I’m fascinated with the game glimpsed at in the trailer for Kentucky Route Zero. A wonderful tone is set for a fantastic looking adventure game with its slow bluegrass and presentation of quiet, mysterious scenes. I can’t wait to try the game when it’s released, but right now the devs are looking to the community for the funding to get this project off the ground.
If you have an interest in magical realism, or games that appeal to your literary sensibilities, or just like funding indie devs with creative ideas, then you can support this title via a donation through Kickstarter. A thorough description of the game as well as some awesome supporter rewards can be checked out there as well.
Check out the trailer for Kentucky Route Zero after the break.
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On the last day of this year’s E3 Expo I met with Sam Roberts at the unassuming Indiecade booth for an interview in which we talked about the festival and the games it aims to support. I expected to see a lineup of interesting titles and hear a spiel about independent games’ superiority to their mainstream counterparts.
Instead, I saw a lineup of outrageous, nearly mind blowing titles and had a fascinating discussion with Sam about the role independent games serve in the relation to the overall games industry.
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Zombies – The only humanoids you can slaughter in videogames that cause less weight on your conscience than Nazis.
Continuing the zombie craze that has infected both cinema and games in recent years, Dead Nation is an upcoming PSN exclusive that looks a lot like the reportedly underwhelming Zombie Apocalypse from Konami. However, with a cheesy trailer, tons of zombie gibs, and the promise of co-op, the game already has the trappings that keep dragging us back for more. Dead Nation will also keep track of national statistics if you’re into that sort of thing.
You can check out the trailer after the cut while I go flog myself for not resisting that zombie pun in the paragraph above.
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Microsoft recently announced the winners of its Dream.Build.Play competition in which independent developers were challenged to create games on Microsoft’s XNA platform. Many of the winning titles look very interesting, but the top two prize winning games are what caught my interest. The winner of the $40,000 prize, Lumi, is a dreamy 2D platformer that looks gorgeous and the $20,000 prize winner, A.R.E.S., looks like a badass side-scrolling action title.
I never really thought of game consoles as viable platforms for indie games, but I’ve been hearing good things about the 360′s indie game channel and initiatives like this competition seem to show Microsoft’s commitment to the small developer.
Anyway, click past the cut for more video of all the winning titles in the competition.
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Title Image by Rey Ortega
A lone developer once sat in his home in Japan and committed himself to making the most hauntingly fantastic independent videogame ever. Five years later, he emerged with Cave Story.
A lot of eloquent praise has been given to Cave Story over the years and there’s not much that I can add to what’s already been said, but there are a few things that struck me during my most recent play through of the title in its new WiiWare form and I can’t help wanting to write a love letter of my own.
The nigh-perfection of this simple title made by a single man (Pixel is Daisuke Amaya’s self-appointed handle) was and is far-and-away a greater achievement than anything I’ve experienced from the professional industry in many years – if nowhere else than on a tasteful, emotional level.
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This new trailer shows off a teeny tiny bit of cut scene footage (is that Samus as a fetus? How much back story are we gonna get exactly?) and a lot more gameplay. We get to see some new stuff like a close up morph ball tunnel sequence akin to those in the Prime series and the trailer also gives us a clearer idea of how the 2D/3D hybrid gameplay will work.
I’ve been impressed by all the footage I’ve been seeing of Other M lately and at this point I’ve put aside most of my past apprehensions about this departure for the series and more than anything just want to get some quality time with the title.
Catch it after the break
UPDATE – Variations, ie extra scenes in the Japanese trailer? We’ve added it below.
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Superbrothers on the language of videogames:
A project starts with an idea, a vision, something that is hard to define, something kind of magic and amazing. This is step 1. This is gold. This is beautiful. You can’t yet see the details, but you have a sense for thing you want to make, and hopefully you’re swept away by it.
Usually in the creative process, the next step — step 2 — is to think about the project intellectually, to talk about it, to look at it from various angles, to plan it out, maybe to second guess it or to problem solve it, maybe reconsider it a bit. This is the talk.
The next step, step 3, is to actually make this thing, to get down to it. This is the rock. And we like to think that the process goes from 1 to 2 to 3.
This, they say, is not how things always are, thus sometimes you must rock before talking.
Less Talk, More Rock
via: Drawn!
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