Éric Chahi is well-known in the industry for his innovative work on Another World (called Out of This World in the U.S.) and Heart of Darkness—and for his nearly ten-year absence from the industry. XBLA Fans sat down at E3 2011 with the legendary game designer for a quiet chat about art, inspiration, and the craft of telling stories.
Developer Housemarque’s Outland has been on XBLA for only a few weeks but has already claimed its place as one of the service’s best games. We recently interviewed the game’s Lead Designer Aki Raula, so strap yourself in, choose between light and darkness and be sure to dodge those pesky bullet-hell, um, bullets.
XBLAFans: So, Outland has been released and has received glowing reviews. How does that feel?
Raula: It feels like our hard work has been noticed and people appreciate it. We are very happy of the spectacular reception for Outland – it is, and continues to be, beyond our expectations. As a small studio we also hope the review success translates to sales so that we can keep on making great games!
Technically Brawler Week is over but we have a slight addendum…
Associate Editor John Carson recently got the chance to speak to Edmund Mcmillen and Tommy Refenes better known as Team Meat. While Super Meat Boy isn’t a brawler the guys are big fans of the genre and hope to make a brawler at some point in the future. Edmund and Tommy discuss some of their favorite brawlers and also share their observations and ideas about the genre. You can listen to the interview below or download it to take with you wherever you may go.
I recently had a chance to sit down to do a short interview with Brian Provinciano of Vblank Entertainment. What I had intended to be a short interview that wouldn’t take up too much of his time turned out to be a great 30 minute conversation about his roots in the gaming industry, Retro City Rampage, and its predecessor, Grand Theftendo. Below you’ll find just a few of the highlights from our conversation. Special thanks to Brian for giving us such an in-depth interview. We’ve posted the audio below. Give it a listen and see some of the highlights after the jump.
The The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile releases on April 6, so we sat down with James Silva, Head Dishwasher of Ska Studios, to talk about the game, the road leading up to this point, and the road ahead.
James began serious work on game development in 2000. His first title was Zombie Smashers X , which was featured on the demo disc of a PCGamer magazine in 2000. He felt like he’d made it big then, but it still took some time before he really had some momentum. James really got noticed in 2007, when he won the Dream.Build.Play contest with The Dishwasher: Undead Samurai. By winning the contest, James received $10,000 prize and an Xbox Live Arcade publishing contract.
The AAA titles are continuing to look for ways to make the player feel that they have an effect on the game world. We have seen the continued success of games that feature choice, as well as multiple endings. The only issue is that many games still contiue to tell the story through in-game movies, to help move along the narrative, as well as captivate the player. Most players do not like the feeling of losing control. They hold a controller for a reason. With Bastion, it is not the cutscenes or trailers that are capturing people’s attention, it’s the narration. This isn’t just some voice walking your through a tutorial. The dynamic narration in Bastion is telling the story that you are creating. The narration in this game is designed to react tho the actions of the player, and tell the story the player is creating. Having only seen a demo at PAX, I cannot say how well this is implemented throughout, but the experience certainly stuck with me.
I reached out to Greg Kasavin, Creative Director at SuperGiant Games to delve a little deeper into the concept of dynamic narration; from how it came to be, to how it’s turning out.
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The following article is based around an email interview conducted by our team with Naked Sky’s CTO Joshua Glazer. Naked Sky is also known for their previous XBLA title RoboBlitz, which was released back in November 2006z.
Microbot is a twin stick shooter that lets the player battle malicious viruses and diseases as a microscopic nanotech robot injected into someone’s bloodstream. As players travel travel through veins, bones, lungs and other organs, they can collected data fragments that allows them to customize their microbot with powerful weapons, defensive systems, movement parts, and special abilities. What got yours truly’s blood pumping about this title, is the planned cooperative drop-in/drop-out mode. Read the rest of this entry »
Gameinformer has a wonderful interview in their December Issue with 5th Cell Co-Founder Jeremiah Slaczka. Unfortunately, he was largely mum on details about their new game, Hybrid. For the uninitiated, Hybrid will be a high-res shooter that utilizes the source engine (check out the Hybrid teaser trailer here).
The following article is based around an email interview conducted by our team with Jake Kazdal, CEO of Haunted Temple Studios. For the uninitiated, Haunted Temple Studios is currently developing Skulls of the Shogun for Xbox Live Arcade for Spring 2011 release.
Skulls of the Shogun is a turn based strategy title. Players take on the role of a Samurai General who was betrayed by one of his closest allies and slain in the moment of his greatest victory. Awakened in the afterlife, he finds the same opponent has betrayed him again in death. As a result, he begins a rampage trashing the laws of the Samurai afterlife as he seeks revenge.
The founders of Vector Unit are no strangers to game development. After working for several years at bigger companies, Ralf Knoesel and Matt Small decided it was time to form their own company with the goal of making “big games in small packages”. Games that felt like full retail experiences but were meant for downloadable services like Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.
With their first title, Hydro Thunder Hurricane, that goal was achieved. With a small team of about 8 people and some art outsourcing, Vector Unit managed to create the sequel fans had been dreaming of for 10 years. This is an interview with Matt Small, co-founder and creative director at Vector Unit. He shares his views on the franchise, the upcoming DLC pack and the future.
