Features

Somewhere in San Diego there exists a couple of buildings. They’re buildings with glass windows and a soft feeling, or so I’ve been told. They’re buildings that are “not too intimidating” when compared to other species in their particular building genus. At least, that’s how The Behemoth President John Baez described them to me at the tail end of a roughly 32-minute interview that took place in Boston last weekend during PAX East. Baez and Level Designer Ryan Horn shared their thoughts on several topics: BattleBlock Theater, what the studio would like to see from the next-gen version of Xbox Live Arcade and the developer’s thoughts on working with Microsoft.

Yes, we managed to cover a lot of ground. This despite the fact that we were sitting comfortably in folding chairs set up in a largely unoccupied space behind the booth over which hung a large arrow bearing a single word: “Behold.” What precisely the attention of PAX attendees was being called to may not have been initially palpable to the first-timers among them, but then again, nor was it to the XBLAFans crew when Horn and Baez — the latter fielding an increasing percentage of the questions we asked the two men — began talking about video game prototypes.

Our attention, as it turned out, was being directed towards those two buildings. Or rather, what goes on inside their walls.

They’re not buildings in which the developer makes games, mind you. They are buildings in which the developer tests games to see if they work. Interestingly, one of the games that has been analyzed there isn’t property of The Behemoth — it’s property of fellow successful indie studio Supergiant Games. And at some point this summer, the iOS version of Bastion will lose the distinction of being the only game from another developer to be put through its paces by The Behemoth. The studio will begin using its pair of non-development buildings to investigate whether or not all manner of foreign games work in the manner that their designers intended them to, and whether or not that’s the way they should work.

The Behemoth will task those working inside the friendlier-than-most-of-their-kind buildings with providing quality assurance (QA) and usability lab services to fellow independent game developers. One indie should help another indie. This type of help, however, will come with a price tag — and not a discounted one.

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Finally you get to see just how bad a player I am
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“To take what everybody loved about Sanctum and elevate it,” Reverb Publishing’s Ted Lange says, speaking to the motivation behind Coffee Stain Studios’ upcoming sequel. Lange is leaning comfortably in his chair, discussing Sanctum 2 with XBLAFans in a small white room on the second floor of a San Francisco gallery. As point man for the game, you would expect a flurry of information and glossy rhetoric about the many wonderful things that are in store. But Lange exhibits a calm enthusiasm, content to let the game speak for itself — which says quite a bit.

The original Sanctum released exclusively for PC and Mac markets, garnering praise for its innovative concoction of methodical tower defense and furious FPS elements and selling notably well for an independent venture. Though there were criticisms. Sanctum shipped with only three maps and a similarly restricted number of weapons. There were no connecting threads between each of the maps or explanations for these vibrantly glowing aliens in the first place. Who was this spunky redhead with an arsenal of future-tech? Why must she single-handedly stem the onslaught?

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A great RedLynx pick, more marble games, and a new community challenge track. Plus I talk about the possibilities of seeing Trials HD as DLC in Trials Evolution on the 360.
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Monday Night Combat was a favorite amongst the XBLA Fans team. From the summer of 2010 up until some time in 2012 we’d often take a few nights a month to get our game on. But as time went on promises made by MNC developer Uber Entertainment weren’t being fulfilled. Fans didn’t know why. Uber brought the game to the PC, where it received several updates, including a new map, Uncle Tully’s Funland (seen below). Rumors even floated around about the possibility to let players create their own maps using the Unreal Development Kit (UDK).

So why the move? As we reported in June 2011, the Xbox 360 version had more players than the PC version, so why wouldn’t it make sense to continue supporting it? Things got even more confusing three months later when Uber announced that it was dropping support for the game all together in favor of its sequel, Super Monday Night Combat, which was to be a free-to-play PC exclusive. Fans were split on the matter, many supported the struggling developer, while others were outraged.

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What we are playing is a weekly column published on Sunday. Select members  of the team talk about the games they’ve been playing over the past week and  which they’re …
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Week 2 of our Trials HD/Trials Evolution: Gold Edition tribute is now a go.
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What we are playing is a weekly column published on Sunday. Select members  of the team talk about the games they’ve been playing over the past week and  which they’re …
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