Potatoes are delicious. We all love potatoes. Some more than others. I have six potatoes. I plan on using them in a delicious meal. Maybe with some cavefish. Cavefish is delicious, but only if cooked. You’ll mess it up bad, well let’s leave it at that. I’ve eaten whenever, whatever I’ve hooked. I’d kill for the thrill of a meal with some fat.
Indie developer Swing Swing Submarine (makers of Tetris/Mario mashup Tuper Tario Tros) recently unveiled the first footage of their upcoming Minecraft, Tetris, Boulder Dash concoction labeled Blocks That Matter.
You play as a driller robot who can break blocks apart, pick them up, and reuse them. If you complete a line of blocks, the line gets destroyed a la Tetris.
Our intention is exactly the same than the one we had when we created Tuper Tario Tros. We want to create a unique game experience mixing games elements and mechanics.
The mash-up concept is a popular genre and that’s something we really like because it allows players to see how games that seem different at first can share the same DNA.
- Guillaume Martin and William David, founders of Swing Swing Submarine.
Blocks That Matter will be coming to Xbox LIVE Indie Games in April, followed by a PC/Mac/Linux release shortly thereafter. Expect pricing to be less than $5.
Hype frenzy begins…. NOW.
L.A. Noire consistently impresses with the quality of facial animations, but in this trailer from Rockstart Games and Team Bondi we see how this unprecedented level of realism will be used to help give Cole Phelps insight into the suspects and witnesses with whom he comes into contact.
When From Software released limited information on Project Dark late last year, it was fairly evident we’d eventually be blessed with a Demon’s Souls sequel. We got the official announcement from Namco-Bandai earlier in the week, along with an official name: Dark Souls. More info continues to trickle in on a game that, perhaps most surprisingly, has a solid chance of winning many game of the year awards…. THIS YEAR.
Often a topic of discussion on the podcast, the Silent Hill series has a sordid history which, on occasion, may cause certain gamers unintended torment and agita. Konami has placed the storied franchise in the hands of Czech developer Vatra Games; a gamble they’re hoping restores the series to its former glory.
Sometimes you just gotta slow down.
Video games don’t always have to be fast paced. You don’t always have to have bullets constantly flying or several hundred explosions going off in the space of about ten seconds, and even multiplayer shooters featuring squads of soldiers armed to the teeth with enough ordinance to erase a medium sized country from the face of modern civilisation don’t always need to be twitch-controlled fragfests. And though I do love sprinting across the Fields of Battle or being Called to Duty with groups of my friends online, I am here today to tell you about a game that takes the exact opposite approach to player-versus-player modern combat.
In the future, professional sports will no longer be comprised of a team of athletes chasing a sphere or ovoid around a grass field, but rather take the form of teams of cloned combatants killing each other in colourful metal deathmatch arenas for our entertainment.
As some of you may know, though many of you will not, Monday Night Combat has seen something of a re-launch this week as it makes it’s debut on Steam. This time however, I am already seeing a much brighter future for the game than it ever had on Xbox Live Arcade.
While watching the gameplay trailers for Capcom’s upcoming iPhone game MaXplosion, it looks like it should be a fun little game. There’s this neat exploding mechanic, you see, which your character can do 3 times in a row before needing a recharge. You use this mechanic to traverse standard platforming levels, blowing apart enemies foolish enough to stand in your way.
Of course there’s just this one niggling little problem. This game, a game wrapped entirely around one mechanic, was released in the summer of ’09.
To say this game resembles Twisted Pixel’s wildly popular and frenetically paced ‘Splosion Man is an understatement… there is no way the planning meeting for this game did not include the phrase “Just go make ‘Splosion Man.”
It gets worse too, as Twisted Pixel CEO Michael Wilford responded on his twitter page:
Best part is, we originally pitched @Splosion_Man to Capcom and they said no.
It’s rare to see anything truly original in modern gaming. Games borrow from one another all the time, and when something works it’s bound to get copied in some capacity. But it is rare to see a major developer unapologetically ripping off a well-known indie game in this way. Hopefully it sells well, and Twisted Pixel nets all the profits when the inevitable lawsuit is resolved.
UPDATE: Guess that lawsuit may not be so inevitable after all. Michael Wilford spoke with Joystiq this evening and shrugged off the idea of filing suit against Capcom:
“While I think the similarities are pretty nauseating, we’re too small to take on a company like Capcom,” said Wilford.
That, and we owe them one for inventing Mega Man, so we’ll let them slide. I just hope they’re not counting on the fact that indies can’t fight back. In general, anything that would take our focus off of making games would be a bad decision, I think. We just need to keep our heads down making the next thing so that Capcom has something to steal next year.”
As the podcast comes to a close, the gang thanks some of the people who have reached out over the last week. For posterity, the gang announces their games of the year (totally not a hastily thrown together braindump) and that’s… pretty… much… it.
Later boners!
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