News

By Mike Wall at March 7, 2012.

Registration for Dream.Build.Play 2012 is Now Open, WP7 Included Too!

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Dave Voyles in News, PC News, xblig, XBLIG News | Leave a comment

Registration for Microsoft’s Dream.Build.Play Challenge is now open for all developers through May 15. The annual competition looks to highlight the best games developed using Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio, and this year the competition has expanded to include WP7 games. It’s free to enter, so you really don’t have any excuse to not sign up. Hey, it might even light a fire beneath you to get that project you’ve been sitting on completed and out the door. You’ll have from May 15 – June 12 to actually submit your game for consideration, so you’ve got a bit more time.

How will they be judging your masterpiece? Easy.

Fun factor (40%) – A key indicator will be the desire to keep playing.
Innovation (30%) – How creative and technically unique is your game?
Production quality (30%) – Make your game world as polished as possible!

The top 20 teams will be announced in August and have the opportunity to win $112,500 in cash, including $40,000 for the Xbox 360 Grand Prize winner and $20,000 for the WP7 winner. They will receive the chance at a WP7 or XBLA publishing deal, and also win a Windows Phone. This year, the allotted file size has increased to 500MB for Xbox games, so this should allow for some interesting entries as well.

Don’t have the tools to build your own game? It’s cool, they’ve provided them for you. The Windows Phone SDK 7.1 includes XNA Game Studio 4.0, along with the Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) emulator. From there you’ll be able to deploy your titles to both on Windows Phone 7, XBLIG, and the PC.

Take a gander at their official site to learn more, or visit the Facebook page to stay up to date with everyday occurrences.

Source: Microsoft

Want an Email When Gunpoint is Released?

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Mike Wall in News, PC News | Leave a comment

Queue the somber violins: Tom Francis’ Gunpoint isn’t going to make its scheduled July release date. But, the the developer of the spy-based game has set up a mailing list to notify you when you can throw down your hard earned Benjamins for the game.

“At this point, you might wonder why I even bother to guess when Gunpoint will be done. Plenty of developers have a ‘When it’s done’ policy, which always makes me want to say ‘I know, I was asking when that will be.’ What they really mean, of course, is ‘We have no idea when it will be done,’ a position I have a newfound sympathy for,” Francis wrote on his blog.

You can find a timeline of features that need to be added to the game over on Francis’ blog. Assuming everything goes exactly according to plan, it looks as the game could be finished sometime in August, but we all know how often things go exactly as expected in the world of espionage. In the meantime, you can treat your eyes to the latest trailer posted above, or stop by the IGF Pavilion at GDC to take the game for a test drive.

Source: Tom Francis’ Blog

One Finger Death Punch Trailer Beats up a Billion Dudes

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Mike Wall in News, PC Reviews, Previews, XBLIG Previews | 5 Comments

Silver Dollar Games is taking a break from trying to figure out who fornicated with whom and wants you to start smashing faces with One Finger Death Punch. The reflex-based kung fu game has your stick -figure hero dishing out the pain with an impressive array of moves that are pulled off with just one or two buttons, depending on the difficulty level.

Why just a stick figure? Developer Jon Flook said “We don’t have the skills to do the animations ourselves and can’t afford an animator. To overcome this obstacle we decided to use a stickman style of animation. This allowed us to create many frames of animations ourselves without the need of an animator, simply because it’s affordable. It’s not as cool as having custom drawn animations with a unique artistic style but we do the best we can with the resources available.”

Flook said the game is “at least two months from completion,” but that they are looking to add in customizable special attacks and other features before the game is released. Anything you’d like to see added? Drop a comment on the Youtube trailer page.

Orbitron: Revolution Drops in Price, Revolves to the Front of the Indie Marketplace

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Dave Voyles in News, XBLIG News | Leave a comment

It hasn’t been a bad week for developer Firebase Industries, as Orbitron: Revolution has not only received a dashboard promotion, but a price drop too. While we’re still not certain of how the titles get selected to appear on the cover of the XBLIG section on the dashboard, it is certainly nice to see it rotating. When the new dash launched two weeks ago, it was Castle Miner, and yesterday it changed to Orbitron.

Firebase Industries has also dropped the title from it’s original price of 240 MS points ($3): a price point most developers have had a difficult time with. It’s now only 80 MS points ($1), which seems to be the sweet spot for most games. Are there any other titles you see dropping in price on the market? Let us know!

New Antichamber Trailer Will Tease Your Brain

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Taylor Bliss in News, PC News | Leave a comment

You really don’t have your finger on the pulse of indie games if you don’t know about Antichamber. Since its initial inception, developer Alexander Bruce has made a point to get Antichamber in the hands of as many judges as possible. So far the game has been recognized as a finalist or winner of a number of contests including the Indie Game Challenge, Independent Games Festival, PAX, IndieCade, and it won the Grand Prize in the Make Something Unreal Contest.

Now, Bruce has a new teaser trailer available for Antichamber on his website that we’ve embedded for your viewing convenience. It gives you just a taste of the twist the developer promises to take on the typical puzzle gameplay. For more information, check out the official website. If you’re looking for a chance to try the game yourself, then I hope you have your passes to PAX East secured, because he plans to have it playable there next.

Source: Demruth

Help Kickstart a Sequel to Auditorium

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Taylor Bliss in News, PC News | Leave a comment

A few weeks back we gave everyone the tip about Cipher Prime’s Fractal being free for a short while. Now that you’ve gotten your game gratis, it’s time to give back to the rhythm game developer. Cipher Prime has turned to Kickstarter to fund a sequel to Auditorium, their debut title. Auditorium 2: Duet will feature similar gameplay to the first title, except now with some oh-so-sweet cooperative gameplay. They’re asking for $60,000, and have banked over $11,000 so far.

“We are essentially asking for our fans and backers to give us the opportunity to focus entirely on a game that we all want, without needing to worry about whether our company can stay afloat. Anything we get above our target will go right back into the game–more game depth, more platforms, more creative flourishes,” the studio wrote on the Kickstarter page.

If want to get an idea of what kind of game might be coming from this project, you can check out a free demo of the first game at www.playauditorium.com, or take a look at the game on Steam.

Source: Kickstarter

Idle Thumbs Kickstarter Includes Video Game Short Story from Blendo Games

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Dave Voyles in News, PC News | Leave a comment

With the recent success of Double Fine’s efforts to raise their requested $400k in under 12 hours, Kickstarter campaigns seem to be all the rage. The guys behind the Idle Thumbs Podcast are the latest to cash in, and they easily surpassed their goal of $30,000, and they still have 21 days to go. It currently sits at $108,457.

Idle Thumbs was (well, is about to be again) a podcast covering the games industry by three game industry veterans. After a hiatus over the past several years, Chris Remo, Sean Vanaman, and Jake Rodkin have decided to start it up again. So what makes a podcast worth paying for? (And if you find the secret, please let us in on it!) We’re not quite sure, but 1961 (good year) people seem to know the answer to that one.

They are giving away tons of prizes (seriously, LOTS), including Thirty Flights of Loving, a video game short story from Blendo Games developed for this Kickstarter. Be sure to hop on over to the page and check some of the others out. Would you be willing to pay for a podcast, from say…. a select cephalopod? Just askin’, just askin’.

Via: Blendo Games
Source: Kickstarter

Get Your Beat on For Less: Beat Hazard Drops to $1 on Xbox

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Mike Wall in News, xblig, XBLIG News | 2 Comments

You can now own Beat Hazard for the amount of money that you may dump into a parking meter on a daily basis. Cold Beam Games dropped the price of its potentially seizure-inducing, music-based shooter from $5 to a mere dollar on XBLIG. If your eyes haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing Beat Hazard, it’s a twin-stick shooter that streams songs from your computer and builds customized levels using the trippiest, flashiest visualizers imaginable.

Beat Hazard follows in the footsteps of several other prominent XBLIG’s to drop in price following Microsoft’s more relaxed pricing model, including Cthulhu Saves the World, Take Arms, and Escape Goat. Check out our review for our full thoughts on the game, or the Xbox Live Marketplace to lay down your dollar.

Source: Cold Beam Games