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gaming · 5 years ago

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Indie Game Spotlight: Röki

We’re back with another Indie Game Spotlight! Inspired by Scandinavian folklore and described as an explore-o-puzzle, Röki is an adventure game that takes the shape of a dark contemporary fairy tale underpinned with deep narrative, satisfying puzzles, and atmospheric exploration. We join Tove on a fantastical journey to save her family into a hidden and long-forgotten world of lost folklore filled with strange locations and even stranger characters.

We spoke with Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou, one of the founders of Polygon Treehouse (a fairly new indie studio from Cambridge, UK). Alex is responsible for the character and monster art and animation in the game. Read on!

What was the main inspiration for the game?

We were inspired by the classic point-and-click games we loved so much growing up but wanted to update and re-imagine the genre for today’s players. Röki is not ‘point-and-click,’ but instead, you take direct control of Tove with the gamepad and explore the world directly in 3D. We feel this makes the game feel more immediate and responsive, as well as enabling the player to form a stronger attachment to Tove. Basically, we wanted to make our take on a modern adventure game that is frustration-free and that all players can enjoy.

For the setting/themes for the game, we had a few different ideas for floating around that we were both quite excited about. However, once we stumbled upon Scandinavian folklore the rest quickly faded into the background! We're not really talking about the Norse gods, more the creepy creatures lurking in the lakes, caves, and forests. They felt so strange, grisly and fun that we fell in love and set off creating our own world inspired by those tales.

Also, we really like the idea of running around in the snow, so that clinched the deal!

What does Röki mean, and how does it relate to the game?

Like the movie Jaws, our game is named after the monster! However, when you encounter monsters in the game, it’s about understanding and helping them, rather than harming them. As a child, Tove looks past the monstrous appearances and sees the humanity underneath. She has to solve the riddles of the forest to fix what’s troubling them, even if they’re not very friendly, to begin with. We like the idea of exploring shades of grey with our characters, rather than binary ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ On a personal level, it’s nice to make a non-violent game with an undercurrent of kindness.

Röki himself is a fascinating, almost tragic character—but you’ll have to play the game to find out more!

What are some aspects of Nordic folklore that players can expect to spot in the game?

Many aspects of our wintry world draw upon Scandinavian folklore. The monsters are very much our own reimaginings of those tales, with a few of our own creations added into the mix.

We undertook reference trips and took about a gazillion photos to feed our work and make sure there was a strong sense of place. That way, not just the forest feels right, but also the cabins, abandoned churches, and shrines feel cohesive within the game world.

We try to make sure each ‘ingredient’ contributes to the world. For example, the voice acting in the game is all done by Norwegian actors, so you get subtle inflections and accents from the region. We have a fair few Scandinavian friends who’ve had eyeballs on the game from an early stage, and the reaction from showcasing the game over there has been amazing. We think we’ve managed to create something that is very much our own but has that flavor running through most aspects of the game.

If you suddenly found yourself in your game, do you think you would survive?

Ha, I’m not sure I have Tove’s resourcefulness, but I do get on well with pretty much everyone. Hopefully, a grumpy troll would take pity on me, and we’d go drink tea in their cozy cave until the snowstorms passed.

Either that or I’d be gobbled up in seconds, not sure!

If you’re ready to befriend some monsters, Röki is coming to Nintendo Switch and PC in 2020—or you can wishlist on Steam here.

#Roki #Polygon Treehouse #Indie Game Spotlight #Indie Game

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breadknight-likes-things · 5 years ago

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Bread’s Game Journal 05/15/20: A New Era, An Old Hope.

I’m a big fan of the way Gears V opens, both the J.D led first act that Microsoft did a really great job of hiding, and the Kait led second act that goes back into the truly messed up world of New Hope Research facility, with extremely interesting results! I wanted to talk a little bit about the New Hope chapter, and how it compares to the one seen in Gears of War 2!

Gears of War 2, back in 2008, both was and is, not a bad looking video game. Sure it’s aged pretty heavily by modern standards, but as far as games from 2008 go, you can find plenty that look a lot worse in 2020 than Gears Of War 2. The New Hope Research Facility chapter was, I would say, a highlight of that game to begin with, and it’s strong visual design played a big part of that. New Hope felt haunted. Both by the things that happened there, and the monsters still lurking the halls by the time Delta Squad arrive on the vague orders they’re given (shortly after emerging from the stomach of a giant worm, of course, because Gears Of War 2 was...a tale and a half). The dank hallways were still mostly intact, and the beasts contained within still hadn’t broken free. Of course, both those things would change on Delta’s visit, but it stills feels like as soon as you arrive, you leave. In the end, New Hope in Gears 2 is a short chapter, but impactful in 2008, and even more impactful now.

This rough screenshot isn’t doing it any favors, but you can sort of see what I mean with the way the general vibe of the facility goes in Gears of War 2.

Forty or so years later, when Kait and Del make their way to New Hope to learn more about Kait’s connection to the Locust, the horror show is somehow in even worse shape than you remember. Granted, advances in graphics technology go a long way in selling this. Hell, even the area around New Hope is now a thick old growth redwood forest, as opposed to the sort of barren nothing it was rendered as being in the middle of in Gears 2. I think this actually sells the idea of the facility a lot better, it’s even established that it was covered up while still functioning by the COG claiming it was a simple shipping depot, but who puts a shipping depot that deep in the woods?

It also has the little problem of Sera’s new extreme weather issues tearing that specific ruin to shreds. You thought the razorhail that pelted Delta in 2008 was bad? There’s full on pillars of ice crashing down into New Hope in 2020. Once you get inside you get the same basic vibes that it had in 2008, but brilliantly realized with the new tech at hand. Most notably, it’s dark (and I mean that literally) in a way the 2008 rendition wasn’t, with the samey level of light Unreal Engine produce back then doing the environmental storytelling no favors. It also focuses a bit more on the tragedy leading to the Sires, rather than on the Sires themselves as just another weird monster to shoot. In Gears 2, you more or less just walked down a series of hallways, then found yourself smack dab in the middle of Sire central. Here, they never actually attack you (not the case at the other secret lab in act 2, but still), and there’s far more sympathy generated for their plight via collectibles and notes that are scattered around in obvious places so the player will assuredly read them. It’s an interesting shift, making it clear that the Sires are the victims here, and even though they were obviously the aggressors in Gears 2, you maybe should have at least felt a little bad about their situation while Marcus was screaming “NOTHING BUT BITS” as he chainsawed them in half.

Here you can really see what the new lighting model does for the dank, dirty feeling of the few hallways that have survived in New Hope at all intact.

I love it when games do this, return to old concepts with fresh perspectives. Sometimes it runs the risk of being repetitive, but here it just adds on new layers to an old horror in wonderfully engaging ways.

Random Screenshot Of The Day: (Spoilers For Gears Tactics)

Cleverly, one of the aforementioned collectibles I mentioned is a letter from Sid Redburn, co-star of Gears Tactics, begging the COG Chariman to shut down the inhumane conditions he’s been privy too. His first hand knowledge of New Hope and the true origins of The Locust play a big part of his arc through Gears Tactics, so finding this collectible again was a really fun surprise!

Stray Notes:

- Whew! That went more in depth than I intended it too! I don’t know if I’ve noted this about myself before, holy hell do I love Gears of War.

- I watched Scoob! tonight with it’s straight to home digital release and it was....alright. I see a lot of extreme anger over it but I wouldn’t go that far, it’s just too generic of a movie to really inspire all that much enthusiasm, and that’s coming from a huge Scooby-Doo fanboy! You’d really be better off just watching your favorite DTV entry again and waiting for the rental price of this one to hit that traditional $6 range.

- My Miku game download failed and now I have to start from the beginning, someone please tell Nintendo how the internet works i’m genuinely begging you.

- Throwing my name up there in the title! May as well brand these things a little more than I already do right?

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geekade · 8 years ago

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PAX East is Fun

The beginning of “Convention season” always gets me excited for PAX East which fortunately for me, is in the first quarter of the year. PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) started out west in Bellevue, Washington for their first show in 2004. Then in 2010, it expanded to Boston for PAX East, and it has been growing ever since. What makes this special for me is that it’s a convention focused only on games, but not just video games. From hardcore D&D to casual tabletop games & card games, they have it all covered. Many of these truly wonderful tabletop game creators even allow you and your friends can try out whole games before you even buy them in a special section of the convention designated for that purpose. The people of PAX are a very friendly community and it is always an enjoyable experience.

PAX East is a much smaller convention than the ones I’m used to, which is a breath of fresh air. I only purchased a Saturday pass because I can normally get through the whole show floor in a day. This year there was a much larger indie gaming presence and while I couldn’t have been happier, it did present me with a challenge. Being the completionist that I am, I had to attempt to get to each booth and find something that would leave a lasting impression on me.

As soon as you get onto the escalator to the show floor, you immediately know where all the big-name studios are. What surprised me was that Twitch had a much larger presence this year than in 2016. They had a lounge where you could network with Twitch streamers and relax. It was a nice addition because all they did last year was hand out deodorant (which I certainly didn’t mind. It sometimes gets a little stinky at the convention) and pamphlets to let people know about Twitch. Then there was also a see-through box with a single streamer inside playing a game. People would press their hands and faces against the glass and watch them like they were in a human exhibit at the zoo. There was also an area where an interviewer would talk to people and developers from the stow floor, but I was more interested in the indie games.

My first stop of the day was at a gaming booth dedicated to Polish game studios. The publisher of the following games was 11 Bit Studios:

Digital Sun is the developer of a game by the name of Moonlighter, an Action RPG with rogue-like elements. You play as Will, a shopkeeper that dreams of becoming a hero. This was my favorite game at the booth. You’re told a story of how the village you live in was once a profitable merchant town and shop owners would venture into the caves and bring back supplies to fill their shop, but soon the caves became too dangerous and the merchants began to leave. You are a brave young hero who dreams of becoming a hero and vanquishing the monsters in these caves. It's a dungeon crawling game, bit it's also a shopkeeper simulator. When you get back from exploring caves you can put the items you find on sale.

Pixel Crow is the developer of Beat Cop, a game where you play as Jack Kelly, a former detective framed for murder. You are reassigned to a new precinct where you are stuck writing tickets. Yes, you read that right. This is a text-heavy, story-driven game with multiple endings and sadly I didn’t get enough time it. I’d love to sit down with this one some more and read every bit of the text I can find. Lucky for me and other fans of the game, it releases in Spring of 2017.

The final game in this booth was Tower 57, a top-down twin stick shooter with 16-bit-inspired pixel art, destructible environments, and a heavy focus on co-op. This game was a lot of fun, and the way the “display” was set up was very cute. There was a couch at the very end of the booth. I was handed a controller and taken to the character select screen. There are 7 different characters you can choose from with different abilities. I obviously picked a female scientist, steampunk Abraham Lincoln, and a detective. You pick these 3 character and they act as your lives. If your first character dies you switch to the 2nd one, and so on. This game took me back to my childhood where I’d play these types of games with my little brother. I loved the couch setup which made it seem like you were in a living room playing with friends.

My next stop of the day was the Shovel Knight booth which was oddly tucked into the back corner of the convention. There were only a few show-goers there so I decided to try out the new co-op mode. If you weren’t aware, like myself, Shovel Knight and all of its related DLC are available now on Nintendo Switch, including Specter of Torment, which is currently only available on Switch, and hitting all other platforms in April. Playing it on the Nintendo Switch wasn’t really my cup of tea because the Joycon controllers were a bit too small to work with. After beating the first boss, the trial was over and I left to pick up a Shovel Knight keychain.

My next destination was the Raw Fury booth. The games they had were GoNNER; a cute 2-d platformer with an award winning soundtrack, Tormenter X Punisher; a top-down twin stick shooter where the goal is to survive and you only get 1 life, Kingdom; a kingdom-building simulation game where you control a king or queen and spend your coins expanding your kingdom, and finally Dandara; a metroidvania gravity bending game based on an Afro-Brazilian woman in the colonial period of Brazil.

Across the way was an elaborate set-up of booths for Melbourne International Games Week, Asia Pacific’s largest digital games celebration featuring conferences, events and activities for the games industry, game enthusiasts and the general public. The game that stuck out most was a beautiful water-colored mobile game called Paperbark.

“Paperbark is a game that tells a playful short story of the bush, a wombat and a very hot Australian Summer. It presents a sincere representation of Australian bushland, which has been inspired by iconic historical and contemporary landscape Artists and Australian children’s literature. The player follows a sleepy wombat; who spends it’s day exploring, solving problems and foraging for interesting things. As the story unfolds and new locations are discovered, the adventure builds with the heat of the day. The game has been created as a love letter to wandering through the bush and can resonate with anyone who grew up in Australia, or is interested in it.”

It was a cute whimsical game where you would swipe the screen to make the wombat walk around and if you swipe over the white space that uncovered more of the area around you.

Afterwards I decided to switch gears and try out some VR games. My friend had been deciding between getting VR or the Nintendo Switch and this was a perfect place to try both. Unfortunately for her, she hates horror games which is the biggest genre in VR right now but, we were able to find a few games that were safe for her. The first one we found was called The Lab, a mini-game collection created by Valve. After putting on the headset I was told by the woman at the booth to select the “Longbow” mini-game which is a bow and arrow “shooter”. This game was pretty straightforward. You are perched on top of a wall in your fort and you must shoot at the stick-figure people who are trying to break down your fort’s gate to enter it. When you shoot the stick-figures they release balloons you can shoot to regain your health. It was a silly game but it did a pretty great job of introducing you to the VR world.

We moved onto another VR shooter called Dick Wilde on the Oculus Home. In this particular game you must shoot mutated alligators and other giant swamp creatures while actively dodging projectiles being shot at you. This one was a bit more involved than the other VR shooter, but also more difficult because you have to remember to move around shoot. At the end of each round your score is tallied up according to how many creatures you shot and how many projectiles you were able to dodge.

The Cartoon Network booth was my next stop. Grumpyface Studios, which brought us the critically acclaimed Steven Universe game Attack the Light, is releasing their sequel Save the Light on consoles this summer. I never played Attack the Light, but had heard nothing but good things about the game. It is a blend of turn-based and real-time combat, sort of like Paper Mario, featuring the main characters of the Steven Universe show. The game will still be co-written by the shows creator Rebecca Sugar and it looks like it will further explore the lore in the Steven Universe universe. The only other game at the Cartoon Network booth was OK K.O.! Lakewood Plaza Turbo based on an upcoming Cartoon Network show OK K.O. Let’s Be Heroes. This game is a beat-em-up featuring characters from the show. The portion of the game I played had rhythm elements to it almost like DDR or Stepmania which I enjoyed.

My final destination of the day was the IndieBox booth. I had been excited about this for weeks because there was a rumor they would have Jotun, an action exploration game where you play as a viking warrior who must prove herself to the Gods so that she may enter Valhalla. I grabbed the box and was on my way to purchase the game when a sales rep at the booth informed me that they were having a special deal that day. If I spent another $20 I would get one IndieBox for the following month and 5 game codes. Typoman is their game for the next month and after receiving such high praise I thought it was an amazing deal.

As I headed up the escalator to leave the convention I couldn’t help but feel a little sad leaving my favorite convention. It’s wonderful to be able to get through a whole convention in a day, but I always think about the games I had missed out on playing or the people I never got a chance to talk to. All in all this is a great way to start the convention season and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

#Video Games #Tabletop #articles

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postgamecontent · 8 years ago

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Quintet Spotlight: ActRaiser

Original Release Date: December 16, 1990 (JPN)

Original Hardware: Nintendo Super Famicom

Quintet's first game, the Super NES title ActRaiser, is also by far their most famous. Part of that is likely down to timing. The game came soon after the system's launch in both Japan and North America, trailing the respective launches by a matter of months, placing it right around the time that players who had quenched their Super Mario World thirst would be on the look-out for something new and substantial. Another part of its success is probably due to its creative design. ActRaiser is both a side-scrolling action game and a god simulator, which isn't exactly a natural combination. Finally, it's well-remembered because it deserves to be. ActRaiser has its rough edges but in some ways it's the most well-rounded of all of Quintet's games. Only Terranigma is better, in my opinion, and that game didn't get a release in North America, essentially ensuring it would be forgotten by most.

ActRaiser presents us with a world teetering on the brink of destruction. Civilization is in ruins, monsters relentlessly attack the surviving humans, and the hearts of the people have turned to evil. This is the work of the devilish Tanzra, who defeated the world's creator, The Master, with the help of his six lieutenants several hundred years ago. The Master retreated to his Sky Palace to recover, and in doing so, fell into a deep sleep. This has given Tanzra and his minions full freedom to run amok, bringing the world to the precipitous state that it finds itself in. Fortunately, The Master has finally awakened, and with the help of his Angel assistant, he means to overthrow Tanzra once and for all. To do that, he'll need to reconnect with humanity through prayer, help them solve their problems, and rebuild civilization so that they can give The Master greater strength through their worship.

Even in its localized American form, ActRaiser isn't very subtle. The Japanese version drops all pretenses, referring to The Master as God and Tanzra as Satan. It's no coincidence, I think, that all of the bosses found in the game take after mythological creatures and deities of non-Christian religions, either. God is back, and he's ready to stick a literal sword through the heart of heathens everywhere. Even with the changed names and edited graphics, it's kind of impressive that Enix was able to slip this one by in North America. Mind you, we never actually see The Master, and I suppose if anything it carries a message that might appeal to those who might have taken umbrage. In the end, when you've finally set everything right again, you'll find all of your temples across the world are empty of their usual worshipers. Your Angel assistant sadly notes that people only seem to want to pray to The Master when they need something. No atheists in foxholes, as they say. I suppose if a near-endless stream of demons, dragons, and giant bats were belching forth from glowing symbols on the ground, I might find religion, too.

There are two basic types of gameplay in ActRaiser. You'll start your entry into each of the game's several areas by inhabiting a warrior statue and battling through a side-scrolling action stage. The controls are a little slow and clunky here, but given this is an animated statue, I guess I can forgive that. There are plenty of enemies to slice through with your sword, and the occasional platforming sequence will keep you on your toes. The level culminates in a battle with a boss, usually a fairly large creature that shows off the Super NES's graphical muscle in some way. These levels can be a little tricky early on when your level is low. You can only take a few hits and the warrior never seems to be as agile as you'd like him to be. The key is to avoid taking damage while letting the enemies come to you. You can often hit them before they even look like they're in range, so keeping your distance is a solid strategy.

After beating that initial stage, you'll be thrown into the game's other mode. You'll have an overhead view of the land, and a temple will be established along with a pair of worshipers. In these sections, you'll control your Angel assistant directly. You have a few jobs here. First and foremost, you need to direct the construction of the city. Getting in the way of that job are seemingly endless waves of monsters that spawn from lairs strewn about the map. If you guide your followers to those lairs, they'll permanently close them, just in case you were getting any anxiety about how to build your city. As lairs are closed, the level of your civilization will improve, bringing more advanced buildings, a higher population, and more offerings. As the population of the world increases, so too does The Master's level, granting more health and magic points to help you survive the next challenge. Until those lairs are closed, you'll need to use your Angel assistant to protect the people by firing arrows at the little beasties before they can cause damage.

The people will occasionally come to you with a problem of some sort. You'll have to solve these problems in one of a few different ways. You might have to use a miracle, such as causing lightning to strike or making it rain. Sometimes, you'll need to seek out something from another land and bring it back. At other times, you'll need to direct the city's construction towards some sort of landmark or object. You'll earn lots of useful items by solving these problems, some of which can be used in the sim portion and others in the action stages. The most important goodies you'll earn are the magic spells that allow you to deal heavy damage during the action stages. Once you've got the second spell, most of the boss fights in ActRaiser become trivial. A second action stage serves as the book-end to each land before you head on your merry way.

The sim portion of the game does a good job of making it feel like a lot of different things are going on while still keeping things relatively simple. You can't choose what the people will build, only a general direction of where they'll build it. That's probably for the best, though. Particularly in the overseas versions of the game, you'll be so busy keeping the monsters at bay that you probably wouldn't have enough energy to handle anything deeper than that. The pace of the Japanese version is positively relaxed by comparison, suggesting that the localizers were worried Western players would get bored if they didn't have something to shoot every second or two. The simulation aspects of ActRaiser are considerably more difficult all-around in the American version. It's very tough to reach the maximum level for The Master as a result.

That ends up being less of a problem than it could have been, since the other major change in the game involved making the action stages significantly easier. The original versions of each stage can still be found in the US version, but only after clearing the game once and starting over on Professional Mode. On your first playthrough, you can get away with spamming magic to take out most bosses, and even when you're out of magic, simply swinging your sword like a maniac gets you a lot farther than it really should. It's hard to come up with a reasonable explanation for these seemingly contradictory tweaks to the game's challenge. It doesn't matter too much, though. The game is still tough enough to keep you from getting bored, and a lot of fun to romp through when you've gotten used to its mechanics.

On careful examination, neither the action stages nor the simulation parts are really strong enough to stand on their own if they had to. But the fusion of the two is interesting and meaningful for the themes the game is trying to express, and there's assuredly some value to be found in variety. The core structure of the game makes it easy to step away between the different lands, but the flip-side of that coin is that it's almost impossible to put the controller down until you've brought peace and prosperity to a particular area. ActRaiser presents a great balance between stop and go, push and pull, create and destroy, and any number of other dichotomies. That is the strength it leans on, and that strength does not fail to support it.

I've already touched on the game being something of a visual showcase for the then-new Super NES, but it's also an impressive display of that hardware's audio prowess. The soundtrack was composed by the legendary Yuzo Koshiro, and he uses the hardware's sampling capabilities skillfully to create rich themes that are both inspiring and memorable. Koshiro tends to be more famous for his FM synth-style soundtracks, but ActRaiser proves he can handle himself just as well with a different kind of instrument. The soundtrack is regal when it needs to be, oppressive where it must be, and even manages serenity quite nicely. The range demonstrated by Koshiro’s compositions couldn’t have been easy to pull off with the cohesiveness found here.

But here I am, glossing over the game’s graphical achievements. ActRaiser is an awfully pretty game for its place in the Super NES’s lifespan. It’s a little flashy with the Mode 7 effects in a way that many launch titles tended to be, but it never feels gratuitous. Zooming in on each stage’s landing point from your heavenly perch makes sense, as The Master is descending into his earth-bound avatar. The overhead map proves particularly enjoyable as you watch each of your cities go from nothingness to an accurate, albeit low-detail, representation of your progress in that area. Of course, the game saves most of its graphical flourishes for the side-scrolling stages. Sprites are relatively large with lots of fine details, and the backgrounds are lush with colors.

ActRaiser makes use of the Super NES’s hardware features to create some interesting background effects at times, reminiscent of the sort of tricks that Konami was quite fond of. The main showpieces are the bosses, though. They’re often large and even more impressively detailed than the rest of the visuals. One of my favorite fights in the game isn’t with one of the large bosses, however. It’s a battle with a regular-sized sorcerer who, halfway through the battle, transforms into a werewolf. It’s an unexpected trick, though likely a familiar one these days for Castlevania fans. It was quite the surprise at the time, at least.

There’s a wide variety of settings among the game’s stages, with deserts, forests, pyramids, castles, snowy fields, and more. No stage looks quite like any other. By contrast, the simulation parts of the game aren’t quite as showy. Plenty of colors, of course, but the overall level of detail is lower. Fascinatingly, while the action stages take a serious approach to the designs, the characters and monsters in the simulation mode are almost cute. It’s just another way the game creates an interesting texture by mixing two very different elements.

That’s essentially how ActRaiser distinguishes itself in general. Besides its presentation, it tends to be serviceable rather than great. But in matching flavors that aren’t usually combined, Quintet came up with a compelling recipe all of its own. Even today, there aren’t really any other games like ActRaiser. Experiencing its unique flavor makes it quite worthwhile putting up with its foibles. I certainly recommend giving it a go if you haven’t tried it before. There’s even a relatively easy means of doing so, since this is the only Quintet game to be re-released on Nintendo’s Virtual Console service. It’s only available on the Wii Virtual Console, though, so you might have to go shuffling through the closet. At this point, it seems unlikely Square Enix will go to the trouble of releasing it again, so that might be your only official option.

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#quintet #actraiser #snes #superfamicom #enix #gaming

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