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
Papers Please wins big at the 2014 Independent Games Festival
Lucas Pope’s Papers Please was the big winner during last night’s Independent Games Festival. The 2014 edition of the annual awards show honoring independent games gave three awards to Pope’s game including “Excellence in Design,” “Excellence in Narrative,” and the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize.” Who knew taking control of a border control agent living under a harsh dictator could be so fun?
Five other games were also honored with awards last night. The “Excellence in Visual Art” award went to Jason Roberts for his puzzler Gorogoa. If you’re more of a sound guy, you’d probably like to know that Simogo was given the “Excellence in Audio” award for their beguiling mobile game, Device 6.
The “Nuovo Award,” which recognizes “abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development,” was given to Tale of Tales for Luxuria Superbia. According to the IGF, Luxuria Superbia is “a musically and visually resplendent title that uses the player’s touch to stimulate in-game sensations of pleasure and joy. Absent any characters or underlying narrative, the game is focused entirely on the experience of traveling through a series of tunnels to make them “feel good” and affect their colors and plumage through the player’s tactile inputs.” Certainly sounds unconventional to me.
The final two awards of the night went to Hopoo Games and Galactic Cage. Hopoo Games is made up of students from the University of Washington and, obviously enough, they took home the “Best Student Game” award for Risk of Rain. Finally, the “Audience Award” went to Galactic Cafe for their work on The Stanley Parable, their heavily-narrated first-person game.
Congratulations to all of this year’s winners.
Posted in Mobile, News, PC
Tagged GDC 2014, Papers Please
South Park: The Stick of Truth Review: Douchebag Saves the Day
Based on the long-standing truth that games based on already established properties are usually second-rate, and the fact that the development cycle was troublesome at best, It would be forgivable to assume that South Park: The Stick of Truth would release as a write off. A whole host of problems should have held back the release of this RPG; however, The Stick of Truth is surprisingly fantastic in almost every way. (more…)
Decapre is the secret fifth new fighter in Ultra Street Fighter IV
Capcom has finally revealed the secret fifth new character for Ultra Street Fighter IV and it’s… drum roll… Decapre! Wait… who?
According to the Street Fighter Wiki, Decapre is a Doll. The Dolls are a cadre of brainwashed teenage girls who work for M. Bison as assassins and bodyguards. The Dolls have played a part in Street Fighter’s backstory for years as Cammy is a former Doll who broke free of the mind control. Due to their similar pasts, Decapre closely resembles an “Evil Cammy” in much the same way that Akuma is considered by many to be an “Evil Ryu.”
I’ll be honest, I was expecting something a bit more than “Evil Cammy” after how secretive Capcom has been about Ultra Street Fighter IV’s fifth addition.
Ultra Street Fighter IV will be available as a DLC upgrade for Super Street Fighter IV or Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition in June with a standalone retail disc/PC download to follow in August.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Street Fighter IV
Gauntlet returns as a PC-exclusive this Summer
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment plans to reboot another popular Midway franchise this Summer with the release of Gauntlet. In development at Arrowhead Game Studios exclusively for the PC, Gauntlet will bring back the top-down dungeon-crawler in the most faithful way possible:
Gauntlet innovates on past titles while staying true to the brand’s legendary format. Players select from four classic fantasy-based characters: Warrior, Wizard, Valkyrie, or Elf. Each character has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. For example, the Warrior does the most damage in melee combat, the Wizard has the most powerful magic, the Valkyrie has the most armor and the Elf moves the fastest. Distinctive play styles, procedural dungeons and an impressive art style keep the gameplay fresh.
Gauntlet will include a local or online four-player multiplayer mode as well as support for SteamOS and the Steam Controller. If you’re in San Francisco for the 2014 Game Developers Conference, WB Games and Arrowhead will have a playable version of the game on display at the convention all week.
Finally, we can expect more classic reboots from WB Games in the near future as Gauntlet will mark the first release from the WB Games Vault, which will reimagine “popular Warner Bros. and Midway brands” as brand new downloadable games. I hereby request a new Smash TV, please!
Here’s what the Steam Controller looks like as of March 2014
Valve revealed the first version of their Steam Controller back in September and the company’s initial vision for a PC controller featured a few unorthodox choices, such as a touchpad instead of face buttons. After undergoing a beta test in late 2013, Valve dropped the touchpad and added face buttons in a new version of the controller that debuted during the Steam Dev Days convention in January. And now, the papier-mache mockup is a real controller, as you can see to your right.
Valve plans to let developers and the media play with the prototype during this year’s Game Developers Conference, which begins today in San Francisco. And don’t go thinking this is the final, Valve’s Eric “Axiom” Hope said, “We will be posting more updates very soon about the continuing testing, development, and refinement of the controller.”
[Source: Steam Universe]
A new trailer explores the combat and narrative of Hyper Light Drifter
A new trailer for Hyper Light Drifter has been posted to the PlayStation Blog along with more details about the game’s combat system and narrative style.
On the topic of combat, developer Alex Preston had this to say about how enemies will attack The Drifter:
Creating intelligent and tactical scenarios with enemies is key, rather than stacking cannon fodder that waits gleefully in line to get their heads chopped off. Some enemies dodge projectiles, others deflect attacks, some (the poison wolves) attack you and vulnerable enemies as a pack. We even have enemies that command weaker types in order to gain an advantage. Each encounter should feel different, and remain challenging.
And for the narrative, Preston will attempt to tell the story of Hyper Light Drifter using no dialogue:
We are wary of endless blocks of text, poorly designed UI, and explicit handholding, which can often dilute a great experience. These leave a player frustrated, or worse, disinterested. Instead, we want players to uncover the rich mythology along with the Drifter in a more organic way, with a narrative that’s not explicit. We chose to recognize that players are smart.
Dialogue and quests are presented in storyboardlike sequences, which convey a specific mood without the use of text or voiceovers. This also allows us to keep the game as visually lush as possible and break past language barriers.
If you’re interested in one of the most interesting Kickstarter success stories of 2013, the remainder of the PlayStation Blog post is a recommended read. Hyper Light Drifter will be available for PC platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) by the end of the year with PS4, Vita, Wii U, and Ouya versions coming later.
Creative Assembly makes the Alien scary again in Alien: Isolation
In a new developer diary, Al Hope, the Creative Director at Creative Assembly, details his team’s goal for your extraterrestrial adversary in Alien: Isolation: “We wanted to make the Alien scary again.” Hope will attempt to make good on his promise by creating a Xenomorph that is unpredictable and very scary. Gary Napper, one of the game’s designers, laid it all out for us:
“Depending on how cautious players are, we’ve seen encounters in Alien: Isolation last over 30 minutes in some cases. And this just can’t be done with scripted behavior. As soon as the player can predict a pattern in the Alien, it stops being scary. It doesn’t follow any prescribed path or set of behaviors that are telling it to do specific things. It’s just reacting to the player’s presence and the choices that the player makes.”
We’ve heard these kinds of promises before in relation to a game based on the Alien films. But the atmosphere and mood that Hope, Napper, and the rest of the Creative Assembly team have packed into this video’s few minutes is incredible. They deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Alien: Isolation will be released for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One towards the end of the year.
Secret Ponchos will sneak into PAX East 2014 in playable form
The developers at Switchblade Monkeys certainly had a busy 2013. In March, they debuted their first game, Secret Ponchos, at PAX East 2013. After a huge reaction from the crowd of con-goers, the team signed up with Sony and agreed to showcase the game at E3 2013 as a PS4-exclusive. And with its April release date looming, the developer has just revealed that first we’ll all get a chance to try it out again at PAX East 2014:
We've been working like mad, getting the game rebuilt in PhyreEngine for PS4! Get your hands on the new SP debut PAX East! Its been worth it
— Switchblade Monkeys (@SwitchbladeMkys) March 14, 2014
PAX East 2014 will be held in Boston beginning on April 11. If you plan to attend, I hope you’ve got your tickets. The popular Spring event is already sold out.
Posted in News, PC, PS4
Tagged PAX East 2014, Secret Ponchos