Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 419

Frog Fraction 2's FMV game is the best/worst Kickstarter video ever

The new viral advertisement game for Frog Fractions 2's Kickstarter campaign cannot—will not be topped. Kickstarter Simulator 2015 is both a satire of all the cheesy, terrible, and maudlin pitches we’re accustomed to, and also the finest example of one yet. It is a terrible idea of terrible ideas, a FMV shooter where you zap the devs at Twinbeard as they brainstorm dumb ideas and consider eating spoiled jars of salsa. If you’re wondering “What is this game about amphibian math?” well, I’m not even sure the guys making it know yet. But the original web game was just as absurd as this campaign.

You can shoot some sense into the devs here.

Age of Wonders III and the Great Man (or Great Orc) theory of history

This 4X revival goes heavy on the heroes but light on the mechanisms of empire.

This disco-ball camera wants to make VR cinema a reality

Gravity—the multi-Oscar winning movie, not the physical force—was a visual showcase that engaged your senses in the way only the absoluteness of space could. A film like that in virtual reality, where you could turn your head to see in 360 degrees, could be downright panic-attack-inducing. 

At least that is the bet of the startup Jaunt, a production company dedicated to bringing virtual reality to film and television. The company intends to show the tech’s potential outside the realm of space shooters and strange art projects. They've developed a hovering camera that looks like an an all-seeing disco ball to shoot footage compatible with Oculus and other headsets.

Of course, there are some big unanswered questions, like how practical watching a movie in virtual reality really is. Games make sense, because you’re moving around and interacting with stuff in 3D space. But does anybody really want to stand and spin around through a feature film? The way this works in Zero Point, another virtual reality film project, is that you sit in a chair and watch a movie with a slightly larger viewing field, kind of like a home IMAX theater. Needless to say, this would be perfect for a home viewing of Gravity, which was best seen in IMAX.

But that still doesn't answer how I will eat popcorn in a face mask. 

Visions marries chillwave with low-poly worlds

Music: videogames. Videogames: music. 

Shu’s Garden shows that growing up is hard

Planting a seed in the thirsty soil of videogames.

Mighty Tactical Shooter; the lovechild of shooters and tactics and might

We don’t know how a 3-way lovechild works but just trust us on that. 

The idea is that this strange, beautiful creature inhabits the shell of an old-school shooter in the time-tested tradition of Gradius and R-Type, two games you can see shades of here. But, then there comes the part where time freezes and you enter commands from two cones anchored to your spaceship and a hexagonal grid overlaying the map. Yes, it is that rad. And then there’s a bunch of variables at work involving gravity fields and bullet trajectory and physic-y stuff. It would take some learning to play but it is fascinating to watch. 

It looks like these guys have a Kickstarter coming up soon, so it’s definitely one to keep your eyes on.

BioShock's Burial at Sea closes the series with a whimper

Irrational's influential work ends as it began, unfortunately.

It doesn’t get much creepier than controlling this ultra-detailed face with your mouse

This is not my face. I am at least as handsome, but far less demented-looking than that. As for this guy, he’s just some highly creepy head model rendered in filmic tonemapping, a graphic technique we see in games like the Uncharted series, which explaining could get complicated. What you really need to know is it’s used in making this awful web toy by AlteredQualia that lets you control the glower of the most vicious looking convict on earth by wiggling your mouse. And that once you do so you won’t be able to sleep a wink tonight. 

Go ahead, give it a shot. 

This incredible musical tool changes your voice into any instrument

Imitone is at the home stretch of a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, but it’s worth taking a look because it’s a very cool project that allows you to compose digital music simply by humming into a microphone, and because I ran into its creator Evan Balster at GDC and I told him I’d post about it. 

You might know Balster as the digital audio programmer for Dance of the Necromancer, SoundSelf, and Cave Story Plus; or you might know him for usually carrying with him his accordion. That’s not just for the Kickstarter video. 

As he explains in the pitch video, he found working with digital tools as an analogue musician frustrating. And being in the possession of mad programming skills, he decided to do something about it. The way it works is that you open the program, start up your workstation of choice, like Garageband or Pro Tools, and record songs in any instrument simply by singing in key. The results sound pretty amazing.

You had me at a 194-page book on Chrono Trigger

You say gamers don’t read. I say there aren’t nearly enough well-written books about videogames. OK, that’s a flawed argument. But it’s a half-decent introduction to Chrono Trigger, the book, a classy, white paperback that was released today and should prove to be an enlightening look at what is probably my favorite old-school JRPG. The game’s twisting plot lends itself to all sorts of introspection about time-travel. But apparently this story of a spiky-haired tramp lost in time goes deeper down the rabbit hole than that.

To give you a taste, here’s an excerpt:

The future of Chrono Trigger is a bleak industrial landscape of shattered cities and lawless ruins. Humans huddle in fear while monsters roam unchecked. Life has been distorted, stunted, and starved. This is the future we were warned about by the Orwells and Atwoods, the Huxleys and Zamyatins. But their futures, no matter how dystopian, were still full of people. People simply behaving as people always have—oppressing, dominating, lying, controlling, self-deceiving.

You can pick up your copy over at Boss Fight Books.