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.
Like 2013’s Halo Spartan Assault, the arcadey, top-down, twin-stick shooter Halo Spartan Strike (iOS, PC, Windows Phones) features the music of Tom Salta. Who, not coincidentally, has also worked on Halo: Combat Evolved: Anniversary and the Halo 2 Anniversary part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection. But while this makes it seem like the people behind the Halo games like Salta, in talking to him about his work on Strike, it seems the feeling is mutual.
Though she learned to speak English from watching Scooby-Doo, there’s nothing cartoony about the scary writings of Ania Ahlborn. With her new book, Within These Walls (paperback, digital) hitting stories, I spoke to her about what inspired different aspects of this novel.
Usually, the scariest thing people see on their phones is a text about how their mother-in-law is coming for a visit…and she’s staying for two weeks! But in talking to Human Head Studio’s Chris Rhinehart, the project director on the scary mobile game Lost Within (iOS, Amazon), it’s clear they looked well beyond their phones when designing this fright-fest.
When the zombie apocalypse comes — and yes, it is a matter of “when” not “if” — it will not just be the strong who survive, or the smart, but the swift. Don’t believe me? Then maybe you should play Must Deliver, a zombie-themed endless runner game for iOS, Android, and Amazon tablets. Though in talking to Cherrypick Games’ Michael Sroczynski, the game director on Must Deliver, he revealed that there’s another “S” that will help you survive as well: Super Moves.
For their new action game for Bloodborne (PlayStation 4), the good people at FromGames didn’t just ask three of their in-house music people to score the game, they also hired three outside people as well, including Cris Velasco, who’s done music for such games as Enemy Front, ZombiU, and Clive Barker’s Jericho, and is also doing for a series of motion comics based on Barker’s Books Of Blood stories. Though in talking to Velasco about his work on both Bloodborne and Books Of Blood, it’s clear the FromGames may not have needed those other five guys.
Every week for the last four years, Henry Rollins has written a column for the L.A. Weekly, a free alternative weekly newspaper in Los Angeles. And almost every week, some editor cuts something out or changes the title.
But while you might think this would send him into some Hulk-like rage — especially if you don’t know much about the man and his professionalism — Henry instead just saves the originals for an ongoing series of books he calls Before The Chop, the first volume of which is available both physically and digitally .
With the second, Before The Chop II (digital) now out, I sent him some questions via email to ask how much his editors change his work, if these changes have impacted how he writes for them, and why — after twenty years of writing about music, his life, and other real things — he’s never penned a work of fiction.
While it’s not unusual for games to add to their stories with DLC, when Path Of Exile The Awakening expands the action-RPG Path Of Exile in a few weeks, it won’t be like when some fantasy game just puts in a couple new dungeons and a dragon or two. No, the expansion will not only add new adventures, it adds other elements that will so fundamentally change this game that Jonathan Rogers, the technical director on Path Of Exile The Awakening, says they’ve decided to conducting a six to eight week long beta — which starts April 20th, but you can join here — to make sure everything works right.
With Battlefield Hardline (Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PC) set up like a television show, you’d think the good people at Visceral Games would hire a composer who’s worked in TV before. But while Paul Leonard-Morgan has done the music for such TV shows as MI-5, it turns out that it wasn’t his TV work that got him this gig.