Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Roving gangs of clever internet-users have tracked down the first Prison Architect video (below) thanks to the clues provided in Introversion’s treasure hunt. The video shows sped up footage of a prison being constructed, with prisoners and guards milling about at high speed. The Introversion-dominated Humble Indie bundle has also been updated so that you get the additional games, now including the excellent Dungeons Of Dredmor, if you beat the average offering for the pay-what-you-wantness, which is currently $3.96.
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Hmm! Introversion are up to something. They’ve sent us a mysterious image, which you can see below. They tell us it is part of some kind of treasure hunt thing. PCG have the first image. The email from Introversion reads: “The clues are all from Introversion’s next game Prison Architect, and showcase Ryan Sumo’s amazing art. Some of the clues are buried in the Humble Introversion Bundle.”

Intrigue-o-tron!
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The next instalment of boundlessly popular indie pay-what-you-will project, The Humble Indie Bundle, has announced its new bundle, which is dominated by the Introversions, and even contains some prototype things from them, like Subversion’s city generator. Yes, I thought that might interest you. The other games are: Aquaria, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Uplink, Defcon, Darwinia, and Multiwinia.

Trailer thing below!
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Introversion’s Chris delay sends word that their new project, Prison Architect, is a game in which you “Build and manage a maximum security prison”. Crikey! Unexpected. But then it was unexpected. That’s the first image up there, too. This is the title the pioneering indie dev are working on now that their procedural heist game, Subversion, has been put on hold.

We’ll be speaking to Chris soon to get some more details.

It has been five years since Introversion last entered the Independent Games Festival, with Darwinia, and the studio have just announced that they have entered their latest game into IGF 2012. However, the submitted game is not Subversion, the stylish, procedurally generated urban heist sim that the team have been working on, which is now on indefinite hiatus. Instead, there is to be an entirely new game, of which we know nothing, apart from the fact that it isn’t a sequel to a previous game. Chris Delay was candid as ever in explaining the decision and his words and more of mine are here to enlighten you.

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Introversion’s Chris Delay revealed yesterday the project he’s been working at the Cambridge Friendship Club, a weekly gathering of local indie developers. It is, in a nutshell, Delay’s own (voxel-powered) quick’n'dirty take on the Minecraft engine, and then when Delay had gotten it into a workable state he realised he could add rigid body physics (using open-source physics library Bullet) relatively easily. You’ll find the end result below- a video showing what is essentially Minecraft with physics. Go take a look, and thanks to RPS reader “Kieron Gillen” for sending this one in.
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What a strange headline that is. What it means is this: Introversion’s forthcoming procedurally-generated espionage game, Subversion, was shown at London-based Indie convention World Of Love earlier this year. It was filmed, via the magic of wobblecam, and uploaded for the internet. That means you can watch Chris Delay play through one of the levels, and see polygonal Kieron Gillen and Eskil Steenberg rob a bank, using their charm and their tech. As in games, so in life…

Go, watch!
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I was worried that people haven’t had an opportunity to complain that we write too much about Minecraft for a bit. So here’s two Minecraft things at once. First up, yesterday developer Notch released a screenshot of the Hell dimension that’s appearing in the Halloween update. You can speculate for yourself what the various block types in here might be – there’s five new ones being added overall. Click on that pic above to see it all biggerised. And below, there’s something special. A video of the biggest Darwinian you’ve ever seen.

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When Introversion do one of their sporadic candid posts, it’s normally worth reading. Mark Morris’ latest one is no different, talking about their last six months. They knew within an hour Darwinia+ hadn’t done well enough, and eventually they realised they couldn’t go on. Instead, they ended up selling the office, going back down to 3 staff, selling tables and chairs and working from their bedrooms again. However – and for me, the key thing in the story – they still needed some operating funds. Defcon had Steam achievements added, in hope that Valve would let a promotion go ahead. And they did…

This was the game-changer. When we started Introversion we’d had a string of successes and believed we were undefeatable, but it was a long time since we’d had a victory and we really needed one. Right on cue, Valve delivered. The promo exceeded all of our expectations and when combined with our low burn rate (no office or staff now) we had gone from being fearful about paying our mortgages to having a year’s operating capital in the bank.

In other words, on with Subversion. And Chris is continuing his development diaries here. It’s the second time Steam saved Introversion, of course, with Darwinia’s original launch there changing the course of a game which seemed to be not finding an audience.