PS Vita’s Escape Plan is looking lovely

Debuted at this year’s Gamescom, Fun Bits Interactive’s Escape Plan focuses on two characters called Lil and Laarge. They look like they’re made out of balloons filled with black gunk. It’s up to you to guide them through a series of puzzles and traps without allowing them to splatter into a viscous, inky paste.

Making use of nearly every input option the PS Vita has available, Escape Plan looks set to offer the “alternative” gameplay experience that every new gaming platform has around its launch time. It’s got a good team working on it as well, with Fun Bits Interactive boasting a number of people from the dev team that brought you Fat Princess.

Check out the clip to see Matt Morton elaborate on their game. This comes straight from the PlayStation Blog so if you want more information then head that way when you’re done.

Source: PlayStation Blog

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Nov 10, 2011

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Hey Indie fans, keep an eye on this

I’ve been watching this game’s progress for some time now, and the more I see of it the more intriguing it becomes. It’s called Tiny & Big and it’s being developed by a team called Black Pants Game Studio. The game mixes puzzle solving with platforming and loads of physics. You can also cut up the landscape with a giant laser. Want!

You play the role of a little, cell-shaded guy called Tiny. He’s on a mission to reclaim his grandfather’s lost pants. To do so he’ll need to slice up the terrain, move giant boulders with rockets and drag stuff around with a grappling hook. These three tools will be your best friends throughout this episodic indie gem.

The game is due out in early 2012 on PC, MAC and Linux rigs. The latest trailer is bellow, and if you want to give the game a whirl then hit up the official website and grab a copy of the beta demo.

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Nov 02, 2011

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Scribblenauts finally makes the obvious jump to iOS

Good news everyone! The wonderful people from 5^th Cell have decided to port Scribblenauts to iOS platforms. They’re calling it Scribblenauts Remix and it’s available oh… right now for five bucks, making this the best news you’ll read on the internet all day. Fact.

The original Scribblenauts made an exclusive appearance on Nintendo’s DS handhelds back in 2009. For those who don’t know anything about this unique puzzle game, you get to write/type in words that then summon objects into the game world to be used for solving the different levels. Obviously you’ll be summoning nouns, but you’ll have about 22 802 words to choose from. It all just works so well!

Super Scribblenauts, a sequel, got released about this time last year. The gameplay mechanic remained largely unchanged but this time 5^th Cell added adjectives to the mix. This meant that your “dragon” that you summoned in the first game could now be an “angry pink dragon”.

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Oct 12, 2011

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Hey! You got Angry Birds in my rugby

Oh boy, Rovio is just not content with 250 million downloads of their obscenely popular time waster, Angry Birds. They’ve already started looking at bringing the game into the real world with something dubbed “Angry Birds Magic”, but now they’re bringing the game to the massive crowds of people that you’d traditionally find in sports stadiums.

Together with a Finnish company called Uplause, Rovio will be bringing Angry Birds to the Singapore racetrack this weekend for the Formula 1. Using voice-control wizardry, crowds will get to play Angry Birds on giant screens near the stands. While we’ll have to wait until the weekend to see how the whole thing works, it seems as if the shouts from the crowds will launch the birds out of the slingshot.

If all works out in Singapore this weekend, then Rovio and Uplause have plans to bring Angry Birds to all manner of sporting events and concerts. Perhaps in the near future, wherever there’s a massive crowd, there’ll be horrible porta-loos and voice controlled Angry Birds.

Source: Reuters
Via: Kotaku

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Sep 23, 2011

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Review: Puzzle Agent 2

Honestly, having never played the original Puzzle Agent, I went into this review without expecting much. To my utter surprise (and subsequent delight) I found a brief but thoroughly intriguing experience within Puzzle Agent 2. For those who find themselves in my position of having never played the first game, there’s no need to worry about not being able to pick up what’s going on. The game features a synopsis of the events from the initial outing – a good thing considering Puzzle Agent 2 picks up right after the original finishes.

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Aug 04, 2011

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UPDATE: There is no publisher for an EU release of Catherine

UPDATE: Hooray! Looks like the shock-horror of PAL territories not getting to play Catherine has had a result. According to Eurogamer, publisher Deep Silver has partnered with Atlus and will be bringing the game to Europe before the end of the year, which means other PAL territories will be getting it too.

ORIGINAL: Atlus is bringing the sheep infested Catherine to the USA on 26 July. Anyone who has been following the game’s development knows that it’s a little quirky to say the least. The game centres on protagonist Vincent, a thirty-two year old guy whose life isn’t going anywhere. He has a steady girlfriend called Katherine, but one night another girl, called Catherine, enters his life and things start unravelling at a rate of knots.

Adding to the must-play factor is the plethora of outstanding review scores the game has been collecting. Website 1Up gave it full marks, and both IGN and Destructoid gave it the equivalent of 90%. It’s sitting with a Metacritic average of 83%, and the media are calling it one of those rare games that has something truly unique to offer.

Sadly, the likelihood of us getting a local release is somewhat slim. At present, Atlus has no publisher for PAL territories, which South Africa is a part of. According to Atlus USA’s sales manager Aram Jabbari, there are “no plans at this time” to bring Catherine to other parts of the world. That doesn’t mean that it’ll never happen, as Atlus has brought their games to PAL territories in the past through publisher Square Enix. As it stands, however, the developer feels that they haven’t found the right publisher for the game. That might change! It also might not – sad face.

Source: Joystiq

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Jul 21, 2011

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Like Google, Angry Birds is taking over the world

It’s called Angry Birds Magic and developer Rovio is utilising it to bring Angry Birds into the real world. Yeah, into Real Life – that thing that gets in the way of your gaming. They’re not training different breeds of birds to fend off errant pigs, they’re utilising the real world as a means to unlock new levels in Angry Birds.

Angry Birds Magic will make use of NFC (Near Field Communications) technology. This tech is gaining momentum and will soon be in most cell phones and handheld devices. NFC allows people with supporting devices to make physical contact with other NFC objects or other phones. By touching your handheld to an NFC device, a data swap occurs or in this case, new levels get unlocked for Angry Birds.

NFC coding can be hidden in pretty much anything, so Rovio expects to utilise stickers and labels on their Angry Birds merchandise in order to distribute levels. If you buy an Angry Birds pig plushy, you might get an NFC tag in the label, or something to that effect.

Posted by Miklós Szecsei Jun 15, 2011

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Feature review: Portal 2

I remember the days following the Doom craze through to about the Quake era, when a large contingent of whiny, opinionated gamers started howling portents of gloom and doom because “originality in gaming was dead” and “everything’s going first-person”. I wonder what they think of the current state of the gaming industry, with the extinction of unpopular genres, the consolidation or disbanding of smaller studios and the standardization of control schemes – they must be turning in their graves, if they’re dead.

Posted by Matthew Vice May 09, 2011

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Review: Epic Mickey

I get the impression that this game was preceded by some pretty high expectations from certain people, most notably the devout followers of games with in-depth stories or characters, like Mass Effect, Zelda, Ratchet & Clank and Fable.

And why wouldn’t they be interested? Assuming that you can stomach Mickey Mouse and a whole entourage of forgotten Disney characters, the game sounds great on paper – but does it measure up to the claims of the developers? Well… I’d like to say yes, but the game falls short for a number of reasons.

Posted by Matthew Vice Feb 07, 2011

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Review: Dead Space: Ignition

Developer: Sumo Digital
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platforms: PS3 | Xbox 360
Website: deadspace.ea.com

I’m all for the idea of companies releasing free teaser games for highly-anticipated, upcoming titles. The idea of getting a small taste of an upcoming game that is more substantial than a demo and can actually have some beneficial effects in the game proper is incredibly appealing. I don’t know why more companies don’t do it. If gamers put the effort into unlocking stuff in an upcoming game, they’re almost certain to make the purchase, aren’t they?

So you can imagine how excited Dead Space fans must have been when they saw Dead Space: Ignition appear on Xbox LIVE and PSN – a preview mini-game to Dead Space 2. According to the accompanying shpiel, we’d be able to play through a riveting storyline and unlock some special items ahead of time for use in Dead Space 2. Cool! Or is it? Ignition tells the story of two engineers, Franco and Sarah, who happen to be secret lovers. Through the course of the game, they’ll go from what starts out as a routine day of fixing broken stuff to running from a sudden Necromorph invasion, using their technical knowledge to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.

This sounds like a serviceable premise for a horror game, and it would be – if Dead Space: Ignition were a horror game! But no, it’s a puzzle game. Now, I’m always open to new ideas, but what the hell was EA thinking? I mean, a small, demo-length teaser for Dead Space 2 would have been great, and even a gallery shooting mini-game would have been fine. But a puzzle game? Am I alone in my confusion here?

Anyway, Dead Space: Ignition consists of three mini-puzzle games that get progressively harder each time you encounter them. They’re not bad in their own right, if you like puzzle games. The first one, Trace Route is more of a reflex game than puzzler, very reminiscent of the old game Pitfall. Players guide a line that moves at a set speed from left to right through an obstacle-littered screen, dodging Matrix code that represents data and trying to outrun security traces. It’s one of those bogus representations of hacking that IT geeks always chortle at. The next, System Crack, is another hacking mini-game, this time more strategic, requiring players to send spheres representing viruses and programs in a hexagonal grid in an attempt to break down a PC’s defences. The last one is called System Override. You’ve seen this in a million sci-fi movies: “Oh no, no power! I need to re-route it!” Yep, you finally get to engage in the fabled act yourself by positioning and turning mirrors which must reflect laser into the right receptacles.

The only reason I can see to get this is if you really want to unlock the extra stuff for Dead Space 2, and possibly if you like the comic style artwork of the story scenes – but seriously, it should have been free.