Warp Zoned Presents
Most Recent: Features
Cloudberry Kingdom Interview: Pwnee Studios’ TJ Lutz on Wii U and the Art of the Platformer
Today, Ubisoft announced that it’ll distribute Pwnee Studios’ ridiculously hard platformer, Cloudberry Kingdom. The game will be available on the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, Steam, and Wii U eShop this Summer.
Less than five months old, the Nintendo Wii U eShop is thriving and it is already home to a variety of interesting titles. In the first of a series of interviews looking at indie game development on the platform, TJ Lutz, Vice President of Pwnee Studios, answered some questions about their upcoming 2D platformer. (more…)
Posted in Features, Interviews, PC, PS3, Top Story, Wii U, Xbox 360
Tagged Cloudberry Kingdom
The Cross and the Controller: BioShock Infinite and Social Exclusion
Joshua Wise is the founder of Crossed Purposes. Crossed Purposes is a website which engages pop culture and theology through reviews, discussion and a weekly podcast. It looks at video games, books, movies, television, and music from a number of different theological disciplines including Systematic, Historical, Liturgical, and Biblical.
BioShock Infinite, Irrational Games’ second BioShock adventure,1 is a masterpiece of world-building and a penetrating insight into the extremes of American civil religion, the nationalization of religious traditions, and the vicious cycle of isolation, division, and insular identities. (more…)
The Games of April 2013
The Warp Zoned crew seem to all be operating on the same page for April. Injustice: Gods Among Us, Pandora’s Tower, and Star Trek are all popular here! But what else will we be playing through the April showers? Read on to find out! (more…)
Warpback: What We Played in March 2013
Warp Zoned couldn’t be more divided this month, as half of us tackled our backlogs with a vengeance, while the other half dove into the piles of games not out yet that were on display at PAX East. Read on for blasts from the past and postcards from the future! (more…)
Shadow PAX: The Hidden Games of PAX East 2013 You Probably Didn’t See
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you first enter the PAX East show floor. With over 200 exhibitors showing off over 500 products (at a minimum), there’s no way to see it all. In fact, it’s possible to seclude yourself in your own little piece of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and not realize that entire other worlds exist within the greater PAX East experience.
The “Three PAX Theory” is the belief that PAX East is actually three different conventions all smashed together. On the north side of the show floor, you have “Triple-A PAX.” That’s where your Nintendos and your Microsofts and your Ubisofts create massive booths, and a game like The Last of Us has a four-hour line. On the south side is “Indie PAX,” which houses the Indie Megabooth and a huge number of small developers who operate booths that are barely big enough for a TV and a few pins. Finally, on the extreme south side of the BCEC is “Tabletop PAX,” where it’s all dice and cards and there’s nary a video game in sight. I wish I had come up with it, but all credit for the “Three PAX Theory” must go to Jake “@jakeninja” Vander Ende.
However, there’s also a fourth side to PAX East that a lot of people don’t see. It takes place in the dark corners of the convention center and in gamer gathering places all across the city after the Expo Hall closes for the night. I like to call this “Shadow PAX.” (more…)
Posted in Features, Mobile, PC, Top Story
Tagged PAX East 2013, Tabletop Games
Shovel Knight Interview: Sailing the PAX East Seas With Sean Velasco
Sean Velasco knows retro games. As the former Director of WayForward Technologies, he was the driving force behind Contra 4, A Boy and His Blob, and Double Dragon: Neon. And as the “Captain” of Yacht Club Games, Velasco is sailing off into the uncharted waters of an original property, Shovel Knight.
You can read all about Shovel Knight in our PAX East playthrough, which will be posted later today (UPDATE: Here it is!). But for now, let Captain Velasco guide you through his love of classic games, his thoughts on Kickstarter, Shovel Knight’s future, and the possibility of a PSN/XBLA version of the game. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, Features, Interviews, PC, Previews, Top Story, Wii U
Tagged PAX East 2013, Shovel Knight
The PAXpocalypse List: The Best of PAX East 2013
We don’t have the PAX pox, but what if the entire convention center was put under quarantine because of some mystery illness? What would you do? What would you see? We’d endure the PAXpocalypse by spending all of our time with the 13 games (nine playable, three developer-guided demos, and one board game) below. Though it would have to be after pushing the hordes of undead off our doorstep. Because any pox affecting PAXgoers would almost certainly have to lead to a zombie uprising. (more…)
Posted in 3DS, Features, Mobile, PC, PS3, Top Story, Wii U, Xbox 360
Tagged Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians, Delver's Drop, Diablo III, Legend of Dungeon, LocoCycle, Luftrausers, PAX East 2013, Saints Row IV, Secret Ponchos, Shovel Knight, Tabletop Games, Transistor, Watch Dogs
Kickstart This! The Post-Veronica Mars Edition
Kickstarter has been receiving a lot of attention in the press this week, mostly due to cult TV show Veronica Mars. Rob Thomas’ 24-hour success story (currently sitting at 175% funded) has been perceived by some as a wake-up call to the film industry, and by others as the end of Kickstarter’s indie innocence. The latter group highlighted the fact that Warner Bros. still owns the rights to the franchise, and that the multi-million dollar company will reap the benefits of the charitable donation of others. Those who have donated will have unprecedented access to information on the film during production, and fans donating over $35 will receive a digital copy of the film. While my own opinion on the positives and negatives of this project fluctuate, there was one detail that seemed very worrying. All of the reward levels come with a disclaimer saying “AVAILABLE TO US AND CANADA (NEW!) BACKERS ONLY.”
Thomas does acknowledge the fact, saying “there are hoops to jump through” in order to include other territories. It could be this is inherent in the dangers of crowdfunding a project where the rights are held by an entity whose aims are not wholly aligned with the spirit of Kickstarter. We have seen this in the past with rewards that required attendance to an event, but even then, people were still allowed to donate, and had the option to travel. For a show that aired globally, this seems like a worrying, xenophobic trend, one that I hope does not translate to other industries.
In light of this, I thought this month I would focus more on smaller indie projects, including classic side-scrolling action-adventure Shovel Knight, euphoric exploration game SoundSelf, first-person survival horror Pulse, retro pixel-art adventure Bik, surfing sim Kahuna Surfer, and last but not least, sci-fi RPG Reflux: The New World. (more…)