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

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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:
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• 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.

State of Play 2013

Prison Architect producer Mark Morris will be giving the keynote speech at tonight's State of Play at DIT Angier Street. He works with Introversion Software in the UK.

A satirical twist on business-sim games like Theme Hospital, Prison Architect tasks players with running the most efficient privatley owned prison possible. It's currently in open alpha (an early test version) for people who want to preorder the game.

State of Play is an annual event looking at the Irish game development scene. There'll be games to play from a host of Irish indies from 5PM and a range of Irish and International speakers on stage. Coverage of last years event is available here on HackettOut.

You can still register for the event on stateofplay.ie.

Here's a terrible trailer for the Alpha version of Prison Architect.

Play this: Demon's Souls revival

Image - From Software

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Demon's Souls' approach to online play was one of the most important design decisions of the generation. These days however, it can be hard to remember why.

The game allowed players to affect other people's games indirectly through their actions. And, with the use of in-game items, to get the help of other players in their single-player game.

READ MORE:
- My thoughts on Demon's Souls from 2011.

Demon's Souls' servers were first scheduled for shut-down over a year and half ago - but they're still live thanks to fan support and the success of the game's outstanding follow-up Dark Souls. They're just not as populated as they used to be.

Epic Name Bro makes let's-play videos on YouTube for Dark Souls and Demon's Souls among other games. He's calling on players worldwide to venture back into the cursed kingdom of Boletaria over the next few days with detailed times for what areas to tackle on what days to make sure that there will be plenty of others to play with - or face off against.

If you've been finding Boletaria empty recently, or if like me, you haven't set foot there since the sequal came out, this might be the week for you.

Take a look at Epic Name Bro's video for more information:

Listen Up! - Tone Control

A podcast on the design and development of Teltale's The Walking Dead that strays into the personal

Lee and Clementine - Image: Telltale, The Walking Dead

The man behind Gone Home and Minerva's Den is back with a new podcast series where he talks to other game designers about their backgrounds and how they go about making games.

First up Steve Gaynor talks to Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, the design and story leads on The Walking Dead. The duo have left their jobs at Telltale and branched out on their own with new studio - Campo Santo.

This conversational interview looks at how they both got into gaming, and how they work together. There's an indept section on the development of The Walking Dead - it's origins and the specifics of how and why the cast took the form it did.

One particularly personal section just manages to avoid being uncomfortable - it touches on the personal investment that goes into creating a video game character.

Well worth a listen. If the rest of the series can live up to the quality of episode one, Tone Control should be of interest to anyone who wants to know how their games get made.

You can hear Rodkin and Vanaman regularly on the Idle Thumbs podcast. Tone Control is hosted on the Idle Thumbs website and new episodes will be released every two weeks.