Irish indie game bundle

Five Irish games are up for grabs on Towerbundle.com this week with fifty per cent of the profits going to the charity, Concern Worldwide.

The Irish Week bundle includes platformer Goldbeard, recent Steam release Ku: Shourd of the Morrigan, brawler mini-game Battle of Clontarf, Batcat Games excellent twin-stick shooter P-3 Biotic, and iOS platformer Jellyflug.

You'll get codes for Steam, Desura and the App Store while Battle of Clontarf is a direct download link.

Keep an eye out for video of some of these games on Hackett Out soon.

bitSmith release new FranknJohn footage

Some of the team from Dublin-based indie studio bitSmith are at GDC in San Francisco this week - but that hasn't stopped them pushing out a trailer showing early pre-alpha footage of their upcoming game FranknJohn.

The top-down, rouge-like-like brawler should be getting a Kickstarter soon, but in the meantime you can take a quick look at the gameplay and some of the environments that you can look forward to in the final game.



In a statement via their newsletter today the developers said they'll be streaming sections of the game on their Twitch channel.

Games Fleadh 2014 video round-up

Games Fleadh 2014 took place at LIT Thurles in County Tipperary on Wednesday. This year's event wasn't without it's problems as it conincided this year with GDC which runs over the weekend.

 Many of the Irish development teams who were expected to speak couldn't make it as they prepared to fly to San Francisco.

 The annual Games Fleadh awards, in conjunction with Engineers Ireland, was posponed as a result but the student competition and industry talks went ahead as planned. And some of what was on offer was impressive.

Last year's Game Studio Ireland Challenge College Cup Champions Joseph Bentley & Ger Stone, or Alt Tab, won this year's Imagine Cup in Dublin last week. They were on site to show off their game CavernNauts. Other established developers like Exgamers Studio, with Source Control, and Atom Split Games with The Power Game were on site.

 Here's what else I saw on my travels.

Games Fleadh 2014

 

LIT Thurles team take games prize at Imagine Cup

Building 3, Microsoft.
Photo: Wiki Commons

At lunchtime in Microsoft’s Sandyford offices in Dublin this Tuesday teams of young people gathered in corners, and around half eaten sandwiches, to talk in hushed tones. This was their last chance to prepare before the judging started.

The Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s annual competition for software innovation by students from across the Island. I had come for the games but stayed for some of the extraordinary apps on offer.

After a morning spent casually talking about their ideas in the brightly lit presentation room at the rear of Microsoft’s Building 3, the reality of the situation had set in. They were here from colleges across the country to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges from academia and industry.

These were the people who could take their ideas from a pastime to a product that they could sell. This is a high-stakes competition, and despite the shy smiles you could tell the pressure was on.

Stephen Howell (@saorog) is Academic Engagement Manager at Microsoft. He organised this year’s competition and he agrees that the set up is an intimidation one - “This is the only way to really put them on the spot.” he said as he showed me into the judging rooms.

Kú goes live on Steam this St. Patrick's Day

Bit Smith Games today announced that Kú: Shroud of the Morrigan will be released on Steam on 17 March.

Kú is a top-down 2D game with action-rpg elements. Bit Smith released the game on iPad last year but now, after a protracted Steam Greenlight campaign, it's finally getting a full re-release for PC.

Versions of the game are already available on the developer's website for Android, PC and Mac.

The game is a twist on the Táin, the story of Cúchulainn, set in a future Ireland.

In a statement on their Steam page today the developers said: "What better way to celebrate St. Patricks [sic] Day than to consume yourself in some ancient Irish history."

Kú was not without its problems on iPad - but a lot of my frustrations came from the controls. The game has full controller support on PC. There's no detail on pricing yet but I'll keep you informed.

Play it: Dream of Pixels

You know that annoying person who likes to say that there's nothing new under the sun?

Well slap 'em. And then show them Dream of Pixels.

Human history is the history of innovation. We've always built on existing ideas to create something entirely new. It's what we do and it's why life never gets boring.

Dawn of Play, the team behind Dream of Pixels, took Tetris, turned it upside down - both literally and figuratively - and created something entirely new.

A wall of blocks moves down the screen. A single tetris piece appears in the top left of the screen. Taping anywhere on the wall removes that shape so long as it can fall off the bottom of the screen - it can't be blocked by a block below. Keep chopping away to remove full lines and buy yourself more time. If the screen fills up you loose.

That's it. It's beautiful. And it's great. Play it.

Dream of Pixels is available on iOS and Android for free with ads, or for €2.15 (on GooglePlay at least).

Microsoft Imagine Cup judging in Dublin today

The Imagine Cup is Microsoft's annual innovation competition. And today is D-day for the teams involved.

Each of the teams has been busy developing their ideas - an innovative piece of software running on Microsoft's platrorms and today they need to pitch their work to real judges from industry.

Submissions closed in early February and today the top teams in Microsoft's three categories - Games, Innovation and World Citizenship - will compete.

I'll be going along to see what Ireland's young tech creatives are working on.

Watch it: The Last of Us documentary

How do shadows fall in a scene? Are the characters looking at each other when they speak?

These are the questions that Naughty Dog's developers asked themselves during the development of last year's The Last of Us.

The heart of The Last of Us is the attention to detail in every scene. It's the little things that make a character sit into the world or that translates good acting into a believable performance on screen.

Area 5, the team behind the successful Outerlands Kickstarter project, made this 90 minute documentary. Originally released as part of The Last of Us's season pass you can now watch the whole thing on YouTube.

The programme also talks about how much work went into making the player understand the feelings and motivations of the characters.

Bruce Straley, the gameplay director says "What are the things that we can do on the joystick to make you feel the same way that these [sic] characters' going to feel when we get to this next pinch point in th story?"


But wait there's more. Left Behind, the single-player story DLC for The Last of Us released on . The production values here aren't quite as high, but if you're looking for more Last of Us here you go:

Video game start-ups shine at Enterprise Ireland event

Dublin Castle CC via [Dicky]

Ten Irish games companies were among the 103 businesses showcased by Enterprise Ireland this morning at Dublin Castle. Speaking on Morning Ireland, Enterprise Ireland's Chief Executive Julie Sinnamon said that there was a really high callibre of companies to showcase.

Enterprise Ireland is the government body tasked with developing Irish industries for international markets. The High Potential Start-Up Class of 2013 event is used by Enterprise Ireland to introduce companies that it has supported during the previous year.

Ms Sinnamon told RTE that technology companies were leading the pack over the past year.

"The biggest sector of all was really the technology, software, internet, games area... really dynamic, young companies and very enthusiastic and full of energy."

She said these companies were driven by really big ambitions.

The full report released by Enterprise Ireland divides the companies into two groups - 'High Potential Start-ups' that have sucessfully raised seed capital and 'Competetive Start-ups' or early stage companies. 

The list of games-specific companies includes Simteractive, a developer headed up by Elaine Reynolds, formerly of Lionhead and Sixminute - a team formed from the ashes of PopCap's Dublin office.

Here's a list of the games companies involved:

High Potential Start-ups
Gamesparks
Sixminute

Competitive Start-ups
Beat Your Manager
English Bubble
Hail Studios
Rainbow Rocket Studios
Sighter
Simteractive
Powwow
Thoughtbox

Bioshock developer to close

Studio head, Ken Levine, to start new, smaller company with the same publisher

Irrational Games, the team behind the Bioshock series, is being wound up by its founding member, Ken Levine, with the loss of the majority of jobs there.

In a statement on the company's websie Levine explained his reasons saying that he wants to develop different types of games in future.

"Seventeen years is a long time to do any job, even the best one. And working with the incredible team at Irrational Games is indeed the best job I’ve ever had. While I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished together, my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before."

Bioshock Infinite launched in March of last year after a protracted and sometimes troubled development process. It went on to sell more than 4 million copies in it's first four months on sale.

The sequal to one of the most highly regarded, and critically aclaimed, games of the last hardware generation, it was well recieved but ultimately divided opinion.

Now Levine, and a fifteen person team, will be moving on to something new with their publisher and studio owner, Take Two. In his post on Irrationalgames.com Levine says that he will focus on narrative driven games that are highly replayable.

"I’ll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two. That is going to mean parting ways with all but about fifteen members of the Irrational team. There’s no great way to lay people off, and our first concern is to make sure that the people who are leaving have as much support as we can give them during this transition."

It remains unclear whether the decision to wind-down the larger team was Levine's or rested with Take Two.

Twitter has been overwhelmed with offers of new jobs for those affected by other developers since the news broke.

Best of luck to all the folks at Irrational. BTW, we have over 70 open positions! http://t.co/x21zkcploT
— Wes Phillips (@WesPhillips) February 18, 2014

Irish indie devs on twitter

Ireland's independent videogame scene is a fast-growing creative industry, full of interesting people and new ideas. You can follow along with the latest news, or join the conversation, with the new Hackett Out 'IndieIRL' list on twitter.

If you have any questions or want to get added to the list you can get in touch with me @padrg.

I'll be posting a permanent link to the list on the navigation pane on the top-right hand side of this site. For now, here's the latest from Ireland's established and up and coming game developers:


Tweets from https://twitter.com/padrg/indieirl

UPDATE: Outerlands video game culture documentary funded on Kickstarter

Outerlands is a new, high-quality video game culture documentary series made by the team behind Co-op, The 1Up Show and Capcom's 'I Am Street Fighter.'  

The five-person Area 5 team got the $210,000 they were looking for on Kickstarter to produce a six episode documentary series focusing on the people who make video game culture dictinct. The campaign reached its target with over a day to spare and an additional $37,481 was pledged before it closed.

Backers needed to hand over at least $25 to get the digital edition of the documentary, with Area 5 also promising to produce new episodes of their video-podcast series, Co-Op.

Area 5's work is characterised by its quality. Below is an example of the sort of work they're known for. These two short films were published on the Kickstarter page.

Irish Dev Terry Cavanagh on Flappy Bird

Image via: terrycavanaghgames.com

Irish indie developer Terry Cavanagh has made his Flappy Bird tribute, Maverick Bird, available for free on his website.

The two-button, PC-only game is built using the same tools as Cavanagh's 2012 hit - Super Hexagon. It expands on Flappy Bird's simplistic game play by allowing players to fly down as well as up to avoid obstacles.

Flappy Bird was a mobile game on iOS and Android developed by Vietmanese developer Dong Nguyen. The game was releasde last summer but rose to prominance in recent weeks. The developer has since pulled the game from the App Store and Google Play saying that its success, and the backlash from gamers, was negatively impacting on his life.

I can call 'Flappy Bird' is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

Terry Cavanagh, on his twitter account, said that his game is intended as a tribute and not a clone. He is resisting calls to release the game for mobile devices.

Getting asked this lots, so here's an answer: I'm sorry, I'm not porting Maverick Bird to iOS or making a Super version. It's a fan game!
— Terry (@terrycavanagh) February 13, 2014

I'm glad people like it, but understand why I made it. I didn't want the only response to Flappy Bird to be anger and jealousy.
— Terry (@terrycavanagh) February 13, 2014

For a while, in my feed at least, that was the only voice I was hearing. I wanted to express something else. I wanted to celebrate it.
— Terry (@terrycavanagh) February 13, 2014

Outerlands video game documentary enters final days on Kickstarter

Outerlands is a new, high-quality video game culture documentary series made by the team behind Co-op, The 1Up Show and Capcom's 'I Am Street Fighter.'

The five-person Area 5 team are asking for $210,000 on Kickstarter to produce a six episode documentary series focusing on the people who make video game culture dictinct. This morning, while the team are broadcasting a 24-hour livestream on Twitch.tv, the total pledged is approaching $200,000.

You'll need to hand over at least $25 to get the digital edition of the documentary, with Area 5 also promising to produce a new six episode series of their video-podcast series, Co-Op, if they meet their target during the live stream.

Watch it - Steam Dev Days

Valve, the US developer and owner of the Steam digital-distribution marketplace, has published a series of talks and panels from its Steam Dev Days event. The developer focused event was held over two days in Seattle this January.

The 28 videos and accompanying presentations have been published on http://steamdevdays.com/. The series includes both general information and highly technical talks.

There are talks on music in Valve games, on the company's push into virtual reality and the lauch of 'Steam Boxes' - Valve's new Linux-based hardware platform.

There are discussions on economics, Steam Early Access, developing for Linux and using OpenGL.

Below is a video looking at the development of the new Steam controller by Eric Hope and John McCaskey of Valve.

 

Watch it - Steph Thirion on Eliss Infinity

Eliss Infinity released today on iOS. The iPad/iPhone puzzler was inspired by the simplicity of Tetris according to one-man developer Steph Thirion (@stephbysteph).

You can watch an excerpt from the Indie Game The Movie special edition below about Thirion, his inspiration and his struggle to get the game finished.

Eliss was an early iOS game, using multi-touch in innovative ways. Now it's back - the full original game with a new endless mode and various tweeks. It's hard to explain but difficult to put down - watch the video and if you like what you see you can pick it up in the app store for €2.69.


ELISS - IGTM Special Edition from IndieGame: The Movie on Vimeo.

Via: @renaudbedard on twitter

Watch it - Tom Francis on Heat Signiture

Rohrer's Passage - 'play' it!

There was a time when it seemed Jason Rohrer was the only interesting name in indie gaming. Just the fact that he existed was interesting - living off the kindness of strangers and making games that were actually about something.

That time was only about five years ago actually. Now we're openly criticising his work, and Roher is just one of many indie luminaries. Some are loved, some loathed, some don't kick up too much of a fuss.

One interesting voice is that of Tom Francis. That's the man behind last year's excellent stealth-action game Gunpoint. More interestingly he has a long history in games journalism and as a result he knows how to communicate his passion. He could be just what indie gaming needs.

Gunpoint by Tom Francis

Tom Francis used to write for PC Gamer magazine. During development of Gunpoint he blogged about the process. Now he's working on the follow-up, Heat Signiture and he's doing more of the same, although Heat Signiture is still in the very early stages of development.

I heard about Francis when Gunpoint came out. Since then he's quit his job and gone into development full time. You can listen to a great intereview with him on Tone Control.

But Francis's Youtube channel is even more interesting. There you can see early footage of the game up and running. What's really got me excited though is his ability to talk. In the video below Tom Francis talks about his ideas and the prosess of turning those ideas into something real, without prompt or pause, for twenty minutes.

And all 20 of those minutes are interesting.

2013 in review

At the start of 2013 I wrote about the rise of successful story-driven indie releases. My examples from 2012 were Dear Esther, To the Moon and Cart Life. The Walking Dead had been a hit that year too although I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I said I hoped that it was a trend that would continue. And I couldn’t have been more right.

2013 saw the release of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Papers Please, Kentucky Route Zero, and Gone Home among others. It saw the trend move out of the indie scene and into the blockbuster space. 

Major character-centric triple-A titles launched this year. Some, like The Last of Us, excelled by creating human moments in an inhospitable world. Others, like Bioshock Infinite, struggled - aiming high with strong moral overtones but falling short of delivering a real message.

If I’ve been scrimping and saving since Hackett Out launched, 2013 was the year where I went broke. Steam sales, Humble Bundles and PlayStation Plus have provided me with the majority of my gaming time this year. 

I’ll always put aside a few pennies for new games though and so my playlist included a few triple-A games. I’m listing here each and every game that I put any real time into in 2013. But first, the five that, for me, felt like they best delivered on the intentions of their developers.

5. DMC Devil May Cry
DmC: Devil May Cry does its best to put you off. It’s bawdy and misogynistic on first impressions. For the first two hours gameplay is cut-through with too many tool-tips and interjections. It’s hard to believe that this is the developer behind 2010’s Enslaved. But stick with it. This is a character-action game and a surprisingly deep combat system reveals itself with time. DmC does a better job than most in encouraging experimentation and weapon-switching. It also provides environmental navigation that make use of the tools in your arsenal.

4. Metal Gear Rising. Revengence
Having two character action games on a list of only five titles is not what I would have expected  at the start of the year. But this is a genre where mechanics are king. When done right there’s a purity to the experience that’s unrivalled. Rising doesn’t quite live up to the quality bar set by Platinum Games with their 2010 title Bayonetta, but this game has an interesting twist with a real focus on defence - every incoming attack needs to be physically batted away with a well timed parry. Also all of the ridiculousness you would expect from a Metal Gear is here, and then some.

3. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
It’s difficult for a game to convey emotion - to capture moments of warmth, of love, of sadness. Some manage it but it’s especially difficult, for any medium, to convey the real depth of grief and loss. Brothers left me a wreck - dragging up feelings I’d forgotten I could have. And it did it by subverting expectations, by telling its story through gameplay but by telling a story other than the one it sets out from the start.

2. Gone Home
Personal stories have a place in video games. Games can be interesting without being mechanically complex or overtly fun. Gone Home single-handedly proved that games can be ‘important’, that they can tell human stories. The tale it tells has been told a thousand times - but it’s told confidently and with care here in a new medium. Gone Home immerses the player in a world that they can relate to - it tells a story about real people with grounded lives and relatable desires. And it’s a joy to experience.

1. The Last of Us
The Last of Us recovers from a difficult couple of hours towards the start, to tell one of gaming’s great stories. It’s the attention to detail in every aspect of its design, from the environmental storytelling of its buildings, to the emotion in the eyes of its characters, to the way protagonists Joel and Ellie animate as they move past each other when crouched and hiding. A great cast, excellent pacing once the game opens up and a solution to the age-old disconnect between player action and story delivered with confidence and style. My game of the year.

The Playlist - 2013
The Room (iOS)
Metal Gear Solid Revengence (PS3) review
Bioshock Infinite (PS3) comment
Ku (iOS)
Republica Times (PC)
Fez (PC)
Papers Please (PC)
Gunpoint (PC)
Hundreds (iOS)
Ridiculous Fishing (iOS)
Super Stickman Golf 2 (Android)
Knights of the Old Republic (iOS)
Catherine (PS3)
A Ride into the Mountains (Android) 
The Walking Dead (PC)
Thomas Was Alone (PS3)
The Last of Us (PS3) comment
Plants vs Zombies 2 (iOS)
X-COM Enemy Unknown (PS3)
Spelltower (Android)
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Wii) 
Dark Souls (PS3) 
Gone Home (PC) comment
Brothers (PC)
DMC (PS3) 

Tomb Raider - an unlikely example of gender equality

Lara and Natla - characters in their own right

.
Helen Lewis, in the New Statesman, recently introduced me to the concept of the Bechdel test.

It's a way to assess the gender-equality of a piece of film and involves a fairly straightforward set of rules:
.
.

• Does the film have two named female characters?
• Do they talk to each other?
• About something other than a man?

As the Washington Post points out, that’s a very low bar but many modern films fail the test. Helen Lewis asked the question whether video games need a test of their own. It got me thinking.

Wrote about whether games need their own version of a Bechdel test. The comments are *all* fascinating. I know. http://t.co/zSdGZJ9P7y
— Helen Lewis (@helenlewis) January 7, 2014

It’s safe to say the majority of games would fail, and that even having a fully-clothed female character is a rarity. But games are varied, even within the same development studio. The Last of Us, for example, passes with flying colours while Uncharted 2, from the same studio just four years before, fails miserably.

A game that surprisingly gets a pass is the original Tomb Raider, now heading for 20 years old. Despite Core Design’s unlikely representation of the female form, the game has women in both the lead and antagonist roles.