Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 259

Katamari Damacy's creator will have us unite friends with a giant funsplosion next

While members of the press struggle to properly label Wattam (is it a puzzle game? A sandbox? A friendship simulator?), the latest trailer only continues to defy all categorization and genre. If you haven't played on of Keita Takahashi's games before then you haven't seen a game quite like Wattam, and that's only one of its extraordinary qualities.

Co-founded by ex-thatgamecompany (Journey) producer Robin Hunickie, and famed Katamri Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, Funomena game studio is creating a playground that unlocks only through friendship, experimentation, and explosions. Hidden beneath Wattam's happy-go-lucky exterior lies a story world of unexpected tragedy. "After a series of unfortunate events," the creators explain on the PlayStation blog, "there was a gigantic explosion which spread the people of Wattam all across the galaxy. As a result of this crazy BOOM, only a few people, a few pieces of world, and the Mayor are left when you begin the game."

restore the world of Wattam to its former adorableness with the promise of fun 

The poor citizens of Wattam find themselves lost in space and searching for their home following the calamitous explosion. Only you, the Mayor, can help coax each of them out of hiding or their slumber. Whether it's a donut or a toilet, each character possesses their own special interaction that, when combined with others by means of holding hands, unlocks even more characters. Of course, you can only restore the world of Wattam and its characters to their former adorableness with the promise of fun. So the more friends you connect then the more willing others will be to join the party. "By building crazy chains and stacks [of characters], and then blowing them up, you will fill the sky with joy," the creators say.

The boulder hat-wearing, trigger-happy Mayor—already featured in the reveal trailer—returns with more of his maniacally cheerful antics in this latest video. Through a combination of wacky rules and rewarding experimentation, Funomera appears to be a digital play space that encourages a mentality summed by up a question: "why the hell not?". At one point in the trailer, in the midst of a seizure-enducing celebration between a coffee cup and a piece of sashimi, the plucky cube of a Mayor decides to eat an apple named Ted. For one horrifying moment, you believe this world has taken a grimmer turn. Then, the option to "poop" comes up. And, of course, Ted is resurrected as an adorable pile of poop. Ah, the circle of life. Isn't it beautiful?

For now, Wattam is a PS4 exclusive and there's no release date as of yet. To keep updated on its progress, follow Funomena's Twitter. 

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Harmonix's virtual reality game is a music "spatializer"

Harmonix reckons it's time for the music visualizer to go about a big change. That's probably about right. For an electronic art that's almost as old as videogames it's a wonder how it's managed to remain so close to its roots in abstract shape-making. Did you know that the first commercial electronic music visualizer was created by the same guy who developed the home version of Pong, way back in 1976? The two mediums have always been intertwined. And so, as videogames make what seems to be a firm leap into virtual reality, Harmonix wants to bring music visualization into this new dimension too.

Harmonix Music VR is the project focused on this transformation. It's to be what the game's creative lead Jon Carter once dubbed during a presentation a music "spatializer." The term makes a lot of sense. When you put a virtual reality headset on you are inside a 3D space. And not one squeezed out onto a flat screen. It's a space that puts you at its center and that you look around using your own neck muscles. It's more than the 2D imagery we might associate with the term "visualizer." And so a virtual reality equivalent of a music video generator does more: it creates a world around you, dressing 3D space according to its sonic instructor.

To achieve an effect that lives up to Harmonix's ambition the studio developed a new-fangled "song analysis voodoo." Leaving the technical details aside, Harmonix is working in tandem with its algorithms to gain complete control over your surroundings, syncing them in a variety of ways to create a musical wonderscape. Carter explains that while Harmonix Music VR still uses real-time data as most visualizers before it, the technology "can also look at the entire song, break it into sections, identify specific drum hits, and even categorize the feel of song sections to drive the visual and environmental transformations."

a strange, computed pathetic fallacy. 

The results of this have, so far, not been shown off much due to it still being in development. But what Harmonix posits is that rather than zoning out to the sight of a psychedelic patchwork of vector art and dancing shapes, Harmonix Music VR will carve out beaches for you to relax on and command weather patterns that align with the melody of a song—a strange, computed pathetic fallacy. On top of this, the idea is that you'll be able to tweak the worlds in their intensity—ranging from tranquil to energetic—according to the experience you want with your music. 

But this isn't enough for Harmonix. After all, this is the studio behind music visualizer games such as Frequency and Amplitude, which were active experiences involving timed button presses—a core concept the team later turned into Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The passiveness of merely admiring a world generated by your own music doesn't sit well. 

"I mean, when was the last time you sat down and just listened to a record?," Carter asks. It's his way of illustrating the peculiarity of sitting still while listening to music, just as you do in Harmonix Music VR. He says, perhaps quite rightly, that people these days tend to use music as an "activity enhancer." And so this line of thinking goes that there should be more to Harmonix Music VR than sitting and looking. The answer was to invert music's typical position as an "enhancer" by adding optional interactive elements that are intended to compliment the music.

While you're inside one of the virtual worlds there will be objects that trigger experiential shifts in the environment if you engage with them. This isn't quite the dexterity test of Harmonix's previous videogames but it's a child of them; an extra touch that enables you to gain further authorship of the music spatializer experience. Whether Harmonix manages to pull off its virtual dream is unknown for now but all the promise appears to be there, dancing away.

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Latest GIFs from the adorable Rain World confirm there will be "death rain"

Oh Rain World. I've seen so many alluring gifs come out of your development process, I probably won't even know what to do with you once you become an actual playable gif—er, I mean, a bona fide videogame. Most likely, out of habit, I'll just watch and wait for you to loop back to the start.

The creators have been making it rain gifs ever since the platformer was successfully Kickstarted all the way back in January 2014. A year and a half later, and the rain—one of the major elemental motifs in the world—is finally ready to be implemented. And it looks pretty damn good, while boasting dynamic a dynamic cycle system.

As the nimble creature known only as slugcat, you must not only survive the apocalyptic creatures of this dog-eat-dog world, but also these apparent 'death rains.' The update doesn't necessarily clarify where these death rains come from, but from the looks of the gifs (I mean, just look at 'em), the downpour becomes so dense that it engulfs the world in a torrential deluge. The update says that, while an adorable slugcat who "knows the terrain could survive crucial extra seconds, [...] eventually the death rain consumes all."

But a ray of hope shines through this bleak environment. The developers have named it 'deep sunlight.' Like the upper parts of the deep sea, a few rays still manage to peak through the Shadow Urban.The video released alongside the gifs shows off the feature much more, as the moment of brightness follows a particularly hairy bit of platforming. The newest weapon takes the cake, though: 'flare fruit plants,' which temporarily illuminate your dingy surroundings in an electric glow.

Despite implementation of its titular symbol, the premise of Rain World remains vague to the public. All I know is that the end of the video made me scream "RUN, SLUGCAT! RUN AS FAST AS YOUR SLITHERY, FURRY SLUG BODY WILL TAKE YOU!" Which, I can assure you, are words I never thought I'd have the occasion to cry out.

You can catch more gifs from the update here. Be sure to keep an eye on the game's Steam page for updates on a release date.