Subset Games is still thinking about doing a tablet port of FTL: Faster Than Light, the studio's Justin Ma confirmed to Shacknews the other day. Interestingly, part of Subset's "looking into it" process involves, maybe, finding another studio to do the port. Whatever it takes, right?
We received a similar response back in October when we were all sorts of hot for FTL and probed Subset about the possibility. It's clear that Subset wants to take this slow and do it right, and even then the port is not a lock. That's an important thing to keep in mind -- there's lots of moving parts in FTL, some of which will take some substantial tweaking to work on touch. We're thinking an iPad port will need some kind of auto-pause or slowdown effect for crew movement at the least.
"We would like to get it onto tablets at some point in the future," Ma told us. "I can't say whether it's feasible or not, but we will look into it eventually."
FTL, if you don't know, is a space survival simulation that focuses on the crew and the innards of a space ship instead of raw, action-y combat. For the most part, it's all about crisis management. Surprisingly, sealing up and fixing a fiery, shield-less, and weaponless ship is just as frantically awesome as shooting laser beams at dudes in real-time. You should check it out on PC or Mac, if you've got the gear.
When we wrote an article about a possible port in October, tons of folks added the game to their Watch List, which is why we figured ANY sort of update, including vague, would be appreciated.
We're still playing a bit of catch up from GDC, but one of the more substantial under-the-radar releases of last week definitely needs some more attention than it's getting. It's called Fester Mudd: Curse of the Gold [$0.99] and the (currently available) first episode seems like a fantastic tribute to adventure games from ages ago. Set in the old west, you play as Fester Mudd and you need to complete all sorts of classic adventure-y style puzzles to progress in your hunt for endless riches.
It's published by Replay Games, which may ring a bell as they're the same guys responsible for that awesome Leisure Suit Larry remake we saw at GDC. Fester Mudd even captures the graphical style of Lucas Arts and Sierra adventure games:
People are loving the game in our forums, and it's definitely going on the list of things we need to review... So, keep an eye out for that in the not too distant future as we dig out from the pile of GDC games and emails we missed. But, in the meantime, if you even have the vaguest of fond memories of classic adventure games, and you have a dollar to your name, you need to spend some time with Fester.
There are very few motifs out there that haven't been beaten nearly to death by a deluge of games crafting variations of the same story. Zombies. Pirates. Ninjas. And yet, I've somehow maintained a soft spot for the story of the well-meaning robot caught up in something bigger than itself. Whether it's a brilliant point-and-click adventure like Machinarium [$4.99 (HD)] or the frantic puzzling of Robot Wants Kitty [Free], I can't say no to the task of taking care of something cute and artificially intelligent. So it's no great surprise that when I heard Teotl Studios was bringing their well-received head-scratcher Unmechanical [$2.99] from PC to iOS, I had my download finger at the ready.
Set in a mysterious, subterranean expanse, Unmechanical follows a plucky propellor-equipped robot on a mission to bring life back to a place long-forgotten. Armed with only one ability - the power to emit magnetic rays that allow you to carry objects, lift latches, and power switches - you zip through a series of interconnected rooms and pathways, slowly coming to understand what you're doing, and where you are. What stood out immediately for me was the way the game's vague narrative leant itself to a mobile port.
Scenes are shot in a purposefully limited field of view, forcing you to fly slowly outward to the walls of a cavernous room too understand its scope, take in its many machinations, and gain a sense of your surroundings. Looking down on the scene as it rests between your hands within the confines of a phone or tablet screen helps immerse you in the unknown, giving off the sense that you - like your spinning protagonist - are under the microscope.
This oscillation between a sense of both discovery and ambiguity is maintained in the puzzle structure, where Unmechanical truly shines. What seem at first like tenuous, disconnected elements of a sprawling space soon give way to a clear goal, albeit one that seems massively difficult. Yet by testing, investigating, and probing the scene, you see see a small, simple first step. When you take that first step, suddenly the path forward seems a little clearer, a little less uncertain, and a bigger picture takes shape: one that you couldn’t see before. Clever, tangible puzzles based around levers and switches soon take their place in larger, multi-part mind-benders that reveal their scope as you progress. Watch out for a particularly satisfying sequence that seems like it begins with a one-off test of refracting lazers, which comes full circle to deliver a hugely satisfying challenge many screens later.
The whole experience is tied together with controls whose simplicity have me torn. On one hand, the boiling down of the Windows version of the game - complete with its controller control option - to two key gestures, is hugely admirable. Resting your finger on the screen and dragging it where you'd like to go handles movement, while tapping the character turns its magnetic function on and off. The massive diversity that Teotl Studios eeks out of that combination serves as a compliment to the game's overall elegance, and very rarely feels forced. Things do, however, feel occasionally spotty in ways that can frustrate. A demand for precision when it comes to the magnetic field, and some imprecise hit boxing for turning it on and off all result in actions being repeated, or solutions being botched needlessly.
To that end, not all of the game's smaller challenges fall down on the right side of that divide between logic and experimentation. A handful of sequences feel altogether too rote, and the ensuing "puzzling" amounts to a lengthy sequence of carrying and dropping. Meanwhile, a couple roadblocks seem to lack any rhyme or reason, and fall down on the side of tiresome trial and error. Make no mistake: Myst [$6.99 (HD)] junkies will enjoy whipping out a notepad to do some detailed cataloguing, but the sparing nature of these types of puzzles makes them feel out of place and at odds with the game's otherwise consistent tone.
That, ultimately, is what helps Unmechanical rise above the kinks in its own machinery to stand out as a deep, satisfying experience: a tone and game world worth exploring. On a platform focused so misguidedly on "replayability," the game's gorgeous setting, subtle story, and (mostly) wonderful puzzles make it something better - deeply playable. Huge kudos to Teotl for flexing their acrobatic skills with Epic's Unreal Engine here on mobile as well, where even an iPad 1 is able to clunk its way through the entire game without crashes (though it's not advisable given the graphical dip!). Fellow robot sympathizers, players looking for a mental workout, or anyone bitter their iPad still can't play Machinarium: don't let this one pass you by.
AnonA is the next game from Be-Rad Entertainment, the studio behind Lame Castle and that WarGames matching game. Created at a NASA game jam, it's a resource-slash-building game that has you making infrastructure on uninhabited moons. The premise revolves around the idea of harvesting moon minerals and using them to "print" buildings. Think 3D printing, but in space. It's neat stuff.
Brad from Be-Rad breaks it down in the video and also shares some of the technology he plans to throw into the game when it's a little bit closer to release:
AnonA is about five months out, and we'll be keeping our eyes on it.
Last month we told you, rather breathlessly, about Wadjet Eye Games' plans to bring Gemini Rue to iPhone and iPad. Depending on how closely you followed the point-and-click adventure scene a few years ago, you may know Gemini Rue as a gritty, futuristic detective story about a spacecop named Azriel Odin and an amnesiac named Delta-Six. We now know that Gemini Rue will hit the App Store on April 11 and cost $4.99, though the game will be discounted to $3.99 for early adopters for the first few weeks.
And those early adopters are going to be important: Gemini Rue is Wadjet Eye's first iOS game, and it will serve as a test case for whether or not the indie dev brings more of its back catalog to iPhone and iPad. "If people buy this, then we could justify porting everything else," Wadjet Eye co-founder Dave Gilbert told Joystiq during PAX East. "If it does badly then there's really no point, because this is our best-selling game on the best-selling platform, so that's the best way to gauge to see if it's worth doing."
Wadjet Eye's "everything else" include point-and-click adventures like Resonance, the long-running Blackwell series, and Wormwood Studios' Primordia, all of which seem delightful in their own way. Primordia in particular is gorgeous, if nothing else -- let's go ahead and find a way to get that on a Retina display.
Anyway, point-and-click adventure games tend to do well on iOS as a rule, critically if not always financially. It's a good match for the platform, and Wadjet Eye have taken steps to make the game make the game as "touch-screen friendly as possible," says Gilbert.
While originally built on the open source Adventure Game Studio engine, the Gemini Rue conversion has taken about eight months and has largely been the work of Wadjet Eye chief technology officer Janet Gilbert. Upgrades and improvements include enlarging and improving the hotspots for selectable items in the game.
Wadjet Eye were kind enough to send over a review code, so look for our thoughts as we get closer to release.
Point-and-click isn't what they used to be, right? Modern adventure titles just don't do the stuff that old adventure games did. It's one of those "for better or worse" kinds of deals. If you're in the "or worse" camp because you still dig the pacing, the logic, and the more... contemplative mechanics of old-school games, Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded is going to knock your socks off. It's a remake of the original game that features new text and new puzzles and new dialogue, all of which has been remade with the original game's vision, theme, and tone in mind. Replay Games has basically just doubled-down on Leisure Suit Larry, making a game that is 200 percent a Leisure Suit Larry game.
While I was talking with Replay's Paul Trowe at GDC in San Francisco the other day, it quickly became clear that this re-imagining of Leisure Suit Larry is an actual labor of love. Dude has been into adventure games since he was a kid and he's stoked to be behind this. As we chatted, he was constantly pointing out throwbacks, as well as commentating on what made old-school adventure games great. Reloaded, from what I've seen so far, is Leisure Suit Larry to the max, as if the last decade of re-tooling traditional adventure game design hasn't happened. For instance, it even still has a point-and-click UI with a visualized verb list that extends over the top of the screen.
Warning: Language and content in this video, being Leisure Suit Larry and all, might not be appropriate for the workplace.
In the demo we saw, Trowe showed off the opening of the game, which of course, asks users to verify that they're of age to play Leisure Suit Larry. It does this through a series of random trivia aimed at older folk. It's kinda cute the first time, but we wonder how quickly this might wear thin on folks. After passing this, we saw the bar and got a look at a down and broke Larry, standing in front of it. The narration here was cheeky. When we went into the bar, Trowe pointed out that thousands of new lines had been written for the game. He used an interaction with a woman at the bar to demonstrate this. He used a lot of the game's verbs on her, each of which resulted in unique dialogue.
Later, we went into the bar's bathroom and back room. This is probably the part where we should bring up that Reloaded is as gross, if not more so, than the original. It has a ton of adult-themed jokes, some of which came off as more... gross than intended. This is going to be one of those games that either clicks with you or doesn't at all.
The way you interact with the game is pretty standard. With a finger, you poke around the world, grabbing verbs from the list and directly pressing whatever object you want to use that verb on. You can also hold down on the screen and pull up a radial menu to bring up that verb list, if that's what you fancy.
The iPad version of the game won't support voices or voiced narration at launch because of size limitation. A voice pack is actually going to come out after the game hits. And speaking of that, Reloaded is due out in Q1 2013, which from what we understand, is a slight delay from when it was originally expected.
The build we saw today was pretty rough in spots. There was placeholder art in spots and the UI was kinda broken. But, it was easy to see the game's vision from the demo and get a clear impression that this thing is going to be very much a Leisure Suit Larry game.
Earlier today, I sat down with RocketCat Games' Kepa Auwae to discuss Wayward (previously Mage Dungeon), a pseudo-sequel to its 16-bit adventure homage, Mage Gauntlet [$2.99].
Hailed as 'what we wanted Mage Gauntlet to originally be' Wayward shifts the gameplay to a more rogue-like style with randomly generated levels, multiple classes (each with their own special moves and attacks), and perma-death. Permanent stat increases that persist across characters and runs offer some depth of progression and replayability that is typically missing from rogue-likes.
While fans of Mage Gauntlet will be intimately familiar with the visual style of Wayward (as the same engine is utilized in both), RocketCat is streamlining the control system by removing all visual buttons on-screen. Instead, attacks are performed by tapping (or holding and releasing) the right side of the screen, while swiping mechanisms govern special attacks. The left side still plays home to a (now hidden) virtual joystick for movement.
I'm really digging the direction that RocketCat seems to be taking with Wayward. Combining the 16-bit graphical feel of Mage Gauntlet with the randomly generated levels of a rogue-like seem like a great fit for the series.
While a release date hasn't been hammered out in stone, Wayward is looking to be released sometime in May. If you're curious for more, click below for a short video we cut showcasing a pre-release build.
Earlier this week we showed you a glimpse from a blog post by Simogo which detailed some of the early design concepts from their haunting adventure Year Walk [$3.99], and yesterday they posted another early look at the game, this time with a focus on character development. As they warn you in the post, it's very slightly spoiler-y stuff, so if you haven't played through Year Walk but are planning on it still (you should be) then you might want to avoid for now.
Melodive [Free] is a weird, laid back experiential kind of game. There aren't any enemies or platforms to climb or towers to build. It's just you, music, and a world that lives or dies based on how well you can keep up with a meandering tune while soaring across and into an alien planet brimming with psychedelic mushrooms and oddities. You'll see what we mean if you take a look at our video or check out our review.
In our TA Plays, we attempt to keep in tune for three attempts, one of which was a good "run" by our standards. We also bring some news: version 1.1 of Melodive is about to be submitted to Apple by the game's creator. In addition to bringing a "no gravity" mode to the experience. A later update will also introduce new music via IAP. That's pretty cool.
Anyway, check out what we've got. We're pretty sure this is a game that's never really been done before.
These thoughts are coming in hot, but we figured a couple of you out there would like to hear what we think of Frogmind's Badland after spending some precious hands-on time with it this afternoon. In brief: it's a simple, but pretty cool video game with stellar art.
If you aren't keeping track at home, Badland is a side-scrolling "adventure" game that's getting compared to Limbo a lot. It probably shouldn't because outside of the silhouette treatment applied to everything in the foreground, the two aren't all that alike. In the game, you play as a weird, bulbous flying creature in a forest full of oddities. Machine parts and traps litter the world, a world you assume looked way better than what's going on at the moment. By holding down on the screen with a finger, you make your little dude flap his winged legs and fly. As you flutter through each level you're tasked with basic object avoidance and physics-based puzzle solving. Sometimes you need to avoid odd spiky bombs, other times you need to steer clear of cogs. Occasionally, you'll have to push or trigger objects to clear your path to the end goal of each environment, which is a weird inky black tube that sucks you up and spits you into another part of the haunted forest.
One of the more interesting things we've noticed about the experience so far is that it hasn't tried to explain anything. You don't really know why you're little dude is flying through this world, but that's OK; there's an inviting sense of mystery and discovery as a result, no doubt bolstered by the steady progression of strange mechanics and the art design, which constantly throws crazy images at your eyeballs. Take a look at some of those backgrounds above.
It doesn't even really teach you things through tutorials -- it lets you experiment with the world and figure out how to interact best with it. For example, each of the power up items we've seen so far hasn't been accompanied by a lazy text blurb or description. You see it, grab it, and then try your best to utilize it. Though, to be fair, nothing we've seen so far hasn't been done in a video game before: speed up and speed down orbs, orbs that make you smaller or bigger, and orbs that create clones of your monster are all at your fingertips at select points in specific levels.
The clones are cool. They operate as an extra life in addition to a puzzle tool. If you go down in a trap while a clone is fluttering behind you, you resume control of him. At later points in the game, you're forced to split up huge armies of replicants and take them down different pathways. It's a neat mechanic.
Keep in mind, while you're splitting up replicants, evading falling rocks and mines, or pushing fallen branches out of your way, you're simply using one finger to control the height of your flutter. It's kinda wild how the game never really makes you feel like all you're doing is one simple control input.
After about 30 or so minutes, we barely feel like we've scratched the surface of this one. There's still a lot to do in the campaign, and there's a whole entire race-to-the-finish multiplayer mode we've yet to put through its paces. We're stoked to see the rest of the game through, and we'll bring you some more thoughts then. This is one you maybe don't want to miss, is our feeling so far.
Heads up: Badland is coming, for sure, to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch this coming April 4, creator Frogmind has said. A new trailer has been released alongside this intel, too, and you don't want to miss it because, man, this game is looking good in just every way possible.
If you're out of the loop, Badland is a super atmospheric side-scrolling adventure game that tasks you with figuring out what's going on in a gloomy, fantasy-ish forest filled with strange-looking machine parts and traps. The game will also ship with a multiplayer race-to-the-finish mode, if you're into that.
We're stoked to get this one in our hands, and chances are we'll be doing just that in a matter of days. Stay tuned!
Back at E3 last June, Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada and publisher Natsume made some waves with the reveal of their joint venture, a game called Project Happiness. Slated to hit at some point this year, Project Happiness tasks you with running a shop in a really small village. Interestingly, it's more about the people you meet and their stories than it is about hardcore shopkeeper simulation, which sounds like a pretty cool twist.
Today, we've got some more news to share on this one: Natsume and Wada have announced that the game's name is now Hometown Story and it's totally coming to "mobile" in addition to 3DS in North America.
A new trailer has been released, too, and it kinda shows off the emotional stuff that Wada is trying to pull off with this. It's definitely interesting.
Hometown Story is still slated to hit at some nebulous point in 2013. Heads on swivels, folks. Heads on swivels.
I've got to hand it to Butterscotch Shenanigans, there aren't that many iOS games that can pique my interest on premise alone. However, TowelFight 2: The Monocle of Destiny [$0.99] certainly does, and is a pretty crazy title in most regards. More importantly, TowelFight is an enjoyable game, with only some control issues keeping back an otherwise unique take on the old-school action-adventure genre.
TowelFight follows the story of Hardik, an ordinary monocle-wearing guy that gets sucked into an alternate dimension where infighting amongst gods is causing chaos. Armed with his newly enchanted monocle, Hardik gains the ability to shoot animals from his eye and is charged with a quest to take down opposing gods and save the world. While the story sounds entirely absurd, I thought TowelFight did a great job not only with its overall narrative but also with its dialogue, which is often tongue-in-cheek and filled with a lot of amusing colloquialisms.
From a broad standpoint, TowelFight plays similarly to the original Legend of Zelda. Combat and exploration take place in single-screen environments connected by doors and tracked with a grid-like overworld map. Enemies also drop coins, which can be used to purchase a variety of weapons and items. Health is also measured in hearts, with Hardik losing a percentage of coins and returning to home base if he dies.
We're into playing whatever you guys think is cool, so we decided to give Towelfight 2 [$0.99] a shot after an awesome commenter (and Eli) suggested we do it. And you know what? It's an awesome game. It's sorta like an ultra light rogue-like mixed with a dual-stick shooter. In the game, you play as monocled-man swept up in a battle between gods. He's warped to a strange world with rabid animals and is tasked with getting out. Unfortunately, this world looks a lot like an old-school 2D dungeon and there's a lot of different ways to go and to approach things.
We're calling it "ultra light" because Towelfight isn't all that punishing. If you die, you go back to a warp spot, which is basically a checkpoint that makes your dude throw up. (Don't ask.) BUT, the rest of the game has some rogue-like sensibilities like, say, a huge grid-based map to explore and a pretty deep weapon system.
It's a little pricey as far as App Store games go, so if you'd like to give it a good long look (and watch us fail over and over again) check out the below:
You know how they say brevity is the soul of wit? Indie publisher Wadjet Eye Games must be witty indeed, then: they sent out a press release yesterday formally announcing iPhone and iPad versions of Gemini Rue, a cyberpunk adventure game designed and written by Joshua Nuernberger.
Wadjet Eye promises that Gemini Rue "has been tweaked for maximum comfort on iOS devices," but point-and-click games are typically well-suited to touch devices in my experience, so no surprise there. A pack of screenshots notwithstanding, that's about all there is to know about the project right now.
Gemini Rue has a fair amount of positive buzz behind it: back in 2010, it won the Independent Games Festival's student showcase, and racked up a tidy collection of awards when it was released in 2011 on PC. As you can see in the trailer below, gritty, futuristic environments and film noir narrative are tied together by Gemini Rue's gorgeous pixel art. Gemini Rue is about the intertwining stories of Azriel Odin, a killer-for-hire-turned-cop, and a man named Delta-Six, who wakes up in a psych ward with no memory of his past life.
Maybe I'm a sucker for cyberpunk and adventure games, but I missed the game's first one and am happy to see an iOS port. Wadjet Eye Games will be showing the game to press at PAX East and the Game Developer's Conference in March, so we can assume that the conversion process is coming along, but a formal release window and pricing haven't been announced yet.
We're still playing a bit of catch up from GDC, but one of the more substantial under-the-radar releases of last week definitely needs some more attention than it's getting. It's called Fester Mudd: Curse of the Gold [
