When your studio is called SleepNinja Games, your publisher is Cartoon Network Games, and your new game is called Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake, you better have a sense of humor about yourself. Thankfully, that seems to be the case with Justin Baldwin, who identifies himself as the Arty-fart McGoo / Animation Dood / Overall Design Person’r on Cake, and his cohort Alex Atkins, Cake’s self-identified “Head Writerererer/Designer.”
Jeff Broadbent is no stranger to games. A composer and sound designer, he’s worked on the post-apocalyptic single-player-focused I Am Alive, the sci-fi online-only Planetside 2, the movie-inspired Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, the upcoming near-future military skirmish Tom Clancy’s Endwar Online, as well as his most recent work on the fantasy multiplayer online battle area game Dawngate. But in talking to him about that latter game, Broadbent went into how a game’s setting and genre can influence the music he makes for it.
If you’ve been to this site more than once, you might’ve noticed that I have an affinity for the pinball games made by Zen Studios. Be they based on the Star Wars movies, Marvel Comics, or an original idea, Zen’s pinball tables always manage to mix realistic physics and sounds with physic-ly impossible mechanics. Which, for a gamer who grew up on pinball, hits a real sweet spot.
I recently had a chance to pick the brain of Peter Grafl, one of the pinball table designers at Zen Studios, and asked him who decides what tables they’ll make, how they’re designed, and what tables he’d like to make.
Warner Brothers Interactive have announced that Batman: Arkham Knight — “Rocksteady Studios conclusion to the series” — will be released on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC later this year.
When you’re a barbarian, all your problems are solved with a sword. But what if you were a barbarian who preferred to solve your problems with a song? Such is the plight of Brad, a barbarian mercenary in the new iOS game Bardbarian, which was made by TreeFortress and published by BulkyPix. But in talking to TreeFortress illustrator and animator Mike Gaboury, their heroes penchant for music over might isn’t the only thing that makes Bardbarian unique.
In many games, you’re a good person. You’re the superhero stopping the supervillian; you’re the human solider saving the Earth from invading aliens; you’re the cop fighting crime on the mean streets. But in the game Gregg — which Namco Bandai have released for both iOS and Android devices — you’re not the good guy, but an outside force trying to protect the good guy. Or the good bird as the case may be. Though as its creator, Play Fripp’s Yann Berthier, would like to point out, this isn’t like that other bird game you might know.
To promote the new Guinness World Records 2014 Gamer’s Edition, the publishers and their PR people chose four of the included records to highlight in their press materials. Included among them was “Longest Marathon On A Dance Video Game,” which was set by Carrie Swidecki, a second grade teacher who played Just Dance 4 for 49 Hours, 3 Minutes, and 22 Seconds. But Swidecki isn’t just some obsessive gamer, she’s also trying to spread the word about exergaming, the idea of using video games in schools as a way to get kids to exercise.
Since launching on PCs in 2011, Terraria has since been released on systems both big (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) and small (iOS, Android). With it now coming to the PlayStation Vita, 505 Games’ David Welch, the Creative Manager for the console and mobile versions, talks about how this new edition is similar, and different, from the others.
It’s funny, but in a way, Richard A. Knack’s novel World Of Warcraft: Dawn Of The Aspects (paperback) may be his most Warcraft-ian book to date. And we’re talking about a guy who’s written nearly a dozen of them. But it’s not because of the story he tells in it, but rather because it was originally released in installments on the Internet like DLC.
With all five parts now being collected in a single volume from Gallery Books, Knaak made himself available to talk about how this book came to be, how playing the game inspires him, and his other non-Warcraft fantasy novels.