DS gets all arty while PSP just wants to play around

It may not have been easy, swearing off commercial games on the DS and PSP, but I have made some surprising discoveries these last seven weeks. Whereas Commercial games excel at polish and comprehensive experiences, you can't beat the bedroom homebrew coders for sheer imagination and fresh ideas. Again and again, I have come across applications that are simply great fun to play with.

After the fun I had a while back with Pocket Physics DS, I thought I would give another creative tool a go. Flickbook DS soon presented itself as the ideal candidate. As stated by the authors, "Flick book DS is an animation toy for the Nintendo DS. It allows you to create an animated film by drawing a series of frames."

Not being of a particularly artistic persuasion I was intrigued to see what this program could help me produce. After using the DLDI tool to patch the file to my homebrew device, I was soon up and running. I found I could quickly knock together all manner of animated scenes via its simple controls. The genius here is its ability to strip away the extraneous options to leave you with a pure animation toy.

Although not in a position to pass judgement on such things, I would imagine this would be a great way to storyboard animation ideas before fleshing them out in a full package.

After all this productivity it was good to have the PSP on hand for some R&R. Having long been a fan of flOw on PlayStation 3 (I have so far managed to resist its subsequent arrival on PSP) I was blown away to find Orbid. This flOw-inspired game enables the player to take control of a tiny orb that must consume smaller orbs in order to survive and grow.

The latest version has added a great little (experimental) multiplayer mode where you can compete against friends online. Once I had copied the game files to ms:/PSP/GAME3XX (firmware 3.x) or ms:/PSP/GAME (firmware 1.5), I was able to while away the rest of the week eating everything in my path while occasionally popping back onto DS for bursts of creativity.

So I draw another week of homebrewing to a close, happy in the knowledge that my play has also saved me (and you hopefully) a pretty penny. Join me in seven days for further homebrew developments.