I'm intrigued by Tom's comments on Sigma. Was it playable at E3 in any form? I have yet to identify a single screenshot that I feel actually came from an in-game shot. Everything looks mocked up.

I love the concept, though. It's original, and it seems to have tons of potential. We'll pretend the hideous WarBreeds never existed for the purposes of discussion.

So cough it up, Chick. Is there an actual game there, or is it still a "game designer" gesturing wildly and coining clever catchphrases like "bubblegum genetics"?

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

p.s. Then again, if Tom hypes it enough, we run the risk of this turning into 2001's Sacrifice.

Sigma's about a year into its development, and there's an actual game engine in effect. This was no canned demo.

There were probably about 20-30 fully built animals. When it was demoed for Mark and me, we could pick any two animals, specify which components to throw into the mix (each animal consists of up to six components), and create a hybrid. The hybrid was then imported into the game engine and it could join the fray. I made a gorilla with an eel's head. Mark made a hippo with dragonfly wings. I think we collaborated on the shark with hyena legs.

As with many games like this, a lot of work will have to go into Sigma's balancing, but the engine is fully in effect.

I'll say it here now: Sigma was my pick for Game of the Show.

-Tom

"Sigma was my pick for Game of the Show."

It was one of my top five of the show. I was skeptical about this game until I saw it.

There's very little building, btw. You prebuild your animal types and save them as an army, and then you select an army, start a game, and collect scrap metal as a resource and begin building animals and just a few other building types.

Like Tom said, balancing the game will be difficult. For example, one of the animals is an electric eel, which can be combined with another animal to produce an animal with a ranged electric attack. We saw bats with eel heads which produced a quick flying unit with a ranged attack. It's easy to imagine players just quickly creating a small horde of these and rushing another player.

When I get this video digitized, you'll all be seeing the "theater booth" showing of Sigma.

Does Sigma look or feel anything like Sacrifice? based on what you saw at e3 that is. The gamplay model seems to sound alot like a mini version of B & W with Sacrifice... sounds good to me!

etc

Balancing the game will indeed be tough. I made a couple of uber-animals, but the MS guys said that one of the things they will be doing in the coming year is making sure that there is no unbeatable creature or strategy.

One thing that did impress me about Microsoft - I was able to play the games in the meeting room, such as Sigma and Age of Myths, and they looked pretty close to being finished. Yet there was no apparent rush to push them out the door. They appear to be genuinely concerned about getting the games finished and polished before releasing them.

Jeff

"Does Sigma look or feel anything like Sacrifice?"

It has a similar feel in terms of being about weird things beating each other up, but otherwise, not really.

-Tom

hey! cool! real in-game shots

http://www.voodooextreme.com/articles/sigmaate3.html

The eagle with preying mantis arms is profoundly fucked up. But in a good way.

Those may be in-game shots, but the camera's typically not pulled in like that. You'll play it from the standard RTS overhead view.