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Feature: These indies should get a new Alyse on life
It’s been a pretty stinking great year for indie games. We’ve seen the release of several long-hyped darlings (finally) as well as a few surprise hits that went on to dominate newsfeeds. You easily could have missed them, though, what with all the big budget map fest games making huge waves this year. I know there are about a million games demanding your attention right…
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Interactive credits sequences make games and their developers more memorable
Usually when I finish a game, I like to sit and let its credits run their length. It’s a ritual that allows me some time to reflect on the game itself and the hard work of all the people who made it, and generally it’s a very nice experience. Except for the time when I spent a full hour watching names scroll by at the…
Feature: From ontology to physics fakery
Donut County is a physics puzzle game in which you are a hole and you make things fall into you. It’s a sort of reverse Katamari Damacy, in which you grow larger as you make things disappear rather than gather them up, and it was inspired by a 2012 Peter Molydeux joke. “The idea was originally that you’d just play as a hole and I…
Feature: The Hole Truth
After more than five years in development, gorgeous-looking hole-based puzzler Donut County is out today. It's definitely not everything I had hoped for. Here's wot I think:
Today you can start chucking stuff down a hole in Donut County
Sometimes, you just want to throw everything into a hole. Sometimes, someone makes a game where you can do that. As a raccoon. Ben Esposito (of Arcane Kids fame) has spent the past five years tuning up Donut County, transforming it from a puzzler about reflecting Native American Hopi culture to a puzzler about reflecting a raccoon's desire to mess with stuff. Both the game…
Stealing trash is all fun and games until someone loses a town, as Donut County will demonstrate when it at long last launches on August 28th. Greedy racoons with remote-controlled holes are sucking up trash, see, but we get a bit carried away with it and... turns out, trash pandas can be a real force of nature when they're bored on the toilet fiddling with…
Hole-growing physicsy puzzler Donut County [official site] has a reveal trailer. Let's not start @-ing me about the fact that the game has already been revealed not once but TWICE given it was also previously pitched as Kachina before Donut County after the developer, Ben Esposito (part of Arcane Kids and level designer of The Unfinished Swan and game design consultant for What Remains of…
A horror game putting me in a room with a Furby would be spooky enough for me; those things are terrifying. Force me to care for a Furby while also avoiding the wrath of its bloodthirsty mamabot and no, no thank you, no, that's kind but no, no thank you. You, however, may be interested in Tattletail [Steam page]. It's a first-person horror game set…
Feature: The Failure Workshop
Two years ago, GDC 2013's Experimental Gameplay Workshop featured a game that had the crowd cheering and applauding in delight. It was Ben Esposito (The Unfinished Swan) with Kachina. This year's GDC revived an old favourite of the show, the Failure Workshop. This was a chance for developers to share the stories of their disasters, and the good or bad that came from them. And…
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ That's ten snakes. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~…
"A whimsical physics toy that gives players control of a mysterious hole that gets bigger each time they swallow something" sure sounds like something I'd like to play with. Our John gushed over Kachina when he saw it at 2013's GDC Experimental Gameplay Workshop, but too often games turn up there then vanish. This lives! Creator Ben Esposito (level designer on The Unfinished Swan and…
RPS reader Ben Esposito writes to say "I'm a stupid intern at Dejobaan Games (AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!) and after seeing what it's like to make games with no money and no air conditioning, I decided to start doing it myself." Mr. Esposito's new game, Nudo, has just been released (for free!) and provides about an hour of addictive, rewarding puzzling. Ben describes it as "a platformer on…
