Back in 2011, Namco had a very bright idea: create a team to breathe new life into some of their long-forgotten franchises and characters. ShiftyLook was born out of this idea, and through a series of webcomics (and games and other media), they succeeded admirably at their mission.But now, like the characters they were tasked to resurrect, ShiftyLook is destined to fall into obscurity; a soon to be distant memory."Now that we have successfully revived so many franchises," reads the latest update on the ShiftyLook website, "the heavy lifting is completed - and so is our work. We battled the video games abyss and won, which means it's time for us to move on and let the hit-makers play with some new toys."The early retirement of ShiftyLook spells a similar fate for many of its creations. Namco High, a fantastic dating sim/interactive fiction release that earned a near perfect score in our review last year, will have its servers shut down on Jun 30, 2014. Their mobile game BRAVOMAN: Binja Bash! will be suffering a similar fate, disappearing from iTunes, Google Play and Amazon at the end of this month.
Few games or creators have ever managed to upset the status quo in the way Flappy Bird and Dong Nguyen did. The game skyrocketed to #1 with zero marketing, earned its creator hundreds of thousands of dollars, and disappeared from the App Store due to a sense of ethics and responsibility; the game was simply too addictive, its creator said.Asides from a few tweets and a whole lot of speculation, though, we've had little to go in in terms of what really happened with Flappy Bird - or to its creator Dong Nguyen. But now, thanks to an interview with Rolling Stone's Peter Travers, we have the whole story."If you have even the slightest bit of interest in the phenomenon that was Flappy Bird, you owe it to yourself to check out the whole article. That said, here are a few highlights of what we learned;
With new console launches from Sony and Microsoft mere months in the rear view mirror, we won't blame you if you buy into the hype and consider 2014 to be a golden age for gaming machines; a veritable Renaissance for living room gaming. But the endless TV ads and Best Buy displays that are selling you this fantasy are devoid of one thing: sales numbers. And as TechCrunch has reported today, they're not good.Referring to leaked NPD data on North American console sales for January 2014, TechCrunch paints a fairly dismal picture for the living room market as a whole - one in which only 16 million next gen consoles have sold to date. At fault, in their opinion, are a myriad of factors - including casual gamers moving to mobile and hardcore gamers moving to PC.As the editor of a site primarily focused on mobile and PC gaming, I hate to say I told you so, but… you're gonna let me have this one, right?
Back in January, Gamezebo's interview with Disruptor Beam CEO and founder Jon Radoff revealed that Game of Thrones Ascent was headed to mobile. The big question was when, but the company kind of answered that today: early spring, close to the time when Season 4 of the TV show gets rolling on HBO.Disruptor Beam isn't going it alone either. Following up on a partnership formed for the popular web version of the game, it's teaming with Kongregate to bring Game of Thrones Ascent to both iOS and Android."Since the early stages of the game's development, our intention was always to release Game of Thrones Ascent on mobile devices," Radoff said in a press release. "Now that we have had great success growing users and revenue across web platforms, we are excited to be bringing the game to mobile players. That's what we've seen first-hand with Kongregate, and why we are excited about partnering with them for our mobile release, continuing to build upon this vast and passionate community of players."Kongregate is best known as on online games portal, but it did announce a $10 million mobile publishing initiative last year. It's also owned by GameStop, which should help when it comes to marketing the arrival of Ascent on mobile devices.
HTML5 games reminds me of Oakland, California. Oakland is the smaller sister next to San Francisco, on the wrong side of the Bay. Every year, we say, this will be the year that Oakland becomes the Brooklyn of the Bay Area. But, it never happens. It's always next year.That's the story of HTML5 and games. Whether its Facebook embracing or dropping HTML5, HTML5 startups getting funding then imploding; the imminent success of HTML5 games is always a year away.But this year may be different.There are awesome HTML5 game technologies available, such as Tresensa, GameClosure, Clay.io, and Goo Technologies. Spil taking the lead with new ad technologies and $5 million in funding. And then there is Kik. Kik is a messenger platform with 100 million user and over 275,000 new users signing up everyday. What makes Kik unique compared to other games-focused messenger platforms such as Line, KaoKao, WeChat, and Tango is that does not distribute third-party game apps.
Oh my god, oh my god, Costume Quest 2 is happening.Phew, now that that's out of the way, here are the details. The second full game in the "my first RPG" series was announced courtesy of developer Double Fine and small-time publisher Midnight City.In typical Double Fine fashion, the announcement comes by way of an amusing live-action short featuring Tim Schafer himself. Beyond the title and publisher, the video does little to inform us about the game. Costume Quest was one of several downloadable games cited with helping to save Double Fine after several financial (though not critical) flops. In the original, players controlled a group of trick-or-treating children whose imagination transformed their costumes into the real thing and allowed them to fight supernatural mischief-makers.
Whitaker Trebella is a busy man. When he's not making great mobile games like Polymer (recently a Starbucks free game selection) and Pivvot, he's composing the soundtracks to all of your other favorite games. Tilt to Live, Super Stickman Golf, Velocispider - the tunes in those games are all Whitaker.Keeping him busy nowadays? A crowd-powered attempt to bring Pivvot to Steam. The game is on Steam Greenlight, and if you're already a fan of his work you should do the man a solid and give it an upvote.With so much on his plate, you'd think it would be a real challenge for Mr. Trebella to take a break from contributing to games to actually play them. He's inclined to agree - but that doesn't mean he hasn't managed to squeeze some game time into the last few months.We recently chatted with Whitaker to answer that one burning question that's on all of our minds: what'cha been playing?
What happens when you mix the latest game clone craze with the hottest Bitcoin alternative payment clone?It's time to play . . . Super Doge!The gameplay is similar to Flappy Bird, which means it's pretty basic. The twist is that as you navigate your doge through the pipes, you collect coins, which can be redeemed for dogecoins. The more coins you collect, the greater your share of dogecoins you can earn per day.The complicated formula is articulated on the developer's web site, but to keep it simple, if you were the only player of the game per day, you'd earn all the dogecoins.Unfortunately for you, the game is getting popular, with 5000 downloads so far according to The Daily Dot. At this point, Gamezebo is receiving about 25 review requests per day for Flappy Bird clones, but this game is unique in it is apparently not based on a $10 framework.And, not surprisingly, it's Android only for now. The iPhone may get the exclusive on Threes! and every other favorite new app of mine, but Android gets Super Doge.The developer is currently donating the prize money, but requesting volunteers to pay into the prize pool. Given how tipsy the Dogecoin community is (as the Jamaican bobsled team can attest), he should be successful building it up.