Warp Zoned Presents
Most Recent: Top Story
Kickstart This! Anniversary Interview: Bendik Stang of Snowcastle Games Takes A Turn to Talk About Earthlock: Festival of Magic
Earthlock: Festival of Magic was one of those rare Kickstarter projects that immediately grabbed our attention with its strong, colourful art direction, firm sense of genre, and polished gameplay. Its ambition was only matched by the passion of small Norwegian outfit Snowcastle Games, who, with only a couple of games under its belt, sought $150,000 to make a huge RPG for both PC gamers as well as the new generation of consoles. Originally featured in March 2014’s Guinness Aftermath Edition of Kickstart This!, Earthlock: Festival of Magic is expected to be released for the PC, PS4, Wii U, and Xbox One later this year.
We caught up with Bendik Stang, Snowcastle’s Game Director, earlier this year to talk about the team’s progress from campaign to nearly-finished product, as well as their experience at the 2015 Game Developers Conference. He even shared two brand new pieces of concept art with us… (more…)
Posted in Features, Interviews, PC, PS4, Top Story, Wii U, Xbox One
Tagged Earthlock: Festival of Magic
Pulling Back the Curtain: The Importance of the Double Fine Adventure Documentary
Recently, 2 Player Productions wrapped production on Double Fine Adventure, a documentary series that followed the development of Broken Age. It was revolutionary in the gaming scene, being the only documentary to ever follow a studio developing a game from its conceptualization through its release and aftermath. Before it, the average game player had only ever seen brief snippets of development from single-person games or small indie teams. Double Fine was the first developer to pull back that curtain on game development, a feat arguably more important than its rocketing of Kickstarter into the mainstream, and unquestionably having a bigger impact on the industry and the community than Broken Age itself. If we’re being honest, Double Fine completely mismanaged their Kickstarter funds, and Broken Age isn’t great. But by “showing how the sausage gets made,” as studio founder Tim Schafer put it, Double Fine made their campaign more than worth it, and left a long-lasting contribution to the industry.
Until DFA came out, game development was a mystical secret that no one outside the industry could begin to comprehend. So much of it was mysterious that many who wanted to be in the industry viewed it with rose-tinted glasses: a dream job where they could play all day. All we knew about game development beforehand were the two extremes. There were the developers that talked in interviews about how great it was, coming to work and hanging out with cool people, getting to create great games that everybody loves. We also read the headlines about developers losing their jobs, and studios being shut down. That or it was about developers going mad in “crunch time” having to work 80 hour weeks. In fact, Double Fine gives us a good example with the Tim Schafter episode of G4’s Icons, when he took us briefly behind the scenes of production on Psychonauts.
We never knew what it was really like, not until Double Fine showed us. (more…)
Mega Man Legacy Collection Review: A Potent Mixture of Retro Perfection
The Mega Man series is built on patterns. Every time out, a robotic warrior clad in blue battles eight “Robot Masters” in an order chosen by the player. As he pushes through the game, Mega Man acquires an arsenal of new weapons from the vanquished Robot Masters. And after defeating all of them, he challenges the evil Dr. Wily in a fiendishly hard multi-leveled fortress. After delivering the final blow (usually with the game’s worst weapon), Mega Man rides off into the sunset, ready to return if the world needs him again.
I know these patterns. I first learned them in 1987 with the release of Mega Man for the NES, and I received a refresher course roughly every year thereafter thanks to the five sequels that followed. Through trial and error (and believe me, there were many, many trials), I eventually learned how to traverse each game’s set of levels with near flawless accuracy.
After ignoring the series for several years, Capcom decided to compile the first six entries into the recently released Mega Man Legacy Collection. I still know the patterns, but even two decades removed from their original release, the games included in the Mega Man Legacy Collection hold up in a way that few do. (more…)
Kickstart This! Third Anniversary Celebration
Three years of Kickstart This! have come and gone, and I thought we would celebrate this milestone in Warp Zoned’s history by looking back at some of the games that have graced the series, from the lucky projects that found success with the help of contributors, to those who missed the mark. (more…)
Lego Jurassic World Review: Spared (Mostly) No Expense
Jurassic Park holds a very special place in my heart. When I first read the novel at 12 years old, I remember closing it and saying to myself, “This needs to be made into a movie.” Little did I know that Stephen Spielberg was already filming the movie as I was reading it. And when the movie came out, it was an amazing experience. After seeing it in the theater, I remember being scared to death as I was riding my bike home, thinking that every noise was a Dilophosaurus hunting me down. Weeks later, I saved my Chuck E. Cheese tickets just to get a raptor stuffed animal and collected Jurassic Park trading cards. I even supersized my Extra Value Meals at McDonalds in order to get the collector’s cups. I was fully engulfed in the dino-mania that was sweeping the globe. Everything about Jurassic Park was amazing, with one exception… the video games.
The Jurassic Park games for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis were completely different, but unfortunately, neither hit that high standard set by the book and movie. I rented Jurassic Park for the Super Nintendo and found the mixture of overhead exploration and first-person shooter to be quite shallow. My friend had the Sega Genesis game, and while I did enjoy the graphics, animation, and 2D style, I found it too difficult to enjoy. Since then, I haven’t really found a Jurassic Park game that I enjoyed – that is, until Lego Jurassic World. Playing it brought back fond memories of growing up watching these movies, and while it isn’t perfect, Lego Jurassic World is still a fun romp. (more…)
Spectra Review: Chiptunes, Racing, and 80s Arcade Style Aren’t a Bad Combination
It’s a rare game that credits the composer as a co-developer, but that’s what you get with Spectra, an overhead racing game that’s set to a chiptune soundtrack created by Niamh “Chipzel” Houston (best known for her work on Super Hexagon). British developer Gateway Interactive took her bleeps and bloops and laid them over a procedurally-generated raceway that expands out into space using arcade-style wireframe graphics. The music and visuals complement each other nicely, but Spectra’s “keep it simple” style goes a bit too far. (more…)
The Games of August 2015
It’s been a slow Summer, and while August is still technically a part of the season, a lot of intriguing games will be available this month. From a ton of retro classics to a handful of remakes to several wholly original titles, there’s going to be a lot to play in August. And you can find out exactly what the Warp Zoned staff is most interested in after the break. (more…)
Warpback: What We Played in July 2015
Can this lazy Summer get any lazier? Probably… but the Warp Zoned staff is keeping busy with their backlogs and playing a variety of games on their phones. Can’t you just feel the excitement in the air? Maybe you need to know exactly what we’re playing, and you can find that after the break. (more…)