Interviews

[Matt McEnerney] We’re in the process of creating more content for the game which will certainly include new moves, but also a new arena, a new style, and some more items for your created fighter. Can’t give you specifics yet, but we’re hoping to pass certification and go live before Christmas. I can confirm that the content pack will be free! Read More

A few days ago, we reported that racing legend Jeremy McGrath would be donating his share of the profits from Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad towards a bone marrow registry program. Very inspirational news, but is there anything to report about the game itself? As it turns out, yes.

New addition to the XBLA Fans team, Paul Acevedo (@segacon), recently interviewed Robb Rinard, Creative Director at 2XL Games, and learned all kinds of interesting things about 2XL’s racing games, including Offroad. In fact, Robb even teases the game’s first DLC pack. Read on to learn what’s in store for Jeremy McGrath’s latest racer.

Since its creation in 1995, Worms has been leading the way in the artillery shooter genre. With its slapstick humor, turn based strategy and tried-and-true formula, Worms became a brand with a massive following and history. Team 17, the developers of Worms, has remained small throughout however. The studio’s other franchise Alien Breed and a few Worms spin-offs (like Worms Blast and Worms Golf) are Team 17’s only true ventures outside the turn-based artillery action gameplay featured in Worms. Due to this, they’ve been called risk averse, they’ve been criticized for clinging to the Worms franchise, so of course their upcoming Worms revamp, Worms: Revolution, may be met with cynicism by some. We talked to lead designer on the upcoming game and 14-year member of Team 17 Kevin Carthew about working with the rest of Team 17 to revamp the Worms franchise.

According to Carthew, most of the group at Team 17 felt like a Worms revamp was long overdue before Worms: Revolution had a single line of code. Roughly two years ago, before true development on Worms: Revolution had begun, a presentation was given by key members of Team 17; it was a studio-wide event. Words were said, pictures were shown, heads were nodded — Worms: Revolution would be the “blockbuster” Worms game. “We aren’t just making another Worms game, we’re making the Worms game.” said Carthew. “Of course we’re going to call it Worms something”, but “revolution” really is the point of this new game, and everybody at Team 17 feels it. Read More

It’s 30-minutes til the doors slam shut on day two of Rezzed; Brighton’s PC and indie games soiree featuring the likes of Gunpoint, Hotline Miami and, of course, Skulls of the Shogun. Hot stuff, but it’s no doubt to the chagrin of Borut Pfeifer – developer at 17-Bit – that I’ve asked him to describe Skulls in just 20 words at this late juncture.

“It’s turn-based strategy infused with the spirit of an action or arcade game. It’s fast, no grid, with multiplayer.”  Nailed.

Skulls of the Shogun marks 17-Bits’ attempt to haul the turn-based strategy shenanigans of something like Advance Wars (possibly the greatest game ever made) onto Xbox Live Arcade. No easy feat; the Xbox is without touch screen, without keyboard and mouse and about the only example I can think of turn-based strategy game built solely for XBLA is Band of Bugs. Gulp.

With that in mind, I chat with Borut about how Skulls has been tailored to XBLA, why 17-Bit chose the platform and, mostly, the intricacies of the recently announced asynchronous multiplayer. What’s an asynchronous multiplayer? Read on!

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Mini Ninjas Adventures, the Kinect focused XBLA follow-up to IO Interactive’s family friendly action-adventure, should be hitting the marketplace this week. To get some insight into the games production, specifically the audio, I recently spoke with the games Composer and Sound Designer, Yarron Katz.

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The family is about to sit down for dinner and we’ve just wished each other Happy Easter — over the phone. Instead of sitting down at the dining room table with the rest of the family, I’m hours away in Boston for PAX East. A little white bunny is on a screen in front of me, but he’s not that bunny. No, this little rabbit hops down an entirely different trail than Peter Cottontail. The rabbit in question on the show floor, Ash, is the star of Arkedo Studio’s Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit and the Prince of Hell. The independent French studio has previously developed handheld, mobile and XBLIG games, so most Xbox gamers aren’t terribly familiar with it. Well, that’s all going to change this summer when Arkedo releases what studio co-founder Camille Guermonprez would later describe to me as “a [fluffing] video game.”

Easter Sunday was the final day of the 2012 convention hosted by Penny Arcade, and an appointment with Guermonprez to discuss Hell Yeah! was the last one on the XBLA Fans schedule for the weekend. I had passed by the game’s booth many times over the weekend and caught glimpses of what appeared to be a wonderfully insane and gorgeous action title that proudly channels early ’90s Genesis and SNES side-scrollers. Several other members of the team had gotten their hands on it during the first two days of the con and word was that this was not a demo to be missed.

But my schedule was jam-packed with appointments to play other promising games and talk to other developers all weekend. Hell Yeah! would have to wait. When XBLA Fans EiC John Laster, reporter Nick DePetris, photographer Scratch Pratt and I finally arrive to speak with Guermonprez, though, it turns out that we are doomed to wait just a little longer. Guermonprez, surely having spent even more time on his feet and in interviews than I had during the weekend, had given in to exhaustion and headed to lunch. And so we waited.

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We recently had the opportunity to talk at length with Greg Kasavin, writer and designer at SuperGiant Games about the state of the downloadable titles. Instead of  focusing solely on Bastion, the team’s debut release, we spoke with Greg about why he chose independent game development as a career, his experience thus far with the Xbox Live service, as well as his plans for the future. Bastion is out now on XBLA and Steam and was the first title to be released in last year’s Summer of Arcade promotion.

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Having been in development for over five years, Fez is a indie/special/something game that has embodied many of the personal challenges its creators have faced, not making the endless development of it seem any shorter. The attendees of the yearly Independent Game Festival Awards at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco were witness to the emotional release of Fez creator Phil Fish and his colleagues when they accepted the Seamus McNally Grand Prize and $30.000 dollars in prize money last month. Fish, a personal indie hero of mine, is currently starring in the renowned and Sundance award winning documentary Indie Game: The Movie, where he is followed through-out trials and tribulations of finishing Fez. His team’s journey up until receiving this award, touched me in a very personal way.
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Recently we had a chance to speak with 7sixty Games about their upcoming new age beat’em up, Kung Fu Strike. In this interview we talk about the games origins, graphics style, even a little tidbit about DLC. So put on your favorite kung fu themed fighting music and dive in to the rest of this interview.

XBLA Fans: Tell us a little bit about 7sixty games.

Rob Burman: 7sixty is a relatively new publisher set up in 2011 with an aim to release great digital games. Many of us play games at the company and over the years it’s become more apparent that a lot of the more creative and imaginative titles are released digitally, so we thought it would be great to focus on this aspect of gaming. Kung Fu Strike will be our first XBLA release and we’re more excited than a black belt in judo who has just smashed his hand through a pile of bricks.

XBLA Fans: How did the idea of Kung Fu Strike originally come about?

Rob Burman: We are action game fans and we are Kung Fu lovers. However if you want to be a Kung Fu master you have to work very hard for years and years. As a result we wanted to create a similar experience in a video game, so you can do all kinds of incredible Kung Fu moves without ever leaving your sofa! Therefore it’s a title for hardcore gamers but it’s also for casual Kung Fu fans.

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Just before the Friday release of Anomaly Warzone Earth, we got a chance to have an interview with Pawel Miechowski, Senior Writer at 11 bit Studios about the game’s inspiration, exclusives and what to expect from this Tower-Offense game.

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