Retro Affect’s long-in-development Snapshotwill be released on Steam “very soon,” according to lead programmer David Carrigg. In a video interview with Pixabyte, Carrigg said that the photo-themeed puzzle-platformer will be released before summer on PC, and most likely Linux and Mac. It will also be released on PS3 later this summer, and “future consoles in addition to that.”
Snapshot lets you play as PIC, a robot that has the ability to remove objects from the environment with its camera and store them for use in other areas. You can check out our full impressions from last year’s PAX East.
I’m sure you’re curious as to just what Super Meat Boy would look like as a zombie. Well, so that you don’t have to delve into the bowels of Deviant Art to find out, we’ll leave it to Sticky DPad Games for the answer. The anthropomorphic wad of meat is currently planned to be an unlockable character in the open-world RPG, Night of the Fred, which is coming to XBLIG and possibly PC this October.
After wondering what Super Meat Boy might look like as a zombie, co-founder, art, and design guy, Adam Anderson, drew up some concept art for Night of the Fred featuring the hardcore platforming superstar. Then, he thought it might be a good idea to share it with guys over at Team Meat, for obvious legal reasons, but also just because he wanted to share it with a team whose work he appreciated. “Before going back to work on the in-game work, I thought I’d tweet the image to Edmund McMillen, just for fun. Alongside it, I joked that I didn’t want a lawsuit!” he said.
But Anderson got a reply that he wasn’t expecting. “Minutes later, we got a response, saying we could use it, and that he didn’t mind at all. We thought he was just joking around at first! But I emailed him later that day to confirm it, and he was being serious.” It’s always great to see indie studios supporting each other, even if it’s a simple gesture such as allowing the use of a character as a cameo. Anderson doesn’t take the gesture lightly either. “It’s a major honor, seriously!”
While Night of the Fred will focus on a large main quest and tons of unlockables, two extremely important components of any large-scale RPG, Sticky DPad also has another game in the works. Dawn of the Fred, slated for this summer, is a zombie-survival game promising to be different from the rest, though the details are a bit reclusive. The main mode will be a multiplayer survival game currently meant for local co-op, but possibly online multiplayer as well. There’s also going to be a one-to-two-hour campaign providing some background story as to the events preceding Night of the Fred.
On Friday afternoon in Las Vegas, during the DICE summit, the top winners of this year’s Indie Game Challenge were announced. Taking the grand prize of $100,000 was Closure. Made by a 3-person team based out of San Diego, Closure is a puzzle platformer that plays on the functions of light and shadow, and the ability to alter the world using both elements.
The other winners include Symphony, which took home $2,500 for the award in technical achievement and also the GameStop PC Digital Download Award. The latter grants the game special promotional space normally reserved for major retail releases on GameStop’s digital distribution service (the company values this at $50,000). The Bridge nabbed two awards: Achievement in Art Direction and Achievement in Gameplay, both valued at $2,500. Finally, Nitronic Rush crossed the finish line for the Gamer’s Choice Award, which was decided by an online poll, and also earned the developers $2,500.
The final portion of the challenge, which awards one game’s development team with a $50,000 scholarship to SMU, will be announced later this year. You can read descriptions of the games and interviews with the developers on the Indie Game Challenge website.
Sure it’s a teaser of a game that’s not officially announced, but that just lends to the creepy, mysterious atmosphere that envelops Frictional Games at all times. One thing does seem for sure, it’s another Amnesia game.
The page, www.nextfrictionalgame.com, displays a single image embroidered with the phrase “Something is emerging…” which will likely be my panic as I imagine myself playing another one of their terrifying games. The nondescript, blurred picture also links to a Google Maps search for “China.” Most people are figuring that the game will take place in China. Personally, I think it’ll just be the most terrifying search for China imaginable.
Smudged Cat Games has released a new video demonstrating the variety of tools that you can utilize in their Portal-ish Metroidvania platformer, Gateways. The video, hosted by developer David Johnston, shows off portals that function like those in Valve’s seminal classic, ones that let you rotate the screen to walk on walls, and a time-traveling gateway that creates a replicant of the old scientist. Smudged Cat is aiming to let you take control of the Gateway gun on XBLIG and PC this June.
For some, Valentine’s Day is a time to get away with that someone special and share a moment of appreciation for one another. For others, it’s an excuse to to sit back and catch up on that growing backlog of games while drowning your sorrows in a beverage or chocolate-filled desert of your choice.
This year, Indie Royale is helping entertain those without a date by releasing 5 new titles as part of their Valentine’s Bundle. As always, if you beat the current minimum ($4.35, as seen above) you will receive all of the titles in the package, including the the newly released PC ports of Magical Time Bean’s SoulCaster I & II.
Other titles included in the bundle are the XBLA hit Zeno Clash, the dragonrific Hoard, and the eccentric-looking Lume. Hurry over to the Indie Royale site, because there are only 4 days left!
New Life Interactive’s cancer-curing, voxel-based game, Cell: emergence finally has a release date. The “action surgery game” will be released on February 9 on Xbox Live Indie Games for $5 (400 MS Points). Cell: emergence HD will also be released for PC for GamersGate, Gamestop PC Downloads, Green Man Gaming, Playism, and Desura for $8.95. The extra four bucks nabs you almost twice as many cells to destroy, along with improved sound.
You might remember Cell: emergence as that trippy-looking game written by Sheldon Pacotti, the writer of the seminal Deus Ex. You play as a microscopic nanobot fighting against diseases inside a the body of a sick child, and you have to stunt the growth of the rapidly-reproducing malignant cells by employing a mixture of RTS tactics and good old fashioned arcade shooting. Sound confusing? Check out the developer walkthrough video (conveniently embedded above!) for a glimpse into this unique game.
The action surgery game “Cell: emergence” will be released Thursday, February 9th on Xbox LIVE Indie Games, GamersGate, GameStop PC Downloads (formerly Impulse), Green Man Gaming, Playism, and Desura. A free demo will be released on Tuesday, February 7th.
In the game players fight a nanoscale war against disease inside the body of a sick child. The fast, deep simulation of tissues, antibodies, germs, nanomachinery, and other elements is achieved with a “dynamic voxel” gameworld, within which every visual detail has meaning, reacts to the player, and interacts with its neighbors.
The Xbox version of the game, selling for 400 MS Points, offers a world of almost half a million cells, and the “Cell HD” version on PC, selling for $8.95 USD, offers a world of nearly a million. The HD version on the PC also provides higher fidelity sound and more frenetic gameplay tuned exclusively to the mouse/trackball/touchpad.
The Xbox version will be available in English and in English subtitled for Japanese, German, and Spanish. The PC version will be available in the preceding languages plus Italian, French, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Korean.
Inspired by “hard” ’80s arcade games like Defender, Centipede, and Missile Command, Cell offers 17 punishing levels that require players to decipher a level’s “cellular automata” simulation and then battle living processes with speed and dexterity.
The game’s story, written by Deus Ex writer Sheldon Pacotti, is a first glimpse at a near-future fictional world where war is fought in code and chemistry and the inner workings of Nature.
ABOUT NEW LIFE INTERACTIVE, LLC
New Life Interactive, LLC is an indie game studio based in Austin, TX specializing in massively reactive gameplay.
Green Man Gaming (GMG) is the leading UK-based independent digital retailer for PC games, selling more than 700 titles from 75 publishing partners to 146 countries around the world. Thanks to its unique proprietary technology, GMG offers consumers the ability to trade-in their digitally downloaded games for new purchases, while enabling publishers to generate on-going revenue from their intellectual property. Green Man Gaming is the only games retailer to pay a royalty back to a publisher on all pre-owned sales.
Whenever someone disagrees with a critic, their first reaction always seems to be “I’d like to see you do it better.” Well, Nick Puleo is going to try and do just that. The founder and managing editor of Co-Optimus has teamed up with longtime friend Dave Paul to form Brian Shape Games, and their first release, SCHAR: Blue Shield Alliance, is due out later this year for Xbox Live Indie Games and PC.
As you might imagine, SCHAR is a cooperative experience and looks to spice up the twin-stick shooter experience by adding strategy and RPG features. Set in the year 2997, you play as one of four unique ships in the Blue Shield Alliance, which is humanity’s last hope against the Constituents of Nothing, a bunch of aliens with a penchant for antagonizing human colonies.
“I’ve always been interested in game development, and have been tinkering with it for many years. I’m a programmer by nature and have been doing it since I was 12 or 13,” said Puleo. The pair have been developing games casually together for about 20 years, and have been working on SCHAR at night and on weekends.
The trailer is heavy on story details, but light on actual gameplay. “We’re only about halfway through the development process at this point, and we have a lot of work to do on things like art, sound, and level content,” Puleo wrote on a post on Co-Optimus. We’ll have a better feel for it after we get our mitts on it this spring at PAX East.
Radiangames dipped its toes into the PC market earlier this month with Super Crossfire, but now it is preparing to cannonball off the high dive and drench us all in its neon nectar. The studio has announced that four more games are coming to PC and Mac on January 24, and it is bundling them together for a limited time. The Quadtastic Launch Collection includes updated versions of 3 of our favorite XBLIG games: Inferno, Ballistic, and Fireball. The fourth game is the previously unreleased Slydris, a puzzle game that appears to be the most drastic departure from the developer’s explosion-laden catalog. The bundle is available for pre-order on the Radiangames website for $9.99, and then it will be $11.99 until it disappears from the face of the Internet on February 1.
Do you scoff at a mere four games in a bundle? Do you demand audial treats with your multi-game purchases? There are also two larger bundles that will survive past the Quadtastic Launch Collection’s short shelf life. The Super Radiangames Collection includes everything from the Quadtastic Bundle and throws in Super Crossfire for $14.99 ($12.99 pre-order). But wait, there’s more! The I Love Radiangames Collection includes all that jazz plus access to the Inferno+ Beta and soundtracks to all the games for $19.99. A portion of all of the bundle sales will be donated to Child’s Play and St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital. The percentage donated increases as more bundles are sold.
Sick of bundles? All of the games will be available à la carte for $4.99 ($6.99 for Inferno) on February 1.
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to turn your attention to what may be the first major platformer of 2012. It’s called Dustforce, and it takes the concept of broom sweeping to new and exciting levels — like Super Meat Boy exciting. And it comes out January 17 on Steam.
As you may see in the trailer, the mechanics of movement are very similar to the 2010 indie hit, but the real hook is the way the sweeper’s broom tethers to piles of mess on platforms. It creates a graceful and stylish motion that can then hook into attacks on enemies, which are often accomplished mid-air.
Though we can’t vouch for whether the gameplay succeeds in being fun, we can definitely say something for the incredible 2D visuals seen in the trailers and screenshots. The music is damn good, too.
With all the hype the game has received from the mainstream press, we have high hopes for its success. And perhaps Armless Octopus will be able to deliver its own verdict soon.
