If anyone remembers the heyday of Japanese gaming's global domination, it's Keiji Inafune. The man responsible for Mega Man, Dead Rising and Onimusha has been a champion in the marketplace since the NES days. He recently left Capcom to form his own indie games studio, Comcept, and his first creator-owned project, Mighty No. 9.It's a pretty familiar story; we've seen plenty of notable developers go this route in the West. But in Japan, Inafune is an anomaly.And that might just be what's wrong with Japanese gaming.At a GDC panel last week dubbed "Meanwhile, in Japan," Inafune was joined on stage by Mark MacDonald of Japanese localization company 8-4. The two explored the cultural differences that have limited Japan's growth in the West, including their indie scene.
Every few weeks Valve will release a new list of games which have been approved through Steam Greenlight, their system for allowing the public to vote on which games achieve publishing deals with Valve. While the votes themselves are not the exclusive deciding factor, they certainly help Valve target which games to allow onto their platform. The lists of approved games often reflect the most popular titles which have attained large amounts of industry attention due to an exciting innovation or by sheer luck. However, not every game on Steam Greenlight gets approved and put on one of Valve's lists.After spending some time digging through the most recent games posted to Greenlight, I'd like to show you five of the weirdest games I came across.
Late last October, Toco Games' endless runner, Last Knight, was approved for distribution on Steam. Now, five months later, Last Knight is about to make its Steam debut with some brand new content. The Steam release, entitled, Last Knight: Rogue Rider Edition, is set to feature the new Rogue Rider gameplay mode which combines rogue-like elements along with Last Knight's signature gameplay mode."The game mode lets the player make his own way through a randomly generated kingdom full of dangers and riches," David Hagemann explained to Gamezebo. "Like the name implies, it is heavily inspired by rogue-like games... Its intention is to combine elements that you might know from these games with the elements of Last Knight, the result is something even more intense than most rogue-likes since there is no health at all and perma-death is always just a split second away."
Every now and then, the internet gets a funky little oddity that provides a surprising amount of amusement for what it is. Today, Twitter rolled out once such oddity. By visiting discover.twitter.com/first-tweet, you can see the very first tweet you posted to your account.In fact, you can see anyone's first tweet. (tee-hee)And so, like any good citizen of the internet, I felt it was my responsibility to comb through the first tweets of every game developer worth following on Twitter to find the ones that really stuck out. As you'd expect, 99% of them are people saying "I'm on Twitter now" or "let's see what this Twitter thing is about." In an effort to represent the 99% (Occupy Twitter, people!), here's what Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid and the upcoming The Witness first tweeted: "Now that we have that out of the way, let's see what those who weren't ready to just greet their newfound Twitter friends had to say.
Games today are cheaper and more plentiful than they've ever been. That's great news for players, but finding the time to actually complete something -- to find that sense of finality -- can be a challenge.Luckily, the independent game scene is often less interested in 20-hour campaigns and repetitive score-chasing. There are plenty of great games out there offering a complete experience in the time it takes to install most big-budget action titles.These are five such games.
After just two days, developer Vlambeer's latest game, Luftrausers, is already profitable according to a tweet from the company's official account.Luftrausers is a 2D aerial combat game that launched on PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita that spent two and a half years in development The game will eventually cost $9.99, but launched (and remains) at a 10% discount on Steam and a 20% discount on PlayStation Network for PlayStation Plus subscribers, making the fast turnaround on profitability just that much more impressive.Nearly a year ago, the game was cloned on the App Store long before release. The story caused a bit of a ruckus as Vlambeer's previous game, Ridiculous Fishing, went through a major cloning ordeal itself.Vlambeer is also the studio behind Super Crate Box and the upcoming Nuclear Throne (formerly Wasteland Kings) for PlayStation 4 and PC. You can currently pick up the prerelease version of Nuclear Throne through Steam Early Access.
Blue Manchu's Card Hunter, the browser-based, RPG-meets-CCG-meets-tabletop game with a sense of humor and a Richard Garfield pedigree, is really good. So good, in fact, that I sometimes wish I could take it with me when I'm not by my laptop.DropForge Games must have read my mind. The relatively new Seattle studio funded by Wargaming.net (yes, the World of Tanks folks) is helping Blue Manchu by developing and publishing a mobile version of Card Hunter made with tablets in mind."The number one request from the Card Hunter community has been 'when will this be on my tablet?'" Blue Manchu founder and CEO Jon Chey said in a press release announcing the deal. "The game's design screams out for a tablet experience."Indeed it does, as the turn-based, tactical battles feel like they'd transfer to touchscreens without too much trouble. It's also already built on a free-to-play model, enhanced with a sensible option to pay for more content.
Few games have a story behind them quite as riveting as Tetris. I first learned about the strange and storied history of the game when reading Game Over, David Sheff's insanely detailed book on the history of Nintendo.The story of Tetris is really the story of the end of the Soviet Era, Cold War Politics, and dirty business. For years I've said that it would make a brilliant HBO miniseries, and while we don't have that, this BBC documentary from 2004 is the next best thing.Sit back, make some popcorn, and spend the next 59 minutes of your day with Tetris: From Russia With Love.