Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- 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
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Wins “Game of the Year” at 2025-2026 GDC Awards
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- 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)
- In 2005, games started rewiring our brains – The AV Club (2025)
Most Recent: PC
Warp Zoned’s 2018 Golden Pixel Awards: Our Favorite Games From Last Year
2018 was an absolutely astounding year for video games, and while we might not have gotten the chance to play everything we wanted, the Warp Zoned staff was definitely able to add a big batch of new games to our “Favorites” pile.
This year’s selection of standout titles offered something for everybody… Insomniac’s Spider-Man let us soar above Manhattan as the webslinger like never before… The mountainous milieu of Matt Thorson’s Celeste challenged our thumbs and our hearts… Capcom’s Mega Man 11 brought the Blue Bomber back for the first time in almost a decade… And those three games were just the tip of the iceberg.
The Golden Pixel Awards aren’t the “Best Games” from 2018, but these are the titles we plan to return to again and again in 2019 (and beyond). We hope you enjoy them as much as we did. (more…)
Posted in Features, Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tagged Alphabear 2, Celeste, Dead Cells, Just Shapes and Beats, Katamari Damacy, Mega Man 11, Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, Octopath Traveler, Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, Spider-Man, Starlink: Battle For Atlas, Tetris Effect
Nominees for the 2019 Writers Guild Award for Videogame Writing have been announced
The Writers Guild of America has announced the nominees for this year’s “Writers Guild Award for Videogame Writing.”
Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, Telltale’s Batman: The Enemy Within – Episode 5: Same Stitch, Sony’s God of War, Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, and Insomniac’s Spider-Man will all be competing for the honor, and the winner will be revealed on February 17.
The complete list of nominated writers can be found after the break. (more…)
Red Dead Redemption 2 leads the way with 7 nominations at 2019 GDC Awards
It looks like Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man, and God of War will be taking over another awards show, as the three games lead the way at the 2019 Game Developers Choice Awards. Rockstar’s “Cowboy Game” secured the most nominations with seven, but Sony’s Spider-Man and God of War were close behind with six apiece.
As you might have guessed, all three games are in the running for the coveted “Game of the Year” trophy, and they’ll be competing against Lucas Pope’s Return of the Obra Dinn and Matt Makes Games’s Celeste.
A handful of other games will attempt to push their way into the spotlight at this year’s GDC Awards, including Mountains’s Florence (four nominations), Enhance’s Tetris Effect (three nominations), and Nomada Studio’s Gris (two nominations).
In addition to the main awards ceremony, the GDC Awards will also present a Lifetime Achievement Award to Amy Hennig, the creator of Naughty Dog’s Uncharted franchise.
The 2019 GDC Awards ceremony will take place on on Wednesday, March 20, at 6:30 PM (Pacific Time). The full list of nominees, and all the Honorable Mentions, can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tagged Celeste, GDC 2019, God of War 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, Return of the Obra Dinn, Spider-Man
Return of the Obra Dinn was nominated in five categories at 2019 IGF Awards
Papers Please, Lucas Pope’s puzzle game about censorship in a dystopian dictatorship, was a huge hit when it was released for the PC all the way back in 2013. And thanks to today’s announcement of the finalists for the Independent Games Festival Awards, it looks like his latest project, Return of the Obra Dinn, will reach similar heights.
Return of the Obra Dinn is an “innovative and uniquely stylized murder mystery” set aboard an abandoned ship in the early 1800s. Using “1-Bit” graphics reminiscent of early Macintosh games, players had to explore the ship and discover what happened to the crew. These elements helped Obra Dinn receive nominations for the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize,” as well as “Excellence In Audio,” “Excellence In Design,” “Excellence In Visual Art,” and “Excellence In Narrative.”
Return of the Obra Dinn will be competing against five other games for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, including Zachtronics’s Opus Magnum, Nolla Games’s Noita, Fictiorama Studios’s Do Not Feed the Monkeys, Hypnospace Outlaw (developed by Jay Tholen, Mike Lasch, Xalavier Nelson Jr., and Corey Cochran), and Minit (developed by Kitty Calis, Jan Willem Nijman, Jukio Kallio, and Dominik Johann).
A complete list of the nominees and honorable mentions from the 2019 Independent Games Festival Awards can be found after the break. (more…)
Freja and the False Prophecy is fully funded on Kickstarter
Unsigned Double Collective is a South African development team that looked to Kickstarter in December to help fund their next project, Freja and the False Prophecy. The Norse-themed side-scrolling platformer also recently earned a spot in our Kickstart This column, so it’s nice to see that the game reached its crowdfunding goal over the New Year’s holiday.
Seeking $22,000, Unsigned Double Collective was able to convince 686 backers to pledge $22,622 towards Freja and the False Prophecy. The developer thanked fans earlier today in a Kickstarter Update:
What an amazing end (and a new beginning) to our journey. After a roller coaster we all pulled through to fully fund Freja And The False Prophecy. Give yourself a big round of applause, you are amazing.
If all goes according to plan, Freja and the False Prophecy will be released for the PC sometime in 2022.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Freja and the False Prophecy
Infinity Ward might be teasing an upcoming announcement for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 or Call of Duty: Ghosts 2
The Call of Duty franchise’s rotating carousel of developers will point towards Infinity Ward this Fall, and it looks like the developer’s Ashton Williams has begun dropping hints about what they have in the works. For the past week, the Senior Communications Manager has been posting several cryptic images on her Twitter account, including a skull with glowing eyes, a skeleton with a sniper rifle, a baby demon, a coven of witches, an adult demon, the Grim Reaper, a few ghosts, and another skull.
There’s always the possibility that Infinity Ward is teasing something brand new, but there’s also reason to believe that this imagery is slyly referencing an upcoming announcement for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 or Call of Duty: Ghosts 2.
The case for Ghosts 2 is pretty obvious, as all of these images tie back to the supernatural in some way (including more than one literal “ghost”). But the Modern Warfare 4 link is also pretty strong, as Simon “Ghost” Riley (and his distinctive skull mask) was one of the main characters from Modern Warfare 2.
Again, it’s possible that Infinity Ward might be in a completely different direction for Call of Duty 2019, though it’s easy to assume they’re working on a sequel to one of their past hits. But with less than a year to go before the game’s (probable) launch, we’ll all find out for sure soon enough.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Who is the new character in Mortal Kombat 11’s New Year’s teaser?
Mortal Kombat fans have been speculating about the possibility of time travel shenanigans in Mortal Kombat 11 ever since the fighter’s Announcement Trailer at the 2018 Game Awards featured a pair of Scorpions and a brief glimpse at a mysterious woman standing in front of a giant hourglass. Ed Boon and company gave us a closer look at this new character yesterday as they were counting down to New Year’s Day on Twitter:
(Let’s try this one more time)
It is only a matter of time. #MK11 pic.twitter.com/dqxbnTJR2s
— Mortal Kombat 11 (@MortalKombat) December 31, 2018
Is she a playable character? If so, who is she? And if not, what role will she play in Mortal Kombat 11’s storyline and the stalemate between “Evil” Liu Kang and “Evil” Raiden?
Thankfully, we won’t have much longer to wait for answers to these questions as NetherRealm Studios is planning a “Community Reveal Event” for Mortal Kombat 11 on January 17. And the fighting game will launch shortly after that on April 23 for the PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Steam’s Top Sellers for 2018 include PUBG, GTA5, Rocket League, more
After more than a decade of dominance as the most-popular digital storefront for the PC, Steam was challenged on all sides in 2018 from both established players (GOG, Origin, and the Humble Store), as well as shiny upstarts (Discord and the Epic Games Store). But Valve’s online shop still sold a lot of games this year, and they recently shared their Top Sellers of 2018 with the public. But instead of ranking the games, Steam chose to split the list up into four tiers “as measured by gross revenue this year.”
As you might have guessed, you’ll find plenty of heavy hitters among the 12 games featured in the Platinum tier. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was slightly overshadowed this year by other “Battle Royale” shooters, but it made the cut, as did new releases like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Monster Hunter: World, and perennial favorites such as Grand Theft Auto V, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Rocket League…
Steam’s Top Sellers of 2018 – Platinum Tier
- Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
- Civilization VI
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- Dota 2
- The Elder Scrolls Online
- Far Cry 5
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Monster Hunter: World
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
- Rocket League
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege
- Warframe
Steam partitioned off the next 12 games as the Gold tier, and followed that up with 16 more games in the Silver tier. The remaining 60 games were included in the Bronze tier.
There’s plenty of recognizable titles at every level, including Ark: Survival Evolved in Gold; Subnautica, Final Fantasy XV, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider all in Silver; and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Dark Souls Remastered, and Nier: Automata in Bronze.
All the titles from Steam’s Top Sellers of 2018 can be seen on… you guessed it… Steam.