Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We spent January doing something a little different at RPS. Every year, websites do their “What’s New In The Coming Year” articles. And they’re splendid. We did it last year too. But we couldn’t help but think perhaps they were all missing something. They exist to talk about games which the vast majority of PC gamers already know and love. We thought that going the other way would be worthwhile: just concentrate on what’s exciting about the next eleven months which, in all likelihood, no-one else is going to mention. Games which the vast majority of gamers won’t even know exist yet. We ended up with eleven interviews and hands-on impressions of the Unknown Pleasures that await in 2009. And here they are…
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Majesty 2 is the only sequel on our Unknown Pleasures list. It’s because the first Majesty was something of an unknown, unique pleasure upon its first release and the nine years since then will have done nothing to change that. It explored an area – indirect control of forces – which few RTS have dreamed of touching, and that topography of tactics is as fresh now as it was then. Also, in terms of a classic PC licence being passed eastwards, we’ve got hopes that it’ll end up being this year’s King’s Bounty. Some initial swift takes on the Alpha Code plus some swift words with 1C:Ino-Co’s Producer and CEO Alexey Kozyrev follow…
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Zeno Clash is different. Which is refreshing. A melee-focused first-person game in the Source engine, in a world that doesn’t look like anything else around. Which isn’t a thing you get to say about many games. Nominated in the 2009 IGF Awards, the independent game from the start-up Chilean developer is rapidly gathering attention. We’ve had a preview of a few levels, and spoken to one of the founding members of the ACE Team, Edmundo Bordeu, which marvellously you’ll find below.

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Amanita Design have quietly made gentle adventure games for a few years. As well as the gorgeous Samorost games, they’ve also produced equally charming Flash games for the BBC, Nike and The Polyphonic Spree. Machinarium is their first full-length project, hand drawn and meticulously animated, about a city populated by robots. We spoke to front man, Jakub Dvorský, to find out more.

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Let’s play a little choose-your-own-adventure game. Okay, ready? You’re a small Russian games development studio located deep in the grassy guts of your enormous nation. It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. In your inventory is: Some designers. Some computers. Two jars of instant coffee. Some asshole has drunk all the milk.

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Off-road Velociraptor Safari. Jetpack Brontosaurus. Minotaur China Shop. Their names are legend. In fact, the names by themselves would be legendary, but Flashbang Studios devotion to webgame randomness has won our hearts. Like, totally. Their plans for 2009 are interesting to say the least. In a Wedding Present 12-singles-in-one-year-esque move, they plan to release 6 new games in 2009, each with an eight week development window. Madness. First up is a little baby called Blush. We chat to the Flashbang Hivemind and show off the first video footage beneath the cut…
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LLamasoft’s last – Space Giraffe – was a gloriously misunderstood classic. Llamasoft’s next move is to return to the scene of a previous triumph. Despite being a Pocket-PC-Port, Gridrunner++ was one of my favourite shooters of this decade. For one of the greatest all-time arcades creators to want to expand upon it is the sort of thing which makes me order in a new set of adrenaline glands from my developing-world meat-banks. I suspect I’m going need them. We talk to ungulate-in-chief Jeff Minter about it, and its PC-first release in April…
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It’s a name which is already on the lips of many who pine after a classical school of RPGs. But not nearly enough, for our reckoning. The last time we talked to designer Vince D. Weller, he proved himself the indie-RPG equivalent of the early Manic Street Preachers in a I-hate-dumbed-down-RPGs-more-than-Hitler sort of way. Is he similarly angry today? Not really. But he’s still more outspoken than any forty other given developers and takes time to shares his and his team’s vision of what the RPG should be.
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Armageddon Empires was our favourite turn-based strategy game of 2007. That Cryptic Comet’s next project is a political wargame set in hell is enough to get us to say things like “We’re hoping that Solium Infernum will be the greatest use of extraneous latin in a videogame since Deus Ex” with a straight face. We talk to Vic Davis about putting the Demons in Democracy and reveal the first in-game shots…
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Ever since RPS’ inception, Stardock done nothing but to do things to further endear themselves to PC Gamers. A fountain of Gal Civ splenditude. A move into publishing with the brilliant Sins of a Solar Empire and the looking-brilliant DemiGod. Even pushing a gamers bill of rights. This is simply their next step, a Master-of-Magic inspired fantasy game which they’ve been working on for years but only finally gave it a name towards the close of the last. It’s time we all learned it. It’s Elemental: War of Magic and looks set to becoming the next PC-strategy game du jour. We talk to Brad Wardell about it…

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Continuing our irregular series of previews for the year ahead’s more offbeat games, we now turn to uber-independent developer/artist Edmund Mcmillen. You’ll know him best either for his work on gleeful, gooey physics-platformer Gish, which scooped the IGF grand prize in 2005, or for last year’s naughty-naughty headline-maker C**t . He’s an outspoken, uncensored fellow – as you’ll tell from his remarkably candid comments about the Independent Games Festival further down this post.

Edmund’s also a massively prolific game-maker, as evidenced by his stuffed Newgrounds page and his recent anthology of 10 years of his output, This Is A Cry For Help. Hence, it’d be wrong to focus on only one of his many upcoming games…
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