Spice Road, Culturally Confused Economic RTS

Posted on September 23, 2014 by thre3zekiel

If you’re like me, few things give you greater happiness in life than looking down on an anthill and watching them run around collecting food, attacking other bugs and working the land. Occasionally it’s fun to spit on them or zap them with a magnifying glass, but even that is just to see how their society absorbs the blow. Spice road is a game that allows you all the fun of watching an anthill, except that the anthill is full of people and they are establishing a regional trade-network.

To further enhance the insect-oriented analogy, the game regularly quotes economic magnates such as Donald Trump, Lee Iacocca and others. This gives you the feeling of being a money machine without having the crappy toupee. If you have a toupee, you have my sympathy. When you start the game, you are looking down on a region that is clouded by fog and filled with possibility. Your initial task will always be to establish a town, which will be your primary base of operations. City-building is a major part of this game, and it is a lot of the fun. As you build your towns bigger and bigger, you will have more people come to live in your town. Pretty basic shit, really.

Aw, fuck no. I am not going into the mysterious clouds of fog! There could be naked cannibals in there!

Some of the first things that you will build at any settlement will be houses, for the plebs, and scout camps, for innocent exploitation. On the region screen, you will see your scouts appear as little blue bullet-shaped things. While your scouts meander the terrain, they will discover resources, which appear as white diamonds. As you uncover these resources, you will be able to establish more and more resource buildings. Now, having fucking resources is great, food gets you more people and makes them happy, alcohol lets you get drunk at the saloon etc. You will be able to manufacture goods from ores you mine and have a full, booming industry. The thing is, you are in this game to make some serious fucking money.

This is where trade routes come in and make things more interesting, simultaneously making your settlements much fucking weirder. To start trading, you have to build “trade route” buildings (The names of buildings in this game are pretty abysmal but it is still fucking fun). Setting up the trade routes will allow you to trade with foreign trade routes (they appear as white arrows on the edge of the region map), other towns you may have set up or other factions. Sure, you can set up a town and make that your only area of operation in a region, but that makes things a little lame. If you limit yourself to one town, that limits how much money you can make. Not to mention, if you can get closer to the foreign trade routes, you’ll have a significant advantage over competitors. And on top of that, controlling a majority of resources in a region will (fucking obviously) give you an undeniable trade advantage over competitors. So getting a couple towns, maybe even just a small trade camp or two alongside your towns, will put you above the competition.

Yes! Make me money!

Now, not everyone is capable of building a massive trade empire and making money appear out of nowhere. There are some men who just want to watch the world burn, which is where bandits come from. These guys are fucking annoying, and they will attack your trade caravans. First, you have to find them, which can be quite a fucking chore; but if you have little angry-colored arrows going after your trade caravans, all you have to do is build a few extra scout huts and they will locate them. All finding them will facilitate is a solution. You can pay them off, but as you make more money, these parasites will want more, so paying off a bunch of bandits all the time is not a long-term solution.

Eventually you want to cut their throats and leave their corpses in the sand for the vultures to feed. You can build a number of public-order buildings like armories and watchhouses to keep your citizens in line; but to deal with external threats, you’ll need to construct a few barracks. These babies create expeditionary forces that you can use to guard caravans and murder bandits. Once you have a few of them built, you can go to the region map and select the bandits’ camps to begin negotiating with extreme prejudice. This is also the final solution that you’ll end up employing with competing trade-nations, because no one likes to share profit!

The goal is to not have your soldiers turned into bones. That is bad…

Meeting some of the goals set out for you in the campaign is difficult, but once you get the hang of it, the game is a lot of fucking fun. You can build a vast empire that encompasses and entire region and vie for control of trade routes, like a true imperialist dog! You’ll also be able to unlock new buildings and upgrade your existing buildings. For those more keyed up by micromanagement, you can go into each caravan, see its trade statistics and monitor the number of camels in a caravan to optimize the amount of money you are making vs. how much you are spending to get your camels out there. Chaining trade across a region also becomes useful as having a smaller town is good just to get your main town into contact with a closer trade target and so you can trade across undiscovered areas. There is a lot to do in this game, and it is a lot of fun for anyone looking for a great economically-driven RTS. Combat is an option, but not the main thing.

Looking at the title of this article, you might be wondering what the fuck this game has to do with cultures. Take a closer look at your town once you get it decently-sized. Looks neat, huh? Nations are mostly named after european powers like Burgundy and Moldovia.. You know, all the really important trade powers of their time. The buildings that you use for trade routes look like these middle-eastern spires from downtown Baghdad and then there are these old-timey, wild west saloon that you build for your peoples’ recreation. The town hall looks like a plantation from 1880’s Confederate America whereas the religious shrines are either little Ottoman-domed structures or Christian chapels. Each settlement looks as culturally tangled as a set from Firefly so that you think one half might initiate a Jihad on the other half at any moment. I was confused and a little terrified, but it just looks like a lot of ideas came together to make this game happen. This is the only thing is suffers from is a serious thematic disparity. If everything were added together and you told me this took place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and made things look like that, it might be less confusing. But as it stands, it seems to be pulled between some kind of Age of Exploration and Age of Imperialism discussion with wild west tossed in there somehow.

Dammit! Where is the level tree for nukes?!

Dammit! Where is the tech tree for nukes?!

Overall, if you are the type of person that likes to win an RTS through economic dominance and politics, this is a game for you. There are a lot of features that add to the combat aspect, but combat is not directly controlled. There is equal development to the city-building, economic and political aspects and it constantly allows you to find ways to make money. The art is a bit on the minimalistic side, but enjoyable. Music feels a little generic, but the overall design of the game itself feels and looks clean. One feature of this game is that it eases you into the greater game fantastically. It is complex and easy to fuck up, and the game itself gives you a number of goals and levels to screw up before you get to the game itself. Steam will sell you this game for only 19.99$ and I will tell you, it is worth it. Check this title out, it was a lot more fun than I expected it to be and is worth a few plays!

Legend of Grimrock, Tearing Out RPGs by the Root

Posted on September 18, 2014 by thre3zekiel

Before all the cutesy, fluffy shit that inhabits most RPGs these days, before Final Fantasy and JRPGs had infested every corner of the genre, there were dungeon RPGs. And they weren’t the Diablo-style one-button RPGs that breed tactical laziness; that’s right tactical fucking laziness. Diable RPGs are allow for a wider range of motion and strategy, so you can hem enemies in with firewalls and nuke them with fire or something. Tactics requires the careful execution of a concerted attack effort. A small group of doomed warriors in a massive dungeon have a solid understanding of tactics. They know if they break ranks and get isolated, they are doomed.

The first and last of these types of games I ever played was Eye of the Beholder, a game we played on SNES. In the game, you play a group adventurers exploring the sewers of a place called “Waterdeep” to cleanse some ancient evil. We did not understand the alignment system although we often chose whatever we wanted and joked about it like kids. When we were in the game, we never got the gist of how to play. We would throw our gear at enemies since it was the only way we knew to deal damage. Eventually it got to where we were disrobing and throwing our clothes, desperately trying to kill the foes. That never ended well… But we were idiotic 8 and 9 year-olds.

Grimrock makes a lot more sense to me. Controls are easy and you barely need a tutorial. Just click around, left click picks up an item and releasing it mid-screen will throw that item. Right-click to attack or to throw a weapon. Everything is a pretty straight-forward RPG style and this makes combat more exciting, too.

Wait! I left the garage door open!

When you start the game, your characters are assumed to have performed some transgression against King and country. The vague nature of the opening titles leave you to think you could have raped the Princess all the way down to eating the last piece of strawberry cheesecake. Doesn’t matter. You’re fucked and they push you down a hole. Best part is, at the top of the mountain Grimrock your crimes are all forgiven and you are free. But the only way down is to descend into the bowels of Grimrock. Oh, by the way, no one has ever fucking survived. That’s ok, I don’t usually come for the accommodations anyway.

Down in the dungeons, you have to navigate labyrinthine corridors filled with unspeakable monsters, like giant snails, gargoyles, mushroom herders, little magic-casting mushroom guys, undead soldiers etc. Each creature adds its own challenges to combat, and one should consider combat a feat akin to dancing. If you just take two warriors and attempt to plow through, axes and swords swinging, you will end up a dusty pile of bones. Many enemies are able to out-number you, out-damage you or can take a hell of a lot more punishment than you can. Did I mention you are all prisoners? Yea, this means they pushed your ass down in the pits with aught but your chapped asses to defend yourselves. As you progress you’ll find the sparse weaponry left behind by other bands of hapless adventurers, so you’re not exactly a keen-eyed fighting force armed for rigorous combat. The most common early ranged weapon is a rock while the most common melee weapon early on is a fucking torch.

When enemies come at you, the best thing to do is to lure them off one at a time where possible. As they round corners you can stab them before back-pedaling toward an open area. As you back pedal, you can throw rocks at them and ready up a spell. Spells are a devastating way to deal damage, but you can’t unlock spells with the spellbook until you find the appropriate scroll, which can be frustrating. Once you get them, though, they are profoundly useful. Be careful, too. If someone in your party dies, you’re all fucked. Sure, you can keep going, but you’ll be needing the full group throughout the game.

Spartans!! Fuck this place.. tonight I’m eating at Denny’s…

Character customization is excellent, and you can choose between human, minotaur, lizardfolk and insectoid. I usually pick two humans, a minotaur and a lizardfolk. I like having two rogues, as this allows me to have a ranged rogue and a dps rogue. You know, for extra damage for the rogue since rogues prefer it from behind. Then there is my mage, human female full of glorious spellcasting magery, and likely the smartest of the entire group. Finally, I like to take a tank, too. That is my minotaur. He has a trait called headhunter where he gets extra damage for collecting skulls. Finally a use for those useless collectible items! I also use the minotaur for a pack animal, since they also get major strength bonuses.

The ambiance is terrific, and you get the sense of an ever-present evil throughout the game. All the time some dark whispers can be heard in your ear, muttering in a chthonic language some horrid curse, luring you deeper into the dungeon. The music in the title screen also brought a tear to my eye the first time I heard it and filled me with the glee of a glorious adventure. Throughout the game there is little more than ominous noises. Sometimes you can heard the groan or squeal of some distant creature lurking about, waiting for its next meal to come trundling down the corridors. There is also the fantastic element of eating whatever food you find lying all over the ground, like some kind of mad baker was damned to imprisonment here and he found some magical means to leave bread everywhere.

Hm.. I guess the Keebler elves didn’t make it too far either…

One of the things this game does really really well are secrets. Notice how the walls are all constructed of a similarly-colored, moss-grown mortarless masonry? Well, every once in a while you will see a chink in the stone or a brick out of place. Click that shit! Somewhere nearby a door will open and permit you access to a secret room and you’ll get some badass loot, much needed food or a magic scroll! It takes me back to the old days of Wolfenstein 3D and Thief: The Dark Project where you had to just run along the walls at a certain angle to open secret doors or cut down every wall-hanging you could to unlock secret doors. I find the best way to search for secrets is to stand in the corner of a room and look from afar. Secret switches are pretty obvious if you know what you are looking for, but they can often be just as easily over-looked, so stay sharp!

Probably the only thing that bothered me about this game was the straight-forward manner of the enemies. This game could be very well served by some wall-lurking enemies that you don’t see until you are right up on them. Granted, the current combat system would make that a tad difficult, but putting in enemies that climbed out of grates as you walked by or changed from statues into flesh and blood foes when you walk past them would make this spooky game into a fantasy-horror adventure. Don’t mind my little intrigues, though. This game is worth every cent you can throw at its creators. It is a load of fun in a genre that I have not seen since I was disrobing for battle. On Steam this game is an overly-reasonable 14.99$, but wait there’s more! This game has a community of dungeon-dwellers who create new content and new levels and games with the map editor of Grimrock! It’s fucking fantastic. And THEN you have Legends of Grimrock 2 to look forward to! Just in time for Halloween! You can pre-order it now! Screw trick-or-treaters! Crawl the dungeons and unlock the treasures within!

The Best Rash I’ve Ever Had

Posted on September 17, 2014 by thre3zekiel

When I was a kid, my friend would come over with a copy of Road Rash for Sega Genesis. We’d race for hours while beating each other over the head with any number of clubbed and bladed implements. Ah, the joys of youth! It has been many years since and I hadn’t even heard the name of this spoken, and I had begun to wonder if it was ever real at all. I played Twisted Metal on the Playstation and any number of other games that tried to emulate it, but none that tried to recreate the balls-to-the-wall motorcycle racing gauntlet that was Road Rash. Then yesterday, it happened. I heard of a projecton Kickstarter that was to emulate this game, and it had already reached its funding goal. Its name was Road Redemption.

In this title, you will be playing a Katana-clad member of a mid-western America motorcycle gang. You have to move your way up in the ranks and take control of drug trading routes. It’s a visceral title that will actually hit harder than its spiritual predecessor. Thing is, it won’t be made by the same people that made Road Rash. In fact, a lot of these developers grew up playing games on the same systems I did, so they remember the good old days of games that make you earn their respect rather than the spoon-fed titles of today.

Who says real badasses never look back at an explosion?

This looks like a title that will take esports to an awesome new level and bring people away from their Xboxes and Call of Duty. You’ll earn money by racing, sure, but if I can wield a shotgun on a motorcycle, why would I just want to race all the time? Luckily there will also be assassinations, robberies and other challenges. Getting the goods will allow you to level your character, buy better hardware and upgrade your bike so you can really take on the tough guys.

The storyline is a sort of made-in-America Mad Max routine. You are part of stated motorcycle gang in post-apocalyptic mid-west America, and the country is run by a ruthless dictator. You gang-leader decides that it would be a great idea to ride into the capital with the intent of killing the dictator. I guess it doesn’t go too well, since the game description implies heavily that shit hits the fan for you and everyone you know. You then have to track this guy down and, pending his judgment at the gang’s hands, decide what to do about the whole dictator situation.

Flying blurry men never did know how to ride bikes well…

One of the more vague features of this game comes with the life-system. There will be no extra lives, but the experience, gear and upgrades you earn should stick with you. What does this mean? Fuck if I know, but I guess you have a lot of family members who are willing to step up and take over your cause. You’re probably from one of those massive Irish-Catholic families you see all over television. What’s more is that multi-player mode will be all about you building your gang and then taking to the internet where you will join up with or against your friends. Hey, competition is just as much fun as working together, sometimes. Personally, I cannot wait to throw someone under a bus.. fucking literally!

The best part about all of this? Road Redemption comes out tomorrow on Steam as Early Access. So get those bike helmets ready. We’re info for one hell of a ride. Get ready for the best rash you’ve ever seen!

Eufloria, Tripadelic RTS Invasion

Posted on September 14, 2014 by thre3zekiel

Eufloria is a game that defines some of my earliest days with indie games, and it’s far from showing its age. There are those who would have you believe that indie is a style that can be encapsulated in a game with a whacky storyline or super-artsy hand-painted backgrounds, but I call bullshit on that. You don’t have to put girls in cakes to make an indie game: what you need is balls. Eufloria shows a lot of that brazen attitude in the way it took a bizarre concept, ran with it, made it work and did the whole fucking job well. That is how you indie.

Eufloria is a game where you take control of an army of flying seedlings, and then impregnate various ‘asteroids’ with them. The key to this army is their flexibility. depending on the characteristics of the asteroid that spawns them, they will have a mix of 3 traits: energy, speed and strength. Depending on their combination of these traits, they will look different. If they have a higher strength, they will have a longer tail, of they have higher speed they will have wider tails and if they are energetic they will have longer beaks. Each of these traits translates into something completely different in game.

Like little, zappy death bugs…

Each of those little flying things is a seedling, and they serve any number of functions from soldiers to colonization. When you send a collection of these little guys at an enemy, they will start zapping them with a little laser. No fucking clue how that works, I will get back to you on that. When you hit that button down there, they kamikaze into the asteroid and a tree starts to grow. Logical in a sort of odd way. As far as I have progressed, there are two trees: a dyson tree, which generates more seedlings, and defensive trees, which lob explosive pods. Planting a dyson tree will generate seedlings with traits mimicking those of the asteroid. Some important things to keep in mind on this point: speed seedlings are fast as fuck and are great for rapid reinforcements, strength seedlings are great for taking out enemies and defensive trees, energetic seedlings are great for taking over enemy asteroids.

Eventually, you will start dealing with enemies, and a fucking lot of them. They swoop in low and start zapping fucking everything, and you have to counter. Now, the way you direct your seedlings is by clicking and dragging. This will launch all the seedlings circling an asteroid at the target in an awesome attack formation that makes me want to turn on Flight of the Valkyries every time I do it. If you want to send only your fastest seedlings (in case you have to contact the Dread Pirate Roberts), you double-click and select the fastest seedlings. This will turn your cursor blue, for speed, and then you drag from origin to target. This can be done with any of the types.

Ba bada ba ba, ba bada ba ba, ba bada ba ba, ba bada ba ba, ba bada baaaa!!!!!

Reading the placement of the asteroids is important, too, because where you can go depends on which asteroids you control. Each asteroid has a range that you can fly from it to reach other asteroids. Once you get there, you’ll have to lay waste to the enemies like a swarm of genocidal gnats. The best part comes when you take the asteroid. To achieve this, the seedlings zap a tree until it explodes. They then fly down into the remaining roots to attack the core, where they fucking explode. If you have a fear of bugs flying into your ears and laying eggs in your head, this is not an okay game for you. I fucking love it, though.

The older your trees, the more seedlings or explosive pods they will generate, so size matters. Watching an old asteroid take hits is a bit gut-wrenching, but the respawn rate for seedlings is pretty good; I still recommend filling up the max tree level as best you can, though. Once you strike an enemy, they will ALWAYS try the fucking dick move and strike at the asteroid you vacated to attack theirs. That’s ok though, you can always pull a few from another location to clean those guys up.

So… whatever is on that rock is about to fucking die.

As you can see, the art takes a minimalist style, utilizing color to make the world feel warm and alive. Every time you start a level you will have a different color and each level has its own challenges to overcome. The way the colors seem to vibrate with life takes on a role of its own in the game though, and it really starts to feel more like a full region than just empty space. As you conquer and cultivate each asteroid, you can zoom further and further out to see all of what you’ve created, and the later levels get pretty expansive. The music combines with this warm sensation to create an ambient space of wonder and interest. This is like playing an RTS painting and each factor is shaped specially for the task. Despite feeling like you are a swarm of dust mites conquering the equivalent space of someone’s nostril, the game itself really has a life and style of its own. I would like to see some major fucking publisher with the balls to release this one. It’s available on Steam right now for 14.99$ and I recommend it highly. It is a magnificent game that really draws you in and challenges you, but in a soothing and enjoyable way that isn’t like every fucking RTS Blizzard made since Warcraft 3. It’s wonderful. Fucking play it.

Introducing Dakota and Project Shadow

Posted on September 11, 2014 by thre3zekiel

Most people haven’t heard of Living Dream Entertainment, and for good reason. This is another group of gaming idealists that have a vision defining, for them, the perfect game. So far everything I have heard and seen out of these guys is impressive, despite things being in an early phase. To be honest, they remind me of Elysian Shadows Team in the sheer audacity of their project and what they want to accomplish. People should know who they are and what they are planning because it will be something really special when it is finished.

Living Dream Entertainment is a small independent game development team working on a game called, A Shadow’s Tale, through a process they call Project Shadow. I wasn’t too sure why there was such a distinction between the two, but I have come to understand that Project Shadow will also invite players and fans to contribute to the finished game itself. No seriously. You can make a quest, a character, customize their style, how they fight, who they are: nearly fucking everything. Check it out here!

Dakota Barrett, founder of Living Dream Entertainment, was happy to answer some of my questions about themselves and the game they are creating. So who are these people and how did they come together?

“Originally my team started out as many indies do: a group of friends with a common interest. That team died over about the course of two months and got down to just me. Around this time I was getting some money in doing odd jobs and I started to contract freelancers.

“First there’s Riley, our character artist. Her job is to draw the busts of characters that you see in dialogue, and often everyone else’s work is based around her creation of a character.

“Then we have Tony, who seems to be the favorite of the public, which is rightly deserved because the guy has a lot of talent. His concept art has a unique style.

“Devon worked with us on and off for several months before becoming an official member of the team. He does our code work and makes a lot of my crazy ideas come to life. He’s the reason we’re able to push an outdated program like RPGMaker into the modern age.

“Elbert does our sprite art and animation and he’s really good at it. We spent four months going through dozens of applicants for the position and it wasn’t until I met Elbert that I knew I had the right guy.

“Saad is our composer and most recent addition to the team. Unlike everyone else, I wasn’t actually looking for a composer at the time. Saad was just interested with the project and sent in a sample of his work. I loved it so much that I included it in our announcement video of Project Shadow and asked him to join our team.

“I run social media, talk to journalists, run the business and all the legal work that comes with that, and I make everyone’s work show up and coordinate in-game, creating the world for the player to enjoy. But at the heart of it all, I’m a designer and writer. All the stories, dialogue, and gameplay mechanics start off as ideas in my head. I have about three gigabytes worth of just notes alone.”

Yep, the skill is visible.

So this is already a strong team of talented individuals with a common purpose. From the teaser trailer for the game itself, I know I got a strong impression. So, if Dakota is the main drive and energy behind this game, what brought him into gaming and games development?

“Throughout my childhood I played a lot of games through frequent visits to BlockBuster when it was around and you could get a game for a week, which was perfect for me because I usually binged a game until I beat it. I’ve played all sorts of genres from big AAA titles to the little indie teams, but I think where I truly fell in love with games was with role playing games like Final Fantasy IX and X, Knights of the Old Republic II and the original Fable.

“As I entered adulthood I started to bind my passion for games with my passion to write. I tried out a few development programs, such as Unity, Blender or Game Maker, but the one I settled with was the one that best served my roots as a gamer, RPG Maker VX Ace. It’s a pretty simple program that could allow even a child to make a game but over the time I had it I started to find how to push it further and further and when I started to really see the potential with the program I started working on the very early concepts of A Shadow’s Tale.”

Projects of passion are often rare gems, because they are so hard to attain. When such a project can be made possible, they often turn into impressive entries in a genre and even in a field of art. The biggest obstacle is often money, and that can kill a project before it ever even happens. How has A Shadow’s Tale gotten its funding so far?

“It started out as a birthday/graduation gift. I was the first in my family to graduate high school, which isn’t much of an accomplishment, but it was something. So I took what was likely meant to be the means of buying a car and put it towards making a game. When that ran out, I started funding the project with what I could from my paycheck, which to this day is just a part-time, minimum-wage job, so progress has been slow. Our goal is to crowdfund with the community we’ve built up, but we’re not quite ready for that just yet.”

Each game has its own draw, something makes it stand out. What are the features of A Shadow’s Tale that will really set it apart from other games of its type?

“Simply put it’s how the game is designed overall. It’s not meant to be a retro throwback to the games I and others grew up on, it’s meant to be Living Dream’s first step in showing what the industry is capable of producing. Though it’s an open world RPG, it takes inspiration from all sorts of games, old and new.

“To be more specific I would say the focus on your actions is at the heart of the gameplay. In many games that I enjoy, like the Mass Effect series, you get to make choices that change the universe you play in and could very well cause your experience to be completely different from all your friends who played the game. But if you look back, almost all these choices centered around dialogue. The hundreds of people and monsters you killed didn’t change anything and where you went didn’t really matter as long as you completed the main goals of the game. With our game we’re putting a focus on what you do, as with reality it’s not so much what you say that affects others and who you become, but what you do.”

So what is the complete vision for the game itself?

“As I hinted at earlier, our goal is to deliver not just a game but an experience; one you’ll look back on for years to come as I have with the hundreds of hours lost in the universes of RPGs. A world in which you grow attachments to the characters as if they were truly your friends or your enemies. One where your actions changed the world. I believe that what people want is their actions to matter. For something we did to have an affect on the world, be it big or small, to know we made a difference in other’s lives.

“That’s my goal for the game at least, for Project Shadow itself you could say it’s the same thing but in the real world. I want our community to truly feel like they had a part in making the game without handing over the files and expecting them to make sense of it. That’s why we’re allowing the community to co-design elements of the game alongside us.”

Whoa. Badass.

That is a lot to shoot for, so the game itself has to measure up to this, helping the player insert themselves into and influence the world in a noticeable way. What are some of the mechanics of the game and how will they facilitate this?

“I would say our combat system is probably the most interesting mechanic of the game outside of the responsive world system. RPGs have been going back and forth between the blood pumping excitement of live action and the tactical thinking of turn based combat. They both have their benefits and downfalls and I believe we found a unique way to combine the two.

“In the game the controls are rather simple: WASD to move and spacebar to interact and use skills. Now that second part is the key to shaping combat. When you press space, a wheel of icons displays over the head of the player. This wheel technically consist of dozens upon dozens of interactions and skills, but since that would be a pain to cycle through, we’ve made it contextualized; depending on what you’re facing, it will only show what makes sense with that person or object.

“As with the rest of the game, this was designed to give the player a choice in how they go about getting past enemies. In a sense it’s more like a puzzle than straight up combat. You could go around in stealth taking enemies down one or two at a time. You could break, throw, or burn objects to cause distractions. Use skills or dialogue to manipulate people, or straight up fight your enemies in turn based combat. Even the turn-based combat itself is designed to give you challenges through three gauges, health, energy, and fear.”

What games have you played an liked? From there, what games can you say have influenced A Shadow’s Tale?

“I mentioned the RPG genre before and some games that are a part of it, but I pull my inspiration from all types of games. I enjoy simple and quick RTS games like the Command and Conquer games or Halo Wars, which I still play on occasion. Shooters like Destiny and some MOBAs have also left their mark.

“Two games which probably have the biggest impact that aren’t straight up RPGs are Dishonored and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. They both have RPG elements but they’re almost entirely based around quick combat in first person. Both of which I focused on stealth and I had great joy is crawling in air vents only to come out and beat someone to death with a refrigerator (Yeah I’m probably a bit too violent). This approach of deal with enemies how you want was really enjoyable and that can be seen in our own combat, though it isn’t a straight up choice between stealth and action.”

I love these emblems.

What can you tell us about the Kickstarter?

“We will be doing crowdfunding, but it won’t be through Kickstarter. That is why we’re creating Project Shadow which works like the crowdfunding with Star Citizen, this sort of build over time instead of all at once approach. Except our design is not so much to keep raising more and more money and add more to the game so much as we want the community to be a part of the design with us and get to see right away what their money goes to. When you contribute hundreds of dollars it’s not really fair you have to wait months to even start to receive what you paid for and it’s usually physical merchandise and not the actual game itself.

“Instead with Project Shadow you choose what you want to co-design such as a character. Once you’ve selected what type of character they are, where in the world they live, and what the character consist of we’ll get to work with you within a few days and start fleshing out the details so that the artist can truly bring your character to life and you get to watch the whole thing happen. If you want you can share it with the world too, just avoid any spoilers.”

Awesome! Well that is good to hear. I will be interested to see how this community develops! What can you tell us about the contest? Where do people participate?

“We’re giving the community a chance to co-design a character prior to the fundraising of #ProjectShadow. Now usually you would cover the cost of your character, but this time around I’ll be covering the cost for the winner.

“So how do you participate? All you have to do is write us your idea for a character and we’ll select our favorite and start working with you on bringing it to life. All the details and guidelines can be found here, which I recommend you read thoroughly if you want to win. One last note: unlike with Project Shadow, you won’t be choosing the character type. Instead, we selected one for you that is one of the more interesting and costly to make. Out of the character types (basic, advanced, keeper, friend, faction member, faction captain, and major) this one is a faction captain, which is a mini boss as your enemy or a faction-related quest giver as an ally.

“One of the key features of Project Shadow (actually the entirety of Project Shadow) is that it allows anyone to be a part of the creation of a game. It’s really great in that you get the benefits of coming up with ideas and seeing your creations come to life without having to deal with the stress of actually being on the team and hoping the game does well because your livelihood depends on it. You get to create whoever or whatever you want that fits within the fantasy world we have created, and in doing so you get to share it with the world and at some point experience it in game as well.

“We may not be doing the crowdfunding now but you can still join in by getting in touch with us. Tweet us @LivingDreamEnt, or use #ProjectShadow on Twitter. Or you can email us at, livingdream3r@gmail.com

“It’s really important that you do because even though it’s not giving us the funding we really need to make the game it shows us the community is ready for this and they want to be a part of it. The sooner we see that people are ready for us and we too are ready for them the sooner we can get this started and start to build a world together.”

The vaulting halls of the Hunters’ Guild!

Awesome! Personally, I am really looking forward to this community event. Living Dream Entertainment is taking on a whole new approach by getting players and fans involved in the creation of the game itself. As the game is developed, players will get to have input on what gets added and it will be, in more ways than normal, our game. A game that we don’t all just love and play, but a game that we’ve all given input and some of even helped to design! Dakota also wanted to leave a special message to followers and fans:

“Thank you for reading this article and please follow us and share us with friends! This Project is entirely based around a community we’re beginning to build, and we encourage every one of you to participate and get involved! If you like our art share our DeviantArt account. If you like what we’re doing on YouTube, share it. Don’t be afraid to contact us at anytime because we’re here for you and we’ll get back with you as soon as possible! Please consider following @crotchetygamer and his blog. He’s a great guy and amazing with words!”

This interview is based on an email correspondence between myself and Living Dream Entertainment. The conversation has been lightly edited for flow, coherence and grammar.

Double-Up Discussion: Catch Aliens, Free-Diving Hunter

Posted on September 3, 2014 by thre3zekiel

In the spirit of moving forward, it’s time to get back to the games. Today I will be discussing two iOS games because my wife would like her iPad back. Granted, there is a reason I haven’t been able to keep off the thing, and these two games are it. There is a lot I have to say about these titles, though so strap in. This might get a little on the long side.

First up is Catch the Aliens. Just from the logo here, you get a distinct sense of awesome. I don’t want to burst that bubble, but you do play glorified dog-catcher. That is alright, though, since the game itself is actually a lot of fun. There are two modes of play: Casual Level-Based and Competitive Endless. Now, these terms are advanced language, and in gamer-speak they translate to “singleplayer” and “multiplayer”. In what I am coining as the “singleplayer” mode, you play by yourself and clear a space station room by room. In the second mode, or “multiplayer”, you compete with friends on Facebook for scores.

Now, as you play, you are confronted with room after room of fairly cute aliens that scamper around and cause a nuisance. These guys vary in color and “ways they piss you the fuck off”. That second quality is key. Now, your method of controlling the alien-catcher is to sort of lean the idevice, like you are gingerly erasing an etch-a-sketch. If you don’t know what that is, your parents should be smacked. Either way, I was using an iPad despite the fact that this game was meant for an iPhone. That would make the game more responsive where I felt like I was wrestling a bull to the ground by its horns. It added to the game itself, but for quality performance I recommend something with a smaller face-area.

And stay in that bubble!

Despite all this, the game was still a lot of fun. Levels are small arenas with up to 4 aliens running amok, and you have to catch them by tapping them with your forcefield alien catcher. You tap them and BAM! instant bubble. Of course, if you are too slow to catch the others, they will free the ones you’ve already caught. This causes issues as you have three green dots at the top of the screen. Each time an alien is freed, the dots turn red. If they all turn red, you lose and have to restart that room. It gets frustrating, but there is a certain strategy to the game: yellow aliens just run around, kind of slowly. They can be caught last. The guys you want to go after first are the spitting purple aliens, which can pop bubbles from across the room, or the speedy green aliens. To catch the speedy guys, you’ll need a speed boost, or you’ll have to get on the inside of their turn out of a corner. The rest of them can be mopped up thereafter. There are also red aliens with horns that you have to tap twice before catching, but they aren’t too fast, just a little annoying and take a bit of time.

Now, accomplishing three challenges in each room grants you stars. These stars are required to progress to the next floor, each floor having more rooms than the last. The challenges are Life, Order and Sparkles. Yea, that sounds like the motto of My National Socialist Little Pony Party, but that’s because it’s not really called sparkles. That is just what I call it. See, when an alien is freed, you lose life. Hence, no life lost gets you a star. There is also a certain order you are “supposed” to catch the aliens. If you get it right, you get another star. Every time an alien is caught, it emits a cloud of little sparkles, which you then collect and store. Get enough of these and you will get the.. um.. sparkle star.

This game also has some optional in-app purchases, and I can see how extensive play would necessitate a high-level of skill or concession to buying your way up the spacestation. It isn’t in-your-face, but after each level, there are ads which take up the whole screen. maybe on the iPhone it would be less irritating to eliminate them, but on the iPad the word ‘iPad’ and the wifi meter get in the way of closing the ad. Grrr… Not blaming the developer on that one, I am the guy using the giant older brother of the device this game is meant for. The best part about this game, however, is that it is free on the app store. You can get to the game through Panipurisoft’s site. They also have a facebook page.

I think I downloaded a broken version of this game, because there were no in-app purchases that I could find. It terrified me. I sobbed-heavily with my new found freedom to PLAY A FUCKING GAME!!! It was majestic, it was awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

The game itself is pretty cool, too. When I was in the military, I knew a Hawaiian gentleman who told us about his exploits with free-diving. It sounded like he was evolving into a fish, honestly, and he has a general disdain for octopopuli. I don’t know how to pluralize that, so fuck you, english. Either way, it sounded like something intense and soothing at the same time. Now, that gentleman only dove with a snorkel and a knife. This game doesn’t have as much faith in your lung capacity. You have a snorkel and a speargun. Now, the much-needed tutorial feels a little basic, but it gives you what you need. The controls are wonky as hell, but they make sense, and once you get used to them, they react well and make sense. At first I was cursing mightily, but this game requires practice, honestly. Putting a little time in sharpened my aim with the speargun and honed my agility with the diamond.. space… non-joystick.. of mystical.. That thing! The fucking thing in the lower right hand corner! That is what you use to control your diver! JEEZ!

DUN DUN. DUN DUN. dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun…. oh you get it..

Now, the rest of the game orbits you in the form of the admittedly cluttered UI. Starting top-left you have your level and lung capacity, bottom-left is the dive button over top the speargun trigger, center-right is a compass, further right is the.. ahem.. control reticule, tucked beneath the swim button. Top-right you see the UI toggle and then your score. Now, in a game where you swim with a spear gun, there should be no surprise you catch fish. Of course, this ends up being like a low-tech alien abduction to them as they are speared and wriggle around until you reel them in. The game process goes like this.

Just snorkeling here. Nothing to see.

You start in a third-person view. Pressing swim will make you move forward while you control with the reticule, roving for prey. Once you find a fish you want to go after, hit the dive button and slide down a little on the reticule. Maneuver yourself until you are heading toward a fish. As soon as you dive, a timer will come up on the screen, starting at the max for lung capacity. As you hunt your prey, the timer ticks down. If you let it tick out, you might black out before you can resurface, which freezes the game for a full minute, but it is tough to have it happen if you pay attention.

Once you start closing in on your prey, you will eventually see an exclamation point appear over their head. Hit the trigger! If you hit, you enter a battle-mode of sorts. During this mode, you have to hold the reel button, which replaces the trigger after firing a spear, while the fish is stationary. It will still be wriggling to get free, but it won’t be swimming around. If you reel in while it is stationary, its life (a red bar) goes down. If you reel in while the fish is swimming, your line’s strength (a blue bar) goes down. If your line loses strength, you lose the fish. Catch the fish and it adds to your score, and every 5 fish you’ll gain a level. Each level will grant you one more second of lung capacity and you will also gain better gear!

Now gear has some stats of its own. These are swim speed, gun strength, gun reach and … shaft speed. They are all.. pretty self-explanatory. Except that last one. I am sure it makes sense and I am sure it’s relevant. I have no idea what it does besides make me giggle incessantly. It doesn’t help that I leveled up a bit and got Depth Max brand gear which has a high shaft speed and makes my gun stronger and shoot further. I am so sorry it’s come to this. Ok, let me get control of myself.

The art of this game is fantastic. Each fishing area has its own challenges from increased depth to sharks. I tried hunting the sharks, but their only real function is pissing you off, since they can eat the fish off your lines. Fuckers. Lucky this isn’t FarCry3. I would C4 your ass in a heartbeat… But each area is unique and has a sort of excitement, like you’ve found another great hunting spot. The music is a sort of asian-keyboard reggae. It is relaxing and enjoyable, but it’s odd. Just listen to it, ok? This game is worth its 1.99$ price, and if you like those outdoorsman games by Cabelas etc., you should try this out for a fresh new take. I have never played a firt-person fishing game, but it is really fun. I just hope this doesn’t get bought out by EASports or something. They would fuck it all the hell up. Of course, this might be cool on a Wii U or something. The developer has a Facebook page here and a website, with free demo, here.

Fuck Chess! We’re Playing Beguile!

Posted on August 31, 2014 by thre3zekiel

I am not the right kind of smart to play chess. A lot of people suck at it, and just being smart doesn’t help. It takes a certain patience and a skill for long-term planning, both require focus, discipline and training. It also requires a strong resistance to falling asleep while sitting down, ability to avoid daydreaming and a skill for not flipping the board when you lose after 4 hours of grueling play. O yea, and if you play it in the park, you have to do all this on a fucking timer. Fuck that! I am just not studied enough in the art of chess to really know how to play! I know the basics though. Plenty of sorry fuckers know the basics! We were fucking taught them by some masochistic prick (or prickess) that taught us to play only so they could experiment with strategies before mercilessly murdering us. It’s not funny. It’s not fucking fair. And it is about fucking time we got even.

Thanks to this fucking guy, we’ll be able to do just that. Study that face. He’s is the guy normal people like me will be hi-fiving while our chess-skilled friends will hire a band of rabid ninja monkeys to hunt him down. Really, I am pretty sure that the kickstarter for the game will be used to fend off rabid bands of ninja monkeys. All he did was add cards to chess. Yup. That is fucking it! So what do they do? Oh, my that is the fun part. In short, they will make it so that you will be on fair ground against your chess-club friends. It makes chess shorter, more fun and hilarious. Our game took only an hour and a half, accounting for the stops to marvel at the wonderful art on the cards. The creator was able to send me some demo PDF’s that I printed for play!

Had my pawns running offense for my knight until he was taken with this card, getting an enemy knight one extra space for the kill!

My brother Joel has an awesome twili… I MEAN.. vampires vs werewoles chess set. Black is werewolves, white is vampires. It went with the medieval theme of the game, and even played on some of its more magical or demonic cards. You play chess as normal, except at the start each player gets 5 cards. You can play one card per turn and there are two different card types: T cards that take up a whole turn and C cards that play concurrently with a piece move. Now, I started off the shenanigans with a “Rally the Troops” card that allowed me to move three pawns at once! It was one hell of an opening move that made my brother laugh and get his game on!

As we played we realized that this made chess casual and even entertaining. We scarcely took the game more seriously than we would have if we were playing parcheesi. And as each card went down, it made one of us laugh and groan simultaneously. After a few turns, I started really getting devious with Joel. I charged my rook through a pawn with “Phantasmic Step” and took my brother’s rook, leaving him a little confused. This happened a lot though, one or the other of us would make a crafty play or take a good piece and we’d look at the card: half to verify that was actually in the deck, half to see the artwork and read the card itself. The cards can often be funny and they make a serious effort to look really really nice, which worked. Look through the cards on the Beguile site. Rather lovely.

Our majestic wall of Old Spice

Then there is this fucking card. Did you read that card? Yea, I was mopping the floor with him. I got all of his pawns, a rook, a knight and even his queen while simultaneously making a few devious plays of my own. I used “Necromancy” after sacrificing my queen for a good capture, then I used a bishop to take a few pieces and played “Sacrificial Lamb” to sacrifice a pawn and keep my bishop. I was closing in for the kill… then he played that shit up there! I heaved a massive sigh and traded spots with him. Now faced with grim prospects, I began picking my attacks more carefully.

Joel started getting really devious, throwing out a few plays that got a couple of my pieces. At one point he played “Holy Warrior” and moved his knight like a bishop to take my knight. Except I had “Man in the Mirror” and took his knight instead! There were a number of really clever plays he got off, but by the luck of the cards I was able to get his army down to nothing but a king. I got his king into checkmate and! …. He played “Back Against the Wall” teleporting the king across the board. He was also able to use catacombs to get across the board and take a couple of my last remaining pieces with just his fucking king! That was ok, though. After a while I was letting him take all my pieces. just waiting. Waiting until stalemate. Once it happened I stood victorious! I threw down “Sir Charles Roundhouse”, which allows you to win in a stalemate! I got that card on the second turn and was able to really give it to him!

Sir Charles Roundhouse now has a barony in the wolf-lands of Nothern Siberia.

The moral of this story is that you don’t need to know how to play chess to have fun with chess anymore. Beguile adds some great flavor and a faster pace to a game that is traditionally pretty tough and makes it casual and entertaining in ways that it was never meant to be. The great news is that the Kickstarter is already past 50%! Woochah! Let’s get some money in there so we can start working on those stretch goals! (note to Americans: It’s a Canadian Kickstarter, so exchange rates account for the shipping cost!) This would be a fantastic addition to any nerd’s game cabinet! I wonder if something like this could be done for checkers?

Stumble Upon a Preview: A Clumsy Adventure

Posted on August 30, 2014 by thre3zekiel

The dutch have a pretty good thing going in the gaming industry, and a lot of what they’ve been putting out has given me a reason to nod with confident approval. Excamedia is another dutch developer, and their game – A Clumsy Adventure – does anything but fall flat on its face. Still in Pre-Alpha, its platforming charm and unique design leave me wondering what lies beyond the curtain at the end of the preview build on Indie Database.

In A Clumsy Adventure, you play as Zack, a clumsy soldier taking part in VR training. He manages to destroy a supercomputer and gets discharged. Not a huge fucking surprise, considering supercomputers usually run into the millions. So this guy is off to a shitty start. Zack is kidnapped by a secret group of aliens and he is used to brainwash the entire human population. From the description on the company site, it seems he is possibly the dumbest person on Earth. Nice fucking job, Zack! At least you don’t spell your name with an ‘h’. Our whole world defenseless, Zack can’t remember what happened, likely repressing the memories of how he rendered the collective grey matter of the human race as cognitively effective as rice pudding. And the best part? This fucking guy has to save the world! The ENTIRE world! IN FOUR FUCKING DAYS!!!! This is the most terrifying apocalypse story I have ever heard. He ends up in a dark place, with only one friend: a light that follows and guides him. To succeed, this fucking guy has to beat the generals of the alien army and steal their dimensional keys, then stop the evil alien emperor AND his alien fleet from destroying everything anyway!

That look on his face is scarcely the confidence-inspiring countenance of heroism

Zack has a lot to put back together, but on the bright side it can’t get much worse. Despite his inhabiting the least-envied place among heroes, the game itself looks and feels pretty nice. In the pre-alpha, you drop out of the sky and land in a jungle fraught with chaos. In the background, massive beasts stalk through the dank undergrowth, redeyes dart between trees and the howls of unknown origin resonate for miles. It is a scenery well set. It isn’t long before the tutorial is delivered via internal monologue. I always find it weird when we are led to believe that a character jumps by thinking about a green A-button, but it always makes me giggle.

After pushing around a boulder, jumping up some ledges and running around, you start to get a feel for the controls. Everything is fairly simple and, mostly, smooth. Granted, you have those odd little hiccups, but the game reeled me in and didn’t stop until the curtain (quite literally) fell. One of the most noticeable elements of this game is its use of the lighting in Unity. Now, I am not a fucking developer, I’m just not that dedicated. I took the easy way out and became a writer. But this game honestly uses Unity like the swatch-board of lighting and color that it deserves to be noticed for. I saw screenies made with Unity that I thought were taken from an unannounced Elder Scrolls title (lord knows the series will need to be resurrected after ESO). Richard Garriott favorited that tweet. Made my knees weak. But Unity honestly has so much more to offer than just an overwhelming deluge of apps and mobile games. Unity is an engine with so much untapped potential, and A Clumsy Adventure is reaching deep into that pool and procuring something magnificent.

Aside from being a clumsy jerk, Zack is also a genocidal maniac when it comes to red-eyed alien things.

The game goes from nearly 2D, accomplished by silhouetting everything, then it switches to a world of vibrant colors and magnificent flora. Ironically, this switch comes from outside, where it is dark, to inside caves, where the character becomes the focus and light and colors abound. Granted, the artistic silhouetting has the effect of bringing out the colors of enemies and pickups. Pickups come in two forms, only one of which I’ve been able to get: the backpacks and the batteries. The backpacks are lives, I think. I am not certain be cause I always freak out when I get surprised by the occasional enemy. Given their size, I imagine that they come with a full trauma center complete with defibrillators and flirty, blonde nurses. There are also the batteries, which luminesce an ethereal green. While it is possible these have a yet unstated link to the aliens, I like to imagine they will power the radioactive Nerf guns Zack must inevitably employ to vanquish the evil alien emperor. A lot of the simple jumping puzzles that the devs employed in this pre-alpha preview also utilized strong deviousness. I am excited to see where else they will go with this title in the future.

Lovely pink everything! My wife would never leave this cave.

This game has a feel that reminds me of Earthbound for reasons I cannot explain. Though I doubt this game will have the same vaguely off-color pop-culture references, there is still much we can expect A Clumsy Adventure to provide. All of it good, but mostly me getting pissed off at this. I guess I should look on the bright side, Zack spends his whole adventure making up for the fact that he blundered his way into subjugating the human race, and there isn’t an evil dictator that could accomplish this with all his efforts. Toss a few coins at it once the kickstarter takes off and watch this one. I have a feeling it should blow your minds.

Elysian Shadows, Preview of 2D Paradise

Posted on August 26, 2014 by thre3zekiel

You backed it on Kickstarter and now it’s happening. We were excited about the mechanics, but what about the elements we’ll all fall in love with? Who are the characters? What are their struggles? What is their world like? I wanted to know, and Falco Girgis and the Elysian Shadows Team agreed to tell me. So what’s behind the game? Find out with the Crotchety Old Gamer!

I am excited as anyone about playing this game, but who will be our window into the world? Who is the main character of Elysian Shadows, and what drives him?

“The main protagonist of ES is named Julien. He is the son of two famous “diggers” who were well known for their research of the ancient ruins scattered throughout the land of Elysian Shadows. Julien grew up traveling with them on numerous expeditions and learning about the different ancient cultures of the past. He was well on his way to following in their footsteps as an accomplished digger, when the two mysteriously wound up missing during an expedition. An adolescent Julien was then sent to live with a family friend, the local museum owner, where he grew up despising the ruins that claimed his parents. Rather than exploring them with a passion and thirst for understanding as he had in his youth, he now scours them for a means to survival, plundering and looting their treasures just to make ends meet.

Julien has virtually no motivation to take part in the party’s quest in the beginning. He is thrust into the action by necessity rather than choice, and it’s initially the other party members who drag him along on the journey. For Julien, this is a quest of personal growth. It’s him having to come to terms with his traumatic past and face the ruins that caused him so much pain, and his struggle to reignite a long-lost passion that died along with his parents. Julien’s character represents crawling back up and trying again after suffering an extreme loss or emotional defeat. Whether this be a metaphor for learning to love again after heartbreak or learning to try again after seeing your dream project crushed on Kickstarter. Heh heh.”

Julien and the other diggers have to rely on physical weapons when excavating ruins because magic is a power reserved exclusively for the religious. While the technology for Julien’s time is not particularly advanced by today’s standards, many of the weapons and artifacts the player encounters within the ruins from civilizations long past are far more advanced than those found in his own time. The diggers and the scientific communities rely on these kinds of manufactured and uncovered weapons for combat while the religious are strictly magic-users. But what if Julien and his friends somehow discovered a way to use magic as well?”

Dark, mysterious caverns where treasures and danger abound…

Julien, like most people, is dealing with a secret pain. His struggle might be unique to himself, but each of us has our own climb from the bottom. Each of us has a cave of terrible darkness and untold treasures unique to our souls that we must brave before we are free to be who we are. Joseph Campbell wrote Hero of a Thousand Faces, which concerned itself with the way characters like these resonate in each of us. What about the world, though? What is the story told by the world Julien and his people will inhabit?

“Elysian Shadows is a world caught in constant conflict between magic and technology. Magic is associated with faith and the religious. Technology is associated with scholars, scientists, and explorers who have turned away from The Creator’s divine gifts in an attempt to better understand the world around them. The technologists are seen as heretics, while the religious are seen as sheep, following blindly. Julien and Eryn, who both work for a museum, are sent on an expedition to uncover a valuable artifact for a new exhibit. The two quickly find more than they bargained for in the ruins. They stumble upon a discovery that thrusts them into the middle of this mounting conflict between magic and technology, forcing them to unlock the mysteries of ancient civilizations and prevent their own people from sharing this fate.

The storyline of Elysian Shadows was heavily influenced by the moral dilemmas of our own technologically advanced society, especially with recent advances in bio-engineering. With stem cell research, cloning and the human genome sequence, science challenges religion on a fundamental philosophical level. Science is beginning to encroach upon powers that many people argue are reserved exclusively for God. Do we have any business modifying our genetic make-up? Is it moral to alter a fetus before its birth? Is it wrong to artificially produce life in a laboratory? Science claims that these advances could drastically benefit all of humanity, while religion claims that we are meddling with things that we have mo business meddling with. We wanted to create a story that was more than just a superfluous JRPG experience. We wanted something that would make the player think; something that would engage them intellectually and emotionally.”

Lovely vistas!

Elysian Shadows seems like it will strike a chord that resonates with our own lives, possibly even a few nerves, but who would we be if art never asked hard questions? And how we answer these questions are part of what make us individual from one another. Our varied ways of thinking and how those come together for a common goal are part of what has made America what it is today: a center for all people to share ideas freely, and sometimes those ideas reach back out to the people that created them. So how will the characters accompanying Julien contribute to the game?

“Julien is initially accompanied by the lead female protagonist, Eryn, who is a tech-savvy university student. Eryn helps her father run the local museum, showcasing various exotic and mysterious artifacts from the surrounding ruins. While Julien’s past has rendered him jaded and disinterested in discovering the secrets of these ruins, Eryn explores them passionately in hopes of uncovering their secrets often dragging Julien along for the ride. She is a strong-willed tomboy and often the most level-headed and responsible member of the party with a ruthless pragmatism.

The two adventurers find themselves in the company of one of Eryn’s professors after his lab is ransacked and his research is destroyed ( presumably because he was getting too close to a breakthrough with his work ). While Professor Rand is brilliant, he’s also infamous for dysfunctional antics and living a life of excess. His peers in academia generally disapprove of his hedonism, but they are often forced to concede to his genius and gift for piecing together puzzles. Rand serves as a non-traditional guide for the party, and he is well-versed in the ancient ruins and their technology. Unfortunately Eryn finds herself having to guide Rand just as much throughout their journey, keeping his arrogance in check and ensuring that his decadence doesn’t get the party deeper into trouble along the way.”

...And when you look at what they want to accomplish, it is hard not to drink the koolaide.

There is a big adventure out there for us

Allies and enemies and what separates the two is a major point of reference in how each of us live our lives. It says something about who we are and what we want. Note that Julien is already surrounding himself with those that spend their time largely concerned with the ruins, the very thing that he blames for the loss of his parents. This means that, despite his feelings on them, somewhere they are still very much a part of him, maybe even one he wants to love again as it would be the only emotional link back to those happy days of youth exploring with Mom and Dad? Eventually he will have to face those emotions, and his friends will be the ones to help. So, what about the game itself? How will each of these characters actually work together? I was allured by the claims to an inventive new system for skills and jobs – How will these systems work and how will they be reflected in each character?

“It’s actually a mixture of two different systems. We ran into a kind of design dilemma early on when we were dreaming up skills and abilities for characters. On one hand, we wanted each character to have their own unique feel and play style. We didn’t want every character to feel completely interchangeable, and we wanted to give each their own innate strengths and abilities. But on the other hand, we are huge fans of job and class systems, and party customization is something we very much wanted to do with Elysian Shadows. We really wanted to give the player the freedom to customize their party as they see fit.

So we wound up with a hybrid system where each party member learns their own unique set of skills and abilities during combat and storyline progression. They each have their own unique skill trees and pools that are independent of the other characters, which is how we intend to make our characters unique and interesting. Then each party member can be assigned to a certain class wherein they unlock class-specific skills and abilities. This allows the player to really fine-tune their party, offering a considerable amount of strategic freedom within the combat system, while still allowing us to create unique and interesting characters.”

Giant swords and power help, too!

This means the class you choose for each character determines what role they will play, and allows you to dictate how the party reacts to challenges. Alongside this, one character might have access to certain elements within there skill tree that other characters simply cannot get to – the same way Falco and myself might both become developers, but we would end up using those skills to completely different ends and learn different, though equally useful, methods of making games. Well, damn, I am glad I contributed to the Elysian Shadows Kickstarter! Of course, there are still 5 days left to contribute to the ES Kickstarter, but what about those that miss the opportunity? How much will they have to pay and what outlets will the game be available on?

“Since we’re targeting so many different platforms with completely different indie markets and economies, we can’t really set a fixed price point across each. The price of ES will most likely be adjusted so it’s comparable to other indie games available on each platform. Currently, digital copies of ES for Steam and OUYA can be preordered for $15 through our Kickstarter. This also includes our development tools, ESTk and ESGamma. The standard edition of Elysian Shadows for the Dreamcast will be $49, which includes a professionally produced jewel case, color instruction manual, and pressed disc thanks to our publishers at Watermelon Corp. The game will look like a 100% legit Dreamcast release picked up from a commercial retailer back in 1999. You will also be able to choose between PAL, US, and JAP style packaging so ES will match the rest of your DC collection no matter what region you’re in!”

Painstaking attention to detail, thorough skills and class systems, complex characters and a complex storyline balancing the the beliefs of a world against the pain of one kid: Elysian Shadows is going to have something for everyone, and a little extra to boot. I have never been this excited for another modern retro game; not Shovel Knight or any other mainstream title. Elysian Shadows, however, is more than just a modern retro 2D RPG: it is our modern 2D RPG. More than just this game, I look forward to the ripple effect that this game will create and how that will resonate across the industry. Here’s to hoping it contributes to some interesting developments all the way around. But whether or not it does, either way, it’s going to be an awesome game! As always, you can check the Elysian Shadows website for more about the game!

Why is Bojan Brbora Merging Film and Gaming?

Posted on August 21, 2014 by thre3zekiel

At the end of July I reviewed 4PM, a game that you might say takes games a little too far. Receiving mixed reviews, this game boldly stares down such topics as alcoholism, adultery, drunk driving and suicide. While I can say that topics with this gravity don’t typically feature in games, it is a trend that is on the rise. Today Bojan Brbora, the serbian cinematographer behind 4PM, discusses his motivations with me and sheds a little light on what is driving this dramatic explosion of artistic games.

For those not entirely familiar with Bojan and his work, he gave a little personal background:

Cinematography used to be my full time job up until two and a half years ago, when I came to the UK from Serbia and earned an MA in Game Design at the National Film & Television School. This is where I made 4PM, as well. I worked full time in the Film industry back home for about 8 years before deciding to take a break and learn this new medium. Currently I try to split my work 50/50 between Film/TV and Game Design, and I am quite keen on continuing to work in both areas. The projects that I mainly seem to work on are drama related, which is probably why 4PM is in the same category.

So Bojan has years in the Serbian film industry, but what would make someone take the step into gaming directly from film?

Around three years ago during slow periods, I was playing things like Mass Effect and Deus Ex and realised how much I had grown attached to the characters, especially after making choices and changing their path in the story. I really felt like I was participating in the narrative, and being responsible for what happened on the screen; something which you rarely get in other media. I thought this was really interesting. What if one applied the same thing, but created a more contemporary and contextually relevant narrative? Since this isn’t commonly done, I decided to give it a go and signed up for the course here in the UK.

(beware of spoilers) In 4PM you play as a reckless alcoholic named Caroline, who is grieving over the loss of her father. Granted, she is personally responsible for his death due to her inebriation at the time of the car crash. After another rough day at her soul-sucking deskjob, Caroline decides to sneak down to the bar for a drink. On her way, she runs into a man who throws her a listless glance and continues past her to the roof. You then get to decide to follow or go to the bar. Following him you can learn the truth about yourself and save him. Going to the bar gives you a front row seat to his suicide, as he lands on a taxi parked in front of the bar. Atop the roof Caroline learns that recently she has been having an affair with a married man – the jumper on the roof – whose wife is leaving him. Despite Caroline failing to remember any of this, she does have moments of recollection where the past comes trickling in to haunt her. On that rooftop she faces down herself, the truth of what she has become and where she wants her future to lead.

Given the gravity involved, I wondered at the inspiration behind the narrative Bojan concocted to accomplish the task he set out for himself. His answer sounded like the beginning of numerous indie films.

4PM started out as a situation, a meeting of two strangers on a rooftop at sunset with some sort of mystery element bringing them together. Extra tension was provided by having one character on the ledge, ready to jump. It was a very simple setup, from which I wanted to expand and see who these characters are, and why they are really there.

A very humanizing situation

So why create a game that is more a dramatic narrative than an actual game?

I think the reason why I made more of an interactive story than a game is because I really wanted to expand what the medium can do and try to attract people who are not gamers; hence the removal of most classic game elements and introduction of film language, which is more recognizable and an easier transition for most people.

Bringing non-gamers into a game like this is a challenging task. Interactive media are the only ones in which you take part in a story, driving its significance deeper into the player. Each action taken in-game is part of a developing story, which makes the internalizing of story elements that much easier via Suspension of Disbelief. Such internalization is made even easier by games since the player doesn’t just see it happening to people on the screen, they experience it happening through their decisions as they play out via the avatar of their own conscience: the primary character of the story. Of course, if the end result doesn’t accurately detail what the player might be working toward, the story could be rejected outright. So, what this cinematographer proposes is an immeasurably more difficult task than what film sets out to do: film shows you a story and ask you to think, such games challenge you to live a story and see where your decisions lead it. This process is profoundly more difficult since the interaction between game and player is exceedingly more intimate than that between film and viewer, and the interaction itself largely occurs in the mind of the player.

So this becomes a natural obstacle for the creation of such narrative games, making the player navigate events and emotions that they might altogether avoid themselves. But as movies challenge viewers to place themselves into a character and understand the context of their lives, so, too, does 4PM. You wake up in bed as Caroline, and her life and decisions become post-it notes and empty bottles on the floor. Her life becomes yours for a short time and learning who she is becomes a large part of the curiosity of 4PM. Then, by making decisions that control Caroline, you adopt her as the chosen form to explore the story. And it is a tragic story. So why make a game that is this tragic? Is there a greater message here?

Through developing the details of the story with my writer, Stefan Kaday, something kept pulling us down this very dark path and outside of just typical thriller material. We stumbled onto some very real and difficult themes, but in my view, this could only be a good thing as it felt like something novel; a place where few games want to go. It is a difficult thing to research, as nobody really likes talking about things like alcoholism, guilt, suicide and compulsion, so most of the conversations with people that had gone through them had to be indirect and were quite often emotionally draining. I don’t believe 4PM has a direct message, it is more an exploration of how complex human relationships are and that a lot of us suffer every day, but we rarely face or talk about this due to some ridiculous social stigma.

Pick your poison

So the nature of the game itself is its topic: exploration of these themes rather than a judgment on them. The player decides the path that Caroline takes, and decides what they see. Therefore, it is ultimately the player that dictates the message conveyed by the narrative. For this reason, 4PM was victorious in its task.

Games like this are not uncommon, though, and have recently been cropping up everywhere: Depression Quest, Papers, Please and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Bojan was happy to provide his thoughts on the rise of the dramatic narrative in games.

It is a sign of the medium finally growing up and having a big niche in serious, adult themes. This is a good sign, and I hope developers continue to do more projects relating to real world issues, though there is still quite a bit of work to do in making these experiences more subtle and entertaining to a wider audience. This is only a matter of time though, and I am sure the next few years will bring some ground-breaking work.

And that is solid logic. People seem to be buying these games, so it would follow that more of these games are forthcoming. Can we expect more of these games from Bojan Brbora?

I am currently doing some work for other people to survive in the UK. I also needed to take a break from being in charge of absolutely everything on a project, as it left me psychologically drained. I am developing a few ideas and prototypes, though, and VR seems to be quite an interesting new platform, one currently worth exploring. I’m also working on some film ideas.

Games, of course, take a team of developers given the enormity of their content. Who were the people on 4PM’s team?

While this was essentially a one-man student project, I did work with a few people from the film courses to make the project really unique. Stefan, whom I already mentioned, fleshed out the story and plot, wrote the dialogue and served as an excellent fresh pair of eyes and counterweight to my crazy ideas. Neo Peterson was instrumental in filling out the world with sound and audio atmosphere. Terence Dunn was the main music composer, and did an amazing job putting together the orchestral and some electronic pieces. I am also very thankful to the guys from “Kazoo”and “et_” for letting me use their music as it plays a huge part in making 4PM what it is. These are all extremely talented and kind people, and I look forward to working with them again in the very near future.

What was you favorite part of developing this game?

My favorite part of creating this game was working with other creative people, bouncing ideas off them and learning these complex, new tools to make the project happen. It also brought me to a new country, where I met so many new, talented people and expanded my horizons.

Games like this really have the potential to make games something more, and help us explore our world in ways we never expected. Although some dissenters fail to visualize the potential of such experiences, games are moving into the realm of true art, a modern art that is just as powerful and relevant as any film today. Bojan had some final thoughts to leave readers with regarding this.

I would like to urge people to support projects like these, both socially and financially, as it is the only way to move the industry forward and avoid stagnation. They are currently experimental, and rough around the edges, but the end goal is something spectacular, so we really need your support.

Hopefully we can develop these games into something spectacular. 4PM is available now on Steam for 4.99$. Thank you for reading.

Please note that material has been lightly edited for flow and coherence.

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Why is Bojan Brbora Merging Film and Gaming?

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