While some people dream of being President, and some people dream of being athletes, the truly cool dream of being rock stars. Well, now you can live out that dream with TourStar, an iOS game that let’s you live the rock & roll lifestyle. But in talking to Brandon Pankey, the managing partner of Music Players Group LLC and one of the game’s co-creators, it seems there’s more to TourStar than seeing a million faces and rockin’ them all.
We’ve all loved someone who didn’t love us back. And no, I’m not talking about Chewbacca. I’m talking about someone we actually know, someone we’d like to know better but they just don’t feel the same way. Which is why we’ll probably all find things in Christy Heron’s new novel Unrequited (which is available both physically and digitally) that we can relate to. With the book coming to print this week, I spoke to Heron about where she got the idea for this book, what influences the way she writes, and why she thinks that while it may appeal more to women than men, men might like it, too.
In recent years, playing video games has become a sport for many people. And yet, most of the games being played as sports, and in sports arenas, aren’t actually sports games. But that could change with Epigenesis, a first-person futuristic sports game for PCs that creators Dead Shark Triplepunch call a “non-lethal ballgame of the future.” But with shooting and platforms high above the ground is it really non-lethal? Project/game design lead Michael Levall explains the finer points of this game.
A dark and stormy night. A double-crossing jerk. Booze, bullets, and babes. These are the tenets of hardboiled crime novels, and they, like the heroes of such books, still pack a punch. But after talking to author Marc Rosenberg about his own crime drama Headcase (paperback, Kindle), while he may be familiar with the crime classics, he tried to write a whole new caper.
In the realm of video games, there’s been flight simulators, driving simulators, even city planning simulators. And now there’s Goat Simulator from Sweden’s Coffee Stain Studios. With the game recently released on PC, and now being distributed in the U.S. by Deep Silver (y’know, the Saints Row people) — the Mac and Linux versions are available through the game’s website — I spoke to Line Jakobsen — who says “We haven’t really done titles for Goat Simulator, but executive director of goating sounds like a suitable title for me” — about the origins of this species.
One of things people love about flying games (and racing games, and motocross games…) is the opportunity to get behind the wheel of many different vehicles. But in the upcoming World War I flight simulator Ilya Muromets, due out on PC later this year from 1C Game Studios, you’ll mostly be behind the wheel of one vehicle: the Sikorsky Ilya Muromet, a Russian bomber built by iconic helicopter designer Igor Sikorsky. But while the titular game lets you fly other planes, in talking to two of the developers — 777 Studio’s Jason V. Williams and 1C’s Anatoly Subbotin — it doesn’t really sound like you’d want to.
We all know how mixing peanut butter and chocolate was a genius move. But it’s not the only example of people mixing disparate elements into some new and cool. Consider the upcoming game Skara: The Blade Remains, which mix elements of fighting games, RPGs, and the multiplayer modes of action games, and will be coming to PCs via Steam Early Access later this month. Though in talking to the dev studio’s co-founder César Ortega, it seems that mixing those genres together wasn’t as easy as ramming a piece of chocolate into a jar of peanut butter.
Released in 1987, Shadowgate was one of the original point & click adventure games. Now this fantasy game is getting an updated upgrade from the original creators. One of whom, design director Karl Roelofs, recently explained how the game works, and how it will work differently than you remember it, when his company Zojoi releases it this August on PC and Mac (and later on iOS and Android).
Given that most games come out regular before getting super sized, you can’t help but be excited by a game that’s already super like Super Comboman, which is coming to PCs via Steam thanks to the good people at Adult Swim Games. But in talking to Interabang’s Justin “ICJ” Woodward, the Creative Dome Piece on Super Comboman, it’s also not hard to get hungry.