Fatale is the latest mystical experiment from Tale of Tales. It’s inspired by Oscar Wilde’s interpretation of the biblical character Salome, although, in my opinion, knowledge of the story is not required to enjoy the game. I wasn’t familiar with it before I played.
I think the game captures the spirit of the story very well. I don’t think it’s meant to retell the story, per se, but to give it a certain added richness by letting you explore a few of the critical scenes in interesting ways. It’s worth mentioning that Takayoshi Sato (of Silent Hill fame) did the character design, which is perfect considering the sensual and macabre nature of Salome’s tale. Overall, the graphics and audio are quite good.
I enjoyed Fatale and came out of it thinking about its implications and intrigued by its source material. However, I still feel that it’s a good game that’s shy of great. For it to be great would require more detail in the simulation, which sometimes feels clunky and uninspired. Whereas these flaws might go unnoticed in the games of “seasoned gamers” (a phrase playfully cribbed from the website), in Fatale they really stand out for the simple fact that looking around and taking in the environment is the game’s primary focus.
Just as he did with Machinarium, Mr. Brandon Boyer gives us a peek of the art direction behind Capybara’s gorgeous Critter Crunch, a ridiculously cute puzzle game that nonetheless involves a lot of puking into someone else’s mouth. This is 2 critters and NO cup, ladies and germs.
The game started off on the iPhone, where it won the IGF Mobile Best Game award and the Audio Achievement award, but it’s now available on PSN for $6.99.
Here are a couple of good-looking old-school 2d games coming from teams known for FPS’s:
Capsized is a platform game that’s reminiscent of Exile. Coming in 2010 to Steam and XBLA, from the creators of the multiplayer FPS Nexuiz.
Locomalito, best known for their chunky FPS 8-bit Killer, are working on Hydorah, a Gradius-style shmup. It will be released as freeware at some indeterminate date.
The latest version of DoomRL has been released. The last version was released over a year ago, so this is nice surprise for fans of the fast-paced roguelike. Version 0.9.9 has a lot of neat additions, including weapon and armor mods, unique items, new levels, new traits, new alt-fire modes, and a badge/medal system, among other things. Lots of balancing and tweaking has been done to the game, too.
This is the coolest version of one of my favorite roguelikes, so I recommend it.
I haven’t been able to access the 2dBoy blog for some reason, but I trust that Rock, Paper, Shotgun has reported this accurately: Kyle and Ron have released sales stats for their birthday sale experiment. During the week-long sale you could pay whatever you wanted for World of Goo.
Not surprisingly, the vast majority of people paid $2 and under. But I think things worked out well for 2dBoy in the end – they made 57,000+ sales and generated $100,000+ in one week. Not a bad present for the young game (and its proud papas)!
A survey that players could take after purchasing the game reveals more interesting information.
Amanita Design’s Machinarium was released last Friday. The game is superb. It’s a beautiful adventure game set in a unique world populated with all kinds of lovable, crazy robots (the protagonist is especially endearing). In my opinion, the visuals are peerless – every room is gorgeous, and filled with little details and surprises that ignite the imagination. The puzzles can get pretty difficult, but by and large I found them to be relatively intuitive and well-done. They’re quite varied, too, and include a mix of hotspot-hunting, inventory-management, timing, and mini-games.
Machinarium marks a very high point in the adventure-gaming and I highly recommend it. Even people who are put off by the slow pacing of most adventure games should try it, as there’s no dialogue in Machinarium and you are sucked into the game itself very quickly (even the title screen is fun!). You can play the demo right in your browser on the game’s website. The full game is $20.
The first ever IGF China wrapped up last week in Shanghai, and our friend Farbs took the top honors with Captain Forever! Congrats, man.
According to Simon Carless, the finalists “came from multiple different Chinese provinces, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia, and over 15 countries were represented in the over 100 entries in the first-ever year of Independent Games Festival China.” You can see all the finalists here. The winners were:
Best Game: Captain Forever, by Farbs (Australia)
Excellence In Art Direction: Donovo, by Magic Day Studio (China)
Technical Excellence: HurricaneX2, by You Yun Tech (China)
Excellence In Audio: Armor Valley by Protege Production (Singapore)
IGF Best Student Game: Autumn Dynasty: Paper Generals, by students from National University of Singapore (Singapore)
IGF Excellent Student Winner: INK, by students from Singapore Polytechnic (Singapore)
IGF Excellent Student Winner: Bumper Halloween, by students from Beijing University (China)
A lot of the other winners look pretty cool, but unfortunately, there’s not a lot of information about many of them. I could only find videos for HurricaneX2, Armor Valley, and Autumn Dynasty. They’re after the jump:
World of Goo has turned one year old and is having a big sale this week to celebrate. Until October 19th, you can pay whatever you feel the game is worth! Yowza!
The indefatigable Brandon Boyer has posted some lovely concept art by Amanita Design. These are sketches for Machinarium, their adventure game which is coming to the PC and Mac this Friday. You can download a short demo and also pre-order the game from the Machinarium website.
Having played it, I can safely say that it is a must-buy for fans of adventure games.
