Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The happiest person I’ve met at GDC so far has been last year’s IGF winner, Andy Schatz, the creator of 4-player heist game, Monaco. Why so happy? Well, the Indie Fund – an investment group set up by the World Of Goo creators 2D Boy and others – is funding his game, allowing him to hire a level designer and to focus on getting the game just right. “It’s coming together so fast that we might go beyond the twenty levels of the story mode,” Schatz told me. “We could end up having a bunch more multiplayer maps.” And, having played some of that both with the rest of RPS, and yesterday with Schatz, I can confirm that this is Good News. The game will also ship with online multiplayer and an editor – an editor whose maps are miraculously encoded into the side-on loading screen images of the game. Magic.

There are certain games which, when their names are uttered three times into a mirror, cause Peter Molyneux to appear. Following serious testing, we can confirm that Monaco is not one of them. And that’s not all we know about Monaco, the game by Pocketwatch Games, aka Andy Schatz. We – all five – gentleman thieves of RPS recently played the IGF-winning four-player steal ‘em up (John and I had to sit out by turns) in an special group contrivance. It was a fun time, a giddy time, like the south of France on a balmy night. Monaco!

This was the recent PAX build of the still as-yet-unreleased game, with four entire levels, and – for some reason – there’s actually a video of us tackling one of them posted below. I’ve also penned some thoughts about the experience, which I previously looted from my brain, and those of my fellow conspirators.

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And the IGF winners have been announced and Monaco is the belle of this particular gaming ball, picking up two awards, including the Grand Prize. The incredibly atmospheric Limbo also picked up two awards, for Visual lookitude and technical prettiosity. The Grand Prize winner takes home $20,000 (Count ‘em) dollars, with all of the other categories bringing home $2,500. Except for the D2D one, which is 10K. A run down of all the winners follows. Well done all. And lend us a fiver.
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Part of you wants to be upset with Pocketwatch Games. Why haven’t they given us 2009′s Unknown Pleasure Venture Dinosauria yet? That part is soon quashed when you see what Andy Schatz is working on. Monaco is a four-player co-op stealth game that’s been shortlisted for both the Design and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Minimalist graphics. Exciting theme. Stealth. This one has RPS written all over it. Our interview with Andy, and footage of Monaco follows…
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