VentureBeat » Fez

iOS game ‘borrows’ assets from Fez and Minecraft

Jeffrey Grubb — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:23:45 +0000

If imitation is flattery and great artists steal, then I think we found the most celebratory work of genius currently available on the App Store.

Ace Block Jump is a 2D base-jumping game with more than a passing resemblance to some popular indie titles. In fact, it looks like the mobile game, available now for iPhone and iPad for 99 cents, directly lifts assets from PC and Xbox Live Arcade puzzle-platformer Fez.

For its background, Ace Block Jump uses art that is identical to Fez.

For its characters, however, it uses the distinct Minecraft style that is popular in knockoff mobile titles.

An image from Fez.

The App Store lists the game’s developer as Infocom Games. This does not appear to be the same Infocom that made classic PC game Zork I, but we’ve reached out to the studio to ask if it got permission to use Fez’s art

Developer Polytron posted to Twitter about Ace Block Jump with the following message:

it finally happened to us! somebody stole our pixels! itunes.apple.com/us/app/ace-blo…

— Polytron (@Polytron) May 10, 2013

“The first action game in which we mixed pixel and Minecraft-style — called [Pixelcraft],” reads the game’s description on the App Store. “[Ace Block Jump] is the most exciting and amusing game ever — especially in this new style.”

The title also has a list of mind-blowing features that include “explosive gameplay,” “various characters,” and “widescreen support.” You’re definitely getting your money’s worth here.

Filed under: Games

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Minecraft creator launches psychedelic typing game Drop

Jeffrey Grubb — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:28:24 +0000

Markus “Notch” Persson could spend the rest of his life watching cartoons and ordering out. The Minecraft creator made a fortune on his open-world block-building game before passing the development torch for that cult phenomenon on to a dedicated group of developers at his studio, Mojang. He’s not, however, kicking back on some tropical island. In fact, he just released a completely original game.

This new game is Drop, and it’s available to play for free in your browser right now.

Drop is an arcade-style typing game that draws inspiration from Fez, Super Hexagon, and a ceiling (see the tweet below). Built in Unity, a popular graphics platform, Drop has players typing in words as a world of vague shapes and shadows fall closer to the screen. If you miss enough letters, or don’t type fast enough, the world will drop on top of you for a “game over.”

The inspiration. Also, super hexagon. Also, the fez ending. twitter.com/notch/status/3…

— Markus Persson (@notch) April 28, 2013

It’s a simple but intense title that you probably can only play if you know how to touch-type. Hunt-and-peck folk might want to wait for Notch’s next major release, Ox10c, which is an open-world sci-fi title with space battles, hacking, mining, and trading.

Filed under: Games

An indie developer’s strategy to sell games: insult fans and raise prices

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:00:33 +0000

Note: this post has foul language.

Infamous indie game developer Phil Fish has stumbled upon a novel tactic for getting attention: insulting people who might (and probably now won’t) buy his game Fez.

Fish was celebrating the rise of his puzzle-platform game on Steam. The release came a full year after the release on Xbox Live Arcade, where the game sold more than 200,000 units despite Fish’s history of generating Internet storms with his controversial remarks.

Then he reacted strongly to those who expressed disappointment that the $10 game was being discounted only one dollar. So Fish tweeted:

if 9$ really is too much for you then please, do me a favor, just steal it and shut the fuck up about it.

— PHIL FISH (@PHIL_FISH) April 20, 2013

Things went downhill from there. Haters got hold of the comments on Reddit and the Fish-hating comments spun out of control. He then said he was changing the game’s price on Steam to $90. Fish egged them on, encouraging fans to pirate his game. A post on Reddit criticizing Fish has drawn more than 750 comments so far.

Fans (or haters) love tweaking Fish too. A couple of weeks ago, Fish tweeted he was tired of hearing about things reproduced in Minecraft. Then someone built a replica of his tweet in Minecraft.

Fish was profiled in an award-winning documentary, Indie Game: The Movie, and he managed to entangle himself in an Internet firestorm when he used foul language to insult Japanese game developers for failing to produce good games. He was accused of racism and caused a stir

Fish’s real name is Phillipe Poisson, and he is a French-Canadian game developer at Polytron.

Filed under: Games

Phil Fish tweet rebuilt in Minecraft

Jeffrey Grubb — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:57:51 +0000

Blogging about games has its share of common tropes. We love top-10 lists and giving out year-end awards, but one in particular is so common that it’s driving developer Phil Fish a little nuts.

Last night, Fish (designer of mind-bending puzzle platformer Fez) tweeted his annoyance with gaming blogs that continue to post about pop-culture icons re-created in the block-building game Minecraft. For example, this post about a bunch of gamers that built the various realms of author George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire in the popular indie title.

hey bloggers, no more “blank rebuilt in minecraft” posts, please. we get it. you can make things in minecraft. thanks.

— PHIL FISH (@PHIL_FISH) April 12, 2013

Naturally, the Internet didn’t miss the opportunity for a clever (or obvious) joke about Fish’s feelings.

Minecrafter Nick Gilmartin responded barely an hour later with a near-perfect facsimile of Fish’s Tweet built in the game. Fish responded well to Gilmartin’s quick wit.

@nicknovelline @DrKarateChop HAHAHAHA. thank you for that.—
PHIL FISH (@PHIL_FISH) April 12, 2013

Gilmartin has made the schematic available for download for those who want their own Phil Fish tweet in their Minecraft world.

Yes, we’re fully aware of the irony of this post.

Filed under: Games

Mayday, mayday: Polytron dates Fez for Steam

Jeffrey Grubb — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:25:20 +0000

Phil Fish is throwing off the shackles of Xbox Live Arcade.

Developer Polytron Corporation, led by designer Fish, will release Fez on May 1 for Valve’s Steam digital-distribution service. This is the first time the indie darling will be available outside of the Xbox 360′s Live Arcade download platform.

Polytron hasn’t set a price for Fez on Steam, but it currently goes for 800 Microsoft Points ($10) on XBLA.

FEZ IS COMING TO STEAM ON MAY 1ST store.steampowered.com/app/224760/—
(@Polytron) March 18, 2013

Fez is a 2D puzzle-platformer that enables gamers to shift the visual perspective to morph the world’s non-Euclidean geometry. Players control a flat creature named Gomez who gets a magical fez hat that gives him the power to move in the third dimension. That empowers him to travel around the world to collect magical cubes.

Filed under: Games

Halo and Fez might be coming to Steam

Rus McLaughlin — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:22:26 +0000

A lucky screen grab indicates the first three Halo games and hit perspective-platformer Fez might make the jump from Xbox to Steam. If true, it would mark the first appearance of Microsoft’s billion-dollar Halo franchise on Valve’s billion-dollar game-streaming service … and its first official appearance on a non-Microsoft platform.

The Escapist reports that listings for Fez, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 appeared in Steam’s content database — a first step before any game goes live on the service — and were discovered by two programmers, “Pavel” and Martin Benjamins using the CDR tool. Hackers used CDR to view Steam’s complete game content database. All four listings have since been removed.

This would also mark the first PC ports for both Fez and Halo 3. It also leaves an open question around Halo 2; Its multiplayer servers are scheduled to shut down next week.

While none of this constitutes a confirmation that Microsoft’s premiere franchise is indeed heading to Steam, all four did appear in a screen-grabbed list that included games already confirmed for release on Steam;

La-Mulana
The Splatters
Octodad: Dadliest Catch Beta
Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition (Duke Nukem 3D+)
Super House of Dead Ninjas
Fez
LucasArts Test App
Fast and Furious 6
Lococycle
Yogventures!
Hardware
Hardware (Demo)
Dyad
Cut the Rope
Shadow Warrior Complete
Hardware (VIP)
Hardware (Internal)
THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIII
Retro/Grade
Resident Evil: Revelations
THE KING OF FIGHTERS 2002 UNLIMITED MATCH
THE KING OF FIGHTERS ’98 ULTIMATE MATCH
Quantum Conundrum 2
Halo 3
Halo 2
Halo: Combat Evolved
The Witness
Angry Birds Space
Angry Birds Seasons
Second Life

Benjamins also discovered a Halo 3 game hub. Steam game hubs are official groups people use to share user-generated content, mods, screenshots, and the like.

We’ve reached out to both Microsoft and Valve for comment.

Filed under: Games

Best of GamesBeat 2012 roundup

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:30:47 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, GamesBeat celebrates the biggest games and news of 2012 with several retrospective features. Even though the year is almost over, that doesn’t mean we’re completely out of news yet, however. You’ll also find stories on Nintendo patenting a specific use for the Wii U’s dual-screen functionality, Microsoft releasing an iPhone and iPad game with Xbox Live Achievements, and where to buy the documentary Minecraft: The Story of Mojang without digital rights management.

Best of 2012:

The DeanBeat: Game industry predictions for 2013
Here’s the scorecard on our 2012 predictions for the game industry
The biggest gaming trends of 2012
The news that shook the game world in 2012
Kickstarter game projects raised $79M in 2012
GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year: The Walking Dead
The best games of 2012 (GamesBeat staff picks)
The worst gaming trends of 2012
The best MMOs of 2012
12 of the best games for your new mobile device
The best video game trailers of 2012
The biggest gaming disappointments of 2012
The best video game soundtracks of 2012
The biggest gaming surprises of 2012
Top 15 mobile games of 2012
2012′s most innovative game ideas
Top gaming technologies of 2012
5 of the best original games of 2012
The best indie games of 2012
The video game industry’s 2012 holiday cards

News:
Blizzard: ‘We are going back to the drawing board’ for team deathmatch in Diablo III
International Game Developers Association appoints new executive director
This week in The Nintendo Download: Wii U discounts, Lost Levels, and Mega Man
Nintendo uploads tip videos for New Super Mario Bros. U to YouTube
Nintendo secures the patent for a specific use of the Wii U’s dual-screen functionality
How to gain early access to the Dead Space 3 demo
Microsoft launches first game for iPhone, iPad with Xbox Achievements
Where to buy Minecraft: The Story of Mojang documentary without DRM

Previews:
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct is an ambitious shooter that’s faithful to the show (preview)

Pieces of flair:
How Canada has become America’s mobile app guinea pig
A tale of two zombie games: The Walking Dead vs. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct
5 worse BioShock Infinite covers
How major MMOs are celebrating Christmas in-game (gallery)
The many major missteps of Far Cry 3
Outlandish factoids from Street Fighter’s expanded universe (gallery)

Filed under: Business, Games

The best video game soundtracks of 2012

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 16:00:17 +0000

This was an outstanding year for video game music. Professional musicians from various genres all contributed pieces to very unusual places, and many up-and-coming indie composers stole our hearts with their emotional scores. In fact, it’s pretty difficult to find a game with a bad soundtrack these days.

Below is GamesBeat’s choices for the best soundtracks of 2012. It’s an eclectic mix of indie, dubstep, and classical composition that aptly reflects this year’s dynamic music scene.

But because this was such a big year for soundtracks, we also have a few honorable mentions, so be sure to check those out, too.

The Best Video Game Soundtracks of 2012

10. Max Payne 3
Composer: Health

Few songs are quite as lingering as “Tears” on the Max Payne 3 soundtrack. “Tears” lingered in the background of numerous commercials for the game, often playing while the down-and-out protagonist walked away from explosions. It’s an apt summation of the game’s sound and inspires thoughts of edgy spy dramas and sweaty action flicks.

Pairing “Tears” with other tracks from the album like 9 Circulos and Combat Drugs, the Max Payne 3 soundtrack expertly sets the scene of a scumbag ex-cop doing bad things in South America.

9. Mass Effect 3
Composers: Cris Velasco, Sascha Dikiciyan, Clint Mansell, Sam Hulick, Christopher Lennertz, Faunts

Mass Effect has always had a clean, space-age feel to its music, and Mass Effect 3 takes that to a new level. None of its music is overly bombastic, but you do feel a sense of urgency throughout. Melodic, determined pieces inspire us to take in-game decisions very seriously, and you can definitely feel the weight of your choices hanging in the air around you while listening to this score.

8. Skylanders Giants
Composer: Lorne Balfe

Lorne Balfe’s most notable compositions feature prominently in splashy action films like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Inception, but his transition to video games is where he really shines. Balfe scored both Skylanders games, but Giants is where his whimsical style really comes to life. Skylanders Giants owes its jaunty atmosphere to Balfe’s music, and it feels like a proper epic adventure because of it.

7) FTL: Faster Than Light
Composer: Ben Prunty

Is it possible to feel space? FTL is about exploration and space combat that’s also fiendishly difficult. Ben Prunty’s soundtrack amplifies the vastness and danger of space with spangly synth sounds that make you feel like you’re floating among the stars.

It’s also fantastic listening to both the exploration and battle variants of each song in the game. Afterward, you can also feel the expert sound mixing as you play FTL.

6. Borderlands 2
Composers: Cris Velasco, Sascha Dikiciyan, Jesper Kyd, Raison Varner

Borderlands 2 is a space Western, and its mix of airy, sometimes-mechanical tones bring that concept alive. While you scour Pandora for crazier weapons and combat ruthless enemies, the soundtrack is always there, sending out tension tendrils every time you trigger a fight or find a cool location.

Borderlands 2 actually shares two composers with Mass Effect 3, something that isn’t too surprising when you listen to the game’s more action-oriented songs. Velasco and Dikiciyan are masters of incidental tension.

5. Lone Survivor
Composer: Jasper Byrne

Silent Hill composer and creator Akira Yamaoka was on to something when he joined swirling, dreamy guitar sounds with metallic clangs. Lone Survivor’s soundtrack flirts with harsh, chaotic tones while wrapping the game in a melancholy melody. Listening to this soundtrack brings back very powerful Silent Hill memories, and it’s nice to hear that sound live on. The spooky score will unnerve you as you explore Lone Survivor’s gloomy environment.

4. Halo 4
Composers: Neil Davidge, Kazuma Jinnouchi

Few games have soundtracks as passionate as the Halo series. I liken them to Disney films such as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast for the emotional depth in the music alone. Halo doesn’t have discernible lyrics, but it inspires a wide spectrum of feelings. Halo 4 does this more competently than Halo 3 while sprinkling in a fair amount of easily dubstepped beats.

You should feel elated during some scenes in Halo 4, as well as very tense. This isn’t just because of the gameplay, but because the soundtrack plays well with the scenery to deepen your experience.

3. Fez
Composer: Disasterpiece

Fez’s soundtrack is a twinkly adventure all on its own, but pairing this with its sometime mind-bending gameplay creates a nostalgic feeling. Disasterpiece’s sound is best described as 8-bit epic and manipulates a similar electronic sound as Angelo Badalamenti’s work for the early ’90s TV cult hit Twin Peaks.

Fez’s score is inexplicably haunting at times, and many tracks would be just as effective if you played them over stock footage from an old lumber mill and a massive water fall.

2. Sound Shapes
Composers: I Am A Robot and Proud, Beck, Deadmau5, Jim Guthrie

Sound Shapes hit the pinnacle for interactive music. As you guide your musical blob through increasingly treacherous landscapes, your actions build the various parts of the song playing in the background. Building music as you play is an addictive holdover from rhythm games like Rez that works as you leap from precarious ledge to precarious ledge while avoiding baddies that want nothing more than to stop the music.

1. Journey
Composer: Austin Wintory

Game soundtracks exist to heighten emotion in any given scene. In Journey, Wintory’s music is often our only companion, a score drifting delicately on the breeze waving the character’s scarf. While sometimes mournful, Journey’s score urges us to embark on an epic quest fraught with danger and sometimes crushing loneliness.

Journey’s soundtrack is absolutely the most emotional and beautifully composed score for any game in 2012, and Austin Wintory definitely deserved the Grammy nomination he earned.

Next page: Honorable Mentions

Honorable Mentions

4. Silent Hill: Downpour
Can Silent Hill ever be the same without Akira Yamaoka’s soundtracks? Downpour does an excellent job standing apart from Yamaoka’s signature style while still invoking the disjointed musical universe surrounding the Silent Hill series. The only thing it’s missing is a song with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn on vocals.

3. Gravity Rush
If you’ve ever wondered what anime soundtracks influenced by French street music sprinkled with a dash of Star Wars composer John Williams sounds like, look no further than Gravity Rush. Each track amplifies its sometimes manic flying and world-bending platforming.

2. Persona 4 Arena
Most of the music in Persona 4 Arena first appeared in the PlayStation 2 role-playing game Persona 4, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome in 2012. Shoji Meguro’s score is incredibly energetic, lending itself perfectly to a fighting title.

1. Syndicate
Cyberpunk was once completely composed by Greek electronic and ambient musician Vangelis in my mind, but dubstep is taking over. Dubstep pioneer Skrillex’s contribution to Syndicate’s soundtrack is probably one of the most face-smashing sounds in 2012, but the rest of the music feels very inspired by it. If you want to feel like ripping out someone’s neural implant, I suggest taking Syndicate for a spin.

Filed under: Business, Games

The best indie games of 2012

Stephanie Carmichael — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 15:00:31 +0000

Indie games are more than inexpensive alternatives to this year’s Assassin’s Creed and Halo; they’re mouthpieces for serious issues, bold experiments in game design, and canvases for discovering new artistic possibilities.

We sorted through 2012′s releases and chose the 15 strongest and most influential titles, in no particular order. Feel free to let us know which ones we missed in the comments. Or tell us we’re completely nuts. Whatever makes you as happy as these games made us.

Fez

Developer: Polytron Corporation
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Release Date: April 13, 2012

We might as well get the elephant out of the room first: Fez is a smart and challenging puzzle-platformer with bad associations. Creator Phil Fish lashed out against gamers and Japanese developers in the spring, and he won few people over with his personality. Luckily, Fez’s charming style and engaging gameplay are as memorable as his antics, only better.

Fez puts a tiny, two-dimensional hero named Gomez in a world that you can rotate and explore three-dimensionally. The complexity of the space Gomez inhabits is what leads to the game’s many brainteasers, but the peaceful visuals and soundtrack encourage impatient players to slow down and reflect.

Although widely praised, Fez is the center of a big controversy — and host to criticism — because of the game’s glitches and the perhaps inadequate steps that Polytron and Microsoft took to fix them. Should we hold developers and publishers responsible when they fail to issue patches that improve the experience for everyone? Do we have the right to boast that Western games and development are superior to that of another country, especially one that’s contributed so much to the medium? Polytron delivered one of the best indie games of the year, but it also gave the industry something much more valuable: an attitude adjustment. Whether that’s made us better or worse is hard to say. The Japanese, at least, have made the most of the criticism — warranted or not.

Spelunky

Developer: Mossmouth
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360
Release Date: July 4, 2012

Before you yell that Spelunky is from 2009, take a look at the screenshot above. Or better yet, fire up your Xbox 360 and behold the differences. Spelunky on Xbox Live Arcade is a completely new model, not only graphically improved compared to its PC counterpart but also with more content. The action-platformer now has 1-to-4 player co-op and deathmatch, new music and zones, and additional enemies and traps.

The appeal remains the same: Explore and survive. Sometimes making it to the next area requires a careful balance of risk and reward, such as a decision to attack the shopkeeper and incite violence or leave the princess safely behind, for example. Sometimes it comes down to plain luck. And part of it depends on whether your friends are reliable or whether they’re all too happy to let you suffer.

Spelunky’s recipe is one of the most irresistible in game design. The promise of randomized adventure and secrets keeps players from setting down their controllers even though they’ve died countless times (and will many more). It’s a game that you’ll love to hate and an excellent case study of how to serve both PC and console crowds without losing what makes the experience exciting and original.

The Walking Dead: Episodes 1-5

Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, iOS
Release Dates: April 24, 2012 through November 21, 2012

With how big Robert Kirkman’s zombie series The Walking Dead has become — leaping from comics, where it all started, to television and now video games — it’s easy to forget that so much of its success is in the hands of independent creators and developers.

Telltale Games has stirred the emotions of players for nearly a year, fascinating them with a surprisingly well-handled story and, better yet, bringing attention back to the point-and-click adventure genre. All five episodes have set a new standard for interactive storytelling. And the game could give the TV show a few pointers about how to create compelling character performances.

The Walking Dead is also a huge success for a relatively small independent company with a modest portfolio of games, including Sam & Max and Wallace & Gromit. Not all of them have been winners, like Jurassic Park: The Game. But this breakaway hit foretells good tidings for Telltale in the new year.

Retro/Grade

Developer: 24 Caret Games
Publisher: 24 Caret Games
Platform: PlayStation 3
Release Date: August 21, 2012

You could learn a lot from your mistakes if only you could rewind time.

That’s the challenge of rhythm-space game Retro/Grade, where you control a spaceship pilot bobbing his head to the music as you play events in reverse. You’ll need to pay attention to the beat as much as the colorful lasers streaking across your screen, which you “collect” so that when the action moves in real time again, you can dominate the battle. Each burst of energy within these lanes of light is your own ship fire, so when you suck up one of these, you’re also shooting it against the enemy in the present flow of time. You can also fast-forward using your rocket’s fuel to give yourself extra seconds to fix your mistakes.

It’s a clever side-scroller and twist on the shooter and music genres, and equally as engaging is Skyler McGlothlin’s (electronica music artist Nautilis) soundtrack and the zero-gravity, free-flying motions of the course you chart. Just keep an eye on the background as you spin and rotate your way through the awesome regions of space. It’s pretty cool.

The Unfinished Swan

Developer: Giant Sparrow
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Platform: PlayStation 3
Release Date: October 23, 2012

The Unfinished Swan is an abstract tale of loss and our need for closure. You play as Monroe, an orphan boy whose mother dies and leaves him one of her paintings, an illustration of a swan. When the bird escapes its picture, Monroe follows its orange footsteps through a world that you create one glob of paint at a time.

It’s a perpetual visual wonder, but as you progress, the game evolves and redefines the way you interact with it. What begins as paint becomes water, and so on. Discovering the unknown is the source of real magic here, not merely the acts themselves, and the things you find inspire your imagination as though you had stepped into a fairytale.

The Unfinished Swan’s fragmented images and themes might feel incomplete to some — almost like you’re touring Monroe’s mother’s unfinished paintings come to life. But as a whole, it’s one of the most original and artistic games of the year.

Click through for our next five picks.

Filed under: Games

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The best games of 2012 (GamesBeat staff picks)

Jason Wilson — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:00:40 +0000

It’s cliché to say that 2012 was “the best year ever for video games.” Some folk say this about every year. Yet it’s difficult for us not to look back at 2012 with such love and fondness.

If 2012 has shown us one thing, it’s that video game development is truly in the “crossover era.” GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year, The Walking Dead, was first available as a downloadable title, not a retail release. Other downloadables, such as indie-developed darlings Journey and Faster Than Light, garnered plenty of votes as well. And in our staff’s and contributor’s top games of the year lists, we even see mobile releases — like Fieldrunners 2.

Gaming has changed, and it’s nice to see that it’s more than just big-budget console and PC titles that have earned Game of the Year attention. Here are the top games as chosen by GamesBeat staffers and contributors. Let us know what you think about our picks in the comments — especially if you feel we’ve left something off our lists!

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Firaxis Games

Little green men — yesteryear’s poster boys for mysterious invaders from outer space — are about as menacing as Oompa Loompas armed with toy guns. XCOM’s little gray men, however, are scary as hell. It’s not the ashen skin, bulbous eyes, or creepy-crawly walk. It’s what these Sectoids represent: a greater threat that we are simply not equipped to handle.

In the strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, we mere humans bring dull knives to plasma gunfights. And just when we start to catch up in weapon technology, the bug-eyed bastards bring bigger guns and meaner friends. These jerks even cheat with mysterious mind-control powers. Meanwhile, we’re barely keeping the checkbook balanced between research, manufacturing, facility construction, aircraft, and an ever-decreasing budget due to world nations pulling out of the program if you can’t keep them safe (and you can never keep them all safe).

It all adds up to an incredibly exciting and stressful experience. Each decision — whether it’s which tree to hide your assault trooper behind or which whiny country gets your last airspace-monitoring satellite — feels monumental and permanent. Humanity’s existence is at stake, and we just want to make it to the next month, when a few more pennies come rolling in and a few more traumatized soldiers get out of sick bay.

It’s a desperate fight. And boy will we celebrate when those little gray men are dead.

Shoe’s other picks for best games of 2012: Fieldrunners 2, Dishonored, Journey, Fez

Lead writer Dean Takahasi

The Unfinished Swan
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network)
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developer: Giant Sparrow

The Unfinished Swan is one of the most creative titles yet for the PlayStation Network. It’s an interactive fairy tale where you lob blobs of black paint at a white screen. As you do so, you uncover part of a 3D space hidden within the white scene. Uncovering each scene is a mind-bending task, as you have to navigate perplexing puzzles. You explore the unknown, and as you do so, you uncover a new segment in a fairy tale about a boy who loses his mother. It is a touching story that will remind of you of the zany Alice in Wonderland. Ian Dallas, the game creator, feels that a child who is abandoned is like an unfinished work of art. But just when you think that the game has become predictable, it changes. In some ways, the story seems unfinished. But the title is a wonderful first effort for Giant Sparrow, a new studio bankrolled by Sony.

Dean’s other picks for the best games of 2012: Halo 4, Far Cry 3, Journey, Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Culture editor Sebastian Haley

Hotline Miami
Platform: PC
Publisher: Developer Digital
Developer: Dennaton Games

Indie sensation Hotline Miami is best described as the film Drive, but in a retro, pixelated and somehow even more violent form, with subtle hints of Rockstar’s Manhunt sprinkled on top. The short-but-sickeningly sweet levels allow you to carefully orchestrate your symphony of murder and mayhem, filling the floors with maimed corpses and spraying the walls with crimson, all while its surreal, Miami Vice-inspired soundtrack beats in the back of your mind. Basically, if you own a Wii or like looking at livestreams of kittens, this is not your kind of game.

Sebastian’s other picks for best games of 2012: Trials Evolution, Far Cry 3, The Darkness II, Final Fantasy XIII-2

Staff writer Jeff Grubb

Mark of the Ninja
Platform: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade), PC
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Developer: Klei Entertainment

For these Game of the Year summaries, we’re supposed to look above and beyond the individual parts of a game. We’re supposed to write about why it is important, but in the case of Mark of the Ninja, it’s those parts that make it so special. Developer Klei’s 2D stealth action game for Xbox Live Arcade and PC is a master class in well-executed gameplay mechanics. Whether it’s a soundwave that ripples off your ninja’s feet to indicate how much noise he’s making or a vision cone that indicates where an enemy is looking, Mark of the Ninja is constantly communicating with the player. It then provides the player with a great controlling character to poke and prod the world with.

It’s not rare that a game makes you feel like a badass, but with Klei’s game it’s not about how powerful you are — it’s about how in tune with the environment your character is. You have so much visual and aural information that every moment is an opportunity for experimentation. You can spend 10 minutes laying out a detailed plan that involves deadly traps, or you can play the entire game without a sword.

In video games, we don’t usually get a lot of new ideas, we just get different takes on old ideas. Stealth is an old idea at this point, but Mark of the Ninja distinguishes itself by executing the concept better than any other game before it.

Jeff’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Trials Evolution, FTL: Faster Than Light

Copy editor Jason Wilson

FTL: Faster Than Light
Platform: PC, Mac, Linux
Publisher: Subset Games
Developer: Subset Games

I’m low on fuel. My crew raced around my starship like a colony of ants, hastily putting out fires as doors opened to the cold vacuum of space. The Rebels are closing in on me. Do I take a chance and see if I can gain more fuel in the next nebular cloud, or do I make a mad dash for the next sector and hope to find friendly forces instead of angry adversaries? These are just some of the choices the player faces in FTL: Faster Than Light, the indie roguelike that’s swept upon a number of Game of the Year lists in 2012 (including ours!). What makes FTL so compelling to players is that a take on Civilization’s “one more turn” addictive nature — but instead of furthering your game, you’re driven to see if your next attempt takes you closer to escaping the pursuing Rebel forces. And it’s this that makes FTL one of the most interesting, fascinating, and, yes, best games of 2012.

Jason’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Crusader Kings II, Torchlight II, Dragon’s Dogma

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

Far Cry 3
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Something visceral. Something primal. Most shooters don’t have these. They settle you into a safe, comfortable role. Veteran soldier. Seasoned cop. Career criminal. A hero … or an antihero. But Far Cry 3 makes you run blind through the jungle while murderous pirates hunt you like a piece of prey. You’re just a terrified kid. Never held a gun before. Never seen anyone die before. Now you’re covered in your own brother’s blood and getting high off the giddy thrill of mere survival. Then you’re turned lose to roam two amazingly rich, open-world islands where you can really start enjoying yourself, slowly and cautiously picking your tormentors apart. Before you know it, the elation you get from destroying a criminal empire hardens into a different kind of drug: revenge.

That’s when Far Cry 3 surpasses the standard shooter fare. An aimless twentysomething becomes a killer of killers, as feared as the insane warlords he wants dead. Between coolly tense stealth play and straight-up gunfights, you become the predator, stalking intruders in your jungle and murdering them at will. It all culminates in a moment where you must decide just how much you enjoy that particular power fantasy. Enough to abandon your humanity? Maybe.

Far Cry 3 goes there. Solid gameplay — minus a weak-tea multiplayer — and incredibly detailed environments lift it far enough, but its secret weapon lies in how it takes you into that dark, primal place. And then it dares you to ignore your basic animal instincts.

Rus’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Fez, Halo 4, Journey

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

Lone Survivor
Platform: PS3, PlayStation Vita, PC, Mac, Linux
Publisher: Superflat Games
Developer: Superflat Games, Curve Studios

Jasper Byrne’s psychological thriller clearly owes a debt to the Silent Hill series’ mysterious and surrealist approach to narrative, among other things. Lone Survivor weaves a tale of intrigue, always making you second guess your choices while silently tracking your every decision. The latter shows an appreciation for an Eastern European take on storytelling (as seen in The Witcher 2 and Metro 2033) that flows more naturally than Western developers’ tendencies to employ contrived morality systems.

Lone Survivor also smartly reinvents the survival-horror genre by undermining the common trope of item scarcity, which games such as Resident Evil and the aforementioned Silent Hill have used in the past to create tension. Instead, Lone Survivor relies on its narrative sleight-of-hand to keep you on the edge of your seat.

For these reasons, Lone Survivor moves storytelling forward in the medium without falling back on “gamey” concepts such as light/dark paths. At once affecting and engaging, the narrative blends almost seamlessly (aside from an archaic death mechanic) with the interactive elements of the work, elevating the game above its peers in the big-budget, triple-A space.

Rob’s other picks for best games of 2012: XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Tokyo Jungle, Armored Core V, Dragon’s Dogma

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

Gravity Rush
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developer: Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Studio

Gravity Rush is the superhero game I’ve always wanted to play. Even without the traditional Western comic book tropes like spandex and capes, Kat functions like any other neophyte comic-book character, only gradually coming into her full power as the story progresses. Her ability to control gravity is disorienting in the best way, as it echoes resonantly with the thematic elements of the story. Kat is as off balance as we are, as we move her about from place to place, finding ever odder, more unlikely spots to land on.

The world breathes with delightfully artistic colors; the environments are a treat to look at while playing. Gravity Rush encourages exploration of every gorgeous spot, with hidden power gems located all around, on top of buildings, under bridges, and the like. Characters pop off the screen with cel-shaded goodness, and fairly glow within the expository comicbook-style sections.

Touch and motion controls are subtle and make sense within the world, but what really makes Gravity Rush sing is the power of flight. Soaring across the various city sections, landing on floating urban debris, flinging objects and even Kat’s own body at the odd-looking creatures during fights is just thrilling, and never once loses its charm.

For me, Gravity Rush is the best title for the PlayStation Vita, showcasing the power and tech of the handheld gaming device to the highest degree I’ve seen yet.

Rob’s other best games of 2012: Guild Wars 2, Dishonored, Journey, Borderlands 2

Contributor Stefanie Fogel

Mass Effect 3
Platforms: Xbox 360, PC
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: BioWare

So much sound and fury was made over Mass Effect 3’s controversial ending that it’s easy to forget the final installment of BioWare’s space opera really is a damn fine game. It told a grim tale of galactic war, yet found time in between the dire exposition and bombastic action set pieces to bid fond farewell to characters Mass Effect fans have come to know and love over the last five years. It’s those quieter moments — the shooting match with Garrus, Mordin humming the Major-General’s song as he sacrifices himself, your final conversation with Captain Anderson — that stick with you months after putting down the controller. Mass Effect 3 also (mostly) fulfilled the series’ promise that in-game decisions would matter, paving the way for other morality-based titles like Spec Ops: The Line and our Game of the Year, The Walking Dead. By the time the credits rolled, I had completed every side mission I possibly could during my playthrough because I hated the thought of leaving that world behind, which I believe is one of the highest compliments you can pay to a game developer.

Stefanie’s other best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Persona 4 Golden, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Dishonored

Contributor Kat Bailey

Halo 4
Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Developer: 343 Industries

Even compared to the normally high stakes world of triple-A publishing, Microsoft and 343 Industries had plenty on the line with Halo 4. If it ended up being mediocre — or worse, an outright flop — the brand as a whole would have a hard time recovering. With that in mind, the sighs of relief throughout Redmond, Wash. must have been deafening when the top scores started coming in, with even diehard Halo fans giving their emphatic thumbs up.

Halo may not be the be-all, end-all shooter anymore, but it remains quite relevant in the world of online gaming. A lot of that has to do with the distinctive blend of action the series brings to the table — shield management, tagging foes with grenades, and properly using the small but multidimensional maps. 343 Industries seems to have a keen understanding of this action, and it’s perfectly replicated it for Halo 4, throwing in a few of their own twists along the way (the Starhawk-like Dominion Mode is a favorite).

That 343 Industries understands the “recipe” for a good Halo game is only part of the story though. With new modes like Spartan Ops — a series of free downloadable microcontent — they are putting their own stamp on the beloved series. For that reason, the air of skepticism surrounding 343 Industries has largely been replaced with one of legitimacy. Now we’ll see if they have the wherewithal to use that currency to make something truly special.

Kat’s other best games of 2012: Xenoblade Chronicles, The Walking Dead, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Persona 4 Golden

Intern Mike Minotti

Guild Wars 2
Platform: PC, Mac
Publisher: NCSoft
Developer: ArenaNet

World of Warcraft is king of the massively multiplayer role-playing game. It’s probably going to sit comfortably on that throne for years to come. But 2012 brought us Guild Wars 2, the first MMO I played since 2004 that I actually preferred to Blizzard’s take on questing on adventuring.

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t reinvent online adventuring, but it’s littered with smart design choices that make you smack your head and yell, “Duh! Why hasn’t it always been like this?” Turning in quests? The hell with that! Guild War 2′s adventures happen organically and painlessly, without having to talk to multiple townspeople with exclamation marks hovering over their heads. Want to visit an unexplored zone that’s designed for players at a lower level than your own? Guild Wars 2 scales your character down so that you can still have a challenging time tackling each area’s trials.

It doesn’t hurt that its world, Tyria, is a beautiful land that’s fun and rewarding to explore. Oh, and the lack of a subscription fee? Yeah, I like that, too.

Guild Wars 2 is not only more accessible than a lot of its competitors, but it’s frankly a lot more fun than just about any other MMO out there.

Mike’s other best games of 2012: Gravity Rush, Borderlands 2, Assassin’s Creed III, PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale.

Intern Evan Killham

Slender: The Eight Pages
Platform: PC, Mac
Publisher: Parsec Productions
Developer: Parsec Productions

Technically, I’ve never lost a game of Slender … because I’ve never actually finished one. I’ve always quit when the cold sweat broke out.

Developer Parsec Productions’ free horror game is one of this year’s most surprising titles (in every sense of the word). Starting with a simple premise — collect the eight manuscript pages hidden in these spooky woods before eponymous monster Slender Man catches you — Slender uses its too-long arms to yank players into a hell of panic attacks and abject terror.

This game is relentless. Everything you see and hear is designed specifically to unnerve you, and it gets worse with every page you pick up. Even more spectacular is the disconnect between playing this beast and watching someone play it. If you do a YouTube search for “Let’s play Slender,” you risk losing an entire evening in the grips of sweet, sweet, schadenfreude. Boot it up yourself and you will regret ever laughing at those videos.

In a year that gave us two Silent Hill titles and three additions to the Resident Evil series, gaming’s horror genre was desperately in need of some new ideas. And then Slender showed up and made us afraid of the dark again.

Evan’s other best games of 2012: Max Payne 3, The Walking Dead, Borderlands 2, Silent Hill: Downpour

Intern Jason Lomberg

Dishonored
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Arkane Studios

Stealth games have never been my cup of tea. Metal Gear Solid 2’s brain-dead guards annoyed the piss out of me, and I usually ended up going “Rambo” in Metal Gear Solid 3, running through danger rather than sneaking stealthily past it. But Dishonored nails it – the sense of danger, the thrill of the hunt, and the exhilaration that comes from successfully pulling off one of Corvo’s many gruesome kills.

As GamesBeat writer Rus McLaughlin points out, Dishonored plays exactly the way you want to play it. You can tear through the City Watch like a Steampunk version of Chuck Norris (minus the roundhouse kicks); you can destroy every living thing in your path with merciless impunity. Of course being a one-man army with a thirst for cold steel and magical spells of destruction makes the game that much harder. But it’s one option.

You can also play the pacifist and refuse to take a life. Or you can utilize the cover system and take out the guards like a silent assassin. Near the beginning, a pack of man-eating rats block your path, and the solution involves drawing them away with a dead body — that’s about the time I realized I was playing something unique and special. The ways to get from point A to point B are endless and never less than thrilling.

Jason’s other best games of 2012: Sleeping Dogs, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, Journey, Mass Effect 3

Intern Giancarlo Valdes

Journey
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network)
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developer: thatgamecompany

Journey is a game that doesn’t feel like it’s made out of textures, wireframes, or lines of code. The glistening sand dunes, the subterranean fortress, and the snow-covered mountaintops feel like real places, inspiring a magical sense of wonder and fear as you explore the unknown. That’s why the bond you form with your anonymous online companion is so powerful: It’s the two of you against the world, a nonverbal pact that is implicitly forged the moment you meet each other.

I didn’t realize this until I saw my partner collapse from the harsh winds during Journey’s climax. I desperately tried to nurse them back to life, but it was no use. I felt a slight pang of sadness as their body perished seamlessly with the natural elements, timidly coming to terms with the fact that I had to face the rest of the game alone. I only lingered on this for perhaps a minute or two, but just the idea of a game making me feel and think this way is a testament to how expertly crafted Journey really is.

By the end, I had experienced an entire range of emotions in a medium where most games have a hard time just trying to invoke one.

Giancarlo’s other best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Tokyo Jungle, DayZ, Spec Ops: The Line

Intern Jasmine Rea

Persona 4 Golden
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Publisher: Atlus
Developer: Atlus

Few Japanese role-playing games in the last few years have made me want to replay them quite like Persona 4. When developer Atlus announced Persona 4 Golden for the Vita, I knew not buying Sony’s new handheld was completely out of the question.

While it is by far my favorite Vita release this year (and arguably the best game on the platform), Persona 4 Golden is a shining example of how much Japanese RPGs have evolved in the last 10 years. It mixes an intense, emotional story about a group of high school friends with an ongoing murder mystery so well that you sometimes forget about all the supernatural happenings.

Persona 4 Golden’s most powerful element is that shows how everyone has a part of themselves they don’t want to admit exists, and the only way to live freely is to accept that fact. Even though you can’t summon your “true self” to fight for you in the real world, we can all learn a thing or two about accepting ourselves. Persona 4’s relatable characters will show you how.

Jasmine’s other best games of 2012: Resident Evil: Revelations, The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, Tales of Graces F, Lollipop Chainsaw

Intern Sam Barsanti

Borderlands 2
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Gearbox Software

It would be easy to explain the appeal of Borderlands 2 by describing it as a cheap way to satiate your hunger for constant rewards. It may be obvious, but the best part of every firefight in the game isn’t the moment-to-moment excitement of rampaging through a horde of bandits, it’s the few seconds after when you get to pick over the loot. The combat is just a means to an end. What really drives you to do anything in Borderlands 2 is the hope that with the next enemy you take down you’ll find a new weapon that is more interesting than your current one. I mean, who can resist an experience that treats every five minutes like a combination of Christmas, your birthday, and a Steam sale all in one?

Of course, to only talk about loot would be too reductive and dismissive of everything else that Borderlands 2 does well. The combat and millions of guns make it a good game, but the cleverness of the world and all of the things in it are what make it one of the best of the year. I won’t remember every bad guy I killed, but I won’t forget being openly mocked by the antagonist or helping one of the characters think of stupid names for local creatures, because those moments were unique (and well written). See, the appeal of Borderlands 2 isn’t the combat or the loot — it’s the gleeful, wacky fun of the whole package.

Sam’s other best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Max Payne 3, Mass Effect 3

Filed under: Games

Nintendo and Wii U eShop impressing indie developers faster than Microsoft and Sony

Stephanie Carmichael — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:43:38 +0000

Click here for all of GamesBeat’s Nintendo Wii U launch coverage.

Indie developers seem to like the new Nintendo Wii U … a lot.

The video game console launched on Nov. 18 with a number of indie games (although Cloudberry Kingdom is behind schedule), and the flexible, stress-free setup of the eShop could help bring more developers on board. Frozenbyte, the maker of launch title Trine 2: Director’s Cut, is one independent studio that’s happy with the revamped digital platform, the Nintendo Network. Marketing manager Mikael Haveri recently told IGN that Nintendo is allowing developers to set their own prices and release dates.

“It is very close to what Apple and Steam are doing at the moment and very indie friendly,” he said.

Part of that includes making patches free to implement, encouraging them. “Simply put, [Nintendo has] told us that there are no basic payments for each patch — which were pretty high on most platforms — and that we can update our game almost as much as we want,” said Haveri. “For indie developers, this is huge.”

The indie treatment, then and now

Developers have complained in the past of the exorbitant fees that publishers like Microsoft charge. “I mean, it costs $40,000 to put up a patch,” Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions told Hookshot Inc. early this year. “We can’t afford that! Open systems like Steam, that allow us to set our own prices, that’s where it’s at, and doing it completely alone like Minecraft. That’s where people are going.”

Phil Fish of Polytron said in July — in a web entry that’s no longer on the developer’s blog but is recorded in full on sites like Kotaku — that he wouldn’t patch the broken patch for Fez (pictured top left) “because Microsoft would charge us tens of thousands of dollars to recertify the game.”

We asked Microsoft about its policies, and its response applied to Xbox Live Indie Games — not Xbox Live Arcade titles like Fez.

“As part of the $99 USD annual Xbox Live Indie Games membership fee, developers have the opportunity to update their game whenever they choose,” said Pete Isensee, the principal program manager in the Xbox Advanced Technology Group at Microsoft. “There is no additional cost per update. All updates must go through peer review.”

When asked about the differences on XBLA, Isensee said, “We cannot disclose these details but can say that Xbox Live Arcade titles must pass a rigorous certification process to ensure high-quality applications and game updates. XBLA titles also have access to a broad set of Xbox Live services, such as Title Managed Storage, that allow them to update the game’s content at any time.” It’s not clear at what cost.

Microsoft also said that indie developers (on XBLIG) can set the price of their games based on size. “Games that are less than 150MB in size can be priced at 80, 240, or 400 points,” said Isensee. “Games larger than 150MB can be priced at 240 or 400 points. Developers also have the choice to either manually select their own custom release date or have their game automatically published to the Xbox Live Marketplace after it has passed peer review. Earlier this year, based on feedback from the development community, Microsoft updated its pricing policy, so developers now have the flexibility of changing the price of their game once every seven days.”

While Fish’s comments were explicitly directed at Microsoft, not every developer has issue with the company. Bruce Morrison, who worked at Freeverse and ported the 3D shooter Marathon: Durandal to XBLA before forming Man Up Time Studios this year, said he never encountered patch-cost issues with Microsoft, according to The Penny Arcade Report. “I got two free patches for my XLBA game,” he said via Twitter. “[Microsoft] can bend any rules they want. You just have to make a case for it.” But that was in 2007, and Fez came out in 2012. It’s possible the rules changed.

But what about Sony? Brandon Laurino, the executive producer for the free-to-play first-person shooter Dust 514, told Eurogamer in March that Sony actually removed barriers for them. As for patches, is the cost comparable to what Microsoft allegedly charges? “We’ve worked out a framework where it’s certainly not at that level,” said Laurino. “And essentially it’s not even a thought — it’s a completely trivial part of the equation.”

We asked the PlayStation producer about its stance on indie developers. “Indies have been able to set their own prices and release dates since SCEA [Sony Computer Entertainment America] opened up access to self-publishing back in 2008,” said Adam Boyes, the vice president of publisher and developer relations. “Allowing indie developers to publish their content how and when they want, using the business model of their choosing — including free to play — without the need of a traditional publisher, has resulted in the PlayStation platforms being the most accessible console in the marketplace. The Pub Fund program is further evidence of the importance we place on indie developers and self-publishing through guaranteed royalties and additional publishing and co-marketing support.

“As for fees,” said Boyes, “we do our best to remove any obstacles that would impact indies from self-publishing on the PlayStation platforms. SCEA hasn’t charged an indie dev a patch fee in over two years, which represents our passion for supporting the indie dev community.”

The Wii U is different — here’s what to expect

The experience with the Wii U seems to be friendlier than these platforms from the outset, which could put the console in good standing with indie developers and make it the more appealing option.

Martin Pichlmair of Broken Rules, the developer of indie game Chasing Aurora (pictured middle left) for the Wii U, told GamesBeat, “The eShop is a huge step forward for Nintendo. We’re setting our own price, we can do sales, and patches and updates to the games are simple to submit. There is still a strict QA [quality assurance] check by Nintendo, of course, which we regard as very valuable. That, all together with the ability to download digital copies of triple-A retail games, should make it attractive for a lot of players.”

Pichlmair also noted that since the marketplace is less crowded, it’s easy for small developers like Broken Rules to stand out — an advantage especially around the time of launch, when the selection of games for a console is thinnest.

“[Nintendo] never gave us the feeling that we were second-class citizens just because we’re one of the smallest studios they’ve worked with for this console launch,” said Pichlmair.

He added, “I can personally only compare them to Steam because we have no game on Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network. Nintendo provides hardware, QA, and marketing whereas Steam provides a huge community and a great user experience — even for a developer. Both platforms have their pros and cons.

“It is unlikely that the eShop [will generate] the sprawling ecosystem for indie games that iOS and Steam created,” he said, “but I am certain that there will be many more indie games on this platform than on any Nintendo platform before — not at least because the hardware is comfortable to develop for.”

Collin van Ginkel, the co-founder of Two Tribes — which is releasing its puzzle-platformer Toki Tori 2 (pictured bottom right) on Wii U first on Dec. 20 — also favorably compared the eShop to Valve’s service. “It’s a lot like Steam’s setup, which has enabled us to keep reaching new players even years after we release our games,” he told GamesBeat. “It’s still [in its] early days, but we’re completely on board with Nintendo’s new approach so far.

“We were skeptical at first since our experiences on WiiWare and DSiWare had been a mixed bag, but the system Nintendo has put in place is about as good as it’s going to get for indie developers,” he said. “There honestly isn’t much we’d like to see them change.”

Filed under: Games

How spoilers, bugs, and online play influence our buying decisions

Stephanie Carmichael — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:00:07 +0000

Choosing when to buy a new video game is a delicate balancing act. Story spoilers, fluctuating prices, and technical problems all factor into when we decide is the best time to make a purchase. But the right moment is sometimes difficult to foresee. As consumers, how do we know when to play to enjoy the fullest experience? What conditions make a game more suitable to play earlier or later in its lifetime?

The importance of preserving narrative

Harley Quinn’s Revenge, the downloadable follow-up to Batman: Arkham City, is in some ways a story spoiler that comes straight from the developers — not chatty gamers, discourteous Facebook friends, or rude forum members. So much as glance at screenshots for the extra content, and you can guess what supervillain Harley Quinn is upset about even if you aren’t familiar with the game or comics. It has a lot to do with the fate of a certain clown, and it’s arguably one of the all-time greatest moments involving comic-book characters in years.

“When we sat down to work on Batman: Arkham City, we knew where we wanted it to end,” says Paul Crocker, the lead narrative designer at Rocksteady Studios. “In fact, we were so sure of what the ending would be that we opened the game on a painting that showed exactly how the game would end. DC and Warner Bros. were behind us all the way, and our goal was to reach a conclusion that was right for both characters.”

Crocker says that Harley Quinn’s Revenge provides “more context and relevance” for those who have completed the main game and is still enjoyable for those who haven’t. Unfortunately, basic awareness of the DLC can spoil the ending for anyone who has yet to try either release – a result that contradicts Rocksteady’s goal with Batman: Arkham City.

“We work hard to blend old and new elements to create fresh versions of these characters,” says Crocker, adding that since Batman comes with years of backstory that anyone can easily discover, the studio had to find new ways to surprise players. “We really want players to be desperate to see what the ‘Rocksteady’ Robin or ‘Rocksteady’ Penguin looks or sounds like. But at the same time, [we don’t want to] spoil what will happen to these characters during the game.”

For some games, like Thatgamecompany’s Journey, the crux of the experience is story: the enjoyment of narrative from beginning to end. The sooner gamers can play, the more likely they are to avoid spoilers and other outside elements that would diminish the narrative. All it takes is as few words or screenshots to lessen the emotional resonance of a game. In the case of Mass Effect 3, a deluge of complaints tarnished the efforts and accomplishments of a whole trilogy.

Exposing flaws and strengths with time

Other games, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Diablo III, improve with age. Story can still take priority (Skyrim contains so much lore that its devotees grouped its many in-game tomes into a single e -book), but much of the focus is also on gameplay…and how many patches are required to fix it. Postrelease updates add supplemental features like Kinect voice support and address serious issues, such as prevalent bugs. Developers struggle to play catch-up and maintain the massive worlds they’ve built, and before they can launch add-ons or introduce expansions, they have to get their game in working condition.

Bethesda still isn ’t happy with Skyrim’s performance on the PlayStation 3, so it’s delayed the release of the Dawnguard DLC on the system. And Blizzard is only now implementing an update for Diablo III (patch 1.04) that will provide a more sustainable end-game experience than item hunting alone. Waiting until a game is stable and reliable can be smarter than slapping down $60 on its release day.

Blockbuster releases aren’t the only games that require time to mature. Polytron Corporation’s indie puzzle-platformer Fez on XBLA was host to a torrent of technical problems, and then its major patch failed, causing more headaches. The developer pulled the patch on June 22, the same day it went public, and then brought it back on July 19.

Sometimes publishers will abandon problematic games completely, so even the most serious complaints will remain unresolved. Atlus might have promptly fixed the lag issues affecting the Xbox 360 version of its recently released Persona 4 Arena, but Konami disappointed its audience on the same platform by canceling an important patch for Silent Hill HD Collection.

Some genres are fussier than others. Fighting games take time to reveal their inner workings, and a good fighter will remain fun, playable, and well balanced years after its debut. Because these games thrive on player-versus-player dynamics, character matchups, and the depth of move combinations and possibilities, they’re more difficult to parse from the onset. A few rounds with another player won’t assess their real strengths, and these games reach their prime when their communities do. Dedicated players compete in tournaments for years after a game’s release.

Early expiration dates

Of course, sometimes a game’s true experience can erode fast, especially when it offers limited opportunities.

Filed under: Games

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Gaming art for your Facebook Timeline (Part 3: The Indies)

Samir Torres — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:00:45 +0000

Facebook’s Timeline lets you place an image at the top of your profile. Sure, you could add a crummy, awkwardly cropped family photo — or you can use a kick-ass cover from your favorite video game.

We’re releasing seven days’ worth of artwork, each with a different theme, that you can use to decorate your Facebook profile:

Sunday: The Modern Era
Monday: Modern-Retro
Tuesday: The Indies
Wednesday: The 8/16-bit Era
Thursday: Social and Mobile
Friday: Arcade
Saturday: Future Games

Today’s batch of covers features 10 popular titles from independent game developers. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the pictures, then right-click (or ctrl-click for Macs) them and hit “save image as” to save to your computer.

Limbo

PixelJunk Monsters

Super Meat Boy

Fez

Braid

Cave Story

Minecraft

Bastion

World of Goo

Journey

Filed under: Games

Minecraft digs upwards and becomes most-played Xbox Live Arcade title

Omri Petitte — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:33:39 +0000

Microsoft’s Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb posted his regular activity roundup for the Xbox 360’s online network, and the Minecraft mania flows strong on the lists.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition nabbed the top position for bestsellers as well as sliding in behind long-standing champions Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops for unique-user counts. Other titans felt the squeeze: Battlefield 3, Halo: Reach, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Gears of War 3 trailed by significant margins.

Here’s the punchline: All of this happened in Minecraft’s first week of release.

Creativity spawns popularity, or so the legions of Minecraft’s stalwart community believes. Originally released for the PC on November 18, 2011, the open-world tinkering title arms players with pick, axe, sword, and other tools while throwing open the floodgates of crowdsourced content, resulting in masterful works such as a recreated Westeros from Game of Thrones and Portal’s test chambers.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition launched on May 9, promptly fashioned a golden sword, and smashed digital-sales records on its first day in the wilds. Its 1,600 Microsoft Points ($20) cost, unusually large for an XBLA title, and its lack of a modding infrastructure didn’t prevent the acclaim rolling in.

Check out Major Nelson’s activity lists below. If you’re playing Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, what have you created so far? Let us know in the comments!

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
FIFA 12
Battlefield 3
Halo: Reach
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
NBA 2K12
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Gears of War 3
Grand Theft Auto IV
Trials Evolution
Forza Motorsport 4
Mass Effect 3
NHL 12
Madden NFL 12
Halo 3
Red Dead Redemption
Saints Row: The Third
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
Trials Evolution
The Walking Dead
Fable Heroes
Fez
Pinball FX2
Awesomenauts
I Am Alive
Castle Crashers
Family Game Night
Fruit Ninja Kinect
Bloodforge
Toy Soldiers: Cold War
Gotham City Impostors
Toy Soldiers
Trials HD
Dungeon Defenders
Full House Poker
Peggle
Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012

Top Indie Games (Full Versions purchased)

CastleMiner Z
CastleMiner
Total Miner: Forge
The $1 Zombie Game
FortressCraft: Chapter 1
The Impossible Game
Avatar Paintball
Avatar Deathmatch
Fortress Wars
FLIRT
End of Days: Infected vs. Mercs
Avatar Legends
Flight Adventure 2
Toy Stunt Bike 2
Solar 2
Firing Range 2
Miner4Ever
Avatar Air Wars
Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy!
Attack of the Zombie Horde

Games for Windows Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

Grand Theft Auto IV
Age of Empires Online
Batman: Arkham City
Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition
Microsoft Flight
Batman: Arkham Asylum
DiRT 3
Gotham City Impostors
F1 2011
Resident Evil 5
Fallout 3
Street Fighter X Tekken
Toy Soldiers
Fable III
BioShock 2
Colin McRae: Dirt 2
Bulletstorm
F1 2010
Street Fighter IV
Section 8: Prejudice

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat Weekly Roundup

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:44:03 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week in news: Digital downloads for full retail games coming to 3Ds and Wii U, Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami working on a new survival horror game codenamed “Zwei”, Valve reveals inventive Defense of the Ancients 2 pricing, and Nintendo posts its first fiscal year loss.

You’ll also find a review for Bloodforge and previews for PlayStation All-Star Battle Royale, Dishonored, and Crysis 3.

The Fez soundtrack’s hidden images and how they got there

Evan Killham — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:01:28 +0000

The soundtrack to developer Polytron’s Xbox Live Arcade-exclusive puzzle game Fez has only been out since Friday, but a group of industrious fans has already discovered a number of secret images hidden in individual music tracks and shared their findings in the game’s discussion board on GameFAQs. The stealthy pictures can be found by importing the compositions into audio editing software and poring through their spectrograms, particularly in sections containing mysterious hisses or odd silence.

Tumblr blog Black Coffee Spirit has posted several items from the soundtrack’s mysterious cargo. Some samples are below.

The track entitled “Beacon” contains a picture of the first footprint Neil Armstrong left on the Moon in 1969.

Greta Kempton’s 1949 portrait of President Harry S. Truman is hiding inside of “Flow.”

“Majesty” includes Salvador Dali’s painting Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954).

Lost fans should recognize the guy peeking out from the spectrogram of “Beyond.” It’s John Locke. Why is Terry O’Quinn stashed inside the soundtrack to Fez? I don’t know; why is anything?

The most cryptic of the images is a QR code that reveals a series of ten four-digit numbers (probably years). Internet detectives haven’t figured out what, if anything, any of this means, but the clue hunt is certainly giving fans a lot to talk about.

Portal 2 players might remember a similar Easter egg in which developer Valve broadcast a slow-scan television image over certain in-game radios. Whoever put the secret goodies in the Fez soundtrack used software like AudioPaint to map out frequencies and amplitudes based on the positions of the pixels in the images and then spliced the resulting waveforms into the music tracks. If you’d like to see the process in action, check out the below video, courtesy of YouTube user gigafide:

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat Weekly Roundup

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:59:49 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week in news: Polytron admits to bugs found in Fez, Kickstarter is on track to triple their earnings this year, and THQ reports its revenue is slightly higher than expected.

You will also find reviews of Trials: Evolution and Skullgirls.

How Fez’s first-day sales compare to Braid, Limbo, and other XBLA hits

Jeffrey Grubb — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:45:24 +0000

According to an update from Polytron Corporation, Fez has sold almost 20,000 units in its first day on the Xbox Live Arcade marketplace. The perspective-warping platformer launched on Friday the 13th but didn’t suffer any unluckiness outside of some game-breaking bugs. Currently, the pixel-art puzzler sits at an even 90 on Metacritic, and our own review is generally positive.

For comparison, here’s a quick overview of how some other popular Xbox Live Arcade games have sold in the past:

In its first week of sales, Braid sold 55,000 units. The puzzle-platformer went on to surpass 450,000 in total unit sales.
Record-breaking Shadow Complex sold 200,000 copies in its first week. Its total lifetime sales reached 600,000.
In its first month of sales, Trials HD sold through 300,000 units. Since the motorbike platformer’s release in 2009, it has sold 1.8 million copies.
After its first two weeks on the marketplace, Limbo sold 244,000. It peaked at just over 892,000 total units.
The number-one selling game of all time on XBLA is Castle Crashers, with over 2.6 million paid downloads.

Amongst that company, Fez is most comparable to Braid and Limbo. All three are indie darlings that hit the Xbox 360′s downloadable-content platform in the leaner seasons of spring and summer. Each of these titles are also critically acclaimed with Metacritic scores of at least 90. But as Limbo benefited from a greater installed base of Xbox 360 owners than Braid enjoyed, so Fez will benefit even more.

In 2008, the year Braid hit XBLA, Microsoft had sold approximately 26 million Xbox 360s worldwide. By the time of Limbo’s 2010 release, that number approached 50 million. With double the amount of 360s in people’s homes, Limbo (892,000 units) sold almost twice what Braid (450,000 units) did.

Two years later and the Xbox 360 install base has reached 65 million, which can only help Fez maintain a strong tail.

Nearly 20,000 in 24 hours is a healthy start. If Fez can overcome any negative word-of-mouth based on its technical hiccups, then it should continue to sell well. According to the game’s leaderboards, Fez now has over 26,000 total players. At $10 per download, that’s already a $260,000. Not bad for a game that looks like an NES title from the 1980s and forces players to use their heads.

Filed under: Games

Polytron acknowledges “pretty serious” bugs in Fez

Jeffrey Grubb — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 19:31:48 +0000

Developer Polytron launched its Xbox Live Arcade game Fez on Friday to much critical acclaim. However, many players have taken to Twitter and message boards to complain that the title (which was in development for over five years) suffers from numerous graphical hitches and worse. Polytron had been dealing with each user’s issue on a case-by-case basis on Twitter, but now the indie studio has posted an update on its website asking anyone with “a game-breaking problem” to email support@fezgame.com.

Reported bugs include the main character clipping through walls and falling out of the level, hard crashes that require a system reboot, and a jittery framerate which GamesBeat reviewer D.F. Smith mentioned in his review.

Polytron detailed some of the worst-case scenarios in its blog:

“A small subset of older Xboxes with smaller hard drives can’t run the game at all. The game has trouble running off a USB stick. Crashes are occurring in specific levels or situations. In a rare situation (exiting the game from the “wall village” interiors), the save file becomes unusable. Nasty stuff.”

The team says that it is working internally and with Microsoft to fix everything. “It makes sense to issue a patch, but we don’t currently have an ETA on it,” wrote Lead Programmer Renaud Bédard.

While save-file-murdering glitches are a very scary proposition, a handful of gamers seem to feel that some of the minor bugs fit in perfectly with the game’s old-school charm.

“There’s a secret t0 [get wall glitches] to happen at will. A secret I don’t want to share because it’ll get patched out if I share it and then I won’t be able to have fun with the game anymore,” reads a post on the Gamespite.net forums from user Morbid Coffee.

GamesBeat will have an update once additional details are established for a patch to the popular title.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat Weekly Roundup

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 21:41:42 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat, but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed. With all the PAX East 2012 previews and downloadable game reviews hitting, this was a busy week.

Among the news, Commodore founder Jack Tramiel passed away at 83, and Sony killed off its Qore digital game magazine.

Retro graphics and relaxing puzzles help Fez rise above a troubled history (review)

D. F. Smith — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:00:42 +0000

Fez is one of those games where the backstory threatens to take up more space than the real story. So let’s get the backstory out of the way as quickly as possible: The guy who designed it has said some silly things, and the game took a long time to come out (five years, to be exact). The end.

What’s left is a charming, mentally challenging puzzler with a cute retro visual style. In other words, it’s more or less what we thought it would be back before it stopped being a game and turned into a sort of locus around which orbited thousands of angry forum posts.

Not every player out there may share the grasp of spatial visualization that Fez demands. The ones who don’t share it won’t take too long finding out because they’ll have a splitting headache within five minutes of leaving the title screen. Do you like having your perception all tied up in knots, though? Then Fez might be the game for you.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Eye-twisting platform puzzles
Fez proposes that its hero, Gomez, is a two-dimensional being in a three-dimensional space. He perceives and moves around in only two dimensions of the game world, even though it’s designed and built in full 3D. Furthermore, since he doesn’t recognize the concept of depth, depth has no hold upon him. If two platforms line up from his 2D perspective, he can walk across one to the other, whether or not they’re separated along the axis that he doesn’t know is there.

Gamers will feel some flashbacks to Echochrome, the Sony design showcase that fooled with our preconceptions about the way 3D objects appear on a 2D display. Literary types may remember Edwin Abbot’s satire Flatland, a 19^th-century novel about a sentient 2D square that accidentally stumbles on the mysterious world of “Spaceland.”

Gomez does something similar at the beginning of his adventure. Suddenly, he can start to experience this third dimension: Hitting the right and left trigger buttons turns the world 90 degrees along this strange new thing called a Z-axis. Spinning his perspective around lets Gomez line up parts of the landscape in all sorts of unusual ways and leads him along a quest to collect the MacGuffins that will keep the world from falling apart.

Though it’s billed as a platformer, Fez is much more like a puzzle game. The pace is slow and thoughtful. There are no enemies to fight and not much in the way of environmental hazards. Falling from too high up is about the only way to die, and all that happens afterward is that Gomez resets at the spot where he fell.

Some of the jumps call for quick, precise responses, but most of the time it’s not about jumping at the right moment; it’s about figuring out where to jump in the first place. A move can seem far too hard until you realize that you’re looking at it from the wrong perspective. Altogether, it makes for a surprisingly low-stress platform game and a nice change of pace from the white-knuckle style of something like Super Meat Boy.

Many areas are also built around pure adventure-game-style brain-teasers that require the player to read cues in the environment and scoot objects around. For instance, Fez’s world includes a fictional language and numerical system made up of little pixel-ey symbols; figuring out what they mean and how they correspond to controller inputs is the key to unlocking several secrets. (Trivia hounds may be amused to see that Gomez’s people apparently communicate using Tetris bricks.)

As far as challenge is concerned, Fez lands comfortably in the range of “not too hard to play well but tough to play perfectly.” Although the hardest puzzles are very difficult, they ramp up gently as the game goes on, and it’s not necessary to knock off every single one. You can clear the main portion of the game and see the credits roll by only finishing about half of the available areas. What this also means is that players who’d rather focus on platforming over code-breaking and block-pushing can do just that and still make it to the endgame. The same goes for folks with opposing tastes.

Finishing up that main stretch of the game doesn’t take all that much time: maybe six hours, give or take a bit depending on the player’s level of skill. That’s about as long as Fez needed to be. Too much longer and the gimmick would probably get a little too obvious. As it is, Fez takes a bow while we’re still enjoying the act.

Filed under: Games

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GamesBeat Review Vault

GamesBeat Staff — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:20:17 +0000

Below you’ll find a listing of every GamesBeat game review to date. They are listed in reverse chronological order with the latest review appearing at the top. Note that the dates listed are for when the review was posted, not necessarily the actual release date for the game. That information, along with platform tested and more, can be found in the actual review.

2013

5/13

Metro: Last Light

5/6

Star Trek

4/24

Monaco

4/22

Dead Island Riptide

4/19

Defiance

4/18

Cut the Rope: Time Travel

4/13

Shootmania Storm

3/25

BioShock: Infinite

3/22

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct

3/21

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon

3/18

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm

3/14

Lego City: Undercover

3/8

MLB 13 The Show

3/7

God of War: Ascension

3/6

Dollar Dash

3/5

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow — Mirror of Fate

3/4

SimCity

2/26

Star Wars Pinball

2/25

Tomb Raider

2/19

2/18

Serious Sam Double D XXL

2/12

Aliens: Colonial Marines

2/5

2/4

Ni No Kuni: The Wrath of the White Witch

1/31

Omerta: City of Gangsters

1/30

01/22

The Cave

01/18

01/15

Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable

01/10

01/07

Seduce Me

Filed under: Games

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Fez creator: “Gamers are the worst f***ing people”

D. F. Smith — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 04:04:21 +0000

Note: The following article features some uncensored vulgarities.

Phil Fish of developer Polytron Corporation took away the grand prize at this year’s Independent Games Festival. Winning the big event at the Game Developers Conference earned him $30,000 to help complete his long-awaited platfomer Fez, currently expected to hit Xbox Live Arcade later this year. However, that’s not what got him most of his headlines this week.

Speaking on a March 6 GDC panel promoting the documentary Indie Game: The Movie, in which he’s featured alongside Braid creator Jonathan Blow and other independent game-makers, Fish fielded a question from a Japanese member of the audience, ID’d by IT Media and Kotaku as a programmer and designer named Makoto Goto. Goto asked Fish his opinion of contemporary Japanese games, and he got it.

“Your games just suck,” said Fish, who went on to criticize the modern Japanese games industry in detail. Develop magazine reports that his remarks “sparked an audible reaction” and considerable comment afterward. Goto himself apparently didn’t get the gist of Fish’s feelings until the rest of the audience began to respond, which put the point across.

On Twitter, Fish added, “im sorry japanese guy! i was a bit rough, but your country’s games are fucking terrible nowadays.”

Once the panel concluded, Fish’s remarks quickly began burning up web forums and Twitter. At the moment, a thread on the NeoGAF forum runs to 54 pages, featuring accusations of everything from bad taste to outright racism. Several commenters had uncharitable things to say about Canadians (Fish is from Quebec).

Fish returned fire through his own Twitter feed. On March 8, he announced, “people telling me they’re going to pirate my game because they dont like me. gamers are the worst fucking people.” He also got personal with a few of his critics:

Speaking of his big win at the Independent Games Festival, Fish also found himself embroiled in scandal over what some called a tainted victory. Brendan Caldwell at Rock Paper Shotgun has an extensive rundown of the dispute, in which critics argue that Fez’s inclusion in the 2012 IGF field — after previously entering and winning an award in 2008′s Festival — came about thanks to cronyism and a fast-and-loose interpretation of the competition’s rules.

Speaking to Kotaku on March 9, after the furor had churned for a few days, Fish did his best to smooth over the issue, pointing out that he apologized to Goto after the panel, and that Blow had also echoed many of his feelings about today’s Japanese games. The tone of his tweets calmed somewhat by then as well, and he sent a public apology to Goto. “im very sorry i was so rude to you in my answer,” he said. “i hope the rest of your GDC was more enjoyable.”

Goto, meanwhile, after returning home to Japan, seemed quite sanguine about his experience. “I am taking Phil Fish’s message,” he said through his Twitter feed, “as a strongly worded message of encouragement to Japanese game developers.”

Filed under: Games

What’s happening in Indie games right now?

Dan Crawley — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:00:33 +0000

January is typically a quiet time of year for blockbuster video games, but despite the cold, the independent game scene is still buzzing with activity.

This week saw the announcement of the finalists for the 14^th annual Independent Games Festival, due to take place in San Francisco in March. The IGF celebrates the most creative and innovative independent games that have emerged from the indie community during the past year. Previous finalists and winners of festival awards include such highly regarded indie games as Limbo, Machinarium, World of Goo and Superbrothers: Swords and Sorcery EP.

The juries for the IGF awards include some big names in game development, such as George Fan, the creator of Plants vs Zombies, and Brett Douville, lead programmer at Bethesda Game Studios, maker of the recent The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

Five finalists have been announced in each of the seven festival categories, and there are some truly outstanding games on those lists.

Perspective shifting platform game Fez, subject of Indie Game: The Movie, is nominated in two categories, with one jury member saying: “Fez is so epic that I think we’ll look back on it as both an homage to video game history, as well as one of the most compelling audiovisual experiences of our times. Such an amazing showcase of craft and talent and design perfection.”

Dear Esther, an experimental first person game, is up for four awards, including the Seamus McNally Grand Prize. The game, which traces a ghostly story on a remote Scottish island, received this comment during the judging process: “Dear Esther is top of my list. Mainly because I feel like it is taking a known genre and game engine and creating something from it that is a total artistic experience.”

Lume (pictured above) is nominated for ‘Excellence in Visual Art’. A jury member said that Lume is “beautiful and fascinating and it’s like playing a game in a children’s book.” Highlighting the unique graphical style of the game, the judges also called Lume “such a handsome feast … overall, very lush and touching.”

All the shortlisted games will be playable at the Game Developers Conference 2012 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, from March 7-9. The IGF Awards ceremony, at which the winners will be unveiled, will be held on the evening of March 7, alongside the Game Developers Choice Awards. IGF award recipients will receive $60,000 of prizes across the seven categories, including $30,000 for the winner of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

Here’s a full list of finalists:

Excellence In Visual Art

Botanicula (Amanita Design)
Dear Esther (thechineseroom)
Lume (State Of Play Games)
Mirage (Mario von Rickenbach)
Wonderputt (Damp Gnat)

Technical Excellence

Antichamber (Demruth)
Fez (Polytron)
Prom Week (Expressive Intelligence Studio, UC Santa Cruz)
Realm of the Mad God (Wild Shadow Studios & Spry Fox)
Spelunky (Mossmouth)

Excellence In Design

Atom Zombie Smasher (Blendo Games)
English Country Tune (Stephen Lavelle)
Frozen Synapse (Mode 7 Games)
Gunpoint (Tom Francis, John Roberts and Fabian van Dommelen)
Spelunky (Mossmouth)

Excellence In Audio

Botanicula (Amanita Design)
Dear Esther (thechineseroom)
Pugs Luv Beats (Lucky Frame)
To The Moon (Freebird Games)
Waking Mars (Tiger Style)

Best Mobile Game

ASYNC Corp (Powerhead Games)
Beat Sneak Bandit (Simogo)
Faraway (Steph Thirion)
Ridiculous Fishing (Vlambeer)
Waking Mars (Tiger Style)

Nuovo Award
[Designed 'to honor abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development'.]

At a Distance (Terry Cavanagh)
Dear Esther (thechineseroom)
Fingle (Game Oven Studios)
GIRP (Bennett Foddy)
Proteus (Ed Key and David Kanaga)
Johann Sebastian Joust (Die Gute Fabrik)
Storyteller (Daniel Benmergui)
Way (CoCo & Co.)

Seumas McNally Grand Prize

Dear Esther (thechineseroom)
Fez (Polytron)
Frozen Synapse (Mode 7 Games)
Johann Sebastian Joust (Die Gute Fabrik)
Spelunky (Mossmouth)

Filed under: Business, Games

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