Tag: Rocket League

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5 Tips for Finding Success as an Indie Game Developer

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. While being an indie designer remains a gamble, experts prove the right tools and mindset can make a difference. The car-soccer game Rocket League’s beta version launched in April 2015 with low expectations. Rocket League was a seemingly ill-fated sequel to a title that developer Psyonix released seven years earlier  —  the unruly titled, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars (2008), which had limited success. To prepare for Rocket League, Psyonix had its servers ready to handle up to 10,000 online players simultaneously. But when 180,000 joined the game, their servers…
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Soccer tactics and the evolution of Rocket League

Soccer as we know it has undergone several modifications since its earliest stages. Back in 1529, a soccer-esque sport called ‘Calcio Fiorentino’ was being played between two teams with 27 players each in the Piazza Santa Croce, a famous plaza in front of a basilica in Florence, Italy. The players used this game to solve their political differences in a match full of violence and intensity. These differences were normal back in 16th century Italy, when competition was more a matter of showing superiority and dominance over a rival group—as in matches between aristocratic families and gangs that dominated different…
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FutureGrind’s joyous bloodsport is worth the death toll

Following in the footsteps of last year’s rocket-car soccer game Rocket League, FutureGrind is set to be the next entry in over-the-top sports games that are built around being as dope as possible. With its bright neon colors, rad beats, and sick flips, FutureGrind imagines a future where the trappings of the EDM club have merged with motocross to become a national pastime. It’s a time and place where riders perform dangerous and sometimes lethal stunts to the bewilderment of thousands watching at home. Sure, FutureGrind may be about a game of death, but it’s about a game of death…
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Rocket League blasts into the world of esports

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. The easy-to-learn “cars playing soccer” game brings the spectator-friendly accessibility of traditional sports to the technological world of competitive gaming. Anyone who’s had to suffer through watching a friend or significant other play “just one more round” of a videogame will readily admit that most titles aren’t such thrilling spectator sports. While slaying enemies in Halo 5 is exciting for the shooter, it’s a snooze-fest for any player without a controller in hand. One game, however, seems to have cracked that code. Psyonix’s Rocket League not only pulls spectators into the action, it achieves the sought-after…
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High Scores: The Best Videogames of 2015

Header image and artwork by Caty McCarthy 25. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (Asteroid Base) Neon cuteness belying hardened spacefaring carnage. A manic platformer disguised as a cheerful shoot-em-up. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a lot of things, and all of those things are descending on you at the exact same time. With the evil forces of anti-love surrounding you as you save imprisoned space bunnies, Lovers works best with two players sitting side-by-side, working together against near-impossible odds. An AI-controlled dog or cat can accompany you on your suicide mission, but facing down increasing waves of enemies next to…
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The push to make Halo 5 the next big eSport

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. For an entire generation of players, there is nothing sweeter than scoring the winning kill in a Halo death-match and leading your team to victory. With the first-ever Halo World Championship, Microsoft is making a concentrated effort to get these good vibes out of the living room and into a giant eSports arena. But does Halo 5: Guardians, the franchise’s latest installment, have what it takes to make it as the next major eSport? Halo 5’s executive producer Josh Holmes certainly thinks so. Holmes recently told the gaming site Polygon that…
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Formula E will be the first racing championship with driverless cars

One of the charms of NASCAR, SB Nation word wizard Spencer Hall once argued, is that “You are watching for a non-fatal but spectacular crash.” Crashes are fun—and flammable—which is great up until the point you start to care about people. Therein lies the problem with racing. The distribution of interesting events is bipolar: either the humans tethered to machines do something brilliant or are on the verge of death. The baseline competence that would normally fill out the meaty part of a bell curve, while far more impressive than anything you could do, is fundamentally boring. Fret not; Formula…
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There may still be joy to be found in racing games

I spent the first 11 years of my life reading used car listings and saving up for my first set of wheels. I spent the next four months of my life burning all of these car savings on arcade racers, a relationship that burned so bright and fast that I have never since felt the urge to learn how to drive or buy a car. Put otherwise: The 90’s Arcade Racer speaks to the part of my heart that will forever belong in the entrance hall-cum-arcade of Montreal’s Quilles G Plus (aka: RoseBowl). As the name implies, the game, which just…
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Why is Rocket League’s jumping so much fun?

Rocket League is a game that is concerned with a great many things, but verisimilitude is most definitely not one of them. To wit, here’s an excerpt from Psyonix president Dave Hagewood’s excellent interview with Gamasutra about the game’s jumping mechanics: Designing Rocket League‘s rocket-boosting mechanic was an interesting process; because it was so much more emergent than other games that we’ve worked on. Usually, we start out with a very concrete plan of what you want to do, but in this case we really started out with just a very simple mechanic: cars that jump. We like cars that can…