I’ve been effectively spamming news about Christine Love’s latest offering: Analogue: A Hate Story and thankfully I feel vindicated in my eagerness. The game places you, anonymously, aboard a spaceship which has been empty and abandoned for many hundreds of years. It’s your job to search the records with the help of the AI on the ship’s computer to discover what happened. But really you can decide what the main story should be. You can decide to assume the role of a criminal investigator or you may find the AI more interesting as people, if that’s not a contradiction in terms (which it absolutely is). It’s a testament to Christine Love’s skill as a writer that she makes the player feel this way. It’s hard enough to get the player/reader to empathise with a fictional character, but to achieve this when that character is also not alive within the conceit of the game is truly extraordinary.

Now not to gush too much about Love’s work, after all it’s not completely perfect. The start of the game is rather confusing. Almost akin to a Dickens novel or one of the later unedited Harry Potter books, there’s a wealth of characters that floods the player’s mind and it’s very difficult to keep track of. This is further amplified by the cultural boundary between the player and those characters. This is necessary as Love is, to some extent, addressing the nature of feminism: the society that the player reads about is so far removed from ours. It’s based upon the Joseon Dynasty in Korea: the medieval oppression of women makes many of the characters entirely unlikeable (this, of course, being the point).

As you discover more about the AI and the what happened to the spaceship so the AI discover more about you. Without providing a character build screen the characters gradually learn more about you as you choose what to tell them about where you come from and why you’re here. I’ve only played one playthrough, and I must say that the inclusion of a timer for one sequence really put the stress on. This was something I was not expecting from a gentle visual novel and it was a welcome change. As for my ending, I was satisfied, although the way I played it meant I didn’t feel quite as much of a sleuth as I could have had I played it differently. That’s the advantage of having five different endings to a game: though it may not be very long I will certainly go back repeatedly to unlock them all, and if Love’s prior games are anything to go by, I’ll have a totally different response next time around.

Speaking of prior games, how does Analogue stand up against Love’s former work. Well, don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story is certainly a hard act to follow. Objectively I’d say it’s not as engaging a story for me, perhaps because it wasn’t as easy to relate to and the plot twists didn’t feel so shocking. But that may be more of a comment on my ignorance and gullibility when I was playing DTIPB. I would say that Analogue felt like much more of a game than a visual novel (though don’t go expecting any platform sections) and in this way it is, as its name suggests, much more akin to Digital: A Love Story. I’d say this game is Digital, with a more engaging plot, nicer graphics and music, and a far less abstruse gameplay mechanic.

Graphics and music are aids to the story here. With DTIPB the occasional shoddy art really ruined some people’s immersion, but no such complaints can be launched at Analogue. It’s gorgeous throughout as is the music. Subtle and elegant, much like in DTIPB, though I’ll admit while I imported the music files from that game into “My Music”, the musical score for Analogue belongs more in the game than iTunes. The gameplay includes a fair bit of coding, but everything is taught to you. At one point I got an error message from Renpy (the game’s engine) and wasn’t quite sure whether I’d managed to screw up the coding that badly or the fourth wall had just fallen into a black hole.

Check out this masterpiece in plot and get your MSDOS fingers ready for Analogue: A Hate Story. Though not as great as last year’s Christine Love release, it’s a damn sight sharper and cleaner, and it tackles moral issues the rest of the industry might not consider for another thirty years.

Good stuff

• Engaging plot
• Attractive layout
• Impeccable art and music

Bad stuff

• Story a little slow to get into
• Number of characters could be confusing

Family Focus

Tackles some adult themes, but nothing too explicit. Being an indie game there’s no PEGI rating but I’d imagine it would be given a “12″.

Paddy Burns, chief tech officer for Minecraft‘s Xbox Live port studio 4J Studios, said in an interview with Edge, “Microsoft knows that to do a similar thing that’s on PC where they constantly update it, that’s a very difficult thing to do on Xbox because you have to go through the full tests.

“But the are quite keen to move towards that — they do see it as the future, so I think we might be the first to do constant updates.”

Does this mean 4J will be releasing updates as they come along? No, they won’t be. “I don’t think it’ll ever come to that,” said Burns. “I think that there will always be Microsoft testing involved.

“But the whole turnaround of that testing they’re hoping to speed up, so we can maybe roll out every two months. We’ll have to see how that goes… I’m really looking forwards to it being updated with patches and new features after it’s released.”

Via CVG.

I must admit I found Digital almost obtuse in its insistence on sending you back and forth to find out more of the plot, but it certainly stood out as a challenging and original title. I also don’t have enough brilliant things to say about DTIPB as it was easily one of my favourite games of 2011. Certainly no other game managed to make me feel sick with guilt so I can’t wait to get my hands on the five possible endings of Analogue. Good news as well for Linux and Mac users, it’s available for you too, and it’s not graphics intensive so if you’ve only got a netbook you’ll be fine as long as you’ve got OpenGL.

Analogue: A Hate Story comes out this month at $15. Check out more at

Analogue: A Hate Story.

The XBLA Prize package will be awarded in addition to the awards given out to winners for both the main Competition and the Student Showcase. The winning title is picked from both categories by a developers’ jury and also Microsoft staff.

In addition to receiving an exclusive first-party publishing deal from Microsoft and releases on Xbox Live Arcade, Windows, and Windows Phone, the winner will also be given appropriate funding to finish the game if it’s necessary. Now how’s that for incentive to do well? Winners will also receive access to Microsoft’s publishing suite.

The next Independent Games Festival is scheduled to take place March 2012 in San Francisco, California.

Via VG 24/7.

In the game, players take on the role of Erica Reed, a Boston FBI agent with supernatural talents that allow her to see into the past. She uses her abilities to follow four different serial killers known as the Wise Monkey, the Hangman, the Cain Killer, and the Oracle. If the story winds up as strong as I expect the visual aesthetics will be, then this game could be great.

No official release date has been set yet. Since it is being developed as part of a Kickstarter project, the speed with which it develops will be at least partially dependent on donations. As of right now, Phoenix Online Studios is aiming for a 2012 release.

“Twisted Pixel has an incredible track record of innovative, critically acclaimed, and most importantly, fun, games,” said Phil Spencer, corporate VP of Microsoft Studios. “Microsoft Studios is home to cutting-edge entertainment experiences, and the incredible creativity of the Twisted Pixel team will help drive further innovation around Kinect and Xbox Live.”

“It is really exciting for us to solidify our long-standing relationship with Microsoft Studios, who we consider to be the leader in digital distribution and creating new innovations in gaming like Xbox Live and Kinect,” said Michael Wilford, CEO of Twisted Pixel. “As part of the family of Microsoft Studios we look forward to bringing even bigger and richer experiences to Xbox and Twisted Pixel fans around the world.”

Let’s hope Twisted Pixel will continue their run of success under their new Microsoft banner.

Via Game Informer.

An entirely fanmade and non-profit project, Left 4 Dead – The Movie was started by enthusiasts of Valve’s hit zombie co-op shooter. Though not sanctioned by Valve, the team behind the movie have done everything to remain true to the game. This includes building CGI models of that S.O.B. and ruiner of perfect campaign runs, the Tank.

The latest trailer, entitled “Pre-Outbreak File #A,” shows us a brief glimpse of life before the infection. And what anyone named Bill would do to take care of it:

Via Left 4 Dead – The Movie.

Version 1.5 boasts the inclusion of no less than seven different language options now available in the game’s interface, including: English, Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish and German. It is also worth noting that according to a recent press release, some of the levels have had a bit of a revamp, too.

Pick a Piggy centres around a small rubber pig, called Pong. Pong longs to escape a maze-like setting filled with spider webs, bees, rats. Players must help Pong free by bouncing her through the levels.

However, all this cuteness has some very clever engineering behind it: built on a powerful physics engine, players set the trajectory of the little elasticated pig, and the power of its bounce, to accurately ping Pong (you knew that was coming) around the screen.

Game features:

• Unique physics-based gameplay.
• Simple yet intricate logic puzzle.
• 100 challenging levels to escape the house.
• Fully compatible with a Game Center.
• HD graphics.

Watch the Trailer:

Pick a Piggy is compatible with all Apple iOS devices and work to port the game to Android devices is currently underway.

And like many gamers out there; I’ve yet to complete it.

Now this is not because the game lacks in any way, but rather that the experience is so genuinely unsettling and atmospheric that I’ve yet plucked up the courage to play it for more that 30 minutes at a time. And I love it. It’s quite simply a terrifying work of art. Amnesia has set the bar for the horror genre and all of the big budget titles out recently don’t hold a candle to its ability to really scare you.

The project manager for Amnesia, Thomas Grip, at GDC Europe earlier this week spoke to Joystig about his surprise over the success of the game:

“The press response was very nice — both in terms of coverage and grading — but even more fun and surprising was the player response that continues almost a year after. The amount of videos, images, etc. that players have created in response to the game is just amazing, and several orders of magnitude larger than anything we have had. Sales-wise it’s, of course, also overwhelming, and I think especially how good it is still selling even a year after.”

He elaborated on the future for Frictional Games, as many have been wondering whether the developer is finished with Amnesia and horror games in general.

“We have an Amnesia-related project in mind, but it is not 100 percent set at this point. Our main development project will be to move on a bit and try and expand what we built on in Amnesia. We have been so focused on just creating fear that we want to see if we can evoke other, less primitive, emotions as well. This means our next game will not have super focus on just horror. However, the other goals we are striving for will definitely result in a scary atmosphere.”

He went on the mention that their next aim was to make a move onto the console market, and how that would effect the development of the next title:

“It is a bit of a hassle now though since the difference in hardware between PC and consoles is quite large. We are developing to cram what we can out of what we think the average PC rig will look like in the two years or so when the next game is released. At the same time, we’re keeping an eye on what the most pressing consoles limits are so we still can make a port from the PC.”

The idea of another game by Frictional Games, something that could hopefully even surpass Amnesia is an incredible thing. On the flipside, if it does, many hours of sleep will be lost across the globe. However the sale of night-lights will no doubt sky-rocket.

Via Joystig.

From these screenshots the game is still keeping that unique aesthetic that we associate with Blizzard games. But not only that, we can see some heavy RPG influences in the UI. They look like a custom World of Warcraft set-up, which will make harcore Blizzard fans happy.

The release date is only 2 days away, with speculation on costs (or if it will be F2P) rife. I’m intending to give it a spin when it drops on the 17th.

Via dota-two.com.