Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Guildford-based developers Hello Games have spent the past few years crafting the delightful Joe Danger, but only for those console things. Now, though, they’re bringing their colourful stuntman to PC, and they’re promising a PC version with shiny knobs on.

We spoke to Hello’s Sean Murray to find out more.
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TUG is an interesting proposition. A game of exploring and building, a multiplayer thing that encompasses lots of what has excited us about games over the past few years – dynamic, procedurally-produced environments, exploration, collaboration. It’s also a platform that will be exposed as much as possible to modding, and the Kickstarter explicitly supports creating tools to make that easy. It also claims to be using science and academia in its development. How can such mad alchemy be possible? It was time to ask Nerd Kingdom‘s handsomely bearded academic, Peter Salinas.
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Every day is D-Day -1 for the busy Seabees at Slitherine Software. An Epsom-based outfit that started life constructing singular sword-and-sandal TBSs, is now, thanks to a slew of acquisitions and a dazzlingly dynamic approach to talent spotting/signing, the dominant force in PC wargame publishing. During the coming year, company chieftain Iain McNeil will be overseeing more than fifty releases. Realising I knew little about the firm’s founder, philosophy, or plans, I dragged Iain away from a red-hot field radio and a sand table crowded with 15mm Hoplites, Panzer Grenadiers, astronauts and Space Marines for a chat. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a weird tension to Gone Home. On the one hand it should be the most normal thing in the world: an American household. On the other, well, it’s unusual for games to try and tell stories about everyday lives. But that’s precisely what it does, and that’s just part of what makes it so beautifully weird.

I met Fullbright’s project lead, Steve Gaynor, and talked about that. This is how we got on.
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Thanks to an unexpected extension by hosts IndieGoGo, the marvelous-looking Ghost Of A Tale gets another week to hit the all-or-nothing fundraising target. It’s one of those strange little projects that can come only from a talented individual with a very personal vision, and I have to declare that I really would like to see it get made. I talked to Lionel Gallat, who has quit the mainstream film industry to submerge himself in solo game dev, about this beautifully animated experiment.
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Gun Monkeys is a surprise new multiplayer 2D shooter from Size Five Games, creator of Time Gentlemen, Please, Privates and the upcoming The Swindle. It has monkeys in it. Is has guns in it. It has Gun Monkeys in it. It’s out this Summer, before The Swindle, which will be out when it’s ready. It stars monkeys with guns, sent to the future to swipe energy for corrupt power companies, and fighting each other in procedurally-generated levels. I spoke to Size Five’s Dan Marshall to find out more, what other animals he could use, why he took a break from The Swindle and something something Timesplitters. In case you’re allergic to reading, the game’s first trailer is also below.
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One of the most fascinating and enduring things about EVE Online is the depth of its economics. The player-driven economy has got a full decade of history behind it, operating on its own strange breed of anarcho-capitalism. In Free Market economics, there is an idea called the ‘invisible hand’. This is the idea that the marketplace ultimately regulates itself, whether it wants to or not. But in EVE’s case, there are two such invisible hands. One guided by the players and the other hand – one which players barely ever notice – guided by CCP’s in-house economist, Dr Eyjólfur Guðmundsson (or Eyjó for short).
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I went to EVE Fanfest, where I mostly walked around pretending to be a real journalist. A lot of my time was devoted to finding one person: a space captain called Chribba. Talking to various EVE players, I soon discovered that this man was something of a celebrity in New Eden. Not only is he one of the most well-known players, but he is also possibly the most well-liked. Which is a strange thing to be in an MMO for which all the advertising focuses on being a treacherous dog and where most of the in-game celebrities are not famous but infamous. What made Chribba different? Was he really a philanthropist, like everyone kept telling me? Or was he simply a cunning master of interstellar diplomacy? I talked to him to find out.

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The Kickstarter to create a new Realm Vs Realm MMO successor to Dark Age Of Camelot has just two days left on the clock. They need three hundred thousand dollars at the time of writing. A tense time, then, for its lead Mark Jacobs. I spoke to the man behind Dark Age Of Camelot and Warhammer Online, and asked him about the story behind Camelot Unchained.
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We are irrationally excited about Hardware: Shipbreakers. Insanely excited. And it’s not often that a strategy game gives us reason to be able to say that this early in development. With the gameplay reveal still lurking over the horizon (set for around June) we’re not even able to show you exactly how this RTS will work, and yet the excitement bubbles to even higher levels. Why is that? Well, there’s the amazing concept art, and a founder of Relic, and art-lead from Homeworld, Rob Cunningham, telling us that it’s “The ultimate vehicle fantasy,” but he would say that, wouldn’t he? And concept art for games always looks pretty good these days. Why, then, should we be so giddy with hyperbole?

I’ll tell you. Oh, and there’s a brand new trailer down there, too.
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Redshirt is a game about being the person who is doomed from the very moment they put their uniform on. Taking place on a space station with a crew who spend a great deal of their lives on the social network, Spacebook, it asks the player to navigate a possible quagmire of relationships and workload while trying to earn the promotions that might keep them alive. Earlier this week, I spoke to the game’s lone developer, Mitu Khandaker, and discussed dynamic personality generation, incorporating social issues into games and ranting at GDC.

Then I threatened to burn games to the ground.

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