Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Limbo is the definition of a Dark Horse, both obviously in its striking visual style and because the scarcity of details about how you actually play the thing. It’s a puzzle platformer, and that’s about all we know. However, it’s impressed the hell out of the IGF judges who’ve played it, leading to it being shortlisted for both the Technical and Visual Arts awards. Our interview with Lead Designer Jeppe Carlsen and footage of this enigmatic game follow…
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You may be wondering why someone as handsome and clever as me is playing yet another demo of yet another hidden object game. I’ll tell you why. It’s because it’s described like this on GamersHell:

“Nothing can prepare you for the experience of playing Mind’s Eye: Secrets of the Forgotten, a hidden object adventure that will challenge, thrill and disturb you.”

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The Eve Online universe is preparing for its transformation into the PC/console hybrid game that has been proposed for Dust 514, and the first stage of that involves bring the planets – which are currently little more than pretty background scenery – into the mechanics of the game. The next expansion, Tyrannis, will allow players to survey planets for resources and begin harvesting them – even building structures on planet surfaces. It’s a move which sort of fills in the last blank space in the Eve galaxy.

The full dev blog on the expansion can be read here.

Sundays are recovering from the aging-celebration of Ex-PC Zone Ed Will Porter, watching the last part of the Corner and compiling a list of the fine (mostly) games related reading that has crossed my path this week while trying to resist linking to whatever piece of pop music is on repeat on my PC right now. I’ve got to manage to do it eventually, eh?

• This is interesting. Savygamer get a little militant about the Ubisoft situation, and is trying to organise a mass-order-and-return from a retailer who currently doesn’t have it on their listing that it requires a connection. Do go read, because it’s a fascinating example of how strong the response is to this one.

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Via an act of minor skullduggery, Popcap’s Peggle (PEGGLE!) sequel may be had for nil-dollars. All you need to do is pop over to their site and sign up for their new Popcap Passport service (expect newsletters, inevitably), and then you can gift Peggle Nights to a friend – or to an alternative email address of your own. Cheeky! Oh, and there’s a collection of bonus levels to be had for similar costlessness here. The Passport sign-up email takes a little while to arrive by the way, so don’t freak out and write an all-caps letter to your MP if it doesn’t reach your inbox immediately. In other Popcap news, Plants vs Zombies is now on iPhone. Apparently a couple of people own those.

Last night at BAFTA in London the handsome men of Introversion sat on stage to chat about their more recent launch, that of Darwinia+ on XBLA. It’s Darwinia and Multiwinia combined for console-dude fun-times. What was a little more interesting, however, was that they did a demo of their next game, Subversion. Chris admits cheerfully that it’s probably a year until they should be doing a demo… but they did it anyway.
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Amazing, these are PC games that you can actually play without having a direct connection to the publishers central mainframe active the entire time. What will they think of next? For more cut-price gaming, get yourselves over to SavyGamer. Bargain Bucket time!
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Stacks of Metro 2033 news has arrived in the last few days, so I thought I’d do a quick rundown. First up was the news that the game will be supporting DirectX 11, for which THQ released a bunch of new screenshots, one of which is above. That’s some eleven, right there. Great news for that bloke I saw buying a DX11 capable card in PC World the other day… Then, perhaps more interestingly, there’s the news that the game will be shipping with Steamworks. What does that mean? Well, Steam Achievements, Steam support for in-game DLC, and a bunch of other Steam stuff including the cloud savegame thing, so you can keep your saves online. Finally Eurogamer have some footage of the game being played. Doesn’t look terrible, anyway.

It’s out on March 19th.

Time to crack open the lid of this frightening Pandora’s box again… PC Gamer have arranged a follow-up interview with Ubisoft about their monstrous constant-connection DRM system. You know, the one that nearly 800 RPS readers have said understandably upset things about. While it clarifies and confirms how the horrid thing works, frankly it’s unclear why Ubisoft agreed to do the interview, given they pointedly fail to address gamers’ concerns in it. Instead, they repeatedly confirm the various everyday situations in which the game you’ve paid for will be denied to you, roundly proving that yes, it is as bad as everyone fears. But it’s okay, because they say they love PC gaming. Well, maybe they do, but they’ve got a bloody funny way of showing it.
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Frictional, they behind the fascinating Penumbra series, have put up a teaser trailer for their next game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Well, they call it a teaser. It’s almost four minutes of game footage. It reveals that the game is going to work in a similar way to the Penumbras, first-person, but with a cursor on screen for interacting with the world. Which is splendid news, since it’s been my constant lament that no one else in adventure gaming has had the scrap of sense to copy this, or license Frictional’s self-made engine. It makes meaningful use of physics in first-person gaming, rather than leaving you feeling like some balloon-handed drunk crashing into everything. And you can lean. And get scared.

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Trauma is unusual, and blistering with potential. It puts you as a girl, surviving a car accident, trying to piece together her identity via experiencing photograph-formed visions. Beautiful, unconventional and hauntingly atmospheric, I can’t wait to play the finished game. As it’s been shortlisted for Audio, Visual Design and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize in the IGF, I suspect I’m far from not alone. An interview with developer Krystian Majewski and footage of the game in action follows…
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