Continuing Valve’s recent push towards more frequent, smaller waves of games to make the Greenlight process faster, six new titles have been Greenlit. This time around we have Bleed, Game Dev Tycoon, The Legend, Legends of Eisenwald, RIOT, and Stardew Valley.

The games that immediately stand out to me are Bleed, Game Dev Tycoon, and RIOT. Game Dev Tycoon is perhaps best known for its ironic and novel approach to combating piracy. I own the 360 version of Bleed and it is a fun, if somewhat standard, action-platformer for a cheap price. Yes, the “16-bit indie retro platformer-thing” genre is really oversaturated at the moment, but if you have $5 to spare and want a challenging action game with old school charm and a few memorable moments then you may want to give Bleed a try.

RIOT was generating a lot of hype a while back, even finishing with a 241% funded Indiegogo campaign a few months back. It tackles some provocative subjects that don’t really get explored in video games, and the developers have a relevant message they want to express with this game. In fact, the devs are so devoted to this topic that they are apparently planning to travel around Europe and the Middle East to experience and document real, ongoing riots and civil unrest.

With this recent wave of releases, the total number of games that have been Greenlit is sitting at 93. So far, 33 of those games have made it onto Steam, either as a full release or part of the new Early Access program.

Remember when you were two years old?  Everything looked larger than life and the world was full of wonder and amazement?  Then, when the sun went down, the world became a spooky place where every bump and shadow was out to get you?  No?  Well, Krillbite Studio wants to remind you with its upcoming title Among the Sleep.

Of course, it’s up to you, the audience, to help them bring their surreal nightmare vision to life.

With only 3 days remaining on their Kickstarter campaign, and about $4K left to meet their minimum goal, this small Norwegian indie company could use everyone’s help to finish out the home stretch.

But what is Among the Sleep, and why should you spend your time and hard earned dollars to support it, you ask?  Well, savvy consumer, allow us to enlighten you.

Even the simplest settings can get awfully creepy when the lights go out – and you’re 36 inches tall.

                Among the Sleep is a first-person horror adventure that focuses on exploration and atmosphere.  The catch?  The game puts you in the role of a two-year-old child.  But the developers are quick to point out that “this is not just an FPS with the camera closer to the ground.”  The player will be immersed in the role of a child, using their small size to their advantage when seeking out places to hide from the things that go bump in the night.  Everything viewed from a child’s perspective is slightly surreal, and Krillbite seeks to capture exactly that in their environmental design.

Players will need to use the environment as well as the character’s small stature to find hiding spots when things get spooky – like this closet!

                Like any indie developer worth their salt, Krillbite’s goal is to avoid publishers and remain independent.  Take the time to watch their Kickstarter video and you’ll see a studio full of people just as charming as the project itself.  Their passion for innovation and dedication to their art is truly the embodiment of the indie spirit from which gaming greatness is born.

Support this project.  Tell your friends.  Help keep indie gaming indie.

…or this guy will haunt your dreams.  You have been warned.

For more from Krillbite Studio, check out their experimental side-project, The Plan, for free.

My previous article focused on Greenlight games with active Kickstarters. Three of those Kickstarters have since ended, and I’m happy to report that C-Wars, Chasm, and Worlds of Magic were all successfully funded. C-Wars was extremely successful, ending with $95,574 (goal was $32,000) and reaching every stretch goal. Chasm only met two stretch goals, but still made a respectable $191,897 (goal was $150,000). Worlds of Magic ended with £45,593 (goal was £30,000) and was just shy of getting its final stretch goal. Worlds of Magic also has an alpha funding campaign, and any money earned from that will go towards the content promised in the final stretch goal.

Among the Sleep has 4 days to go and has only reached $184,247 of its $200,000 goal. A.N.N.E. still has 8 days to go and is just over its goal of $70,000, with a long list of stretch goals to hit. Since my last article, I also wrote a short article about Ghost of a Tale and its Indiegogo campaign. The Indiegogo campaign has 8 days left and is sitting at 34,612€ of its 45,000€ goal.

Since my previous Greenlight article there was also a mini wave of three Greenlit games. Papers, Please, Edge of Space, and Venetica made it through this time around. It is great to see both Papers, Please and Edge of Space make it. Papers, Please is an oddball game that sounds like it wouldn’t be too interesting, but manages to be very compelling with fun gameplay and a real message worth exploring. Edge of Space looks very promising as a fun alternative to Terraria and the other increasingly popular block-based building games. Venetica is an action RPG that has been out for some time. It also wasn’t very good, but it isn’t really my place to complain about such things here. Valve has stated that they will do these mini waves more often to help speed up the Greenlight process.

Now that the updates are out of the way, time to get on with today’s Greenlight Spotlight. This time I wanted to focus on some so-called “Concept Games.” This section of Greenlight is mostly devoted to games that are extremely early in development. The goal here isn’t so much to get Greenlit as it is to get as much feedback as possible, or even find people who would be interested in helping out with development. Because of this, most of these games are primarily concept art, target renderings, and extremely early prototypes, but they are all interesting and unique in their own ways.

The Somme by TopHat Studios

The Somme is marketing itself as the first commercial attempt at making a multiplayer-focused WWI shooter. Like Red Orchestra, The Somme will be heavily focused on teamwork and tactics, and TopHat Studios is doing everything they can to make it as authentic as possible. It will use a class-based system and feature the ability to ride horses and use vehicles. The tanks in The Somme will operate much like they do in Red Orchestra, where you need a whole crew to effectively use them. So far they are looking to include Somme, Passchendaele, and The Battle of Lake Naroch as maps, with more coming later. The renderings and animations look pretty good so far; TopHat Studios is using Unreal Engine 3 to make The Somme.

Junkers by syaped

Junkers started as concept art and videos created by just one animator, and the developer is currently looking for people with the necessary skills required to make this game a reality. In Junkers, players manage a crew of scavengers in space, so-called “junkers,” as they raid derelict spaceships for anything worth selling on the black market. Gameplay will be made up of both real-time tactical battles during the raids and a management screen where you have to handle your crew’s finances, hire new crewmen, trade and sell materials that you scavenged from derelict ships, and more. The target renderings look really charming; it reminds me of Syndicate and many other classic isometric tactical games from the ’90s.

Ludus silva by Jayelinda

Ludus silva is an interesting sandbox strategy game where the goal is to build a thriving forest by using an editor to design plants best suited for the current environment. The editor looks quite robust so far, and you’ll have to consider many environmental factors to ensure that the plants survive. One example the developer gives is that plants with big, broad leaves are more effective at gathering sunlight, but also susceptible to UV damage if you don’t carefully consider where you put such plants. This means that to create a thriving forest you’ll need a diverse range of plant species of various shapes and sizes. Some examples of environments to expect are fertile plains, deserts, swamps, and mountains.

The Realm by Atomhawk Design

This game has been getting some buzz lately because of its active Kickstarter. The Realm is an adventure game set in the distant future, where some event has caused our world to be reclaimed by nature. Humanity is now limited to small, sparse rural communities where magic exists and our modern technologies have long since been abandoned and forgotten. Players will control a young girl named Sarina and her giant stone golem companion Toru on a quest to find a cure for a mysterious illness afflicting Sarina’s mother. The game will focus heavily on solving environmental puzzles using the strengths and special abilities of both characters. The Kickstarter could use a boost; The Realm is only 31% funded with just over a week left. The game is mostly a concept at this point, but the art direction is gorgeous.

The Stomping Land by Alex Fundora

Like The Realm, The Stomping Land also has an active Kickstarter, but it is already over 200% funded with nearly a month to go. The Stomping Land is an open-world multiplayer survival game where you play as a primitive hunter on an island full of dinosaurs. The goal is simply to survive by hunting smaller dinosaurs. The process of hunting is made difficult by the fact that the smell of fresh blood attracts larger carnivores, giving you a limited window to gather meat from a kill.

You can improve your chances with traps, distractions, or simply forming tribes with other players. Creating tribes and hunting parties with others is a pretty big part of the game. It not only improves your chances at a successful hunt, but also allows you to more easily stockpile food and other resources vital for your continued survival. The game also incorporates the idea of raiding other tribes and fighting for access to prime hunting grounds.

That’s all for today’s Greenlight Spotlight. Remember to check out the previous articles to find more interesting games. Of the 15 games I’ve highlighted in this series so far, only one (Cradle) has been Greenlit. Also remember to check out the Kickstarters I’ve brought up in both this article and the previous one.

Greenlight Spotlight 1

Greenlight Spotlight: Kickstarter Edition

This morning’s press release from Ouya also boasts $15M in new funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, most of which will be used to better meet anticipated retail demands, as well as improve the Ouya game development community.

Ouya will be available for purchase in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. on June 25th. The console will sell for $99, with additional controllers selling for $49.99. Ouya consoles can be pre-ordered through Amazon and other retailers. (Note, Amazon is still posting the June 4th release date.)

Monaco is an action game that gives you and up to three friends the opportunity to break out of jails and rob banks or rich old men. While the game attempts to give you the feel of a theft film it really hits it’s stride as a fast-paced puzzle game. While stealth exists in the game it’s clearly just a tool you’re supposed to use when breaking open vaults as fast as you can.

The game’s over-arching story isn’t quite as interesting as the dialogue between all the colorful characters. You get one of every stereotypical character of a heist movie but can only use four at any time by playing coop. If you’re playing single player you can only use one character per mission and your decision on who to play is based more on who’s best for that level and less about who you’d really like to play.

The different characters are wonderfully created and also allow for a lot of creativity on every map. If you want to run through the map and put every unsuspecting guard to sleep then you can be the Cleaner and have a few less guards to deal with. If you want to sneak around and rush in and out of vaults then you can play the Lockpick and while your friend is cleaning out the guards you can get the score. There are eight playable characters that each have one magnificent strength although if you’re not playing multiplayer you’re going to need to be more picky about who you take into each mission.

The game’s controls and mechanics are beautifully simple. Your directional controls are the standard W, A, S and D unless you are playing on an Xbox controller. If you walk up to a lock or computer you will begin to unlock or hack it. This applies to any usable object in the game including bushes you can hide in and traps you can disarm. When you pick up an item like a health pack or a shotgun it’s usable with the left-mouse button and the weapons aim with the mouse. It’s clear that the developers took steps to streamline the controls so all the mechanics work with the least buttons possible. It’s a fantastic standard they set and it makes the game feel simple while allowing you a huge variety of options to complete every mission.

The game’s visuals equal the controls in simplicity but not always in a good way. When playing the game for the first few missions you may get confused at what’s going on but that tends to lend to the mastery aspect of the game. It would be nice to assume this is entirely intended by the developers but it feels like there just wasn’t enough time to give any more depth or care to the game’s graphics. As long as you find a reason to enjoy it Monaco’s art shouldn’t bother you too much.

That being said the game uses plenty of squares and geometric figures but it’s definitely not classical pixel art. It definitely wins some points for it’s bold direction and it’s a nice breath of fresh air in an indie market that’s become saturated with retro pixel art. The way the characters animate on the screen definitely feels unique.

Although I haven’t played on a large screen (I’m playing on my PC) I hear that you’re going to need one to play coop on the same rig and I understand why. The game’s camera will keep every local player on the screen so if two players are on either side of a large map you can imagine how much harder it could be to recognize every icon in the level. This is of course something that’s hard to avoid in a game like this so if you’re going to play with friends on a couch make sure your screen is big enough.

The music sounds like it’s right out of a silent film which is a nice take. It was done by Austin Wintory who worked on Journey and it shows. The music will change depending on what you’re doing at the time and it’s a nice addition to an already great-feeling game. Sometimes it can throw you off but usually it’s a nice indicator that you’ve made a huge mistake.

Regardless of what visual setbacks may exists for certain setups the game is definitely a treat. It’s been in development since 2009 and although that seems like a long time it feels like it required a lot of trial, error and even happy-mistakes to become as great as it is now. I suggest picking this game up with a few other friends and running through the campaign in a night or two. Every mission will be better if it was with the same crew you played the last few levels with.

The only mechanic this game is missing is the option to betray your crew which happens in every heist movie but this may occur in the story somewhere.

The game has great pacing and I enjoy the story because I do love my heist movies. The game is worth fifteen of your hard-earned dollars, on Xbox or Steam.

What’s yours is mine.

As we get closer to the June 4th consumer release date for Ouya, the question on everyone’s mind is about the games that will be available. It’s well known throughout the video game console industry that what games are available at launch or soon after can make or break a successful console. We saw the value of an established catalogue of exclusive software during the last console wars when Microsoft was able to release their Xbox 360 way before Sony’s PS3 hit shelves. The lessons learned that will apply to the long-term success of the Ouya game platform are all centered on the software available – there has to be a collection of really good games or the console will fade away into technological obscurity. While the business and tech-savvy individuals behind the scenes have been great about creating a developer-friendly platform to publish on, none of us want to sift through a ton of mediocre games in the Ouya store. This issue has plagued certain mobile platforms and can leave a potential customer thinking that the console is not worth the price because none of the games are very memorable. I’ve put together a short list of some titles that will no doubt make the console not only worth the low price but also a great living room gaming experience to compete with the already established “big guns” of the console industry.

Final Fantasy III
This wonderful slice of the well-known series was originally released in Japan in 1990 on the Nintendo Famicon (known as the NES in the U.S.) A full 3D remake was done for the handheld Nintendo DS system and released in the summer of 2006 and it is this remake that will be available on the Ouya at launch. I know this will be one of the more reliable titles for Ouya because the Final Fantasy series wrote the book on replay value. It is titles like this that will continue to sell Ouya consoles.

The Ball
Tripwire Interactive’s shooter/puzzle hybrid The Ball will be a welcome addition to Ouya strictly because of the beautiful visuals. Built on the Unreal Engine, this title will push the Ouya hardware with its impressive graphics. The Ball belongs on this list because there aren’t very many Ouya games that succeed in replay value as well as top-notch graphics. Portal was an extremely successful title and this game captures some of the same feel. The Ball should be a great addition to the Ouya!

Saturday Morning RPG
This game from Mighty Rabbit Studios began as a Kickstarter project and does some interesting things with narrative and the “episodic” release timeline. SM-RPG is chock full of side quests, neat places to explore, and a bunch of 80’s pop culture references that will provide many hours of enjoyment for us gamers that remember what was popular in the 80’s. RPGs in any form are a good genre for the Ouya because they take time and offer different play-through options. I look forward to this one just because of its mis-matched, eclectic art style.

Stalagflight
This simple little Indie game is a direct product of the mobile game boom which means that it is easy to learn and difficult to master. Simple games like this are a blast to play with your friends when you are chilling out at home and they will have their place on the Ouya console. The home game console has become a center-piece in the living room entertainment and having fun, fast-paced competitive games to play with friends or family is a must. With a simple objective of “jump…. and don’t stop!” this will be the game I challenge my wife to when we don’t want to hook up our SNES and boot up Mario Kart!

Legend of Dungeon
This great title from the husband and wife team Robot Loves Kitty will be available at the Ouya launch. LoD is a great combination of true co-op gameplay, beat-em-up style combat, and RPG elements all smashed together underneath some amazing pixelated artwork. I am looking forward to this title because the devs moved into a treehouse in order to afford working on it full-time. That is dedication. All natural living arrangements aside, great gameplay and artwork will make this a hit on the Ouya platform.

Canabalt
Adam Saltsman’s indie hit Canabalt will be available for the Ouya from the launch and this will be another great living room multiplayer like Stalagflight. With a very simple control scheme of jumping when you’re supposed to, this game will port to a console with a controller really well. Similar to the way the 2D platformer genre worked so well on the early consoles, I think Canabalt will be a very popular download.

A Fist of Awesome
This game from Indie developer Nicoll Hunt features the familiar mechanics of basic beat-em-up titles such as Final Fight or Double Dragon with the addition of a lumberjack….. who fights homicidal forest creatures. Sign me up for two, please! The style of gameplay here will make it a blast to play over and over and I think there is a unique sense of humor about this game that will make it a diamond in the rough. Seriously, at what point in life will you get to punch a wild bear in the face?

StarBound
This one is my personal favorite title coming to the console and one of the main reasons I will be getting an Ouya myself. Starbound is the spiritual successor of Terraria, one of my favorite Indie game experiences of all time. Starbound developer studio Chucklefish were one of the lucky developers to win an Ouya console during the developer giveaway and team members tweeted about adapting the control scheme to the Ouya controller the moment they won. Starbound will take the best building mechanics and aesthetics we have seen from the likes of Minecraft and Terraria and add different planets to explore and quests to complete. Tiny little social life that I do maintain = gone!

Ghost of a Tale is an action-adventure game where you play as an anthropomorphic mouse in a medieval setting who finds himself on a mysterious, haunted island that was once a garrison for an army of rats. There is combat, as the alpha trailer shows, but the main focus is on exploration and trying to unravel the mystery of what happened to the island. This game is still a very early concept and is full of incomplete assets, but what is on display looks pretty promising. It heavily evokes the charm and general feel of many classic animated films from the ’80s and ’90s, which admittedly was Lionel’s goal.

In addition to the Indiegogo campaign, you can also support Ghost of a Tale on Steam Greenlight. Assuming that Lionel gets the funding he needs, the target release date is sometime in 2014.

Recently we got a chance to hop aboard with Yacht Club Games for a long chat about the already popular upcoming title, Shovel Knight. Along the way we discuss their origins as a team, their inspirations for the game, the Kickstarter campaign, the story, and other amazing details. Let’s take a look!

Could you say your name and what your responsibility on the team is?

Woz: My name is Nick, I go by Woz. I do everything that is not programming or music. I’m not solely responsible for that stuff, but I do contribute a lot of stuff to the game.

Sean: I am Sean Velasco, and generally I have designer, directorial duties [at WayForward.] That’s pretty much what I’m doing here, too, except since we’re a smaller group we have to wear a lot of hats. So I’ve been doing a lot of pixel work.

Ian: I’m Ian Floyd. I’m primarily a programmer or gameplay programmer on the project. But, just the same, I’m involved in various areas of the project.

Erin: I’m Erin. I do a lot of the illustrations, the graphic work, logos, and character design.

Sean: Yeah, every pixel model that we put together Erin does a sketch of it on paper first.

How did you all end up coming together on this project?

Woz: We worked as a pretty close team at WayForward. We did Double Dragon Neon recently.

Sean: We’re part of the team…

Woz: Right, not us exclusively, but a lot of us are part of the core team.

Sean: The majority of all our careers have been in WayForward. I assistant directed Contra 4, and then I directed A Boy and His Blob. Then there was BloodRayne: Betrayal, which Erin did concept designs for, and Woz did a lot of the effects for. So we’ve been working together for quite a while. That’s how we all got together.

What stage of development are you at right now? Alpha? Pre-alpha?

Woz: Way before that.

Sean: Basically we have kind of what you’ve seen in the PAX demo and what’s on the Kickstarter page. Other than that, we’re still in the very early stages of development. So…we’re maybe like ten or fifteen percent done.

Has it been hard to get back into development since your Kickstarter came to an end?

Nick: Once we’ve been in the weird pitch mode on Kickstarter for so long, it is a little bit daunting to get back into the actual production.

Sean: Just starting like that, it’s been all hands on deck doing the Kickstarter, doing promotion, getting the word out about the game, responding to comments. We’re just going start getting back into development now.

Often when you see the ‘making of’ footage it shows progressive character designs that resemble little of the final product. Did you guys go through a lot of variations before his final look?

Sean: There were a couple [designs]. We knew from the beginning that he was a diminutive knight with horns that carried a shovel.

Woz: We knew the basics of it. Sean did a basic sprite of it, and then I took a pass at it. It kinda went back and forth a little bit and finally landed on a sprite we all liked.

Sean: The sprite Shovel Knight and the Illustrated Shovel Knight are two different models, basically. So it was two different efforts. Shovel Knight also went through some revisions and you can even see that the models on the Kickstarter page are slightly different, because we were still getting the character design one hundred percent locked down.

Woz: Yeah, figuring out if we can get it to look right in-game and if it feels NES-y enough. The best example I can think of is if you look at the King Knight sprite on the front page. You can see he’s pretty detailed, but in the actual gameplay footage you can see he’s not totally rendered the same way and has a lot of simplifications. That way he feels more NES-y.

So what about the bosses? Did that go fairly quickly once you nailed down the Shovel Knight’s appearance? Did you have a pretty good idea of what you wanted them to look like?

Sean: I think the bosses went through more revisions than Shovel Knight. We spent a lot of time working with those.

Erin: Just seeing what we could what can we do with a knight mask, or how can we implement different masks for each boss was a big part of it. And then sewing on a simple, yet pixelable character was a big deal. Color choices came from what was available on the NES palette.

Sean: We wanted to make sure all the knights fit in together as a group, so we wanted to make sure we had good representations of big characters and little characters. We wanted to make sure each one felt different, so they went through a lot of revisions, and I think we ended up with a pretty solid lineup.

They look pretty fun. The Polar Knight is my favorite so far. What do you guys go to for inspiration? Have you found yourselves getting a little creative block, and if so what do you go to in order to alleviate that?

Sean: We play a lot of games together obviously. It’s like we’re embedded with each other. The whole Yacht Club is together almost all the time, so it’s a free flowing of ideas. Art is happening all the time. So I think generally if one of us is having a block, we just talk to the whole group and then you can work through it.

Woz: And that means writing down our ideas, having a brainstorm session the whiteboard, or just getting lunch together and hashing out a concept or an idea. If it’s a character creation, Erin spends time getting inspiration from various other artists. We kinda source everything, right?

Erin: Real knight helmets for the bosses in particular.

Sean: It’s just a big group effort for the most part. Now the cool part is, with Kickstarter we have the Director For a Day and Design Hangouts, so now we’re going to start bringing some of our Kickstarter backers into the fray to help come up with ideas and to implement cool stuff. We haven’t really started with that yet, but we have done a few livestreams where we have a lot of creativity and wackiness.

How many backers did you have for that?

A couple hundred actually.

Wow.

Sean: We probably won’t be bringing in each person individually. Instead, we’ll do like a Twitch TV stream or Google Hangout style of thing. Everyone will be in the channel, we’re going to talk through the problems, maybe we’ll be at the whiteboard, maybe we’ll be typing it into the [design] document, and then people can throw in ideas, and we can have a dialogue with the whole group.

Woz: Yeah, we want to make it feel as organic as it does when we’re actually designing stuff as a group together. If somebody has an idea and other people latch onto it, then we’ll talk about that idea. It’s not just people observing what we’re doing, it’s a lot of interaction and getting ideas from the group.

Sean: Whatever makes us laugh the loudest.

Woz: Basically.

So you’re kinda pushing the record for largest indie team with that number.

Sean: Yeah. [Laughter]

Let’s talk about the story. What kind of format are you presenting it in? Is it going to be cut-scenes? Are we going to meet characters mid-level? What can you tell us about that?

Sean: That’s something we’ve been talking about a lot recently. We’re really big on story, and theme, and tone, but we hate it when it gets bogged down with too much narrative. So imagine you’re playing a game and you stop and all your momentum is lost because you have to have a cut-scene interaction with a character. That’s something we definitely want to avoid. So we’re looking for ways to make it so we’re not stopping the action. Maybe we’ll do, like you were saying, conversations or talking heads, but it would be in a pretty limited capacity. Like maybe before boss battles, or if we were to do a town or a merchant I imagine you would have some dialogue lines there where we could inject some more personality.

Woz: But a lot of the story is going to be situational. In gameplay, what you see in the background, how we decorate certain things, you’re going to get a sense of what’s happening without being overtly told that you’re going to the last boss of the game, or whatever.

Sean: Like in Super Metroid, right before you fight Kraid, there’s a dead space marine that looks sort of similar to you. I feel like that one sprite just sitting there tells more story than a lot of other games. That type of thing. Or if you’ve played A Boy and His Blob, that’s another game that I directed that some of us worked on, that game does a lot with story without too many cut-scenes. There’s actually no written dialogue in the entire game. We want to go more that direction. That’s our approach to story.

Aside from the bosses, the level design is so neat to watch because it’s nostalgia, it’s excitement for what’s coming and what we get to do again. It hearkens to all the great things that made gaming awesome growing up. When you were designing levels, how many different games did you reference as far as your inspiration for what you wanted to do?

Woz: For the level design specifically…how did that work out?

Sean: We had a brainstorming session and the only level we’ve really gone through is the King Knight’s level from the PAX demo. We went through a ton of different gameplay objects, the falling chandeliers and the book that makes the pages appear. And even enemies, like the wizard that shoots at you that you can reflect back, the knight that you have more of an actual dual with. We planned out how the flow of the stage was going to be, so we said in the beginning that you’re going to be outside the castle, then you’ll be sort of storming the interior, and then you’ll go down into the abyss like into the actual proper interior of the castle which is the library room, and then you’ll come out of it get to the throne room where King Knight is.

We thought about it in the context of a story, and we thought about how these gameplay objects would all interact with each other and with enemies. Then we just started putting it together and iterating.

Woz: The level design comes from games we played in the past like Mega Man, or other Capcom titles like Duck Tales.

Sean: The screen transitions are entirely Mega Man.

Woz: It feels very solid. You have a good sense of what a room is, and where you can actually go. There’s not a lot of weird camera movement. That’s captured pretty well in Mega Man, and we wanted to retain that. A lot of the combat ideas we’ve been talking about have come after playing Zelda II a lot. There’s a little bit of Dark Souls in there, how we deal with the player’s value systems and how death incorporates into that so you want to keep the things you have because dying makes you lose a lot of it.

Sean: That sense of fear…

Woz: The tension, yeah. So, it is a lot of games but it is starting to feel unique. We definitely are obviously referencing Nintendo games. Nintendo is who we are, it’s in our blood, and it’s where we’re going with this game. It’s an NES palette, so it feels like it’s on the NES.

What makes it feel like its classic is that it’s done design first. How is the fun going to work, how will the interactions work, and what is the gameplay going to be like? We built everything around that. So because we did that, it’s a more abstract sense of fun, and that’s what you generally find in Nintendo. Not just ones from the past, but modern day ones.

It’s really cool to see the way that this project has spread out. It got the attention of the original Mega Man composer (Manami Matsumae), who is contributing two songs. Where will those songs appear, and how will you be collaborating?

Woz:  That was a really random thing for us, too. Like you said, she reached out to us. She was working with these guys over at Koopa Soundworks. He saw Shovel Knight and wanted to support it, so he looked us up. She’s real excited about it. She wants to get back into the Western Market, and be relevant to the current gamespace. It’s pretty cool to be able to facilitate that.

Basically they are doing chip tune album with a lot of notable composers on it, and she was one of them. So that’s how we got hooked up.

Woz: We don’t really know where she’s going to fit as far as like what songs specifically in the game. We’re hoping she does a couple level tracks.

And perhaps a collaboration with Jake. Kind of like a dueling banjos sort of thing, where they are contributing to a single song.

Erin: That’s going to awesome.

I’m sold.

Woz: Yes! I want the soundtrack so bad.

Thanks guys! Next up we’ll talk about Kickstarter rewards, Director For A Day, future game designers, and recapturing the glory of the NES days! Tune in next week for Part Two!

Over the years there has been a major shift in terms of what the majority of players want from their games and, more importantly, what they think is fun. Perhaps the Japanese really were chasing a vision of fun that only existed prior because they didn’t know any better. This fundamental flaw in turn based role playing games, the bread and butter of most video games coming out of that country, could be a key understanding why peoples tastes have changed. Since I don’t believe that people change over time, perhaps the reason for the success of Japanese games was really more out of a lack of choice than a conscience thumbs up by the general public.

That’s not to say that all Japanese developed games are aggressively bad or even average, it’s just a potential reality that may have been an outcome because of the lack of competition. Competition is a really important idea when dealing with a open market because it allows what is truly great to rise to the top based on its own merit and not because there is some massive entity behind it buying up every possible competitor and tolling them in to its existing business or shutting them down. It’s something that the US has always needed to have laws over. However this form of lack of competition seen in the early games industry was really born out of a lack of experience from western developers than something fundamentally wrong with the people.

In many ways the types of games Japan developed, and still to a large extent do, have always been focus on long in depth mechanics without the usability or attention paid to a new player or one that just wants to get into the action. As more and more western games try to become movies and vice versa it’s increasingly harder for me to see a path out without accepting that global tastes have changed and if they are not will to react to that, I fear for the development community at large.

A quick disclaimer before I begin: despite being a fan of 4X strategy games, I’ve never played Eador: Genesis. This means that I can’t really pull up the original game as a reference point when judging Masters of the Broken World. From what I’ve read, Masters of the Broken World is less of a sequel and more just Genesis with a new coat of paint and some redesigned mechanics anyway.

Eador: Masters of the Broken World is a new fantasy 4X strategy game by Snowbird Games. The basic concept of Eador is that the world is broken into many shards floating in space. You play as a sort of godlike being, one of many Masters, who is trying to rebuild the world by conquering the shards and reuniting them. To do this, you travel to a shard, establish a stronghold, and start conquering provinces by any means necessary until you rule the shard.

This is the basic format of the game’s campaign. You pick shards to invade, with each shard giving you access to new structures and various buffs once you conquer it. In this way, the campaign is almost like playing a bunch of custom skirmish maps, except you gradually gain more unit and building options as you progress. There is also a karma system that changes what other Masters think of you. Your karma is generally based on the sort of units you favor (each unit has a different moral leaning) and your actions both on a shard and in the pre-invasion screen.

Each game will start you off with a single province, your stronghold. This is the center of your empire, and losing it results in defeat on that shard. It is here where you build structures, recruit hero units, and form armies. Structures are divided into various districts, each with four tiers. One important thing to always remember is that there is a limit on certain types of structures. For example, there are around a dozen rank 1 unit structures, but you can only have four in any given game. This means that the game forces you to pick and choose what you feel would be the best choices for the current shard. Even still, the sheer number of building options can get rather overwhelming later in the campaign. It doesn’t help that the UI can be rather confusing and unresponsive at times. I’ve had times where the UI just wouldn’t register my input at first. It can be difficult to figure out prerequisites at a glance, and the advanced view can be even worse.

The main focus of your armies is the hero units. You must recruit a hero to move units around the map, much like in many games of this type. Your heroes gain experience, can use various spells and abilities, and can be equipped with items and weapons. The heroes themselves are very powerful units in battle, and can be resurrected for a price should they fall. The four hero types are Warriors, Scouts, Mages, and Commanders, and each type caters to a vastly different play style. As you recruit heroes, the price of recruiting another one gradually goes up, particularly if you already have a hero of that type. This encourages you to have a good mix of different hero types to perform different roles.

There can be a ton of things to consider in any given province of Eador. There are various structures you can build in provinces to modify income, allow heroes to recruit units and study spells, improve the population’s mood, and more. While the only primary resources in the game are gold and gems, many provinces have secondary resources like lumber, horses, iron, and so on. These resources aren’t spent like gold and gems, but rather modify the income from those provinces and provide discounts to the hiring of certain units and construction of some buildings. Random events can also cause various positive or negative effects on a province, like a serious forest fire wiping out a large chunk of a province’s lumber supply and screwing with your income.

Each province also has locations that can be visited by your heroes, and more locations can be discovered by having your hero spend a turn “exploring.” These locations vary from shops where you can buy powerful items or special units, to battles that provide experience and loot. Exploring a province doesn’t just feed experience to your army either; it also has an effect on the province itself. Sometimes you’ll discover secondary resources or random events that change the province’s income. Exploring the province also increasing population growth, and once a province is 100% explored then you’ll get an income bonus.

My main complaint with the exploration mechanic is that it can take forever to explore a province, unless you are using a moderately experienced Scout. This is especially annoying in the early stages of a game, where many of your early turns will be exploring provinces to find weaker enemy encounters to level your hero. This means that the game can get tedious and downright boring in the early stages, when you just don’t have the income and forces to expand too rapidly.

I can be here for a while talking about all the various factors in the overworld map of Eador, but that is only part of the game. The other part is the actual combat, which takes place in a hex-based grid. Much like the world map, the combat system has quite a bit of depth to it that must be learned. Units have morale and stamina that affect their performance, there are various terrain types to consider, many units have unique passive and active abilities, etc.

The tactical combat is quite fun and satisfying, and the AI is actually pretty good. The AI will use terrain to their advantage, attempt to target your weaker support units, and even focus their attention on wounded units. However, like many things about this game, there are various gameplay and technical issues that need to be addressed. Even with the recent patch that sped things up, some animations can take a while to perform. The audio, animation, and damage numbers are also all out of sync. It is pretty common to see units die before the damage numbers and attack animations have finished, resulting in units slashing at the air or taking damage from a unit that died before its own attack animation went through. It can also be difficult to tell what type of terrain a unit is currently sitting on.

That’s really the problem I have with the game: It is full of rough mechanics and glaring technical issues. I already mentioned the rather awkward UI, various issues with the combat system, and the tedium of the early stages of a game, but late game can also be rather tedious too. By this point you’ve pretty much done everything you can leveling up your heroes and improving your kingdom. Now you just have to conquer the enemy, be it a faceless local lord or another godlike Master such as yourself. Sieges against an enemy stronghold can take more than a dozen turns, assuming you don’t have siege weapons. Problem is, it can be a while before you get said siege weapons in the campaign, making the endgame of your early campaign missions seriously drag on.

Another annoyance is the general lack of information in some parts of the game. Not all of the mechanics are explained all that well, and looking through the manual didn’t help. The screen before combat is also mostly pointless fluff with very little true information. Telling me that the enemy force contains three giant slugs tells me nothing about what giant slugs are and if my army can take them on. It gets worse when you consider that units also level up, though the Scout has the ability to determine what level the enemies are before you enter the encounter. Sometimes a screen will pop up with your hero saying something vague like “Looks like we can win without casualties” or “If we win this, I’d be surprised,” but these only appear some of the time and are often misleading.

If rough mechanics where the only thing wrong with Eador, I wouldn’t mind giving it a recommendation. This game can be pretty engrossing and downright addictive at times. However, I’ve also encountered numerous technical issues as well. The game is obviously poorly optimized, with a very inconsistent frame rate. This isn’t an isolated issue either, I’ve heard reports of people with PCs far better than mine getting choppy frame rates and bad performance. Occasionally, the AI will lock up during their turns, forcing you to exit the game and reload your last save. Even when the AI isn’t locking up, in larger maps they can take upwards of a minute to perform their turns.

I’ve not encountered them personally, but I’ve read quite a few posts on the GOG and Steam forums about the game not starting or crashing with an error message. I’ve consistently encountered a glitch where the game won’t display the name of my Scout hero during battles, replacing it instead with “hero.4.name.” I’ve also encountered, and heard reports of, enemy units with glitched out stats that make them far harder to fight than they should, or even accounts of buffs and debuffs not working correctly. There have been several instances where the game just wouldn’t let me click certain buttons, forcing me to restart. In one bizarre situation the game actually took control away from my army, like the game got stuck on auto-combat even when I had it turned off.

I don’t play multiplayer in these sorts of games, but I’ve heard from others that the multiplayer component is pretty much broken right now. It wasn’t working at all on launch apparently, and even with the recent patch it is still full of issues. If you really wanted to play Eador with others then this might be a huge problem for you, though given how slow a game of Eador goes I can’t really imagine this game working well in a multiplayer setting anyway.

Because of these numerous technical issues, I have a hard time fully recommending Eador: Masters of the Broken World, at least in its current state. The game is far from being unplayable, but the technical issues are common enough that it can really hurt your experience. It’s so frustrating because I really want to say that this is a good game that is worth your money, but I simply can’t do that right now. Despite my complaints, I have managed to get quite a bit of enjoyment out of Eador. When everything is working right, Eador can be quite addicting despite its rough mechanics. If Eador‘s faults were just these rough mechanics then I would probably say go for it. Eador has the foundation of a solid strategy game, and I can see a ton of potential in this title, but as of right now I’d recommend waiting until the first time it goes on sale on Steam or GOG. Hopefully everything will be ironed out by then. I may come back to this one after a few more patches with my updated impressions.

You can find Eador: Masters of the Broken World on GOG.com and Steam for $20 or your regional equivalent.

Before I get to the real meat of this article, it’s time for a quick Greenlight update. As I reported, 18 games have been Greenlit since my previous article. Of the games I featured in the last Greenlight Spotlight, only Cradle made it through this recent wave of titles. Sadly, Rekoil, 99 Levels to Hell, Driftmoon, and GoD Factory: Wingmen are still waiting in Greenlight limbo. Please remember to go check these games out and leave them a vote and comment if you are interested in seeing them on Steam.

One other sad piece of news to report is that one of the games that made it through the latest wave of Greenlit titles has since been canceled. After a failed Kickstarter and alpha funding campaign, Death Inc.‘s developer Ambient Studios announced that they will be closing their doors. They simply don’t have the money to keep operating, and will be issuing full refunds to the alpha backers in the coming weeks.

Things aren’t all doom and gloom though. Some pretty promising titles made it through the Greenlight process and will hopefully be on Steam before too long. The steampunk action MMORPG City of Steam made it through, as did Frozen Endzone, the next game by the developers of the critically-acclaimed and commercially successful Frozen Synapse. After highly successful Kickstarters, both Shovel Knight and Battle Worlds: Kronos also made it through.

All this talk of Kickstarters brings us to the common theme shared among today’s five spotlighted games: each one currently has an active Kickstarter campaign. If any of these games interest you, and you have some money to spare, perhaps you should also consider a pledge to their Kickstarter campaigns in addition to a vote-up on Greenlight.

Worlds of Magic by Wastelands Interactive

By the time this article is posted, Worlds of Magic‘s Kickstarter will have less than two days left. Luckily, they have already exceeded their funding target of £30,000, but as with most Kickstarters there are always stretch goals to hit.

Worlds of Magic is yet another 4X fantasy title trying to recapture the feeling of the classic Master of Magic by Microprose back in 1994. The game still looks really rough, as expected of a pre-alpha, but it seems to have the foundation of a solid 4X fantasy game. There is set to be nearly 100 units spread across six factions, twelve diverse schools of magic, multiple planes to explore and conquer, and who knows what else could be added if the Kickstarter campaign is successful enough.

Among the Sleep by Krillbite Studio

This rather unique take on the Amnesia-style of classic horror gaming gained quite a bit of buzz when it was announced a while back and now it is on Greenlight and Kickstarter. As I write this, their Kickstarter campaign is just over halfway to its $200,000 goal, and they still have plenty of time to reach it.

For those of you who’ve yet to hear about it, Among the Sleep is an atmospheric, exploration-based horror game from the perspective of a two-year-old child. The idea of playing as a toddler in a horror game is actually pretty brilliant, and based on the trailers Krillbite seems to be doing a great job with the concept. Everything seems so big and monstrous through the eyes of a young child with an overactive imagination. The game will be tackling the themes of how surreal dreams and confusion over the way the everyday world works can make things seem more frightening than they actually are.

Chasm by Discord Games LLC

Action RPG Chasm‘s Kickstarter has just under two weeks left, but they are pretty close to their $150,000 goal. At the time of writing, they are about 78% of the way to being fully funded.

Chasm is a 2D Metroidvania-style action RPG/platformer that creates a procedurally-generated dungeon with each play through. In other words, each time you play should be a unique experience as the dungeon layout and loot drops are randomized. Bosses will also be randomized in the same way that items are. Multiple modes allow you to tackle the game as either a “score attack” or slightly more roguelike experience with permadeath.

A.N.N.E by Gamesbymo

On the subject of 2D Metroidvanias, A.N.N.E has been getting a lot of attention over the past week or so. It’s Kickstarter campaign went up around a week ago and it is a little over halfway to its rather modest $70,000 goal. Most of the stretch goals are related to porting the game to other platforms like PSN, the WiiU’s eShop, and the OUYA.

A.N.N.E is an open world 2D Metroidvania/action RPG where you can explore both on foot and in a ship. The game seems to have a basic physics system where you can use your ship to pick up and move heavy objects, thus allowing you to get to new areas.  The game is meant to be truly open, in the sense that you can theoretically get to areas you “shouldn’t” be yet if you are smart and skilled enough to overcome the obstacles and higher level enemies blocking your path.

C-Wars by Onipunks

C-Wars is doing really well for itself on Kickstarter. They are well past their target goal of $32,000, and they are now focusing on stretch goals that include ports to other platforms and contests where fans can vote for new weapons and options to be added to the final game.

C-Wars is an oddball game that is pretty hard to describe. I’d recommend watching one of the trailers. It is a combination of an action RTS/RPG roguelike where you fight on a grid in real time. You micromanage a powerful hero unit while also deploying various allied units that fight with you. It looks a lot like the old Mega Man Battle Network games on the GBA, combined with some sort of tower defense/action RTS and permadeath. If nothing else it is quite a unique game that looks pretty fast-paced and hectic.

As with all Kickstarters, remember that just because a game has reached its funding that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pledge some money if able. Every little bit counts, and a campaign meeting its stretch goals just means that the final product will be that much better. Also remember to leave these games a vote on Greenlight. A successful Kickstarter is great, but getting the chance to sell your game on Steam is even better.

It’s easy to get caught up in this almost self reflective and insular nature of what games are and in turn what we think they should always be. I see this as destructive to the growth and potential depth of video games and all interactive forms of entertainment. There is a lot we can learn from other mediums or other separate parts of life, be they academic or experiential.

It’s key to understand the original points of inspiration which an art form draws upon because of how influential and pervasive this influence may be. As an example, a game may borrow the concept of zombies from a film. This is not innately a bad thing but when other games only self reference other games you may find yourself surrounded by a market full of games that are at best fundamentally the same but only superficially different.

It’s a problem that games are certainly not alone in facing but it takes a keen observation of the underlying cultural touchstones that are so pervasive. So what can we do? Are we powerless to stop this? No, I don’t think so at all. The best way to combat this is to expose ourselves and those we work alongside to as diverse a variety of material as we can in life, whether that be books, plays, hobbies or academic studies like philosophy or economics.

It’s that constant and ever present awareness of things around us that can teach us as we live our lives. To me this mindset will overcome any incumbent way of thinking regardless of medium or field.

A new Jagged Alliance reboot, subtitled Flashback, is currently looking for funding via Kickstarter. This new installment in the classic turn-based squad tactics game is being developed by an indie studio named Full Control in Copenhagen, Denmark. Full Control is also working on a Space Hulk game for PC and tablets.

Unlike the other recent (and rather terrible) Jagged Alliance reboot Back in Action, Flashback is returning the series to its turn-based roots. Flashback takes the series back to the 1980s, when Cold War tensions were at their highest. As a CIA operative, it is your job to assemble an elite team of mercenaries from across the world to overthrow a Communist regime on the tiny island of San Christobal. Flashback promises the return of all the deep squad-based tactics and management of the old games, along with more RPG elements in the form of tough choices that can affect the outcome of the story. This game will also take us back to the events that lead to the founding of the mercenary company A.I.M. from the previous titles.

If you wish to learn more about Jagged Alliance: Flashback, or pledge some money, head over to the Kickstarter page. At the time of this writing, the campaign is sitting on $83,822 out of a targeted goal of $350,000 with 27 days to go.

Ouya and the independent game scene

The summer of 2013 will bring us all something that we haven’t seen in a while: the breakout of a new game console to compete against the big three that have ruled the console market for years now. Ouya, the difficult to pronounce new hardware contender, is centered on bringing gaming back to the television and the living room. Ouya is the brainchild of game industry vet Julie Uhrman who put together the most successful Kickstarter campaign the online pledge system has ever seen. With an initial goal of $950,000.00 to get the development process moving, we all got to watch in amazement as they raised almost ten times that goal in a very short time. While gaming innovations over the last five years have almost always been geared toward the exponentially expanding mobile market, Ouya seems to take the best creativity we have seen in that realm and put it back on the living room television where it can be enjoyed by the massive demographic that is the hardcore console gamer. Based on what we have seen out of Ouya so far, this will be a wonderful platform for the independent game scene and many of us are excited to see how its release will reverberate throughout the entire industry.

With a recently announced retail launch date of June 4^th, 2013 many Kickstarter backers and development studios began to receive their brand-spankin’ new Ouya consoles during the last week of March and into April, 2013. There are quite a few hardware reviews and “first impression” articles out there to check out if you are interested.  Some familiar names from the indie scene are amongst those that have backed the project since day one; Notch and Mojang studios are on board, Canabalt developer Semi Secret Software have their flagship title already included in the game lineup, and other major players such as Brian Fargo of Interplay and Robert Bowling of Robotoki are all providing the needed support to make this indie console a reality. Indie smash hits such as Minecraft, Canabalt, and Terraria’s spiritual successor Starbound currently in development by Chucklefish in the UK will all be part of the Ouya experience. I already have a small spot cleared off my desk next to my monitor that would be perfect for the tiny console.

In tune with what today’s console gamers expect with their purchase of a game console as an all-around media machine, games are not the only interactivity the Ouya will offer. Twitch TV, a network/community of broadcast gameplay and tournament coverage, is already included on the console as a native app. Iheartradio is proudly wearing the badge of the first confirmed radio app for the new console and hopefully we will see the likes of Hulu, Netflix, and even Facebook available on Ouya in the future. While this plethora of games and apps put together in one piece of technology sounds suspiciously like every other game console on the market, there is an underlying independent spirit and philosophy behind the development and eventual release of this platform. The complete development tools are available with the purchase of each console and the ability to get your game published on Ouya is going to be drastically easier than other platforms that allow the same avenues. The Ouya homepage even boasts that you will not void your warranty by tinkering with the hardware itself and they even express interest in seeing what hardware mods are created by the users. For us console gamers, it has been a long time since we have seen a company truly embrace what the user community is capable of and the nod in our direction is much appreciated. It is the reason that I will be preordering this great console to be a part of this experience. Directly from the Ouya website, “The revolution will be televised!”

Mods or Modifications are changes made to a video game that range from slightly editing certain mechanics or stats to change the game to a player’s liking to going as far as making an entirely new game out of one that already exist. Mods have been around nearly as long as video games have been inside our homes. Early PC games could be opened and their code altered right on the disk with no problems. Players would add their own content to the game, sometimes vastly increasing the size of the overall game. This led to people swapping their own versions of games that they had toyed with themselves. So Modding a game is nothing new, yet it was not until the internet started taking off that it reached a whole new level. One of the best known examples of an early Mod is Counter-Strike. It all started with two fans of Half-Life who wanted to make a multiplayer component for the game. Eventually they settled on a terrorism theme and created weapons and levels based off of real counterparts. Counter-Strike took the online community by storm and caught the eye of Valve, the creators of Half-Life. They liked the Mod so much that they hired its creators to come work for them and release a commercial version with a much larger team and budget. Today Counter-Strike is one of the most successful PC shooters around and has had three commercial releases as well as numerous additional Mods made for it.

One such mod has players fighting each other as Humans vs Zombies with the Human players turning into Zombies upon their deaths.

Mods have become a staple of PC gaming as they allow players to change the game to suit their own desires. Many PC developers not only allow Modding but fully support it as it essentially gives their game more content, which may in turn increase sales, and they didn’t even have to lift a finger. Some developers go a step further and purposefully make their code easy to access and alter or even create modding tools that can be used by the community. If you have ever played a more recent Elder Scrolls game then you have probably played with a few Mods yourself or been asked if you would like to install the editor. These tools and freedom when it comes to altering a game can make a video game so much more than it already was and bring a dead or less-popular title into the limelight. A good example is the simulator turned video game Arma 2. Though there is a hardcore fanbase for the game, the overall community is rather small and the sales, while good, have never been anything to awe over. However, that changed when the Mod DayZ was released, a zombie survival game where one had to forage food, ammo, and anything useful they could find all in a map covering several miles, while simultaneously avoiding potentially hostile players and the obviously hostile zombies. Arma 2 became a top seller on Steam for several weeks during their annual Christmas sale even when it was being charged at is full price, a rare, if not impossible, feat to accomplish. The makers of DayZ have now teamed up with the developers of Arma 2 who will together release DayZ as a polished commercial product just as what happened with Counter-Strike years before it.

Like games where you play as a medieval lord?

What about games where you play as a lord of Westeros?

Or would you prefer being a King in Tamriel?

The moral of the story is Mods are good. They take games and make more games out of them. They do not harm the developers, in fact, often doing the opposite and making them more money. Developers should not only allow Mods but embrace them, making them easier to build and share while we as gamers should reward those who empower us to play games as we see fit. Video games are both an artform and entertainment, and opening the doors to allow us as a community to create our own art and entertainment, well…that just seems like good manners. Mods are a wonderful thing and I cannot wait to see what the vast imaginations out there can create next.

I am a big fan of the Medieval era…

…and the Napoleonic era…

…and the Star Wars…era.

Last Friday I got a chance to sit down with Greg Kasavin, creative director of the 2011 smash indie hit Bastion and now working full steam ahead on Supergiant’s newest title Transistor. We talked extensively about Transistor’s story, what the game has in common with Bastion and how it differs, and a lot about what it means to design games. Enjoy!

How are things going on development so far?

Pretty good! Finally returning to some sense of normalcy after an exciting few weeks.

What is the narrative style of Transistor and how does it differ from Bastion? Are we going to have real-time narration or is it going to be a unique creation for this game?

We have the whole team from Bastion working on Transistor, including Logan Cunningham, the voice actor who was the narrator from Bastion. From our point of view, the way in which Transistor’s story unfolds is very different to us, and presents its own challenges and opportunities. Basically the key difference is that it’s a character who is with you for the events of the game. He is kind of discovering the events along with you as you go, as opposed to in Bastion where you have this kind of omniscient sounding narrator who is holding back a lot of information, and the story is unraveling as you go and telling the tale of your journey as you make progress. So this time around, it’s someone who is along for the ride.

We have this pairing of characters. We have Red, the protagonist character, this woman who has literally lost her voice and she finds this extraordinary weapon called the Transistor, which contains the consciousness of this speaking character who has been reduced to only a voice. We liked the idea of that kind of partnership and developing that relationship over the course of the story.

That sounds incredibly interesting. They kind of depend on each other.

Yes, that’s exactly right. They very much do. The guy who’s trapped inside the Transistor, there’s not a whole lot he can do [Laughs], which creates some kind of fun dynamics in terms of the kind of relationship that the characters have. From what people played hopefully we it came across that the speaking character cares very much about Red and he wants to make sure that she Is gonna be alright, but there is only so much he can do. He knows the city very well and things of that nature, but he kind of needs to go along with what she decides to do, not by choice but by necessity. That’s a fun dynamic for us and we’re still exploring all the different ways we can do interesting stuff there.

So he’s kind of a hero in chains.

Yeah. It’s very much the player’s story, we feel, similar to Bastion. I think our high level goals for the story are similar to Bastion. We want to surprise players. We think surprise is a key component to an interesting story. We also want to make sure the story feels very personal to you, maybe not straight from the beginning, because it’s a specific character in a specific situation, but by the end we hope that players will become more invested in the events and the world. I think that’s what can make game stories so powerful is the sense that you are the driving force of this story, you’re not just a spectator. It’s very important to us to let players interact with the situation and not just feel like they get a reward cut scene every few minutes or something like that.

The initial statements from around the industry have been overwhelmingly positive. When you started designing this, did you start with the story idea or was it more of a gameplay thing first?

That’s a good question. It’s very chicken and egg for us. We do see ourselves as a gameplay driven studio. We don’t come up with stories and retrofit gameplay to suit those stories. Quite the contrary, we develop gameplay ideas and experiential ideas and come up with narrative that can sort of tie it all together. So in the case of Transistor, we did have ideas around this type of character pairing that I was talking about before. But it wasn’t even necessarily in a science fiction context that you see in what we’ve shown. It was just kind of a broader idea, and along with that we had a lot of thoughts on the kind of gameplay direction we wanted to take, wanting to do something that maybe felt more deliberate and had more drama from moment to moment as opposed to the very fast-paced action packed feel of Bastion. We still very much want a fast-paced, easy to pick up and play kind of feel in this game, but we wanted to see if we could introduce more tension and suspense into the moment to moment gameplay. That sort of evolved into this more strategic combat system that we’ve developed. So those things combined, and some of the early narrative ideas, that in turn motivated us wanting to create a whole new setting and a whole new world for this game. The world building aspect of Bastion was something that was really fun on that project, like the part where we created our own fiction for it and all that, and it was a well-regarded part of the game. SO we wanted to see if we could do that again, really, and let’s try to make a whole other world from scratch and see what people think.

So kind of like Red and Transistor depend on each other in a circular manner, it’s kind of interesting how the game story and the game design kind of tend to feed each other in a similar way.

Yeah, that’s absolutely the case for us. We think that the deep connection between those things is crucially important and we spend a lot of time just sort of trying to maneuver those things, especially the narrative, to align with the gameplay as closely as possible thematically. One of our high level design goals on Bastion and I think on Transistor as well is we just want the game to feel complete, like every aspect of it just fits. No vestigial little elements or anything, no tacked on features, it’s just all part of a cohesive whole. Just making sure that the narrative and the play experience are closely aligned, and you feel like everything you’re doing is in the service of some thematic core of the experience, something like that, which could happen subconsciously for players. It’s important to us.

The way Bastion felt when I played it, it really hearkened back to a lot of the old school kind of titles when games didn’t have these monumental production tasks. You know, Assassin’s Creed is great, but it is never going to be as easy to implement a story in that as it is something more scaled down graphically. It really did feel complete for that reason.

Yeah, that’s great, I mean we do think of it sometimes in those terms. I often feel like the game industry took a pretty dramatic turn kind of in the later nineties when the PlayStation rolled around. There was all this knowledge of experience around building really terrific 2D games. There was stuff like Super Metroid and Chrono Trigger, and any number of these games that are regarded as classics from the 16-bit era. But it seemed like a lot of that knowledge had to be thrown out, and now people have to learn 3D cameras, basically having to relearn everything about game making now that everything is in 3D. I like to think that some of the stuff we were doing is almost like, in that older tradition, if people kept making games in that tradition what would they be like today with somewhat more modern storytelling techniques and some of the technological improvements that are available now. But yeah, for the most part it’s easier to trace back our work to stuff like that than a fully 3D action adventure game or something. I still love a lot of those old games, and I miss the feel of them and even the way they told story and stuff like that. I think we’re not the only ones working in that kind of tradition. I’m glad there’s stuff like that out there again, where for a while it seemed like only 3D blockbuster experiences that can feel a little monotonous after a while.

Yeah, it can. The indie movement and Bastion in particular have done a lot to bring back that feeling. Having said that, in Transistor is it going to be a similar feel to that do you think? Or do you want to push a head a little more as far as exploring new emotional territory in a game?

Oh yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think, you know, what I say about it is that it’s really important to us that the game has its own identity. It’s certainly no accident that we kinda went ahead and tried to create a whole new setting and a whole new premise. A new gameplay direction. Something that we were really happy about coming out of PAX East, when we let people play the game for the first time, was the response to the gameplay. People told us that they felt it was really different and felt fresh. That made us really happy because it feels very different to us and introduces a whole new set of interesting design challenges as we create encounters. But you never really know until you put it in the hands of other people. In the same way the play experience, we think, is quite different even though technically its maybe part of the same action RPG genre. I think from a narrative point of view, this game should feel quite different as well, apart from the fact that this game, like Bastion before it, the narrative will be an important part so that’s something that the games have in common. Hopefully it gives some sense of the experience people will be in for, but at the same time I think our job is to surprise people which is an interesting challenge this time around. I think Bastion had kind of a dark horse advantage in the sense that we were an unheard of studio and no one knew what to expect from us at all. And this time around, people who have played Bastion, they may think they know what our tricks, are as it were, so it’ll be interesting to see if we can surprise them yet again. But again, the initial response to this game suggests that hopefully we’re onto something and it’ll feel sufficiently surprising and fresh if not more than sufficiently so.

So with the combat system being more strategic, did you have any ideas that were inspired by Bastion or springboarded off of them? Or is this  a complete fresh start?

Yeah, it’s sort of indirectly in response to Bastion in the sense that, having worked on Bastion, we wanted to try something different. Our design goal around the combat in Bastion was to sort of reward playing with finesse and have lots of satisfying timing-based mechanics and let people kind of find their own play style within that, and have different weapons with a lot of character and distinction, so we were happy with how that panned out. But rather than just keep pushing in that direction, we wanted to see if we could do something new. Several of us, myself included, come from working on real-time strategy games, and we all love classic turn-based gamed and tactical RPG’s, so we thought about that style of play and we sort of decided pretty quickly that we didn’t want to make a straight-ahead turn-based game because that didn’t line up with the kind of narrative goals we had in mind, and just the kind of experience we wanted. But we still wanted to see if we could capture the character strategic games within the context of an action RPG, and like I mentioned before just get the drama of some of that across, because in a game like Bastion, when you get very good at it, the encounters tend to get solved very quickly. You could just blaze through fights, just play very effectively and that’s sort of your reward for getting good at the game. And here we wanted to see if we could capture more of a sense of  ebb and flow to the battle, where you could kind of quickly turn the tables on your enemies and vice versa. Sometimes they can turn the tables on you. It’s more of this cat and mouse game. As we explored that further, we really liked where it was going and we introduced this ability early where you could essentially stop everything besides yourself and plan your next set of actions, then execute them in a supercharged fashion. We found we were all using that ability in different ways, and that’s I think when we felt we were really onto something that started to feel very deep and open ended. That’s kind of what we wanted out of it.

Going back to Bastion a little bit. The last time I fired I heard an interesting phrase from Rucks. When the game started up it said “I’ll see you in the next one.”

Yeah, that’s when you start the New Game Plus mode.

Oh okay, so this isn’t a sequel tease or nothing like that?

No. [Laughs]

Dang it!

I wish I didn’t say no in the sense that I don’t like to discredit people’s theories, because I think in Bastion we tried to answer a lot of question and tried to build toward a satisfying conclusion. But I think part of what makes fictional universes interesting are the parts that are left open to the imagination. But yeah, in the case of Bastion there is an implied sense of continuity in the new game plus mode. The line “I’ll see you in the next one.” was not written in anticipation of Transistor for what that’s worth.

Anything else you’d like to talk about today as far as where you’re at in development?

It’s pretty early right now. It’s in a pre-alpha state, so what we showed at PAX East recently is kind of our first time we had something we felt was showable and we really wanted to put it out there to see what people thought before we go down further in this particular rabbit hole. The response has been really terrific. We’re just really really grateful for that, because it makes it that much easier for us to push forward with the confidence that people like what they see of it so far. The pressure for us is a very good one, of just trying to create something that lives up to the promise that people have seen in it, and there was a similar feeling on Bastion so that definitely help me through the days and weeks because we haven’t always worked on games that people are excited about. It could be pretty rough working on something like the people out there don’t think is going to be anything worthwhile, so it’s good to have this type of pressure instead. We plan for it to come out sometime hopefully early next year, so we’ve got a ways to go, but we will try to keep everyone posted on how it’s going. We always appreciate the feedback and the questions on everything.

So with your design stages, how long did it take you to get to the pre-alpha stage?

It’s been a little over a year in development, though it’s kind of hard to measure on this particular project because we actually spent a lot of time last year still working on Bastion stuff. We released the iPad version of the game, which was a pretty intensive project. Only since the Fall of last year we’ve been working on Transistor with a whole ten-person team full speed ahead. At the same time it was really good to have a good amount of time for some of the core ideas, the narrative and the aspects that are designed for that, just to stew for a while, because linear time can really help when it comes to just generating early ideas. It’s impossible to schedule when you’re going to have a good idea for something. You could get writer’s block or whatever, start twirling around not sure where to go when you have an open-ended goal. So it’s been good having some of this other Bastion stuff just to give us some distance from this project so when we’ve come back to it we’ve been able to make good progress, and now we have a much stronger sense of where we’re going with it and are mostly in that mode where we just need to build out the rest of it, which is kind of a more comfortable problem having to just build the whole game than it is to just go “Well, what are you gonna do next?” and just total blue sky. The blue sky stage can be fun, but something about it very daunting as well. You could do ANYTHING, so what are you going to do? But that’s my own take on it. I feel different levels of anxiety about all different stages of game development.

I can imagine. Being creative people, we’re kind of our own worst critics. We kind of create our anxieties if the fans don’t create them for us.

Yeah, that’s for sure. We really appreciate the support and that people are keeping an eye on us. We’ll do our best to live up to what people have seen in this thing so far.

Thank you very much for your time, Greg. It’s been a very big honor to finally meet you.

Thank you very much!

You are a newly recruited inspection officer at the Arstotzkan boarder. Your wife and children are counting on you to accept or reject the right people who mean to live, work, or travel to the country. Failure to do so will result in their sickness and death.

These are the stakes in the interesting Papers, Please, now available on Steam Greenlight.

As of right now, there only exists a beta version of the game which contains 8 days of your toil in this clearly Soviet-inspired, crucial decision making game.

Visually the game has an amazing sense of style capturing the bleak and drab colors and setting of the era and location. Graphically is looks like a really great looking Commodore 64 game. There is a sharpness to the sprites that just stands out in a really striking way.

There is only one piece of music in the game. A tuba plays a few notes as citizens trudge up to the desk and hand you their papers. It fits the mood of the setting perfectly in a way that reminds one of the Communistic time period.

The game-play consists of evaluating the potential immigrants’, workers or vacationers’ documents as they pass through your check point. Each day the rules will become stricter and the player will need to adapt accordingly, such as checking for a work visa or citizen card.

It’s hard to explain how interesting this game is on face value. This setting shouldn’t be fun. Checking people papers shouldn’t be fun.  Communist Arstotzka shouldn’t be a place you enjoy. But you know what?

I do.

Today, Valve announced the sixth set of games and software to make it through the Steam Greenlight process. This set includes 20 items in total, with 18 games and two pieces of software:

• Agarest: Generations of War
• Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures
• Battle Worlds: Kronos
• City of Steam
• Cradle
• Dead State
• Dead Trigger
• Death Inc.
• Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey
• Elsword
• Faceless
• Frozen Endzone
• Hammerwatch
• Legend of Dungeon
• Pinball Arcade
• Planet Explorers
• Rush Bros.
• Shovel Knight
• PlayClaw (Software)
• GamePlan (Software)

Quite a few good-looking games on that list. I mentioned Cradle in my Greenlight article last week. Sadly, Cradle was the only game in that article that was Greenlit, so remember to go vote if any of the games I mentioned look interesting to you. I personally find it bizarre that Frozen Endzone even needed to go through Greenlight. This is the next game made by the developers of the critically-acclaimed and rather successful Frozen Synapse; you’d think they wouldn’t need Greenlight since their previous title was such a hit on Steam.

With this sixth wave, a total of over 90 games and pieces of software have made it through Greenlight. Roughly 28 of these titles have since been released on Steam.

Every now and then you play a game that throws you for a complete loop. It openly invites high expectations with a unique concept and fascinating story setting, only to find that their proverbial traps don’t spring quite as intended, with many aspects of its release marred by the look and feel of an incomplete product that, while certainly having many strong merits in its own right, leaves us feeling the need for, wait for it, less.  Half-good and half-terrible, it creates a tug-of-war in the player that keeps them from truly loving it as they wanted. So it goes with Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves (Tome I), the strategy action RPG with a liberal dose of tower defense from Artifice Studio. The story finds the player as one of two burly Canadian brothers, Jack or Joseph O’Carroll, who must put aside their raging differences to save the soul of their beloved sister Josephine from lupine enemies and demonic threats using sharp axes, ingenious traps, and steady aim. Strange things are occurring in the forests, and it is clear from the opening cinematic that the devil himself is to blame.

It is night, and a horse-drawn sleigh gallops through a wintry forest at an urgent pace, its rider bearing the orange glow of a lantern and the words of the Lord’s Prayer on his lips. He whips his head in the direction of a wolf’s frightening howl, unaware of the fallen tree that blocks his path. Thrown from the sleigh, he makes one final attempt to get to the cabin in the distance only to be cut down by an invisible menace. And so begins the story of werewolves haunting the town of Wolvesvale, and a taste of the enemy to come.

The enemy turns out to be plenty menacing once the game gets going; you begin with three tutorials that show you the basics of battling nocturnal threats, which present you with less threatening scenarios to get you familiarized with what is ahead. The game does, however, continue to give you more ongoing video tutorials to let you in on what your brand new weapons and abilities can do. This proves to be very helpful when the enemy waves start to include more powerful enemies. Wolves and Werewolves attack in tandem and both have a more powerful “Grand” version that packs an even bigger wallop. Facing these enemies down with axe and gun is no easy feat.

And this is where the traps come in. You begin each day on a 3D map of your defensive territory that shows you where the creatures are going to attack, which are indicated by a red dot and ‘X’ showing what direction they will head to their targets, i.e. the occupants of significant buildings in your territory, and clicking on a red marker will show you the route they will take to get to these places. You have a limited pool of Action Points. When you place a trap, the cost of the trap is deducted from these points, and certain traps cost actual money to place, such as the Wolf Trap or Spike Trap. These elements are essential in helping you set up your defenses, which you use to slow down, reroute, or outright kill an enemy before they get to you. This system works very well and provides a suitable challenge that is complimented by a melee segment which allows you to finish them off with much satisfaction.

This is repeated over twenty days of attacks, each day bringing a new threat or combination of creatures that require more and more strategy on the part of the player, which differs slightly between the brothers. If you chose Joseph, you get a bigger pool of Action Points and stronger melee power. If Jack, you get fewer AP and less melee strength, forcing the player to be much more strategic in placing traps.  As you progress you get new toys that give you a slight edge on the enemy. Some of the more useful traps are the basic Wolf Trap, Hanging Net, and my favorite, Bait. Baiting an enemy stops them in their tracks, perfect for placing under a hanging net trap or for slowing them down as you fend off other attackers. One of the best contraptions you get to use later in the game is the Watchtower Zip Line. You erect two towers that act as a fast transportation system between two points, allowing you to traverse the forest setting quickly.

But the forest isn’t the only setting featured in the game. Two areas open up to you for trade in between nights: Wolvesvale, the starting town where you can buy guns, axes, ammo, and other power ups to help you through the night. The other is the Innu village whose tribal members aid you in your fight against a tribe of shapeshifters called the Maikans. These areas are one of the rare parts of the game where you get sucked into the time period with its historical and rustic look. The town is rendered in 3D, but has a beautiful hand-drawn appearance that captures the folktale atmosphere of 1858 Lower Canada. This illustrative style carries over into all of the game menus giving you that woodsy feel that is perfect for the sound of eerie howls through the snow-covered trees.

And the game just sounds great on top of everything else. The Celtic folk music that plays at different points in the game grabs you and doesn’t let go. Indeed, you will have these tunes stuck in your head for several days. The best of these is the tune you hear during the rather long loading screen, but I almost like that it is long because I get to listen to an excellent rendition of real folk instrumentals. I love it when the music kicks in during a heated battle with accordion and rhythmic tapping going crazy making you feel like a wild Irish hero. Though some may feel it contrasts the dark nature of the game too much, it serves to keep things from feeling bleak and depressing, keeping everything upbeat and hopeful that victory will be achieved at the end of the story.

Yet it’s the story that is something to behold. Not because it is good, but because of how awfully executed it is. The idea is fantastic and does keep you wondering what’s going to happen next, but most of the intrigue is destroyed by shoddy presentation. One wonders how much input Amos Daragon author Bryan Perro actually had in the writing of the game, as it bears little resemblance to something one would expect from a published author. The 3D cut scenes break visual continuity with the rest of the game, and present us with a disjointed story that feels more like an after-thought than serious effort. We are treated here and there to more of the awesome hand-drawn cinematics, a look they should have stayed with throughout, but they are too few and far between. Finishing that off with below sub-par voice acting and unconvincing (though often still likeable) characters, we are left with a broken piece of the game that, if finished, would have put it over the moon. Pun intended.

But that is the extent of the bad, and I will ponder it no more. The rest of the game is so fun and addicting that one can look past such a glaring flaw and find a satisfying purchase for this first part of the series. I look forward to the next entry in the series, hoping with cautious optimism that the team at Artifice Studios can improve on and add to the fresh and fun gameplay they’ve introduced to us here. Part tower defense, part hack and slash, and part RPG, Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves is a game that is not to be missed by indie lovers and mainstream gamers alike. I can’t wait to grab the axe and flintlock for some more lycan-bashing exploits.

7.5/10

Space Bullet Dynamics Corporation has just recently released Signal Ops, a retro multi-FPS stealth game that allows you to do all kinds of neat super-spy stuff like assassinate targets, steal information, plant incriminating evidence, and sabotage enemy hardware all from the safety of a multi-monitored control room. What Space Bullet has done here is implemented a rare way to interact with some familiar gameplay mechanics that we all have seen in a few prominent game genres and set the whole experience in a charming little world that doesn’t take itself too seriously. On uproxx.com the game was described as “James Bond meets Deus Ex” and I could not agree more with this label mash-up. After a few delays to polish up their product, Signal Ops was officially released on April 2^nd 2013 at GoG.com.

My favorite aspect of this game was the art direction. It was truly a painter’s delight if you take the time to soak in the details. While not anywhere near the more high-end graphics of some games that utilize the very popular first-person perspective, the ambience and atmosphere were definitely augmented by the look of this game. Environmental lighting looked cool and really worked to showcase some of the more detailed and open areas of the game. For a game that incorporates so much stealth in the gameplay, I feel that there could have been more overall contrast between dark and lit areas. It was somewhat difficult at times to differentiate where my agents were hidden and where they were exposed but that is my only complaint about the visual side of this title. The sound design was functional but nothing spectacular. There were moments when I thought the ambient mechanical sounds were a bit loud and obtrusive; however, that did not happen often.

The writing of this game was superb and there was a dark sense of humor about the whole experience that fit perfectly in the game. There were mock-motivation posters around some of the interiors that cracked me up, a sign that states “Basic Training Tutorial….. Do it or Die!” is a perfect example of what I mean. Dialogue was also very quirky with serious activities and consequences being discussed in a snarky, comical tone. After stumbling through one of tutorials, the quest-giver says “Ahh… the uncomfortable sting of failure…… I am not surprised.” This writing style definitely added to the experience and I caught myself laughing out loud at some individual lines.

The espionage-focused gameplay had some flaws in my opinion. I liked the multi-perspective views that allowed you to see each mission from the view of all four agents; however, the screens were sometimes so small that it made missions harder than they should have been. Combine this with the difficulty of telling the difference between light and shadow areas, and some missions seemed downright impossible. Strategically moving multiple units opens up a lot of fun gameplay options but I found that the importance of the radio location ended up overshadowing everything else going on. You have to closely manage both the radio and a power source to keep it juiced up and in many of the missions, this was the biggest challenge. I like the realism this part brings to the game, but it quickly became a repetitive game of “where-to-put-my-radio-so-I-can-see” over and over again. Lastly, some clunky keyboard controls and a lackluster tutorial that had me more confused than enlightened dampened my initial excitement for the title. Right now, Signal Ops is available on GoG.com for $14.99 and I would rather see it for $9.99 but there is good quality to be found here if you spring for it.

Title: Signal Ops

Platforms: PC

Release Date: April 2^nd, 2013

Available at GoG.com