Today, I’ve got a question for you. Can a platformer be nonviolent, while having a deep story, adventure, dynamic platforming, and more? That’s one of the game design questions we answered when working on the upcoming Even the Ocean.

Even the Ocean is a platformer adventure where you play as Aliph, a government worker who repairs power plants. You’ll travel across the countryside, meet diverse people, and attempt to restore the world’s balance of light and dark energy. In the power plants, you’ll use obstacles and hazards to shift Aliph’s energy levels and movement physics.

Central to Even the Ocean is the two-way energy bar. This bar shows Aliph’s alignment between dark and light energy. By touching energy-charged obstacles, she’ll shift her alignment — dark means she’ll run faster; light means she’ll jump higher. Absorb too much energy of one type… and Aliph will die.  Every level contains multiple ways to overcome its challenges. A dark-energy laser might be a hazard at some alignments, but it might be a huge benefit at other alignments.

I hope you’ll play the game to discover all the different ways we use the two-way energy bar! But, you may be wondering… “Wow, that art… looks pretty good… what’s the deal with that?”

Good question!

Well, you see, Even the Ocean is roughly divided into two types of areas. Outdoors areas and power plant areas. The first picture in this post was a riverside outdoors area and the photo beliw is a power plant area.

The town areas are more organic, more natural feeling. They have hills, slopes, forests, water, and more. So, our artist Marina Kittaka used a special pixelized, painterly style to create these flowing hills and backgrounds. We wanted to create a feeling of being outdoors and hiking. Please take many screenshots and be sure to use the dedicated sit button and enjoy the sights.

As for the power plant areas? They’re far blockier and more geometrical. That’s because we wanted to emphasize the man-made-ness of those levels, and also, it’s easier to create platforming levels that are blocky and square shaped. You might also notice that those areas are made up of a patchwork of tile-based graphics, just like older games. This allowed us to make the levels art faster.

Now, the art we’ve shown here is just a mere taste. The game has a rich, character and dialogue-driven story, which will take you to many wondrous places. I hope that this post will enrich your experience and time with the game!

And, by the way! Even the Ocean is one of the first indie games to feature an extensive accessibility and gameplay options menu. You can turn on blocks to make levels easier, toggle the platform physics – even play the game without story or without platforming levels! Please utilize these options to make the experience as fun for you as possible!

Anyways, thanks to the support of prolific Ratalaika Games, we’re happy to be bringing Even the Ocean to Xbox One.

I hope this post has piqued your interest in the game. Please look forward to playing Even the Ocean later this year! Until next time… Chief Happiness Officer Sean Han Tani out. (Be sure to check out our other game, Anodyne, also on Xbox One!)

DOOM Eternal is Now Available for Pre-Purchase on Steam!

As the DOOM Slayer, you return to find Earth has suffered a demonic invasion. Raze Hell and discover the Slayer’s origins and his enduring mission to rip and tear…until it is done.

Experience the ultimate combination of speed and power as you battle your way across dimensions with the next leap in push-forward, first-person combat.

Konami – which holds the rights to the PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16 brand via its ownership of the now-defunct Hudson Soft – has lifted the lid on yet another retro-themed micro-console.

This time, it’s NEC / Hudson’s legendary PC Engine, the system which took Japan by a storm in the late ’80s and came to the US in the (slightly less successful) form of the TurboGrafx-16.

The console will come in three designs. The Japanese market will get the original white PC Engine, while Europe will get the Core Grafx revision (which was basically just a different case colour with AV output rather than RF). In the US, players will get the TurboGrafx-16 case design, which was larger to appeal to American sensibilities.

Games confirmed so far are:

It has also been confirmed that the Japanese version will have Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, a regional exclusive which was only released on CD-ROM.

There’s no pricing info or even a solid release date, but we’ll update this post the moment we know.

REDMOND, Wash. — June 12, 2019 — Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday announced that its board of directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.46 per share. The dividend is payable Sept. 12, 2019, to shareholders of record on Aug. 15, 2019. The ex-dividend date will be Aug. 14, 2019.

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

For more information, financial analysts and investors only:

Investor Relations, Microsoft, (425) 706-4400

For more information, press only:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at https://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers, and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. Shareholder and financial information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor.

If it wasn’t already official enough, it’s now 100% confirmed – Bowser is Nintendo of America’s president and there’s no turning back. If you caught Nintendo’s E3 2019 Direct presentation, you most-definitely saw Doug Bowser – Reggie’s replacement – appear in his first Direct as the head of the American subsidiary.

If you did miss it, you can probably guess what went down. Instead of the human Bowser, Mario’s arch-enemy actually appeared alongside Nintendo’s Yoshiaki Koizumi. It was quite hilarious, as predictable as it might have been. Not long after this, the real Bowser eventually walked out and owned the spotlight while informing the other one about the mix-up. Here’s a recap:

It’s hard to believe, but it seems like Doug has already won over the majority of Nintendo’s fans and it’s all because his surname is Bowser. Honestly, this is all it took for people to trust the guy who’s been troubling Mario for more than 30 years? Maybe every company should appoint a president who has a surname of relevance.

Regardless of this, we think Doug did a fantastic job in his first presentation as Nintendo of America’s president. It’s also got us wondering how Nintendo will keep this joke alive. Maybe Baby Bowser will appear in a future Direct? We guess we’ll find out!

What did you think of this joke? Do you feel safe with Bowser in control of the American sector? Tell us below.

There was a lot to learn about each of Nintendo’s upcoming Switch titles on the first day of Nintendo Treehouse Live at E3 2019. When the localisation team sat down alongside Super Mario Maker 2 producer Takashi Tezuka, viewers were able to learn a little bit more about what to expect from the building game arriving in a few weeks time.

If you missed the live stream, or don’t already know about this particular morsel of info regarding the follow-up to the Wii U original, read on. In the game’s story mode, there’s a ‘Part’ icon in the bottom left side of the screen. During a preview of a night level, we got to see how exactly it functions.

If you’re struggling with a course, the game will notice this and Luigi’s course parts will become accessible, allowing you to select from a small assortment of helpful items such as stars, mushrooms and even blocks to modify the course.

In a translation, Tezuka explained how the Luigi assist mode allowed everyone to play through levels, regardless of their experience:

“I wanted to make sure that there was something for people who might have trouble with these stages, so that they would also be able to make their way through it – so include some way to help people that might not be as advanced as other players.

Tezuka further explained how it is a game about making after all, and it’s a very “light-hearted” addition:

“This is a game about making, so I thought it would fun if there was a way to include a little bit of course making, even when you’re playing a course, like this, so we included this Luigi assist mode.

“I wanted people to just have a light-hearted casual way to be able to add some making elements to courses while they were playing them…That means you don’t have to persevere”

Are you glad to hear Super Mario Maker 2 is more accessible? Are you looking forward to this game’s release? Tell us down in the comments.

In January 2019, we launched our journalism grant partnership with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). Our first recipients are already midway through their data journalism training and now I’m thrilled to introduce the recipients of the second phase of our program.   

Kelechukwu Iruoma and Ruth Olorounbi comprise a team investigating the toxic effects of oil spillage in Ogoniland, Nigeria, which has led to poisoned farmlands and compromised reproductive health. An estimated 13 million barrels of oil have been spilled since 1958: This makes an annual average 240,000 barrels of crude in the Niger delta, destroying the local livelihood and the very population’s survival. An award-winning investigative freelance journalist, Iruoma covers environment, education, agriculture and health in Nigeria. He is a reporting fellow of ICFJ and International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), and has been trained by the organizations as Premium Times Center for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) and Global Rights Nigeria. 

His reporting partner Olurounbi is the business editor at Per Second News, a U.S.-based organization. The Wole Soyinka Female Leadership and ICIR fellow has covered development and human right issues, business, and agriculture for more than 10 years. When she’s not writing, the award-winning journalist mentors young girls in her local community.  

The second project is one man’s cultural retrospective on a country’s re-emergence to a superpower and tourist destination. Philip Cunningham’s story will take him across the globe, about 7,000 miles from his New York base to Beijing. A seasoned broadcast reporter, producer and documentary filmmaker who started as a Chinese history researcher and tour guide in China, he has worked with outlets like PBS, ABC, NBC, BBC, NHK and CCTV and has witnessed key events like the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, the 1999 anti-U.S. demonstrations, and the 2008 Olympics. His goal is to create an immersive travel odyssey of Beijing across time and space that’s at once personal and political, cultural and historical. In addition to plumbing his photo and video archive, a past Nieman Fellow and Fulbright scholar, Cunningham plans to revisit key locations — some of which have changed beyond recognition. Since his first visit in 1983, not only has China changed radically, but so has journalism and the toolkits for a documentarian. A student’s retelling of one of his own stories inspired Cunningham to explore how the latest technologies might enrich the age-old art of storytelling.  

Two very different stories, both told and amplified through immersive storytelling.  

Supporting these three journalists has been part of our larger effort to help newsrooms and journalists deliver impactful stories and empower them through technology to find, create, and share information in unprecedented ways. We operate on the industry and individual level: be it hosting workshops at NICAR in southern California and the upcoming GEN Summit in Athens, working directly with newsrooms like the AP or Recode or assisting individuals like our ICFJ grant recipients, our goal is help journalism in what is our shared values: the pursuit of truth so that people and communities can make the best decisions in their daily lives to guide their future sustainability. 

We look forward to sharing stories on what the ICFJ grantees are learning and how they are affecting change in these communities. Please visit ICFJ to see and support all the tremendous projects it is undertaking–and while you’re at it, wish the center a happy 35th anniversary. 

Tags: data journalism, grantee, ICFJ, storytelling

In January 2019, we launched our journalism grant partnership with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). Our first recipients are already midway through their data journalism training and now I’m thrilled to introduce the recipients of the second phase of our program.   

Kelechukwu Iruoma and Ruth Olorounbi comprise a team investigating the toxic effects of oil spillage in Ogoniland, Nigeria, which has led to poisoned farmlands and compromised reproductive health. An estimated 13 million barrels of oil have been spilled since 1958: This makes an annual average 240,000 barrels of crude in the Niger delta, destroying the local livelihood and the very population’s survival. An award-winning investigative freelance journalist, Iruoma covers environment, education, agriculture and health in Nigeria. He is a reporting fellow of ICFJ and International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), and has been trained by the organizations as Premium Times Center for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) and Global Rights Nigeria. 

His reporting partner Olurounbi is the business editor at Per Second News, a U.S.-based organization. The Wole Soyinka Female Leadership and ICIR fellow has covered development and human right issues, business, and agriculture for more than 10 years. When she’s not writing, the award-winning journalist mentors young girls in her local community.  

The second project is one man’s cultural retrospective on a country’s re-emergence to a superpower and tourist destination. Philip Cunningham’s story will take him across the globe, about 7,000 miles from his New York base to Beijing. A seasoned broadcast reporter, producer and documentary filmmaker who started as a Chinese history researcher and tour guide in China, he has worked with outlets like PBS, ABC, NBC, BBC, NHK and CCTV and has witnessed key events like the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, the 1999 anti-U.S. demonstrations, and the 2008 Olympics. His goal is to create an immersive travel odyssey of Beijing across time and space that’s at once personal and political, cultural and historical. In addition to plumbing his photo and video archive, a past Nieman Fellow and Fulbright scholar, Cunningham plans to revisit key locations — some of which have changed beyond recognition. Since his first visit in 1983, not only has China changed radically, but so has journalism and the toolkits for a documentarian. A student’s retelling of one of his own stories inspired Cunningham to explore how the latest technologies might enrich the age-old art of storytelling.  

Two very different stories, both told and amplified through immersive storytelling.  

Supporting these three journalists has been part of our larger effort to help newsrooms and journalists deliver impactful stories and empower them through technology to find, create, and share information in unprecedented ways. We operate on the industry and individual level: be it hosting workshops at NICAR in southern California and the upcoming GEN Summit in Athens, working directly with newsrooms like the AP or Recode or assisting individuals like our ICFJ grant recipients, our goal is help journalism in what is our shared values: the pursuit of truth so that people and communities can make the best decisions in their daily lives to guide their future sustainability. 

We look forward to sharing stories on what the ICFJ grantees are learning and how they are affecting change in these communities. Please visit ICFJ to see and support all the tremendous projects it is undertaking–and while you’re at it, wish the center a happy 35th anniversary. 

Tags: data journalism, grantee, ICFJ, storytelling