Pay What You Want (March 23): Bob Came in Pieces + FantomenK

Just heard via my Yawma email news subscription that Bob Came in Pieces, a game I have reviewed before, and some FantomenK music (chiptune) will be offered in a Pay What You Want sale on March 23 on their Groupee site.

Bob Came in Pieces is not a bad game, but does lack polish. And given that it is at least slightly unique and somewhat fun, you might want to think about grabbing a copy cheap.

Note: I apparently was wrong, I just assumed that since all previous groopee sales were Pay What you Want and they did not mention a price that it was going to be the same but instead it will be $5.

Tarboy

Tarboy is a short animated film made by James and Hania Lee (married). It is simply the best short film I have ever watched. Not only does it have great graphics, voice acting, score, and design, the plot was designed and implemented outstandingly well.

The story is short enough that it would take less time to watch it then to explain it, so I entreat you to just go and watch it now, but I will spend a little time talking about the setting. Tarboy is set in a world populated totally by robots; This is used mostly as a graphics device, as the robots tend to act similarly to how you would expect a human to act. The main protagonist is aptly names Tarboy, as he is made of tar and he is out to get the tyrannical leaders ("fat cats") of this mechanical world.

Currently, Tarboy 2 is in production. As far as I know no release date has been given, and only a few details have been provided.

While little can be found online about James Lee, the talented Hania Lee (pronounced "Haa-nya") has many active electronic abodes. Primarily she is a musician, and has a quite a few award winning songs on newgrounds. as well as some videos of her singing and playing piano on youtube. In addition to her selection of free songs, she has a commercially available album titled Cuddle Punch!. She also manages to do the music for a lot of projects; Most recently she worked on the audio to a nice little internet video called Ballgina Safari.

Getting down to the basics, her musical ability; I just love her music and voice. Her collection is surprisingly diverse, while quite a bit of it is romantic/love songs she also has a bunch of songs for comedic/general flash movies and even a few games; She even has one song about necrophilia, which is very creepy. Out of her magnificent library of songs, for me, one stands slightly above the others in at least memorability. This is Come Closer, a romance song with very memorable lyrics.

In addition to Tarboy, the development team has also done a few less ambitious films: Popstar, Roller Coaster Junkie, Purged, and Make Snacks not War. Popstar and RCJ are both very good satirical flash films; While Purged is more of a serious short film and MSnW is pretty much an advertisement for Doritos.

Subsonic Review

Subsonic is a free web based music streamer. with it installed on your computer you can access your music anywhere that you have access to the Internet and on any device that has a Flash enabled browser (in addition the iPhone, Android, Windows, Linux, and Mac have specific applications for use with Subsonic).

Subsonic works with all stream able audio formats. Additionally, it can use on-the-fly conversion to convert any non stream able format and stream it to the web player.

As well as streaming the music to your browser it can also operate in Jukebox mode, allowing you to control what your host computer is playing.

Additionally, you can use it to upload any file to your computer.

These last two features work particularly well with the robust user account system. It is easy to set up any number of accounts for yourself or your friends and even includes a IM IRC style chatting system allowing you to collaboratively set up playlists or build a collection of music.