette’s bridal shower.

A few games I’m looking forward to soon: The World Ends With You, LostWinds, Boom Blox.