General game developing news and updates.
– Fixed a longstanding bug that caused units to attack more slowly than expected at certain attack speeds.
– Fixing a bug that caused Morphling to not gain stats when leveling up while morphed.
– Fixed a bug that allowed the Silence from Riki’s Smoke Screen to be applied to units with Spell Immunity.
– Fixed a bug that caused Monkey King to become disabled when Feared during Primal Spring channeling.
– Fixed post-game scoreboard text not clipping correctly with long strings.
What is ELOH? An acronym? Is it the god of the Hebrews? Is it HOLE backwards? In a world where words no longer have stable meanings, perhaps it is simply the best (and most Googleable) name for a chilled-out puzzle game with an elegant musical twist.
Essentially, what we have here is the classic light-and-mirrors puzzle, but instead of light, you have bouncing balls and instead of mirrors you have blocks in the shape of animal heads. That sounds strange, but the aesthetic really works, especially coupled with the sound design. ELOH has a jungle theme with animal noises and drumbeats, plus a smooth, flat, totemic animation style that will look familiar if you’ve played any mobile puzzle game of the last five years.
At the most basic level, you’re moving blocks into different set positions to bounce balls around the field from set sources into set holes. Tapping the speaker will start the stream flowing, and as the balls successfully land in the cup, a pedestal will rise from the bottom carrying your prize: the button to continue to the next level.
As the puzzles get more difficult, you get more options and tricks to work with. Some blocks can only move from one end of a track to the other and need to be carefully positioned by impeding their movement with other blocks. Others change the color of the balls, making them only able to exit the arena through the matching-colored hole. Gates allow one color of ball through but reflect the others back in another direction. While each is introduced individually, the different abilities each block brings build upon each other in natural and intuitive ways to gradually increase the difficulty and complexity of the puzzles. Each puzzle uses the building blocks in a slightly new way, keeping the game challenging but progressive.
It takes some experimentation to solve each puzzle. Some of the easier ones may be unexpectedly brute-forced, since there’s a relatively limited number of states the game board can be set to. A more complicated game would give you more freedom in setting up the board, but we’re dealing with a nice relaxing mobile puzzler here. It’s fun to start shooting balls around at first, then deduce some of the limitations you are working with, and finally work each piece of the puzzle into its proper place. It’s not too mind-twisting, but you do get nice aha moments every few puzzles.
None of the puzzles should take longer than a few minutes to bounce your way through, but there’s over eighty of them, so you’re looking at a few good hours of gameplay for your minimal upfront investment (No ads or IAP to be found). Since the design of the puzzles is so straightforward, it’s a little disappointing there’s no option to create and share your own designs: with infinite user-made levels to try, this would really be a must-buy for puzzle fans.
There’s a musical element to the game, but the rhythmically-challenged can have no fear. The balls that fly around the level pop out of their trumpet to the beat. Striking each block produces a different percussive sound, and forms complex polyrhythms as a series of balls clang pop and bump off of each surface. Combined with the relaxing ambient animal sounds, the overall effect is soothing, yet also culminates in a very satisfying groove by the time you finish each puzzle. That said, there’s no absolute need to play with headphones if you don’t want to.
What really makes the game a pleasure to play is the amazing attention to detail. For instance, the gradual but insistent movement of the prize pedestal as you solve a puzzle feels very satisfying in a way a simple “you won” would not. Partial solutions will only raise the pedestal partway, encouraging you to try again. Also, each block seems to have its own personality. They sleep at the beginning of the puzzle, but as you bounce balls off of them, their faces pop and contort delightfully. Enigmatic splash pages introduce each set of puzzles and the new blocks that will join the line-up.
It’s not revolutionary, but ELOH is a good puzzle game that develops its central ideas well and puts them in a very attractive package.
Electronic Arts quietly published a blog post on Medium today which reads like a pitch to game developers for a new online game development platform called Project Atlas.
There’s a lot of exposition and detail in the full blog post (attributed to EA CTO Ken Moss) that’s worth reading in full, but the upfront takeaway for game devs seems to be that EA has over 1,000 people working to unite its disparate game tech (the Frostbite engine, etc.) into Atlas, a unified hub for building and running games.
“Right now, developers have to spend a lot of time making fragmented services work together,” reads the post. “Time and resources that could have been spent on creating new game play, concepts, story, or characters. We’re solving for some of the manually intensive demands by bringing together AI capabilities in an engine and cloud-enabled services at scale. With an integrated platform that delivers consistency and seamless delivery from the game, game makers will free up time, brain space, and energy for the creative pursuit.”
It’s an intriguing idea, albeit one that stretches across well-worn territory. For example, EA claims that Project Atlas will encompass the option to tap remote servers for additional processing power, which sounds quite similar to how Microsoft originally pitched Crackdown 3 years ago.
“With Project Atlas, which is cloud native, we’ll have the ability to break from the limitations of individual systems,” the post continues. “Previously, any simulation or rendering of in-game action were either limited to the processing performance of the player’s console or PC, or to a single server that interacted with your system. By harnessing the power of the cloud, players can tap into a network of many servers, dedicated to computing complex tasks, working in tandem with their own devices, to deliver things like hyper-realistic destruction within new HD games, that is virtually indistinguishable from real life — we’re working to deploy that level of gaming immersion on every device.”
No date has yet been announced for the launch of Project Atlas, though interested developers can find a lot more information (and a link to a hiring page) in the full blog post.
Gather your books and wand, because it’s time to head back to Hogwarts! Accompany Harry Potter and his friends in this remastered collection of LEGO Harry Potter: Year 1-4 and LEGO Harry Potter: Year 5-7.
The LEGO Harry Potter Collection unites the signature humor of LEGO games with the expansive world of Harry Potter. Join in on a thrilling journey full of spell-casting, potion-making, puzzle-solving, lessons, dueling, and much more. Fans can experience the entire LEGO Harry Potter adventure, featuring content from the books and films with enhanced graphics, environments, lighting and visual effects, along with two downloadable content packs.
If you would like to purchase the game, please visit https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/lego-harry-potter-collection-switch.
Cartoon Violence
Crude Humor
In 2008, music games were a big thing but the genre needed to innovate. Thus, Pro Guitar mode was introduced to Rock Band 3 with the intention of having people play on a real guitar, and actually learn to play the instrument.
In this classic GDC 2011 talk, Harmonix’s Jason Booth and Sylvain Dubrofsky break down the production and implementation of Pro Guitar mode in Rock Band 3.
The duo discuss how Pro Guitar mode was the result of three months of kicking around ideas, seven months of prototyping, and a full thirteen months of production to make it a reality.
It was an insightful talk that’s still worth watching, so developers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so now that it’s freely available on the official GDC YouTube channel!
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.
Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.
Twitch is teaming up with Rock Band developer Harmonix to bring Twitch Sings, a streaming karaoke game, to the platform.
Announced during TwitchCon last week, CEO and co-founder of Twitch Emmett Shear described Twitch Sings as a “new category of game that’s made to be streamed,” explaining how the audience is integral to the experience.
The partnership makes a lot of sense, considering how Harmonix has experience in developing music-oriented games and karaoke is a performative activity best enjoyed with an audience.
However the announcement brings forth a few questions: How are the devs over at Harmonix monetizing Twitch Sings, if at all? Did Twitch invest in Harmonix or help fund the game?
More specifically are there any new, interesting dev features of Twitch that were specifically implemented for Twitch Sings?
Gamasutra has reached out to Twitch in hopes of answering these questions, and will update when a response is received.
The game is currently in closed beta, but Twitch is accepting signups on its website for streamers who are interested in taking part.
Stardew Valley, the Herculean effort from sole designer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, is massively popular across every platform it’s been ported to – and that’s practically everything, including PS Vita and Nintendo Switch. Now you can cross iOS (with Android coming soon) off the list at long last, with the long-awaited mobile version of the indie farming sim/role-playing game finally out on the market. It’s available now for just about anyone who wants to carve out some time to try the accessible yet challenging sim game, and its mobile iteration is its most ambitious yet. It succeeds at making farming and everything that goes with it a fun and intriguing adventure for just about everyone, too, albeit with a few small missteps that come with the mobile territory.
The game invites you to take on the mammoth responsibility of caring for your late grandfather’s farm, which is a sizable plot of land that lays in disrepair. It’s your job to build up your plot of land to its former glory while getting on with the other citizens of Pelican Town, where the game all goes down. This includes growing crops, raising livestock, and performing a variety of important activities that all take place in day-to-day farming. Much like the very similar Harvest Moon series, you’ve got to take care of everything on your own, whether that means clearing your farming area of bushes and rocks to make space for crops, watering them, harvesting them, and collecting supplies to keep things running smoothly.
Planting crops and harvesting them means you’ll turn a profit, of course, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Crafting, raising livestock, and interacting with the NPCs around you play large roles in the game as well. There’s always something new to do, whether you’re getting to know the abundance of NPCs out in the world, learning to fish and selling off your hard-fought spoils, or heading into the mines to become a seasoned member of the Adventurer’s Guild. There really feels as though there’s no end to what you can accomplish, no matter if you’re just starting out or heading back in for round two, three, or four – no shame!
But despite all of these things being available for you at any given time, there’s no real push to try and make you concentrate on one thing out of it all. You can explore as you wish, at your own leisurely pace, whether you spend an entire day weeding your fledgling farmland or meet up with the locals before going to your in-game bed to advance time to the next day. If there’s a special someone you enjoy speaking to and getting to know, there’s even a chance you might marry them one day, which is a delight in and of itself.
There’s always something more to do around the corner, and the game reminds you of this at every turn. But it never forces you into completing objectives if you don’t want to. It continually introduces new optional quests to take on as it gently pushes you to dig deeper into the systems it’s already lavished you with. It’s difficult to believe all this content is the work of one man, as it’s polished and in fine form, and all here laid out for you to enjoy once more, even if you’ve clocked an ungodly number of hours on another platform.
Mechanically, Stardew Valley‘s iOS version is just as sound as ever. It’s the same fantastic, content-rich game you’ve likely played on just about every other platform. Unfortunately, the mobile version makes a few sacrifices to make it accessible for players on the go. You can tap on the screen to make your character travel to a certain point and tap and drag. It works well enough, but it can be frustrating when navigating tight quarters such as your farmland, which is lined with rocks and other obstacles at the beginning of the game.
What’s more, your tool line-up is set on the left side of the screen in the vertical position, which makes tapping or dragging your character to travel in that direction a pain when you’re forever accidentally hitting a tool instead of heading to the next screen. This is an issue those who play on other platforms won’t run into and isn’t a huge problem, but it’s massively frustrating sometime when you keep having to switch from tool to tool instead of moving to the next screen. Combat controls don’t get any better, but it’s serviceable. Again, these are minor problems in the grand scheme of things (such as the whole of Stardew Valley being available here on mobile), but it’s also enough to drive one to hope for MFi controller support in the future.
Additionally, there’s no multiplayer option available, though it’s not exactly the version I’d recommend playing with others on – it’s still something players would like to see eventually, though, myself included.
Stardew Valley on iOS is another excellent version of the popular farming title, and while it has its own platform-related peculiarities, it’s still very much the same fantastic product, with everything you love about the other versions packed in here. It’s a great and affordable way to experience the full game if you haven’t already, and while you might get a touch annoyed with its mobile-centric control scheme, it’ll still suck you in immediately for the long haul – better settle in.
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.
This week’s highlights include a morbid piece on killing in-game characters in The Sims series, a plethora of writing around the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2, and an interview on the tools used to make the classic Deus Ex, among many others.
Well, that was a week – with a certain little cowboy game launching, and a whole bunch of discussion around its size, realism, and the human toil that went into completing it. I know that the creators of the Westworld reboot have said that the original Red Dead Redemption was an inspiration for the new series.
But it seems like RDR2 has almost as many ethical quandaries around it as an actual robot-filled theme park? (And I can’t believe nobody has compared The Man In Black to the Housers on Twitter yet – get to it, ye cynics!)
Until next time…
– Simon, curator.]
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Exploring Helplessness in Games with Bury Me, My Love (Florent Maurin / GDC / YouTube – VIDEO)
“In this 2018 GDC talk, The Pixel Hunt’s Florent Maurin explains how he tried to confront players with a feeling of helplessness through a series of design choices in [the smartphone ‘text messaging adventure game about Nour, a Syrian migrant trying to find her way to Europe’] Bury Me, My Love.”
Reclaiming video games’ queer past before it disappears (Adrienne Shaw / The Conversation – ARTICLE)
“For 30 years, GLAAD, a leading advocate for LGBTQ visibility in the media, has honored TV shows that positively represent LGBTQ people – and along the way has expanded its attention to include other genres, such as English language film, journalism, theater and Spanish language media. The 2019 GLAAD Media Awards will, for the first time, recognize video games with LGBTQ characters.”
Getting into the games industry (People Make Games / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Given that we’re called People Make Games, it only felt right to tell this particular story from a real person’s perspective. [SIMON’S NOTE: this is excellent, and a bit surprising, and has really good animation too.]”
To All The Sims I’ve Killed Before (Jillian Capewell / Huffington Post – ARTICLE)
“Mortimer Goth settles in to one of the 15 wicker chairs that have suddenly appeared by his lit fireplace. He feels strangely compelled to sit and remain seated, as if guided by an unseen hand, even as the room he’s in grows curiously hotter and hotter. Before he knows it, the chairs around him burst into pixelated flames.”
Inside Rockstar Games’ Culture Of Crunch (Jason Schreier / Kotaku – ARTICLE)
“In the final year of development on Red Dead Redemption 2, the upcoming Western game, the top directors decided to add black bars to the top and bottom of every non-interactive cutscene in hopes of making those scenes feel more cinematic, like an old-school cowboy film. Everyone agreed it was the right creative move, but there was a catch: It would add weeks of work to many people’s schedules.”
Classic Tools Retrospective: The tools that built Deus Ex, with Chris Norden (David Lightbown / Gamasutra Blogs – ARTICLE)
“In recent years, retrospectives of classic games have been well received at GDC, but there have been very few stories about classic game tools. The first two articles in this series have featured John Romero (about the TEd Editor) and Tim Sweeney (about the Unreal Editor). For the third article, I am very happy and honored to speak with Chris Norden about the tools that were developed to create the landmark FPS / RPG hybrid, Deus Ex.”
Dead Cells in Japan – an encounter at TGS 2018 (Archipel / YouTube – VIDEO)
“For our last encounter from TGS 2018, we met with Sébastien Bénard, Thomas Vasseur and Gwenaël Massé from the Motion Twin team to discuss the development story, their influences behind their acclaimed roguelike game: Dead Cells, along with their views on Japanese games.”
Red Dead Redemption 2 and the problems with creative work (Will Partin / The Outline – ARTICLE)
“One reason the video game industry gets away with “crunch” is that we tend to have a higher tolerance for long hours in creative industries because we believe that its workers are doing what they love (and given the number of stories we have about the sacrifices art supposedly demands, we may even expect it). But, like so many things in culture industries, these are simply exaggerated versions of broader phenomena: namely the expectation that we should find “meaning” in our work. [SIMON’S NOTE: see also The human cost of Red Dead Redemption 2 over at Eurogamer.]”
Mike Sellers of “Sims 2” on Community and Real Life Faith (Humans Of Gaming podcast / Libsyn – PODCAST)
“Mike Sellers has a “career swamp” that flows through nearly every game genre. Starting off with a desire to be a neurosurgeon, Mike’s career path would instead lead him to be a software engineer and interface designer. In the 90’s he founded, along with his brother, Archetype Interactive which would develop the first 3D MMO Meridian 59. He would go on to work with Will Wright on The Sims 2, do extensive work with DARPA on AI, and finally settle down to be head of the University of Indiana’s Game Design program.”
It started as an online gaming prank. Then it turned deadly (Brendan Koerner / Wired – ARTICLE)
“As she spoke at length about her rage and anguish, Finch conspicuously failed to mention the nihilistic Angeleno who has been widely vilified for his role in her son’s death. She goes out of her way to avoid letting this young man’s name cross her lips, even though he has become a global symbol of all that’s rotten in gaming culture.”
Red Dead Redemption 2: The Kotaku Review (Kirk Hamilton / Kotaku – ARTICLE)
“From tip to tail, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a profound, glorious downer. It is the rare blockbuster video game that seeks to move players not through empowering gameplay and jubilant heroics, but by relentlessly forcing them to confront decay and despair. It has no heroes, only flawed men and women fighting viciously to survive in a world that seems destined to destroy them. [SIMON’S NOTE: I hope Kotaku finds a way through its unfortunate corporate situation, because work like this is transcendent.]”
How Mega Man 11’s Levels Do More With Less (Mark Brown / Game Maker’s Toolkit / YouTube – VIDEO)
“After looking at level design in Mario, Donkey Kong, and Rayman, it’s time to see how the blue bomber’s stages work – by taking a look at the levels in Mega Man 11.”
The legal status of loot boxes around the world, and what’s next in the debate (T.J. Hafer / PC Gamer – ARTICLE)
“The most intense criticism of loot boxes—which offer randomized rewards, often for real money—came late last year, and was especially stoked by Star Wars Battlefront 2’s subsequently-revised progression system. The conversation has cooled a little since then, with net neutrality regulations and industry working conditions taking center stage, but the the issue is far from resolved.”
Copyright Law Just Got Better for Video Game History (Ian Birnbaum & Matthew Gault / Motherboard – ARTICLE)
“A new ruling from the Librarian of Congress is good news for video game preservation. In an 85-page ruling that covered everything from electronic aircraft controls to farm equipment diagnostic software, the Librarian of Congress carved out fair use exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for video games and software in general. These exemptions will make it easier for archivists to save historic video games and for museums to share that cultural history with the public.”
A Video Game Shows the True Colors of Ancient Greece (Zachary Small / Hyperallergic – ARTICLE)
“Still, the consensus of #ACademicOdyssey historians is that Odyssey captures the monumentality of objects in the Ancient World while preserving elements of the culture largely forgotten in mainstream depictions. Temples are not always sterling marble palaces, but rightly include elements of wood and metal.”
Driven to distraction: Why do open-world racers have the worst plots in gaming? (John Walker / RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE)
“The plot of Horizon 4 goes like this: You’re some race driver who does quite well in a couple of races… This success is met with incredulous astonishment, your abilities recognised as signs of the second coming of MotorChrist, so someone clearly suggests you as a stunt driver for a movie that’s filming nearby. [SIMON’S NOTE: This is rantier than the articles we normally run, but having just played Forza Horizon 4 too, which is GREAT, but does indeed have a pretty insipid plot, I thought it was an interesting point. Maybe these games are meant to have ‘ambient plot’?]”
Team Fortress 2: A Boo-rief History of Scream Fortress (Ozzie Mejia / Shacknews – ARTICLE)
“Halloween is almost here and that means more and more games are kicking off their spooky holiday-themed events. There’s Overwatch, Rocket League, Killing Floor 2, Guild Wars 2, and The Elder Scrolls Online, just to name a few games. But there’s one game that was among the first to embrace the Halloween holiday and continues to do so to this day. That game is Team Fortress 2, Valve’s beloved team-based shooter.”
Game Developers Give Advice On How To Make Their Industry a Better Place (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint – ARTICLE)
“The answers varied, but shared a common theme: buy and enjoy the games built by them, even if you come to realize the circumstances they were developed may have been harmful. “I would prefer someone just play whatever they want and then vote for folks who will lead the way on progressive, future of work issues,” said Campo Santo (Firewatch) co-founder Sean Vanaman, who previously worked at Telltale Games.”
Red Dead Redemption 2: The inside story of the most lifelike video game ever (Sam White / GQ – ARTICLE)
“Houser isn’t even sure how his and Sam’s jobs intersect anymore, but he loves working alongside his brother. It’s a family thing, a brotherly thing – something that clearly helped define Rockstar’s cultish, insular attitude – but the bond is important to Houser considering the drama that they’ve attracted over the years.”
A week away from Fortnite feels like forever (Andrew Webster / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“When I last played Fortnite, the latest major addition was a vehicle that let you ram through walls and launch players in the air. That was 10 days ago — and so much has been added since. The major shift has been the Halloween “Fortnitemares” event, which has filled the island with shambling monsters.”
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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected] MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]
No Way Out – A Dead Realm Tale is Now Available on Steam!
No Way Out: A Dead Realm Tale is a chilling VR experience that takes you to hell and back! Race against the clock as you solve puzzles in this haunted mansion caught between our world and the Dead Realm. Will you escape? Or will you become just another lost soul trapped forever in Huxley’s Mansion?
In this GDC 2012 talk, Magicule’s Matt Rix and Zeptolab’s Semyon Voinov share game design insights they learned while creating Trainyard and Cut The Rope.
Rix and Voinov discuss their tried and true principles for level design, data driven decisions, and gameplay choices.
They explain how these addictive games have amassed scores of enthusiastic fans and achieved wide popularity.
It was an insightful talk that’s still worth watching, so developers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so now that it’s freely available on the official GDC YouTube channel!
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.
Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.
