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Feature: The Making Of War For The Overworld
War for the Overworld [official site] creative director Josh Bishop uses the word ‘ridiculous’ quite a bit. It’s understandable. The 22-year-old is on the verge of releasing what is intended to be the first faithful follow-up to beloved strategy/management/Imp-slapping title Dungeon Keeper in 16 years. He leads a studio which has reached as many as 20 members, he’s received £200,000 in Kickstarter pledges, he’s had…
Feature: Bringing a tiny city to life
State of the Art: Katherine Bidwell On The Models Of Lumino City
These are all photos I took at the exhibition - if you want to see the larger version just click on them. "All our games so far have had some element of handmade-ness to them but Lumino City has gone to the nth degree." Katherine Bidwell, co-director of studio State of Play, is taking me round the GameCity exhibition of their Lumino City game models.…
It's one of the most anticipated blog posts in internet history. Now, in a one-part series, get an inside look at the creation of a blog post about a making of trailer for Assassin's Creed III. Inside the process that's behind one of the most exciting articles ever written. Inside the technical breakthroughs that made it all possible. And inside the mind of John Walker,…
Here's the first part of a documentary following the making of Mojang's new game Scrolls. It's a shame that, as with most of the discussion elsewhere, so much of this concerns the name rather than the game, but it's still worth a watch if only to see the legal issue being discussed by the lead designer. Especially because he's looking rather dapper while discussing it,…
Good news for fans of good news. All the Age of Wonders games have been re-released for the Direct Download market. At the time of writing, all three are available in a trilogy pack (plus soundtracks) on Impulse, the first is on Good Old Games and apparently they'll be on Steam imminently. They're some of my favourite turn-based strategy games of the last fifteen years,…
Feature:
[Ah, been a while. I did a series of Post Mortems for PC Format over a few years, chatting to a dev a month about the development of a game. I've republished the vast majority here already, but I find there's a few left over like this one with Deep Red in 2006 about Monopoly Tycoon. It's one of the games which I felt as…
Feature:
[Since the new Trackmanias are tearing up the internet, I thought it'll be a good time to dig out a Making of interview with Nadeos's Florent Castelnerac. This interview was performed in the lead up Trackmania Sunrise and focuses primarily on their first game. Florent was agreeably driven and funny, even through the occasionally broken English. Re-reading this a few weeks after I wrote about…
[With Jumpgate Evolution incoming and Space week entering its final quasar-packed moments, I though it an opportune moment to dig out an Old Making Of I did about the original Jumpgate. I spoke with their Ryan Seabury at an AutoAssault press-event, way back then. The article originally appeared in PCF and has been slightly edited.] You never know what to expect at a press event.…
[Since it's Space Week, it's a good time to pull my Edge-commissioned Making Of System Shock 2 feature out of Stasis. The material for this was drawn from the lengthy conversation I had with Ken Levine last year. So, yes, before Bioshock. I'm quite fond of this piece, if only as it reveals the secret origin of the Psychic Monkeys...] The lights are low. Everyone's…
[This interview took place in a Manchester Hotel Bar, with Oleg chain-smoking and chuckling to himself all the while. He was also agreeably outspoken against most Flight Sims - usually while doing that chuckle - in a way which not many developers are about their peers. I have to applaud. This interview originally appeared in PC Format magazine, in the lead up to Pacific Fighters]…
[Way back when Firefly were revealing Stronghold 2, I had a chance to talk to Simon Bradbury about the genesis of their big-in-Germany management RTS and its demi-sequel, Stronghold: Crusader. As usual, this originally appeared in PC Format. All sales stats referenced are circa then.] It’s easy to underestimate something like Stronghold. We shouldn’t. As far as a games go, it’s been an incredible success.…
The Interview I did with designer Soren "Ex-Civ, Now Spore" Johnson in December could be roughly divided into two parts. The bits which were not about Civ 4 and not about Spore. We published these in January, where we talked about the future of the PC being Punk Rock. The second half were the bits about Civ 4, which we publish below, where Soren talks…
[With Conflict: Denied Ops running jokes reaching critical mass, I thought digging out this interview with Pivotal's Stuart Poole about the genesis and development of the series may be a good idea. It was done just before Conflct: Global Terror was released, but their mind were clearly on Next-Gen. It deals with both Desert games - which I think were neatly designed, actually - and…
[Our Making Of series returns! Since I'm starting to run low, I'm working on another string of articles to mix in with them on Fridays. It's a series of interviews with some of my favourite Indie-game stuff right now - basically, all the RPS favourites. However, in the meantime, here's what I think is good one - Will Wright, on the Sims, in typically expansive…
[Lego Star Wars remains one of the most quietly radical yet enormously successful games of recent years. I've done more than one post mortem on it too. Here's a different one I did over at the Escapist. In fact, I think Jim's done at least one too. Anyway, as always, this one originated back in PC Format. The interview was performed well before the second…
[I'm entirely unsurprised when going through this again that I used the word "Avuncular" to describe the ever-avuncular Charles Cecil. Bless him. The interview happened as he was revealing Broken Sword 4, and written in an optimistic and I don't think Sam and Max had shown their face yet.] The Adventure is dea… okay, let’s try again. The number of articles which started exclaiming the…
[Another brilliant game which should have been massive - I recall describing it as the first great game of the new millennium, which will annoy anyone who's anal over that Popular Millennium thing. In it I interview Julian Widdows, who I - when writing this - realise I haven't seen for years. Where are you, Julian Widdows? Also, reading it reminds me of one great…
[Considering Mr Levine's turned up in the rumour mill today, I thought turning an eye back at one of Irrational's other games would be a worthy endeavour. This interview with Ken was done in the run up to the second Freedom Force game.] “We had a lot of internal arguments at the time. Some people wanted it more dark and gritty, and others preferred it…
[At this point in these postmortem features, I decided to mix it up a little for PC Format. Since they were integrated into the mod-section of the magazine - with the subtext that they were inspirational things for readers thinking about becoming games developers - I thought a look at how a designer got to be a designer could be fun. Luckily, Harvey, who's previously…
[Not much to say about this one, except that everyone who interviews Brian Reynolds pretty much falls love with him. He's an incredibly nice guy. Oh - embarrassing confession. Despite digging Rise of Legends, I've barely played Rise of Nations due to a really odd bug on the machine I had around the time. The game ran fine until the first blow was struck... at…
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