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
- 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)
- Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history – Design Room (2025)
Most Recent: PC
Coldwood’s inspiration for Yarny and Unravel… “What if we could make a game about love?”
“What if we could make a game about love?”
This sentiment is expressed several times in the video above by Coldwood’s Creative Director, Martin Sahlin, as he talks about the inspiration behind Unravel, and its adorable main character, Yarny. The developer revealed that Yarny’s red string is meant to symbolize the “bond” between people and that its tethered to something very important at the start of the game. He also shared a nice story about creating the first concept art for Unravel on a family camping trip with a handmade Yarny doll (and with his kids serving as an impromptu focus group). Excuse me, I think I have something in my eye…
Unravel will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on February 9.
New trailer for Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India released ahead of January 12 launch
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India will be released tomorrow, January 12, for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. To get fans ready for the franchise’s next 2.5D installment, Ubisoft recruited Lead Designer Matt Duff to narrate this brand new gameplay trailer.
Prospective players will be able to see many of Arbaaz Mir’s stealthy secrets, including smoke bombs, sound darts, a grappling hook, disguises, and his trusty Trident Blade. There’s also a brief look at the game’s futuristic Challenge Mode, along with the tougher Plus and Plus Hard difficulty levels.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India
Insert Quarter: Does the Oculus Rift’s $600 Price Tag Make it a Platform?
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
The general public was understandably blindsided when Oculus announced earlier this week that its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset would be priced at $600. That kind of financial outlay is usually reserved for a brand new game console or the latest and greatest iPhone.
GamesIndustry.biz’s Rob Fahey believes that this extravagant price tag repositions the Rift as a “platform” that must be supported instead of a “gadget” to be tried. Oculus will need to join the ranks of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to ensure the Rift has enough content to support a growing audience of gamers:
That brings us back to Oculus Rift and its $600 price point (which is $600 minimum – expect it to be significantly higher in other territories). Six hundreds bucks is a platform, in the eyes of the vast, vast majority of consumers. $300 may, for a fairly broad swathe of consumers with decent disposable income, be worth a punt just to “see what it’s like”, to own the latest thing, to show off to friends; $600 needs to justify its existence in far broader terms. Oculus Rift’s pricing pushes it squarely into the position of being a platform, and it must present and justify itself in those terms. In short, now that the price is on the table, Oculus has to prove itself on a harsh frontier that has often sunk even the toughest and most deep-pocketed of challengers; it has to deliver software, software and more software.
The full article is available for your perusal at GamesIndustry.biz.
Posted in Insert Quarter, PC
Deep Silver might release Homefront: The Revolution on May 17
They say “war is hell,” but it might be just as accurate to say “developing war games is hell,” especially when you look at the sorted history behind Homefront: The Revolution.
After the massive success of the first game, Homefront 2 was announced by THQ and Crytek nearly five years ago. The game was set to be developed by Crytek UK, who revealed a plan to move the action to Europe, adding a second theater to the franchise’s US-Korea conflict. After THQ’s bankruptcy woes, the rights to Homefront 2 were purchased by the developer, who promptly shifted the story back to America (specifically, Philadelphia) and added the “Revolution” subtitle. Crytek went through their own financial crisis several months later and ultimately passed the game’s rights to Deep Silver, who also acquired the developer’s UK studio, which they renamed to Dambuster Studios.
While it seems like Homefront: The Revolution might be cursed, Deep Silver has carried on anyway, and it looks like they might release the game this Spring. Officially marked with a “TBA 2016” release date, XboxAchievements recently published a picture of a Target Pre-Order Card for Homefront: The Revolution that lists the game’s release date as May 17, 2016.
Obviously, we don’t know if Homefront: The Revolution will actually be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on May 17, but the date is a Tuesday and the original Homefront did manage to find its fairly large audience after a Spring 2011 release. Deep Silver hasn’t commented on the release date leak, but I feel pretty confident that this could turn out to be true.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Homefront: The Revolution
Nominees for the 2016 Game Developers Choice Awards have been announced
Bloodborne, Fallout 4, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Rocket League, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will all be competing for “Game of the Year” honors at this year’s Game Developers Choice Awards, which will be held on Wednesday, March 16.
With four nominations apiece, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt became the most-nominated titles this year. In addition to “Game of the Year,” The Phantom Pain is also up for “Best Audio,” “Best Design,” and “Best Technology.” Meanwhile, The Witcher 3 will attempt to also take home “Best Visual Art,” “Best Narrative,” and “Best Technology.”
Fallout 4 and Bloodborne were just a step behind both titles with three total nominations of their own. However, they have a lot of company as Star Wars: Battlefront, Splatoon, Her Story, and Undertale all received a trio of nominations as well.
Viewers at home will be able to watch the 2016 Game Developers Choice Awards through Twitch, and a complete look at this year’s nominees can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS3, PS4, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Bloodborne, Fallout 4, GDC 2016, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Rocket League, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Mini Metro, Her Story lead all nominees at the 2016 Independent Games Festival Awards
The Independent Games Festival has announced the nominees for their 18th annual awards, and two very different games lead the pack as Mini Metro, a tranquil public transportation sim, and Her Story, a detective story that uses 90s-era full motion video, will both be competing for the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize.”
The minimalist Mini Metro collected three other nominations including “Excellence In Visual Art,” “Excellence In Design,” and “Excellence In Audio.” Meanwhile, Her Story also racked up three additional nominations including “Excellence In Narrative,” “Excellence In Design,” and the “Nuovo Award.” Both games will be competing for the “Grand Prize” against Darkest Dungeon, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, Superhot, and Undertale.
The 2016 Independent Games Festival Awards will be held on Wednesday, March 16, during this year’s Game Developers Conference. If you aren’t going to be in San Francisco to attend the show in person, you can watch the festivities live through Twitch. However, if you are attending GDC 2016, all of this year’s finalists will be playable on the show floor at the IGF Pavilion.
A complete list of the nominees and honorable mentions for the 2016 Independent Games Festival Awards can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged GDC 2016, Her Story, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, Mini Metro, Superhot
Warp Zoned’s 2015 Golden Pixel Awards: Honoring Our Favorite Games From Last Year
The conventional wisdom will tell you that 2015 was a down year for games and that all the good stuff got pushed back to 2016. But how can you trust the conventional wisdom when last year featured a ridiculously entertaining string of good games starring kid squids, gothic hunters, glitchy sci-fi heroes, and the lone survivor of a nuclear war. And all that’s before you dip into the millions of user-created levels from Super Mario Maker.
Yup, we think 2015 was a pretty great year for games, especially the ones that took home some hardware during our annual Golden Pixel Awards… (more…)
Posted in Etcetera, Features, Mobile, PC, PS4, Top Story, Wii U, Xbox One
Tagged Alphabear, Axiom Verge, Batman: Arkham Knight, Bloodborne, Broforce, Earthbound Beginnings, Fallout 4, Guitar Hero Live, Her Story, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Mortal Kombat X, N++, Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Until Dawn
Psychonauts 2 reaches its $3.3 million funding goal on Fig
After amassing more than 20,000 backers, Double Fine’s crowdfunding campaign for Psychonauts 2 reached its $3.3 million goal yesterday on Fig. Unlike Kickstarter, Fig allows backers to invest in projects and eventually see a return on their investment once the game is released. At this moment, more than half of Psychonauts 2’s funding ($1.7 million) has been provided by investors.
“We’re so grateful to our backers for giving us this chance to continue the story of Raz and the Psychonauts. Knowing that they will be able to participate as investors in the game makes the whole thing feel more fair and more rewarding,” said Tim Schafer, the President and CEO of Double Fine Productions.
The Psychonauts 2 crowdfunding campaign will wrap up on Tuesday, and then begins the long process of actually developing the game. As of now, Double Fine is planning to release Psychonauts 2 sometime in Fall 2018 for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Psychonauts 2