To the Moon, an indie adventure game developed by Freebird Games, is slowly but surely gaining traction around les salons of the games press circuit. And why not? It's heartbreaking premise and genre-swapping aesthetic hit all the rig...
"PIXELGALAXY is a book all about the Nintendo Game Boy and the pixel graphics. It includes its secret of success, an overview of the top games and takes a closer look at the graphics," writes Sergio Ingravalle, the book's author and cu...
No one, I reckon, really wants to talk about David Johnston, the one-man dev team behind Smudged Cat Games' The Adventures of Shuggy. That's because his four years of development hell illustrate most of the systemic shortcomings of the...
So. Nyan Cat. There is very little left to be said about Nyan Cat, except that it's my profound disappointment to inform you that Konami did not, in fact, release a licensed Nyan game in 1988. Not only would Nyan Cat vs. Tac Nayn have made ...
“Legacy” comes from humble beginnings: Varric, our dwarven narrator, tells Cassandra, a Chantry seeker, that he didn’t tell her about Hawke’s excursion into the Vimmark because he “didn’t think it was imp...
Without digging into the semantic details too much, auteur theory -- the idea that a single, charismatic designer can leave his mark on a game -- was a popular talking point a few years ago. While no longer part of the games criticism zeitg...
You remember QWOP, don't you? (Now on iPad!) Of course you do -- it almost spawned a meme, and you can't hear Chariots of Fire without seeing the bruised and broken body of QWOP's nameless protagonist. Today, Bennett Foddy released GIR...
[Update: Seems we got this one a bit wrong, originally reporting that the game would be an MMORPG. But according to the game's developer, that's not the case. Indie Stone's Chris Simpson explains that Project Zomboid is "primarily a single...
After the release of Machinarium in 2009, Czech developer Amanita Design have been pretty quiet. Sure, they're bringing Machinarium to the PlayStation Network after adding it and Samorost 2 to Wolfire Games' Humble Indie Bund...
I'm calling it here: 2011 is the year of the cephalopod. DePaul University already brought us Octodad ("Loving father. Caring husband. Secret octopus."), and Dakko Dakko's The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character is anothe...
If you still haven't played one of three available versions of Persona 3, you may not see what all the fuss over this Aegis figure is about, but the beauty of a socially maladroit android who shoots bullets out of her fingers is s...
When I interviewed David Gaider for a series of Dragon Age II-related previews, he seemed a charming, soft spoken, and intelligent writer with a passion for role-playing games. Imagine my surprise, then, to see the bespectacled scribe destr...
Marian Hawke -- refugee of Lothering, Champion of Kirkwall -- is a liar, a thief, and a murderer, a political sellsword for the powerbrokers of the Free Marches. Most Kirkwallers assume she is a lesbian after a brief affair with Isabella, a...
Unlike games like Fable and BioWare's own Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins deftly sidestepped framing its character interaction systems as a set of moral binaries. It's a subtle shift: actions aren't judged in absolutes, but situated in the...
Very little of what BioWare has said about the upcoming Dragon Age II gives the impression of forward movement. In a Q&A session at BioWare's Edmonton studios, producer Mark Darrah explained that Dragon Age II isn't "a brand-new game. I...
When I try to get in touch with Jason Cirillo, founder of Robotube Games, he's in line trying to buy a bento box, somewhere in New York City. He's starving and needs to eat, so I try again later. This time, he's stepping onto a train. I'm s...
"I've been playing RPGs since ... Ultima 2 territory, way back on my PC," says Mike Laidlaw, lead designer on BioWare's Dragon Age series. "And it's like, I remember, actually Ultima 3 did this: 'Choose your gender: male, female, other.' An...
BioWare's made no secret of the fact that they keep a running tab of player metrics, and Dragon Age: Origins was no different. They learned a few neat tidbits -- "more people played warriors than rogues or mages" explains lea...
The videogames industry has a complex: it relies, perhaps too much, on the concept of genre, but being "generic" is an offense of grave proportions. Being "innovative" is, naturally, antithetical to being generic. According to Matt Goldman,...
"Oh, look, we've got a 91 Metacritic," begins Dragon Age II lead designer Mike Laidlaw. "But it's not 100, so there's got to be room to improve." Over the life of Dragon Age: Origins, Laidlaw's BioWare Edmonton team attempted to d...
It's not uncommon for fans of upcoming games to go on media blackouts -- actively avoiding screenshots, trailers, and previews so as not to spoil their initial impressions. So far, that hasn't been difficult with Dragon Age II -- if yo...
"Dragon Age II is not a brand new game; It's a better, more-refined version of Dragon Age: Origins," explained executive producer Mark Darrah during a recent press event at BioWare's Edmonton studio. Darrah's take on Dragon Age II ...
BioWare have been keeping details about Dragon Age II close to the chest, sparking the worst kind of tortured speculation seen this side of arsenic-based life-forms: "Dragon Age II is a hack-and-slash" is the new "NASA found alie...
"Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win." So quipped Gary Lineker, an English international, after losing to West Germany in the 1990 World Cup. As in life, so in art: Pro Evolution Soc...
I once managed to get a set of Panasonic RP-HTX7 headphones (cream colored, natch) run over by a car. I don't need to discuss the Wile E. Coyote-esque set-up, but it has become my new litmus test for audio hardware. If it still works after ...
