In making the rhythm game Jungle Rumble!! for iOS devices and, soon, Android ones as well, the good people at Disco Pixel could’ve had you controlling lions or tigers or giraffes, oh my. But in talking to Disco Pixel’s Trevor Stricker, he revealed that, no, it was always going to be monkeys. Sweet, sweet monkeys.
If you give your mobile game a name like Bomb Buds, you’re just asking for someone to make jokes about weed. But in talking to Fugazo Inc.’s Jim Burner, the game designer on this iOS and Android strategic action battle game — if that even is his real name, and not another pot joke — he didn’t just make a couple weed-related quips, he veered into what would’ve been legally-implicating territory…had Fugazo’s hometown of Seattle not just legalized marijuana. As they say, smoke ’em if you got ’em.
In his new sci-fi novel Dark Eden, writer Chris Beckett imagines an alien world where everyone — and their society’s rules — originated with just two people. But while the plot and the title might have you thinking that a certain Bible story was the big inspiration for his book, as Beckett explains, there’s other influences at work here as well.
As a bad Jew who likes shooting things from the first-person perspective, World War II first-person shooter are my jam. Or rather, they would be if I was young enough to have a jam. But while this genre hasn’t been seen much since Call Of Duty: World At War came out in 2008, its now being resurrected by Enemy Front, which C.I. Games will released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on June 13th. But in talking to producer Stephen Skelton, it’s clear that Enemy Front is trying to bring this old genre back with some new ideas.
In the first-person underwater survival game Narcosis, you’re a deep sea diver who’s stranded at the bottom of the ocean. But while the development team have figured many of the game’s mechanics, they still have some important decisions to make. As writer David Chen explained when he came to my house to let me play the latest demo of the game, “We don’t even have a name for our team yet.”
In his debut novel, The Detainee, writer Peter Liney imagines a dystopian world where those who are incapable of taking care of themselves are sent to a prison called The Island. But while the book is fictional, Liney admits that the book’s origins, and thus its foundations, stem from some very real concerns about our society.
Originally released in the ’80s as a series of gamebooks, Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! has since made the transition to an interactive fiction game series for iOS devices. With the first installment, “The Shamutani Hills,” now coming to Android, and part 2, “Kharé: Cityport Of Traps,” slated for Spring, Inkle Studios’ Creative Director Jon Ingold discusses what this series is all about, why it’s only now coming to Android devices, and why it won’t be available on the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One anytime soon.
Written in the fourteenth century, Dante’s Inferno is one of the most influential works of literature, inspiring everything from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The House Of Fame and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman to the Daffy Duck cartoon “Book Revue” and, of course, the 2010 action game Dante’s Inferno. Now it’s the inspiration for The Ninth Circle, the debut novel from veteran comic book scribe, TV and movie writer, and book editor Brendan Deneen. But in talking to Deneen, he revealed that Dante wasn’t the only influence on his book.
When Abbie Heppe was first hired by Respawn, it was to be their company’s Community Manager. But as so often happens in game design, one thing led to another, and now Heppe is also the voice of the Militia commander Sarah in Respawn’s new sci-fi shooter Titanfall, as well as the face model for pilots on both sides of the conflict in the game. Which means she’ll probably be running the place inside of six months. Though in talking to Heppe about her career path, it’s clear this isn’t all part of some carefully crafted master plan devised by a career-minded genius. Or so she says…