Archive for the ‘Wikipedia’ tag
Obliterate the Brains of Woodland Animals with X-Ray Mode in the Upcoming ‘Deer Hunter Reloaded’
Assuming my math is correct and the curators of the are on the ball, including the various compilations there have been 23 different Deer Hunter titles. When you reach ten entries in a series, you’ve got to really start thinking outside the box to come up with new things to keep the lineage fresh. When you hit 20, you’ve got to get really crazy, and when you hit 24 (again, assuming the Wikipedians are doing their job) you apparently have to implement X-Ray mode.
Check it out in the trailer:
As far as I can tell, the killer new feature of the “Reloaded” game is the ability to flip down your X-Ray specs and aim directly for the brain, heart, or lungs of your prey. Hunting games have always been sort of borderline when it comes to grotesque brutality, especially in recent installments as point systems have been implemented, rewarding the player for a flawless stream of headshots fired upon a group of deer wandering through the woods, but this… This is something else. It almost seems over the line, even for this hardcore veteran of the worst shock sites the Internet has to offer.
Deer Hunter Reloaded should be available soon as a free to play title, featuring sixteen upgradeable weapons ranging from rifles to shotguns and even handguns for your brain-blasting pleasure. You’ll also be able to tweak out your avatar with all sorts of different hunter swag.
What do you guys think about this? X-Ray mode seems a little over the top, right? Or am I just being uncharacteristically sensitive about this?
[via ]
[]
Coming Tonight: ‘Ow My Balls! XL’ and a Few Other Games That Aren’t ‘Ow My Balls! XL’
Sega’s Free-to-play MMO ‘Phantasy Star Online 2′ Heading To Mobile, Too
Sega’s won’t cost you a dollar — unless you’d like an item or two. Sega has announced that the upcoming sequel to the everyone’s favorite “light” MMO, , will roll with the standard MMO free-to-play model, and charge users for select item transactions from its in-game store. Also, an iOS and Android version has been confirmed. Both are slated to hit at some point in “winter 2012,” according to .
Keep your expectations in check, though: Sega has said that the phone versions of the game are simpler and will feature “social game elements,” on top of a basic character creation mechanism, and controls. These versions will be able to loosely communicate with the PC and Vita versions of the game, but the experiences won’t had across these platforms won’t be measuring up to each other.
Images via Andriasang.
The available intel on PSO2 still isn’t fantastic, as it seems like Sega is keeping its marketing efforts for the game contained to other regions. However, we do know that PSO2 will continue to offer the franchises’ specific blend of shooter-meets-brawler combat and offer instanced-based content. Oh, and Mags !
Footage of the Vita version.
[via ]
[]
On Success, Expectations, And Brilliance: How ‘Solipskier’ Is Informing The Direction Of Mikengreg’s Next Game
This is a promo image for Solipskier, which was used when Mikengreg revealed the game to people.
When a game developer creates an awesome game, we expect its next release to be just as good. This works both ways. Greg Wohlwend and Michael Boxleiter of fame have told me what it feels like to have to work on something new with the expectation of past success in the background. It isn’t just noise — it’s having an effect on the development on its new title, . From ideas to coding, the shadow of the success of an arcade skiing game called Solipskier [$.99] looms. It makes decisions harder. It ramps up the scope and quality. It’s making the stakes higher at a time when the studio is looking to do something totally different.
We discussed two kinds of pressure: external and internal. Mike and Greg said that they don’t feel any external heat as they build Gasketball. Solipskier got into a lot of hands, but that hasn’t given the studio the kind ravenous base that other great independent developers, like Team Meat of fame, enjoy. There aren’t throngs of people expecting mastery in the follow-up from Mikengreg, in other words, so the bar feels low.
The pressure comes from inside, they expressed. Solipskier’s sales were the best Mikengreg has ever experienced, and the studio desperately wants Gasketball to outperform it in revenue, quality, and audience. Success is mutating their goals, as if the magic of Solipskier could ever be repeated.
“We really want our next game to seem like a step up, which is not actually very different from our early development days, every game we’ve made has been more interesting, more polished and more successful than the last,” Mike told us in an e-mail exchange. “The difference, now, is that we are trying to succeed in terms of a million players willing to pay us, which sets the quality bar dauntingly high for a two-man outfit.”
Gasketball's logo and the placeholder image for the game's web site.
Greg keeps asking himself if it’s even possible to have another Solipskier, and that seems like a fair question to ask. Its development, from idea to prototyping to final release, happened in brilliant flashes of creativity. Gasketball, on the other hand, hasn’t had that sort of conceptual magic. The conceit took longer to come along, and the studio had to throw out a lot of stuff in order to find this game.
“We had to resolve to getting down in the muck and doing the hard work of prototyping, testing, and scrapping everything for yet another prototype that felt like it had promise,” Greg told us. “For a game to really strike all the chords for us it has to be pretty specific.” Solipkier was initially designed as a Flash game. A lot of its systems and mechanics are designed around that platform. Gasketball is a departure, so it took longer to design as the studio learned new tricks.
The idea for Solipskier came from a brainstorming session that revolved around parallax scrolling. Speed and parallax seemed to gel well, so Mike and Greg started prototyping. , the duo described the idea for the landscape painting component came as a watershed, “oh my god” moment. With wide-eyes, they went to work. In the end, the Mikengreg created an exhilarating skiing game unlike any other. Instead of focusing on tricks, jumps, and speed, Solipskier leverages style and the emotion that bursts from your chest when you feel like your acceleration is spiraling out of control.
Version ".01" of Solipskier
This wasn’t the duo’s first rodeo. Solipskier was created first and foremost as a flash game, just like Mike’s other titles as a part of . It was, however, the first game of either developer to grab major mainstream appeal. Mike tells me that he realized that this was a truly special project after publishers had entered into a bidding war for the game. An iOS version wasn’t in the picture at the time, but the reality of Flash development changed the tone of the porting conversation going forward.
“We were always looking for the next step out of the Flash world and into a more sustainable market that allowed for us to make larger, more fully formed games,” Greg told us. “The Flash market is great and gave us a way to become better developers while getting paid for it; however, it wasn’t a sustainable business.”
Mike and Greg were working “crazy hours,” and fretting over paychecks when they developed for Flash. Living by the seats of their pants did have its moments. “It was exciting in some ways for sure, but it couldn’t last,” Greg said. “We were lucky to have such success with Solipskier, as it’s allowing us to fully commit to iOS and downloadable titles in future.”
Within , the iOS version of Solipskier made a little over $70,000, while the sponsored Flash version generated $15,000. On Metacritic, it’s sitting at a 79 average across five positive reviews. Greg tells us that this success “changed the scope” of what it could do with its next game. The duo continued to pay themselves the same amount of money, but Solipskier gave them consistency and the ability to screw up.
Version "0.5." Can you spot the differences!?
“Since Solipskier, we’ve made six or so fairly polished prototypes and scrapped all of them,” Greg tells us. “We could have taken any one of those further but we’d rather call it a failure early and often than find ourselves with a less than stellar finished game that never found that magic we always look for.”
Solipskier’s success and design are weighing heavily on Mike’s mind as he executes concepts on Gasketball. He second guesses a lot and he’s finding it hard to accept praise from friends. “We’ve always seen the flaws in our work first and foremost, but even worse on this project I see things that aren’t there.” Mike elaborated: “My brain is constantly convinced that there are more features I need to discover before the game will be good, but they’re always just out of reach or vision. Every time I implement an idea and it doesn’t make the game instantly better I feel a crush of defeat. I feel a bit like I’m going crazy.”
They’re not alone in this, though.
The Other Guys
Other studios go through the similar issues. Some deliver greatness quickly. After released a brilliant Meteroid-style game called on XBLA, it was able to stoke a similar sort of fanfare and praise with the launch of Infinity Blade. After released Bumpy Road, it followed it up with an equally charming rhythm and stealth game called Beat Sneak Bandit.
Some studios deliver late. released its puzzle game Edge a couple of years ago to insane levels of acclaim and drama. The app was pulled because of just as it was hitting critical mass, and the studio had to fight for the game to get back onto the App Store. Its follow-up, Cross Fingers, released 11 months after Edge. Mobigame’s David Papazian tells us that Cross Fingers is picking up steam. Edge has since been re-released.
Edge on MacOS
“We were very happy with this second game because it is really innovative and completely unique on the App Store. While I am writing, I can see that Cross Fingers is 5th in the Top Free in the US App Store with more than 8 million downloads. However, the game works a lot better now than it did at the start, because we evolved with the market. We added more levels and in-app purchases. Also, the fans are not the same as Edge fans, a lot of women and men from any ages love Cross Fingers, when Edge is more for gamers.”
Papazian says Edge, and its awards, gave his studio legs. The popularity led him to meeting a lot of people, and gave him a good “in” when introducing his work to press. His studio’s pressure was internal, too.
“But you have some pressure, you must do it again and you polish the new game as much as you can, maybe too much. Luckily we did it again, but we did not receive any awards and Apple never featured Cross Fingers on the US store. We had to fight for this success, by updating the game until it finally worked.”
Tiger Styles grabbed a lot of attention with its puzzle game Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. While working on the follow-up, a Metroid-style game called Waking Mars, Tiger Styles’ David Kalina said he felt a subconscious kind of pressure to one-up Spider. It’s a similar feeling that Mike and Greg feel as they create Gasketball. “When you make a game that gets game of the year nods,” Kalina told us, “there is definitely this feeling that EVERY game needs to live up to that standard, which is sort of an impossible bar to try and meet every time out.”
Waking Mars is more about exploration than anything else.
The development of Spider had a sense of urgency to it. He needed the game to succeed so his studio could exist. With Waking Mars, Kalina said that urgency was replaced with the desire to blow everything up in its second game, which again, is something Mikengreg is similarly struggling with. “When you start approaching game development that way, the cost of everything goes up, and the more you spend, the more risky it is to fail,” he admitted.
Waking Mars, in the end, will keep his studio alive. However, Kalina said he wouldn’t pour so much time and so many resources into Tiger Style’s next game. Kalina wants to be able to fail and experiment and do bold things.
“I’d like to release two or three games in the next year and have them all be surprising in some way, and if they don’t happen to set the world on fire, we can be cool with that because we’re at least trying to push in new directions,” Kalina told us. “The worst thing we could do now is to say ‘we have to do something just like Spider or Waking Mars BUT BIGGER…’ If we go down that path, you may never hear from us again!”
On Gasketball
Gasketball has a chance to be stellar. It’s a basketball game that has its users matching their opponents’ last shots. It’s like a digital version of HORSE, except rendered on a fantastical 2D plane that lets you freely move the hoop and shot placement around. It also has special balls and barriers that you can set up to make your shot more Byzantine and advanced. There’s a plan in place to continually update the game as it lives on the App Store.
Surprisingly, nothing mechanically in Solipskier informed Gasketball’s creative direction, Mike and Greg said. In fact, Greg argued that there wasn’t one to begin with. He said Mike came up with the idea for a playful and fun basketball game that was “a bit more skill-based than just a slingshot or pre-mapped trajectory control scheme” game. Moving in a new direction entirely, Gasketball eschews the stark contrasts of Solipskier in favor of a more playful and fun art direction.
Mike walking people through their first look at Gasketball.
Our expectations got the best of us when we first saw Gasketball. It’s just not the game you envision this studio doing at first glance. Solipkier was speedy and sharp, and it had a very specific and awesome rhythm, tone, and style. You’d figure the next game from this studio would incorporate some of these elements. This game is exceedingly friendlier in look and behavior. It’s also more thoughtful and maybe even a shade or two less impressive from a conceptual standpoint.
The stakes are just higher now. But there’s also another reason this project is especially different for the studio. Like with Mobigames and Cross Fingers, Mikengreg see Gasketball as an opportunity to grab an entirely new audience.
“We’re both getting older and want to do more with our lives than spend a hundred hours a week in a dark office,” Mike tells us. “When you start working independently you tend to hold your breath and accept sacrifices to your happiness in the short term for long term gains and we’ve yet to really succeed in a way that really gives us the security to let go and look to the future. It can get very nerve wracking to think that you only have one shot at releasing each game, and every time you fail to reach your goals you get one step closer to having to quit trying.”
It’s a strange world right now for Mikengreg, as the studio struggles with the success of Solipskier and thinks about a studio-wide transition. But it’s confident about Gasketball and its eventual quality. We are are, too. We’ve seen the game in action, watched the videos, and have even fiddled with a build. The title threw us off at first, sure, but now that we’re comfortable with the fact that Mikengreg are switching focus, we’ve been able to move past our expectations. It’s figuring out a way to do that, too.
[]
‘Plants War’ Review – Simplified DotA-esque Action
Depending on how much you relish your (If the acronym made you raise a puzzled eyebrow, don’t worry. We’ll get into all that shortly), you may either find Plants War [Free] an unexpected treat or a moderately competent RTS. It could go either way. Best described as a heavily diluted, single-player version of the world’s favorite Warcraft III mod, Plants War will have you leading Dryad Forest’s local vegetation in a struggle against some encroaching… animals? Global warming definitely screwed up the environment here.
Gameplay-wise, Plants War – Gamevil’s latest freemium title – works something like this. Before you begin each stage, you’ll be asked to elect an upgradable hero (the first you get for free, the others you’ll have to earn through extensive grinding or buy as an in-app purchase). After that, you’ll be at liberty to select the troops you want to deploy in the upcoming onslaught. Yet again, only the first one comes free.
To unlock the other units, you’re going to have to amass a fortune in gold or green leaves. A fair warning, however – the number of horticultural soldiers that you can utilize is limited by the number of slots and plants points you have available. In order to exceed the quota, you’re going to have to (you guessed it!) make a few choice purchases.
Once you’re done with all those decisions, the action begins. The objective here is to blow up the enemy’s base before they can do the same to yours. At regular intervals, both bases will spawn pre-determined units that will barrel towards their opponent with all the suicidal fortitude you would expect of NPC shock troopers. Needless to say, death is their only inhibition. Though you’re significantly more powerful than the ground troops, you’re not omnipotent. In order to succeed in your mission, you’re going to have to make efficient usage of your unsuspecting meat shields.
You will also have to make full usage of the four different skills available to the Leafy that you’re using. Initially, you’re only going to be able to invest a point in one skill. However, as you gain in level (acquire the last hit on an enemy to gain the maximum amount of experience points possible), you will be able to pour more points into your skills. Alternatively, you can choose to increase your mana pool. The choice is yours. Anything goes so long as it ensures certain victory.
(For those of you who do play DotA, Plants War can be summed up as ‘Middle-lane only DotA with no river, items or neutral camps.’)
And that’s pretty much the whole game in a nutshell. It doesn’t get more complex than that. However, the details are what make Plants War work. Each stage will impose a new challenge to your talent for picking the most suitable troops. Are you facing off against highly aggressive mice with a penchant for gnawing through shrubbery? Be sure to bring along a Tree Protector and a grim-faced Potato Blower. Are you up against some sturdy bears? Try some Seed Shooters.
Though certain combinations work better than others, it’s not impossible to be creative with things. As you progress through the game, you’re also going to have to battle with a variety of enemy heroes, each more difficult than the last. While you can bring a different hero to the conflict (assuming you’ve already purchased them, of course), you can also attempt to make do with the first Leafy you use. How do you bait a fast-moving tiger into being mounted onto a wall? Can you kite a hard-hitting bear around in circles while slowly pepper spraying him into submission? Once again, it’s entirely up to your own discretion.
The controls in Plants War are responsive and extremely simple to learn. To move, you tap on the screen. To attack, you tap on the screen. To use an ability, you – you get the picture. In order to zoom in and zoom out, you’re going to have to alternately pinch and unpinch the screen. My only complaint here is the fact that targeting can be extremely difficult at times when the hero is clumped up with their troops.
With three levels of difficulty associated with each stage, twenty-four achievements to unlock, a multitude of rewards to collect and a menagerie of units to discover, there’s not much to dislike about this stream-lined little title. Unfortunately, there’s also not much to it. Once you’ve beaten the first few levels, things can grow rather repetitive. You can only do so much with the same set of faces. If you want new minions to abuse, you’re going to have to either spend an inordinate amount of time grinding for gold coins or cough up the greens.
All said and done, however, it isn’t too bad given the non-existent price of admission. The problem here is whether or not you like this style of play. If you enjoy this sort of experience, you will probably lose occasional hours to the game. If not, you will probably lose interest after the first three games. It’s all rather binary.
TouchArcade Rating: 
[]
‘Retro Racing’ Review – A Nice but All Too Brief Nostalgia Trip
Lately it feels like racing titles on iOS place a greater emphasis on realism (whether in visuals or controls) and less on simple, enjoyable gameplay. Retro Racing [$0.99] looks to rectify that with an emphasis on fun, fast gameplay that sacrifices depth for arcade basics. While Retro Racing suffers from being way too short, the experience it does offer does a good job taking you back to the days of classic top-down arcade racers.
As its name implies, Retro Racing harkens back to the old days of top-down pixelated racers. Each track is chock-full of turns, obstacles, and (most importantly) power-ups. Power-ups range from tires (which improve turning), to acceleration and top speed upgrades, to the standard nitro boost. While the goal of each track is to finish in third place or better in order to advance, you’ll find that later tracks essentially require you to focus on power-up collection (while navigating the tracks flawlessly) in order to have a chance at advancement. It plays like a simpler version of old-school console racers such as .
In this regard, I’m a fan of the gameplay in Retro Racing. There aren’t any deep elements such as a cash or parts system, but it does a good job recreating the classic racer experience, particularly with the limited randomness of the power-up system. The gameplay is fast and the controls are responsive, although they’re not exactly the easiest to maneuver with its limited schemes. Retro Racing is a portrait-only game which makes playing on an iPhone feel incredibly cramped, though it feels just fine on an iPad. It’s baffling that there isn’t support for playing in landscape mode, but hopefully that option can come in an update someday.
Another nice touch that Retro Racing offers is split screen same device multiplayer on the iPad. While I found the experience decent enough for the local play it offers, it’s (obviously) of limited use for gamers that primarily play with others via the internet. Still, it’s better than not including it at all.
Retro Racing comes with full leaderboard support. However, you’ll quickly find that in order to compete on the leaderboards, you’ll have to purchase the extra vehicles with increased stats (the game has three default cars with various attributes plus three souped up cars as a purchase). While the developer has stated that the game will eventually let you unlock them without IAP, the simple fact is if leaderboard chasing is your hobby, you need to shell out more cash.
Another complaint with Retro Racing lies in its longevity. To put it bluntly, Retro Racing is incredibly short. There’re only twelve total tracks, and each can be learned and completed in a short amount of time. Granted, there is some replayability even after completing all the tracks simply based on the aforementioned leaderboard competition. However, I don’t think it’s enough to sustain the game for very long. I really would have liked to have seen more tracks at launch, although features like online multiplayer or a track editor would have really vaulted the game into the spotlight.
At this point, Retro Racing is one of those games with a decent gameplay formula that could have been so much more. The developer has been and has stated that more tracks and possibly other wish list features will make it into subsequent updates. Meanwhile, Retro Racing is still worth checking out for fans of classic top-down racers, as long as you don’t mind a lack of substance and a tiny assortment of tracks.
TouchArcade Rating: 
[]
A Hands-On Look at the Gorgeous World of ‘On the Wind’
On the Wind is an eye-catching game. The interplay between the light, floral art and the chunky pixelized interfaces just begs for attention. t’s hard to tell exactly how it plays from the trailer, but the gist is this: the screen scrolls by, getting faster and faster as you progress through the seasons. You control the gust of leaves with your fingertip, moving it around obstacles and through other leaves that scatter across the field. It feels a bit like a with added speed and less sadism.
At first glance it’s easy to assume that thatgamecompany’s Flower is the obvious source of inspiration, but developer David Buttress says it didn’t much factor into his design. Instead, he looked to The Helicopter Game, a classic Flash-based cave flier with simple, one-touch controls and a rather brutal difficulty curve. The idea for the leaves and flowing motion came from a more esoteric source: a in-depth look into , an early artificial life program that models flocking behavior. He was particularly fascinated by the idea that such complex and beautiful motion could be created from a few simple rules, and he is bringing that organic motion into play in On the Wind.
Buttress is new to the iOS development world, having just recently launched his one-man studio, . But he’s coming from a long background in game development at Rare. Working with the other creative-types at the studio was often inspiring, but he had few chances to work on the small, creative ideas that cropped up. As with so many other developers moving from the console space, he found that iOS offers a great opportunity to play around with the concepts that had been building up while he put his time into larger projects like Conker: Live and Reloaded and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
Buttress reached far and wide for inspiration while developing On the Wind. The silhouettes that make up the environment were initially inspired by Limbo. Rather than taking a similarly dark and pensive approach, he built on the idea, letting in riotous color for the leaves, flowers and backdrops. The sparseness of the sound is another carefully considered choice, like the auditory atmosphere in Shadow of the Colossus, which was usually formed only by the sound of the wind and the hooves of your horse.
For now, On the Wind is a concise experience meant for on-the-go play, one that runs through the seasons in short order before ending. Buttress is considering an update with an endless mode and powerups in the future, but for now he’s happy to launch with a still-pure experience. Between the procedurally generated world, leaderboards and a series of clever achievements, though, fans should find plenty of reasons to keep going. We’re certainly looking forward to playing more, having had a taste of the game. We’ll be sure to let you know when it lands, hopefully in a handful of weeks.
[]
Adventure Classic ‘The Lords of Midnight’ Coming to iOS
Way back in 1984, English teacher-turned-game developer released a vast and innovative adventure gamed for the ZX Spectrum home computer called The Lords of Midnight. The game was extremely well received and garnered high praise for its gameplay, the expansive world in which it is set, and its use of a clever graphical technique known as “landscaping” to render the scene with pre-scaled sprites. The Lords of Midnight turned out to be Singleton’s most well respected title and is considered by many to be one of the best video games ever created.
Versions of The Lords of Midnight were soon released on a few other (mainly European) platforms of the day, and in 1991 of the game and its sequel, Doomdark’s Revenge, were released, originally developed as reverse engineered fan conversions by . (Singleton gave his stamp of approval to Wild’s conversions — see Wild’s 2004 Retro Gamer with Singleton.) Not long after, Wild began thinking about doing Windows versions of the games and thus began his work on , a system that would allow the Midnight games to run under modern operating systems and, thanks to data abstraction, would also allow new games to be created under the same framework.
At this point, the astute reader has probably figured out that I am not just waxing nostalgic for the simple fun of it. No, I am happy to say that there is reason for my taking a few moments to bring the uninitiated up to speed, here, and that reason is a project that has been underway for over year now to bring The Lords of Midnight to iOS.
In January of 2011, original author to Christopher Wild, suggesting a collaboration to get his 27 year old classic in the hands of a new audience. Since that time, at a varying pace, the project has been underway.
Wild has been posting progress updates to throughout the year, and indicates that it is definitely the intention of both he and Singleton .
Let me firstly assure you that we are not developing a freeform, realtime, 3d game. We are not developing [the less well-received sequel to Doomdark's Revenge] the Citadel. We are not going to f*** it up!
Lords of Midnight is about the landscaping. It’s about those 2d panoramic views. It’s about moving some characters and pressing night and the end of the turn and waiting for the dawn to break to find out what happened.
So, the landscaping stays. Yes it will get an update. Graphically we will try a few things to help us justify bringing a 27 year old game back to the future. If you’ve followed the history of [The Midnight Engine] with the Lords of Midnight and more importantly Doomdark’s Revenge, you’ll have an idea of some of the things that means.
We’re going to make a few changes to the AI. Nothing drastic. This is not about turning Lords of Midnight into the style of RPG/Adventure games that are currently available. The AI in lords of midnight works – it’s a little simplistic, but it’s perfect for the style of game. However, there are a few little things that no longer sit comfortably, and to be fair, probably didn’t when Mike originally coded them. So there will be a couple of tweaks and additions.
The affect of these additions is that the game will not play like it used to. In spirit it will be the same, but don’t expect to be able to fire up the emulators and watch the old spectrum game play exactly like the new one. There will likely be some surprises, but I think everyone will enjoy.
Wild also indicates that certain AI changes will be made to facilitate multi-user gameplay and that it will remain turn-based like the original — not real-time. The picture that he paints of the conversion goals should appeal to those iOS gamers who loved the title in decades past.
The iOS conversion of The Lords of Midnight is being developed under the (née Airplay SDK), will run natively on both the iPhone and the iPad, and should make its way to various , as well. Doomdark’s Revenge will also be brought over, some time after The Lords of Midnight arrives.
The team has just posted a demonstration video, albeit preliminary and somewhat rough, of the game running on iPad hardware.
That a whole new generation of gamers will have easy access to such a rich classic is wonderful news, and rest assured we will keep readers apprised as progress on The Lords of Midnight for iOS marches on.
( Embedded screenshots are from the ZX Spectrum original and graphics in the demo video are placeholder — not final versions. )
[ , thanks ]
[]
GDC 2012: A Look At Graeme Devine’s ‘Dance City’
Conceptually, it’s hard not to fall in love with this one. Graeme Devine, and his studio , are working on a… spiritual successor of sorts to dance game . It’s called Dance City, and it’s looking to leverage story, attitude, and dancing. In our meeting with Graeme today, he expressed his extreme love for narrative-led games, as well as quick-to-play titles with “one more time” hooks. Extrapolating, we’re guessing Dance City is going to try to have all of these things.
It’s early, so we don’t know much. On the other hand, we do have the following image, which clearly reveals that Dance City will feature a strong protagonist, and a dance-for-followers mechanic, which should be pretty radical:
We’ll keep our eyes on this as it hurdles to release and bring you much more as soon as possible.
[]
GDC 2012: A Host of Titles on the Way from BulkyPix
Today at GDC 2012 we sat down with the folks from BulkyPix to have a look at a host of new titles they will soon be releasing, both internally developed and those from outside development groups.
The SandBox
The SandBox, which BukyPix co-produced with , is a charming little pixellated 2D world-creation game — and, by world, I mean the space inside of a literal sandbox. The player starts out with the four basic elements and combines them in an on-screen sandbox to create vastly more elements — 40 or so — and, with those, worlds limited by the player’s own imagination (and the bounds of the iPhone or iPad screen).
There is both a story mode with ~30 levels (which serve as a kind of tutorial) as well as a free play mode, which is where the real creation can take place. Once a world has been created, it can be shared with others online, through the game. Players who download others’ levels can then have fun, oh, inserting TNT and other nice little items into them and watching the fireworks unfold. New element packs can be purchased with mana, the game’s virtual currency, which can be accumulated with skilled play or purchased for cash through the app.
The SandBox is being discussed in in our forums and will be released as a freemium universal app in May.
Lightopus
“When the Gloom came, we were unprepared. They took away everything, including our homes and our young ones, the bulbies. They took away our light. Now the time has come to take back what’s ours. Go, Lightopus. You are the last of our kind. Go into the Abyss, save the bulbies and bring back the Light!”
Thus is the story of Lightopus, a game which challenges the player to steer a strange creature through an aquatic abyss on a mission to save the tiny bulbies in the face of an increasingly menacing enemy horde. The visuals and accompanying ambient audio are similarly eerie and deliver an ambience reminiscent of the PS3 title Flow.
Lightopus is expected to go live on Thursday of this week as a universal game at the price of $2.99.
Kung Fu Rabbit
Internally developed at BulkyPix, is a cartoonish platformer that puts you and your on-screen rabbit on a quest for carrots. Carrots are the game’s virtual currency, and the more you grab, the more game perks you have access to, such as the ability to skin out the levels to entirely change their look. While carrots can be accumulated by standard play, they can also be purchased in-app for cash.
Kung Fu Rabbit brings the standard mix of platformer features — the ability to jump off of walls, enemies that can be crush with a jump (Mario style), and substances to avoid (a tarry goo and the like). The game is a universal app that features iCade support and is set to arrive on March 15 for $0.99.
Saving Private Sheep 2
Like its App Store forerunner which we enjoyed, Saving Private Sheep 2 is set to bring a silly / fun play experience to the iOS screen. The game’s challenge is one of trajectory, much like that of Angry Birds.
As it turns out, a wolf has eaten some sheep pals and it’s up to your sheep (and uneaten friends) to aim precisely and toss a (poor, little) hedgehog through various structural arrangements in order to whack the wolf and free the sheep that were recently a meal.
The game features a level creation tool that allows users to create their own set of obstacles to augment the 60 built-in levels and upload them for others to play. The catch, however, is that the player must be able to win their own level before they go online. Levels placed online can be ranked by other users, to create a curated set of challenges.
Aby Escape
In the area of 3D run-and-jumps, BulkyPix demonstrated Aby Escape, a title co-produced with Spanish game studio Pixel Ratio. The game puts you over the shoulder of a purple raccoon that has managed to piss off a bunch of locals who got into hot pursuit of the pesky varmint that is you. In a bid to escape with your hide intact, you must run, jump, duck, dodge, and slide your way to freedom, collecting coins on the way, in a fashion with which Temple Run fans will be quite familiar.
Aby Escape features a story mode with three different settings — a forest park, a city, and Route 66.5 — at 10 levels each, as well as an unlimited running play mode. Little in-game objectives surface during gameplay to mix things up in a manner similar to that of Tiny Wings. The game can be expanded with power-ups and environment enhancements using coins collected or purchased in-app.
Aby Escape will land as a universal freemium title, sometime in May.
Hidden Runaway
Building on the long-running Runaway point-and-click adventure series from , Hidden Runaway for iOS, which BulkyPix co-produced with Péndulo, brings a Monkey Island-like mystery to iOS. The game features a hidden object adventure dynamic, wrapped in a thick backstory, peppered with 12 different mini games.
The title will launch for iOS in May and will also be making its way to OS X and Windows PCs.
Yesterday
Another point-and-click adventure from Péndulo, co-produced by BulkyPix is Yesterday. This one is also a Monkey Island sort of game, and places you in the role of a depraved serial killer who must try and piece together just what happened over the last 24 hours. Unsurprisingly, it’s a very dark title, exuding an eerie ambience.
Yesterday, which offers around nine hours of play time, will arrive in the App Store in May and will arrive on the Mac and PC sometime beforehand. Price on this one is undecided as yet.
Gnu Revenge
Developed by Vaze and publishde by BulkyPix, Gnu Revenge is a cartoonish planetary gravity game that drops you into a universe of long-running galactic conflict between the gnus and the crocodiles. You, on the side of the gnus, must fire gnus from orbiting cannons with utmost precision in order to rescue your imprisoned ungulate brethren and knock out your despicable crocodile enemies.
Gnu Revenge is a universal title that will arrive at the end of March at a price of $0.99.
[]
