Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This is tiny and brilliant. 4 Hour RPG is a randomly generated dungeon hacker made by Jan Willem Nijman for The Poppenkast’s friendly four hour competition. We picked it up via Indiegames, and it’s a riot. The Necromancer is best – I’d love to see this idea developed a little more with some serious player-defined options. The four scenarios require a particular level of character to play properly, so I’ve posted the controls and the relevant level instructions below the cut. A direct download is here.
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I’ve just had the pleasure of sitting in on a talk by Nolan Bushnell, co-creator of Pong and founder of Atari. He’s currently in That London to collect his BAFTA videogames fellowship, which is of course richly deserved. As Will Wright, in a pre-recorded appearance, puts it, “It’s hard to overstate Nolan Bushnell’s influence in the videogame industry.”

Highlights of the great man’s cheerful words are below, hot off the presses (i.e. transcribed ASAP from my scruffy notepad).
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Tale of Tale’s The Path is officially released today, and now available on Steam. Last week I wrote my impressions of the peculiarly evocative art project – trying to present a mixture of the opinions that formed in my brain, about a game that deserves attention/confusion. The twist on Little Red Riding Hood has you take six sisters on a journey through the woods on their way to Grandmother’s House. However, heading straight there isn’t how to play. It’s all about deviating from the task, and the path, and getting lost in the woods. It’s £7.25 on the UK Steam, $10 in the US, and 7,90€ in Europe. Do I recommend it? I do, but I sort of squirm in my seat at the same time. Well, read this, it explains it better.

Having enticed half a million people into the beta, Frogster’s free-to-play MMO, Runes Of Magic, has now gone live. It looks a little like – let’s face it – World Of Warcraft, and there’s not much chance it’ll compete that that behemoth, but when it costs no pennies that might not be such a bad thing. It boasts similar launch feature lists too, such as 1000 quests and six character classes. I’ve not had a chance to dip my critical toe into it yet, but the waters look warm, lovely, and lacking in subscription fees. Has anyone else had a crack? (Oh, and a trailer lies beyond the jump.)
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This has been a long time coming, but the City Of Heroes (& Villains!) mission architect is now in open beta, for testing before it launches into the full game along with Issue 14. (Test server details here.) It’s looking brilliant, with players about to control everything from “environments, mission objectives, and enemies, to written fiction and character dialogue”. And these aren’t just single instanced missions, we’ll be able to deliver mission arcs with multiple stages. NCSoft report that players can create wide ranging adventures, so they “story can have up to five chapters or missions and each mission can hold up to a maximum of 25 achievable goals.” Apparently the player scenarios will be launched from an in-game browser, and ranked by a player rating system. The best missions will enter a Hall of Fame decided upon by the devs. Apparently players will receive “in-game benefits” for making content that is rated highly by the community.

We’ve been promising this for a while, but I’ve finally managed to go through and edit this. It’s still fifty minutes recorded when I was off in New York for NYCC and crashing overnight at game journalist dynamo Leigh Alexander‘s Brooklyn apartment. At near midnight, after hitting a bar somewhere, whilst drinking some manner of whiskey. We mainly focus on Leigh’s background in games and her ongoing interests – which includes lots on sex and sexuality in games, and culture generally. It’s both more off-topic and probably more explicit than usual. To say the least. It’s a fascinating carcrash between some fancy games and cultural theory and… well, just a carcrash. Also, takes a while to get the mic position sorted so Leigh’s laugh causes some peaks, especially early on. We know that some of you are sensitive like that. Anyway – you can download it direct here, it has a special internet home and here’s the Itunes home, while the full running order is beneath the cut…
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Gawd-blast Kotaku, nabbing a thoroughly PC exclusive like this. Get off our land, yous. Bah. Their colour scheme’s still hideous, mind.

Anyway, this time around, they’ve got games-in-browsers types InstantAction to reveal they’ll soon have the original Starsiege: Tribes up for free, browserly play.
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For a while, I wasn’t sure what story could possibly be safely posted on top of an interview with Dr Derek Smart. All things pale, right?

Hmm. A video should be okay. Just a nice video about a videogame, to ease us all on.

Oh dear. It’s a video about a bad-tempered megalomaniac wreaking destruction and torment upon all and sundry. This is going to be really, horribly misinterpreted by someone, isn’t it?

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You suspect 3000AD’s Derek Smart is the man the phrase “outspoken developer” was coined for. He’s… oh, you have an opinion, don’t you? Whether or not you’ve played – or could even name – one of his games, everyone’s got a take on Smart. He’s also a perennial PC gaming figure which we haven’t talked to yet. With All Aspect Warfare approaching release, we thought it time to change all that. Talk about where he’s coming from, going to and – whisper it – whether he was actually right all along. Along the way, we take in the death of Space Sims, Steam’s power being over-estimated, his take on the Space MMOs, some cheery demonization of EA and… well, whether he ever regrets comment threads.

Join us.
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So what’s this, then? RPS readers: ASSEMBLE! We must solve and reveal. A video, below, featuring some remarkably impressive special effects, seeming to be part of the Half-Life universe. Not only does it feature some really neatly woven background mattes on regular film, but there’s a sense of scale that seems like it should be beyond a couple of guys mucking around on their weekends. Who has the capacity to take over a street, leaving cars strewn all over? And buses. Make sure to watch it in HQ.

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Here’s your dumb distraction for lunchtime: Tinymania’s Tiny Trials. It’s a collection of micro-Flash games, with some sort of global leaderboard to compete against. Think Wario Ware, with a mouse and keyboard, on a PC, without the minds behind Wario Ware.

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