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Here’s some of the games you’ll see at PAX East
12 years ago

Here’s some of the games you’ll see at PAX East

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Our friends over at Play XBLA have provided a list of the games they’ll be showing off at PAX East in Boston next month. We …
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Dream.Build.Play 2012 registration is now open
12 years ago

Dream.Build.Play 2012 registration is now open

Registration for the Dream.Build.Play 2012 Challenge, the annual contest to inspire independent developers to create games for Microsoft, opened earlier this week. This year in addition to creating games …
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Ms.Splosion Man splodes onto Pinball FX2 August 31

The long awaited Ms. Splosion Man table for Pinball FX2 received a new trailer today and a release date. Zen Studios have announced that their latest pinball table based …
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Toxic Games’ Q.U.B.E. may go XBLA
13 years ago

Toxic Games’ Q.U.B.E. may go XBLA

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Toxic Games, a UK-based team founded by former classmates, began development of Q.U.B.E. as a student project in 2009 with no programming experience whatsoever. With the help of many around them and the Indie Fund startup, they were able to bring their dreams of creating a full game to life. Right now it’s PC only, but Toxic Games has informed XBLA Fans they have “strong ambitions to bring the game to XBLA in the Future.”

That game is Q.U.B.E., or “Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion”. Q.U.B.E. takes everything delightful about spatial puzzles, jigsaws and physics manipulating challenges and turns them first person, adding in some platforming to boot. Here’s how it works:

With the aid of technologically enhanced gloves, the player manipulates and navigates a deep space training facility packed with cubes. The player can pull red blocks one at a time, extract multiple cubes of yellow all at once, use blue for jumping, and push green cubes around in the environment.

Not sure how that all comes together? Check out their tech demo and screenshots after the jump. If this has you intrigued, check out Q.U.B.E. at PAX this year between August 26– 28 at Booth 6407 on Level 6. Read More

Bastion: Dynamic Narration Can Replace Cutscenes
13 years ago

Bastion: Dynamic Narration Can Replace Cutscenes

The AAA titles are continuing to look for ways to make the player feel that they have an effect on the game world. We have seen the continued success of games that feature choice, as well as multiple endings. The only issue is that many games still contiue to tell the story through in-game movies, to help move along the narrative, as well as captivate the player. Most players do not like the feeling of losing control. They hold a controller for a reason. With Bastion, it is not the cutscenes or trailers that are capturing people’s attention, it’s the narration. This isn’t just some voice walking your through a tutorial. The dynamic narration in Bastion is telling the story that you are creating. The narration in this game is designed to react tho the actions of the player, and tell the story the player is creating. Having only seen a demo at PAX, I cannot say how well this is implemented throughout, but the experience certainly stuck with me.

I reached out to Greg Kasavin, Creative Director at  SuperGiant Games to delve a little deeper into the concept of dynamic narration; from how it came to be, to how it’s turning out. Read More

XBLAFancast – Episode 4: PAX East Special
13 years ago

XBLAFancast – Episode 4: PAX East Special

A tad late, a lot longer and a bit rougher. That’s how one would describe this weeks podcast, John, Tyler and Andrew are joined by new writer Stephen to talk about all things PAX East. Both Andrew and Stephen attended so they share their thoughts and experiences from the show, while a jealous John and Tyler quiz them.

Apologies for the spotty editing and audio this week folks, various events and technical difficulties conspired to make this show as big a hassle as possible. Still we persevere and bring you a new episode.

We’re also changing hosts for the podcast, these changes might not be reflected on iTunes right away. We’re still working out the technical details but in the meantime you can listen below or download the MP3.

We’re now on iTunes! So please subscribe, rate and review us there. As before if you have any feedback or general comments then feel free to get in touch. You can either post something in the comments below or shoot us an email to podcast@xblafans.com

RSS | MP3 | iTunes

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/XBLAFancastEp4PAXEastSpecial.mp3[/podcast] Read More

The Behemoth to show off BattleBlock Theater story mode
13 years ago

The Behemoth to show off BattleBlock Theater story mode

Good news to any Behemoth fans who plan on attending some upcoming trade shows. The Behemoth has revealed plans to show off more of their next game, BattleBlock Theater. According to a blog post over on The Behemoth’s site the dev has refrained from showing the Story mode until now because they weren’t sure it would fit with a trade show environment.

They have decided to finally pull back the curtain however, excited to show everyone the collaborative gameplay. We have listed the handful of places The Behemoth will be showing off the mode below and hit the jump for some (small) screenshots of the game cinematics.

PAX East (Boston, MA) March 11-13th

Tokyo Anime Fair (Tokyo, Japan) Business Days- March 24-25th; Public Days March 26-27th

Comic Con International (San Diego, CA) July 21-24th

PAX Prime (Seattle, WA) August 26-28th

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Housemarque Announcing New Downloadable title at PAX
14 years ago

Housemarque Announcing New Downloadable title at PAX

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The talented Finnish developer Housemarque revealed via their Twitter feed that a new downloadable title will be revealed at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo.

The only thing that we currently …
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