Would you kindly layoff a good portion of your company and leave it to start a smaller venture? That’s apparently what Ken Levine is doing now that he’s finished the Burial at Sea Part 2 DLC for BioShock Infinite. In a statement posted on the front page of the Irrational Games website, veteran producer Levine explains that he is refocusing on a smaller “entrepreneurial endeavor” at Take-Two and will be winding down Irrational after seventeen years at the helm. Although the company created such critically lauded games as System Shock, BioShock, and BioShock Infinite, Levine says he wants to create replayable narrative-driven games with a more direct relationship to the fans. Rather than go full indie, Ken Levine will stay at Take-Two to take advantage of the infrastructure.
When I first contemplated what I wanted to do, it became very clear to me that we were going to need a long period of design. Initially, I thought the only way to build this venture was with a classical startup model, a risk I was prepared to take. But when I talked to Take-Two about the idea, they convinced me that there was no better place to pursue this new chapter than within their walls. After all, they’re the ones who believed in and supported BioShock in the first place.
Former members of the Irrational Games team will have access to the studio to beef up portfolios and resumes. Take-Two will work with the team to on opportunities within the company as well as outside interviews.
Hidden Path Entertainment’s Windborne is now available on Steam Early Access. It looks like the feyest Minecraft clone ever made. Players use magic to swoosh blocks into place on floating islands and everything has that sparkly sheen from Ridley Scott’s Legend. There’s even a friendly race of characters called Jin that look like an even cuter version of the Lalafell from Final Fantasy XIV. It’s a sugar overload!
Hidden Path intends to differentiate their game from the other blocky crafters by focusing on the social aspect of sharing online islands and by letting players guide the NPC Jin to prosperity. You can check out the fairyland shenanigans here.
Harmonix and Hidden Path have announced Chroma, a free-to-play music-based arena shooter for the PC. The upcoming first-person shooter ties music to combat by using beats and rhythm to power weapons as well as altering the battlefield landscape. Players will be able to choose classes and loadouts with different musical abilities.
“Unleash streams of sound and music with your arsenal and bring the musical landscape to life in battle! From deep wobbling bass to the crunch of an electric guitar, crushing metal drums to poppy synths, choose a weapon load-out that reflects your musical tastes and personal style and take your sounds into battle.”
Chroma will be entering limited alpha soon, with a release on Steam to follow sometime later.
What was the last golf game you played on the PC? Perhaps it was the critically panned Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters from EA? It came out in 2011. Since then, we haven’t seen much in the way of links for the PC. The commonly held wisdom is that you can’t be successful on the PC with a golf game. HB Studios hopes to prove that maxim wrong by bringing The Gold Club to Steam. The game will feature a Course Creator that can procedurally generate new courses on its own as well as allow players to create and edit a course from scratch. The Golf Club will also have online tournaments as well as local multiplayer. Could this be the PC sim golfers have been waiting for?
The Gold Club will be coming to Steam Early Access later this year.
It’s always heartening (get it?) to see someone take their first tentative steps into the game industry. Juan Raigada, a veteran member of our forum, has been working on his personal passion project for about a year, and he’s ready to ask for public backing through Kickstarter. Heart&Slash features roguelike difficulty and randomized arenas combined with the combat of a brawler. You play Heart, a robot with yearnings of independence and the fighting skills to back it up. The love interest is either Slash, another free-thinking bot, or the many weapons and upgrades the player can grab as he journeys through the hostile automated facility.
“Fight using 75 different weapons and 60 different body parts that will change the way the game plays. Teleport, stop time, fly with a jetpack, wall-jump, discover enemy weaknesses and so on. From the trivial to the game-changing, you can try thousands of different combinations.”
You had me at “stop time.” He is asking for a mere $20,000 to turn Heart&Slash into reality. If you’re interested, you can even read back through the early development of the game in the TIGForums.
Headlines in the news yesterday proclaimed that scientists have started to “count whales from space”. Which, of course, means they’re using satellites and whatnot to track whale populations. It doesn’t mean the other thing it could mean. That would have been pretty cool. For that, we have Windforge, a zepplin-crammed RPG set in a procedurally generated world with this bullet point:
The first game to include minable sky whales, and meat blocks
If you don’t believe me, you can get independent verification here. Windforge is out on March 11.
Bohemia Interactive has announced Zeus, a free DLC coming for Arma III multiplayer. Zeus will allow one player to become a sort of “game master” or god of the battlefield, by giving him control of almost all aspects of the game in real-time. The Zeus player can spawn units, issue battle orders, smite troublesome griefers, and basically do anything he wants. Popular YouTube players like Jester814 have already been using similar mods like MCC Sandbox to do similar things since Arma III lanuched, but Zeus promises to have better integration with the basic game as well as official support. Plus, smiting! I mentioned that, right?
Valve rolled out Steam Tags yesterday and puckish users have already found delightful ways to screw with the system. The new Steam feature allows users to add tags to software listings in the store. Tags like “action” or “driving” will help sort games by genre and popular tags will become browsable entries in the storefront. Of course, gamers are playing with the democratic feature. Like stuffing virtual ballot boxes full of nominations for Ke$ha’s Timber as best song, tagging games has become its own kind of fun. For example, Gone Home currently has tags for “not a game” and “walking simulator” while infamously difficult Dark Souls has a “casual” tag.
One can only hope that Valve will add unlockable badges for ironic tagging.
With all the hype around Titanfall, it’s been tough to remember that there is another big-budget sci-fi shooter coming out for next-gen consoles. Bungie’s Destiny features all the scientifically improbable running and gunning a nerd could want, but Titanfall has big badass mechs. Mechs! That’s tough to compete against but Bungie gently reminds gamers that their game also has futuristic vehicles. Instead of lumbering mechs, Destiny has the sleek Shrike hoverbike as depicted above. The developers promise that the appearance of your bike will improve over time. Adventures and experience you rack up will be reflected with various paint schemes.
Destiny’s beta begins this summer, and the official launch is scheduled for September 2014.
Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V is getting DLC on Friday that’s filled with love. The Valentine’s Day Massacre Special update comes with a new weapon, the “Gusenberg Sweeper” which looks just like the infamous Thompson machine gun, a 1920’s styled automobile, and new clothing options to outfit your character in style. The items will be available for a limited time only, but once you have them in your inventory, your character should be able to access them after the promotion.
The Valentine’s Day Massacre Special update will be free to all owners of Grand Theft Auto V.
You escaped the zombie-infested area of Trumbull Valley in State of Decay. You went back again and again in your RV in the Breakdown DLC. Are you ready to go somewhere new? Undead Labs has announced a new expansion to their open-world survival horror game called State of Decay: Lifeline. Astute Steam users found evidence of the developers testing the DLC and Undead Labs decided to make a formal announcement before rumors got out of hand. Although there wasn’t much to the reveal beyond the name, community manager Sanya Weathers dropped one morsel of information that’s sure to get players buzzing.
“Fine, I’ll say it straight up: There’s a new map, okay?”
Fresh meat! State of Decay: Lifeline will release on PC and Xbox 360 at the same time.
Besides being in charge of Microsoft’s European game publishing, John Needham is filling the spot once held by Peter Molyneux at Lionhead Studios. As studio head, Needham is tasked with crafting the next big Fable experience. Not much is known about Fable Legends, except that it will feature an asymmetrical dungeon masters versus heroes setup. Bearing in mind Needham’s past experience at Gazillion Entertainment, Cryptic, and Sony Online Entertainment, it’s no surprise that his studio will focus on connectivity. Needham tells Edge that online social features will be a big part of Fable Legends.
“I think the real magic in the industry now is taking great traditional gameplay and IP, and this new connected world, and mashing them together. I am the person pivoting Lionhead into a games-as-service studio. Legends is quite different from previous Fable games.”
John Needham says Fable Legends will take a cue from titles like Dark Souls and Journey for its connected features. Fable Legends is expected to release in 2015.
That’s the trailer for Evolve, the new asymmetrical multiplayer game from Turtle Rock Studios and 2K. Remember how awesome it felt to bum-rush the humans as the Tank in Left 4 Dead? This is a whole game built around that concept. Human characters get different abilities, depending on their class, while the big beastie evolves into more powerful forms by feasting on critters or even the humans.
I wonder if the beast gets big enough to take on Danzig when he hears what happened to his song?
Coffee Stain Studios has created a stir on YouTube with Goat Simulator. The work-in-progress was born as a lark to blow off steam after working on Sanctum 2. In Goat Simulator, the player takes on the role of a goat creating havoc with ridiculous physics. The goat can peacefully eat grass for 1 point per chomp, or the goat can ruin the farm for 1,000 points per incident of destruction. Knock over tractors! Head-butt barrels! Eat tools! According to an interview with Modern Farmer, Armin Ibrisagic said the game’s chaotic gameplay was inspired by skateboarding games like Tony Hawk.
Each act of mischief is “like a skateboard trick.”
Alas, there is no official release date for Goat Simulator, despite fans sending cakes to the studio.
Slightly Mad Studios, the creators of Need for Speed: Shift and Project CARS, announced they are developing a new free-to-play massively multiplyer arcade racer called World of Speed that will be published by My.com. Due later this year, World of Speed will have live events, challenges, and the social elements crucial for the success of any free-to-play game. Ian Bell, CEO of Slightly Mad, stressed the all-important freemium buzzword soup.
“At the heart of World of Speed lies a unique massive multiplayer online experience which incorporates dynamic social elements and entirely new ways to compete in a racing video game – from an individual to a team level.”
World of Speed will be entering closed beta in the Spring.
