Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Angry Birds, Dragon Quest, FIFA Soccer, and Silent Hill are the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
- BAFTA Games Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books to Get a New Look for Richard Moss’s “Age of Empires”
- GDC Awards: All the Winners from 1996 to Today
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- How a Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game – The New York Times (2026)
- Spore: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- We Pitched a Museum a 1993 Game Hint Line (And They Actually Said Yes) – Yarn Spinner (2026)
- The History Of The Word “Metroidvania” And How It Spread – A Critical Hit (2025)
- Creator of Hit Game Shovel Knight Is at a ‘Make or Break’ Moment – Bloomberg (2025)
Most Recent: Articles
Daily Scoop: December 23, 2015 – Last day for SPORTS!
It’s almost Christmas, which is exciting for me, because it means that’s when my time off from my day job begins. Hooray! I’m super excited to have a vacation where I just play games. Well, I’ll be doing a lot of work, too, but… games. And pajamas. And sleep! And cookies. But also games.
Speaking of games, you have less than a day left to get the Humble Weekly Bundle, which is just called SPORTS! Pay what you want for Max Gentleman (with the Triple DLC Pack), Qvadriga, and OlliOlli. Beat the average to get WRC4, Vertiginous Golf, and one of my all-time favorites, Sportsfriends. Pay $10 or more to unlock OOTP Baseball 16.
The Steam sale is still going strong, of course. Get South Park: The Stick of Truth for $7.49, Portal 2 for $3.99, and Dishonored for $4.99, along with tons of franchise sales, including Warhammer, Arma, and Dirt.
Some good t-shirts today! (more…)
Posted in Daily Scoop
Xbox Store Today: Minecraft Story Mode Episode 4, Frizzy
Two new titles are available to download today through the Xbox Games Store…
- Telltale is releasing their fourth, and second-to-last, episode in their Minecraft: Story Mode adaptation. The End will be reached in 2016, but for now, you can experience the penultimate episode on the Xbox One and Xbox 360.
- Also available today is Frizzy, a platformer for the Xbox One that features a retro art style from the 90s.
More information on both games can be found right here:
Xbox One Games
Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode 4: A Block and A Hard Place ($4.99)
As Jesse, you’ll embark on a perilous adventure across the Overworld, through the Nether, to the End, and beyond. You and your friends revere the legendary Order of the Stone: Warrior, Redstone Engineer, Griefer, and Architect; slayers of the Ender Dragon. While at EnderCon in hopes of meeting Gabriel the Warrior, you and your friends discover that something is wrong… something dreadful. Terror is unleashed, and you must set out on a quest to find The Order of the Stone if you are to save your world from oblivion.Frizzy ($7.99)
Frizzy is a tiny ball of dirt and fur. Within this late 90’s retro art style setting, the player must solve puzzles while simultaneously moving in an intense platforming environment utilizing gravity and sandbox mechanics. Frizzy can static cling to special objects called balloons, which fling Frizzy around each level.Xbox 360 Games
Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode 4: A Block and A Hard Place ($4.99)
As Jesse, you’ll embark on a perilous adventure across the Overworld, through the Nether, to the End, and beyond. You and your friends revere the legendary Order of the Stone: Warrior, Redstone Engineer, Griefer, and Architect; slayers of the Ender Dragon. While at EnderCon in hopes of meeting Gabriel the Warrior, you and your friends discover that something is wrong… something dreadful. Terror is unleashed, and you must set out on a quest to find The Order of the Stone if you are to save your world from oblivion.
Posted in News, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Minecraft: Story Mode
Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, Minecraft: Story Mode Ep4, Trine 3, more added to PS Store
With just two days to go before Christmas, Sony is gifting PlayStation owners with a massive new PlayStation Store update this week. PS4, PS3, and PS Vita players will be able to purchase…
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (PS3, Vita) – XSEED Games and Falcom have finally brought the RPG to the North American market, more than two years after its Japanese debut.
- Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode 4: A Block and A Hard Place (PS4, PS3) – The penultimate episode of Telltale’s Patton Oswalt-starring Minecraft story is now available.
- Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power (PS4) – Frozenbyte’s latest puzzle platformer comes to consoles for the first time.
More information on all of these games (and a few other new releases) can be found after the break. And don’t forget to visit the PlayStation Blog for a complete rundown of this week’s new game add-ons and discounts. (more…)
Posted in News, PS3, PS4, Vita
Tagged Minecraft: Story Mode, Trine 3 : The Artifacts of Power
Daily Scoop: December 22, 2015 – So many games on sale!
It’s that time of year… when your backlog is about to get even bigger, and your digital backlog is so embarrassing that you don’t even want to look at it. But you have to acknowledge it, because it’s time for the massive Steam Winter Sale!
There are some crazy sales there, like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain for $40.19, Spelunky for $3.74, Killer Is Dead – Nightmare Edition for $3.99, and indie darling Undertale for $7.99. They’re also having huge sales on the franchies for The Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, and Devil May Cry.
There’s also a shiny new bundle at Humble – the Humble Square Enix Bundle 3! Pay $1 or more for The Last Remnant, Life is Strange Episode 1, Murdered: Soul Suspect, and Tomb Raider I, II, and III. Beat the average to unlock Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Just Cause Collection, Front Mission Evolved, Gyromancer, and Yosumin. Pay $8.99 or more to unlock Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, Tomb Raider GOTY Edition, and Hitman Absolution: Elite Edition.
There are no shirts today, but that shouldn’t stop you from shirt-surfing! (more…)
Posted in Daily Scoop
Capybara will now release Below in 2016
It look like Capybara’s Below, a roguelike in development for the PC and Xbox One, is going to need a little more time in the oven. Originally expected to be out by the end of 2015, Capybara’s President and Co-Founder, Nathan Vella, recently told Game Informer that the game was pushed back to 2016:
Below is indeed coming in 2016. Past that I can’t share much, yet. We’ll certainly have a lot more content to show and news to share in the new year.
Since there’s just a week and a half to go in 2015, this news isn’t too surprising.
Concept art from Agent unveiled by an artist formerly employed by Rockstar
Even though it was announced more than six years ago, Rockstar’s Agent, their PS3-exclusive Cold War shooter, has never officially been canceled. But aside from the game’s logo, the gaming public hasn’t heard anything else about it in all that time. Until today, that is.
Darren Charles Hatton, an artist formerly employed by Rockstar North, has updated his official website with some concept art he created for Agent back in 2009. According to Hatton, his team was pulled off the project less than a year later and eventually put to work on Grand Theft Auto V. The artist left Rockstar in 2010, but he said, “[I’m not] sure if this project will ever be published.”
The leaked concept art has been posted after the break, and you can find even more environment tests at Hatton’s Agent portfolio. Take-Two Interactive renewed the trademark for Agent back in 2014, but hasn’t spoken publicly about the game in years. (more…)
Harmonix hopes you’ll “Desire” the U2 Essentials 01 Pack… which is available through the Rock Band 4 Music Store beginning today
Harmonix is taking a trip “Where the Streets Have No Name” today to give players a chance to purchase an eight-pack of U2 songs in Rock Band 4.
The U2 Essentials 01 Pack starts with 1983’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” before taking a career-spanning journey through many of U2’s biggest hits including 1984’s “Pride (In The Name Of Love),” 1987’s “Where The Streets Have No Name,” 1988’s “Desire,” 1992’s “One,” and 2004’s “Vertigo.” The pack closes out with two songs from last year’s Songs of Innocence: “California (There Is No End To Love),” and “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone).”
Players will be able to purchase the complete U2 Essentials 01 Pack for $13.49, with individual songs priced at $1.99 apiece. A video preview of all eight songs has been embedded above.
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Rock Band 4
Kickstart This! Deserted, Wanda: A Beautiful Apocalypse, Night City Assault
Kickstarter recently released a long-awaited Fulfillment Report, an independent analysis of its crowdfunding activities by Professor Ethan Mollick of the University of Pennsylvania. While the report contains a lot of interesting data, the number many media outlets are focusing on is the 9% failure rate of fully-funded projects. The report has this to say about the numbers:
Is a 9% failure rate reasonable for a community of people trying to bring creative projects to life? We think so, but we also understand that the risk of failure may deter some people from participating. We respect that. We want everyone to understand exactly how Kickstarter works — that it’s not a store, and that amid creativity and innovation there is risk and failure.
Let’s look at this another way. 91% of projects across all categories succeed and deliver. What industry can say that? There is an old adage in the film industry that mentions that 7 out of 10 features lose money, two break even, and one film makes enough money to cover the loss. This is almost the opposite.
Personally I have yet to support a successful project, video game related or otherwise, that has not delivered after receiving my funds (or at least been on course to do so). Yes, I practise what I preach and donate on crowdfunding sites. I recently had an update from lead developer James Fletcher about his long-gestating project Knite and the Ghost Lights. In a nutshell, he had to put the project on hiatus to work for six months so he could support his family and then return to the game. Despite waiting longer than I thought I would for the game, James’ commitment to do six months of commercial work in order to realise his dream keeps my faith alive in the crowdfunding community. There are people out there who seek to con others, but that’s why we have columns like Kickstart This!
So what games are we urging you to back this time around? We start off with RPG action-adventure Deserted, before shining a light on not one but two games from Australia. The first is cutesy robot puzzler Wanda: A Beautiful Apocalypse, while the second is the Streets of Rage-inspired RPG beat ‘em up Night City Assault. (more…)