Tag: videogame development

Return of the Obra Dinn
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Development of Papers, Please creator’s next game hits rough seas

It’s been a year and a half since Papers Please (2013) creator Lucas Pope first announced his nautical mystery game Return of the Obra Dinn, releasing a small demo of the game for players to try for free. Like many demos, it offered a vertical slice of the game’s typical routine, helping to embody what the full game might eventually look like as a whole. However, while working on a new demo to show at this year’s GDC, Pope found that his original vertical slice “did not scale up (at all) to making a full game.” As such, he’s taken to…
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Take a look at Rollovski, the adorable Simogo game that never was

Recently made available for free over on their blog, Simogo’s Rollovski is adorable, clever, and unfortunately, only four levels long. The game, an unreleased prototype, stars a round, limbless detective of the same name, following him on his journey to infiltrate a strange hotel made up entirely of circular rooms. Along the way, players must avoid capture from spotlights and, like in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, build up enough speed to roll around the environment’s many loops. Unfortunately, like its ball-shaped main character, it was never quite able to get off the ground. Rollovski‘s story begins in 2012, when shortly after releasing…
The Life of Pablo
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Kanye West is patching his latest album like a videogame

“Ima fix wolves,” tweeted Kanye West some four weeks ago in reference to a track that he was seemingly unsatisfied with from his most recent album, The Life of Pablo. Last week, in the second update Kanye made to The Life of Pablo (streaming exclusively on Tidal), he finally subbed in a new version of “Wolves,” now featuring more pronounced contributions from Sia and Vic Mensa. And this may not be the last update we see for The Life of Pablo either. Kanye has stated that he sees the album as “living breathing changing creative expression #contemporaryart,” implying that it may never technically…
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Finals Fantasy creates game design lesson plans anyone can use

As tablets continue to move into schools and games like Minecraft (2011) are repurposed to educate, the idea of gamification, or using games to teach students about the world, has been gaining popularity as of late. However, as an increasingly diverse artistic medium of its own, others are developing new ways for students to learn about games themselves. Described as a series of “speculative projects for game art students,” Finals Fantasy has gathered together a small group of notable artists, educators, and critics to challenge and expand how game design is taught. (Oh, and so you know, Kill Screen founder Jamin Warren…
DOOM
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The monstrous models that gave DOOM its human touch

DOOM (1993) is known for its hellish bravura and the legacy that followed. On the surface, we tend to think of big pink demon muscles, gnashing jaws, and bloodied grimaces. It’s a stern-faced brute that would be quicker to punch you in the mouth than hold a conversation. Somehow, that aura surrounds the game even today, 20-odd years after it was originally released. But we’re told that all hard-nosed giants have a soft side, and that is at least true for DOOM, as all you have to do is wind back the years to before it came out, to DOOM‘s somewhat goofy-looking production. I’m…
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Explore a portrait of a game creator in The Beginner’s Guide

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. The Beginner’s Guide (PC, Mac)  BY Everything Unlimited LTD The Beginner’s Guide, a followup from the creator of The Stanley Parable (which is a game about games) is a videogame about the people that make them. Somewhere amidst all that game-ness is the portrait of a person, a friendship, and a community of people who are still figuring out how to create and even talk about this thing they love. Voiced by the designer himself, Davey Wreden, Beginner’s Guide sets you out on a journey to understand Davey’s friend, Coda, through a series…