In playing the new PC adventure game Technobabylon, you might think you’ve fallen into a wormhole that’s taken you back to the ’90s. After all, it’s a point & click cyberpunk adventure game with pixel art. But while this makes this PC game sound retro, the game’s creator, writer, and programmer James Dearden says it’s actually using those retro elements in new ways.
Considering that zombies have invaded nearly every kind of game, save for racing games, it’s shouldn’t surprise anyone that they’re now chewing their way through an MMO called World Zombination Though what might surprise you is that World Zombination could actually be called a MMMO: Massively Multiplayer & Mobile Online game. With the game coming to Android after already being available on iOS, I spoke to Seth Sivak, the CEO of Proletariat — “though my actual role on the game is more like Executive Producer or Creative Director,” he says — about how there’s more to World Zombination than just eating other people online.
While game developers usually start thinking about sequels after their games come out, and are successful, the good people at NeocoreGames actually conceived of The Incredible Adventures Of Van Helsing as a trilogy before the first game was released in 2012. With The Incredible Adventures Of Van Helsing III due out on PC at the end of May (and later on Mac and Xbox One), I spoke to narrative designer Viktor Juhasz and CCO Linda Bozoradi about this series, as well as what they’ve added, changed, and improved for this final chapter of the trilogy.
It was recently announced that like some of the bands that may be in them, the music games Guitar Hero and Rock Band will be making a comeback with Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4, maybe even before the end of the year. But if you hate music, don’t want to buy a guitar-shaped controller, or just can’t wait that long, you can sort of get the same kind of gameplay, and more, from Color Guardians, a side-scrolling endless runner, platformer, and color matching game for PlayStation 4, Vita, PC, and Mac.
When it comes to games, sometimes it’s their premise that first catches our attention, sometimes it’s the visuals, and sometimes it’s the people behind it. And then you get a game with a name like Mayan Death Robots (PC, Mac, and Linux) that just makes you wonder, “What heck kind of game is that and how can I play it now?” (To which the answers, in this case, are “Please keep reading,” and “No, not until August or September.”) Though in talking to programmer Karel Crombecq, one-half of this Belgium’s Sileni Studios, it’s clear that this game’s name isn’t the only interesting thing about it.
When Star Wars Rebels started airing on Disney XD last October, there were two things that were rather obvious: One, that this wasn’t any more of a kids show than its predecessor, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, had been; and two, that Zen Studios would be making a Star Wars Rebels pinball table for Zen Pinball 2 (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Vita, Mac, WiiU), Pinball FX 2 (Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC), Zen Pinball (iOS), and Zen Pinball HD (Android, Amazon). And wouldn’t you know it…
As we all know from the movies, gunpowder is a volatile and unstable explosive. So, of course, it makes perfect sense that someone made Gunpowder (iOS) a physics-based puzzle game in which you use the stuff to blow things up, what could possibly go wrong? Though in talking to the game’s co-creators — Rogue Rocket Games’ co-founders Richard Sun and Nicky Bruty — it’s clear these guys thought more about making their game fun than the safety of the people in it.
As an old fool, I sometimes like to kick it old school. Which is why, despite some seriously stupid problems, I actually really enjoyed Project Root, an old school, top down, arcadey, third-person sci-fi shooter made by OPQAm for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita.
Some things are just inevitable. It’s inevitable that I will die with a stack of unread books near me, it is inevitable that Rush will stop making new music at some point, and it is inevitable that humanity’s reign on Earth will come to an end at the hands on intelligent apes, zombies, or intelligent zombie apes, and that none of them will read or listen to Rush. But not all inevitabilities are so dire. Take this one: With Marvel releasing the movie Avengers Age Of Ultron on May 1st, it was inevitable that Zen Studios would make a Avengers Age Of Ultron table for Zen Pinball 2 (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Vita, Mac), Pinball FX 2 (Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC), Zen Pinball (iOS), Zen Pinball HD (Android, Amazon), and, at some point soon, Zen Pinball 2 on the WiiU.