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Hands-on with coming-of-age puzzle game 'Where Cards Fall'
Where Cards Fall looks like a dream. Literally, I've had dreams that feel like this game -- the world is segmented into blocky platforms covered in grass, asphalt and clouds, as if a rudimentary algorithm was asked to create cities and forests, and it spat out gorgeous geometric interpretations of the real world. The game's art style highlights this dreamlike quality, covering all those cubes and slopes in soft, hand-drawn colors and dramatic shadows while ambient music hums in the background. Playing Where Cards Fall feels exactly like it looks -- ethereal yet grounded in reality, shockingly complicated and soothing at the same time.
Atari shows its non-functional 'VCS' console prototype at GDC 2018
Last June, venerated gaming company Atari announced that it was making a comeback. Specifically, that it would be jumping back into the console market with a retro-style entertainment system it dubbed at the time, the Ataribox. Eleven months later, we can finally see the results of the company's IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign: Say hello to the 2600-inspired Atari VCS.
GDC 2018 by the numbers
It was a wet and wild week at the 2018 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The Engadget team spent our days wandering the show floor, meeting with developers and, of course, playing every game we could get our hands on. Here are a few highlights of the conference.
Slaughter sentient fruit to save humanity in 'Juicy Realm'
We saw a number of genuinely unique and innovative games at the Indie Megabooth during 2018, but few can compete with the sheer adorableness of Juicy Realm from Spacecan -- even when you're gunning down Uzi-wielding anthropomorphic pears.
'Guacamelee! 2' blends a Mexican fairytale with wild, flashy action
Good sequels are hard to make, especially if your first product was considered a hit by gamers and critics alike. That's a predicament that developer DrinkBox Studios is about to face with Guacamelee! 2, the follow-up to its beat-em-up, Mexican wrestler-themed game from 2014. But, I'm happy to report that the sequel may be even better than the original, thanks to an improved graphics engine and characters who are more robust (and powerful) than before. I played it at GDC 2018 and it didn't leave anything to be desired, at least based on the 30 minutes or so I spent with all the new features.
OptiTrack Active VR makes for a more mobile zombiepocalypse
My biggest qualm with many home VR experiences involves how I move about in-game. Using a controller for locomotion -- whether it's a Doom VR-style teleportation mechanism or using a thumbstick a la Farpoint VR -- dramatically reduces the immersiveness of the gameplay and reminds me that I'm really just wearing a screen on my face. But with the Active VR system from OptiTrack, players will soon be able to move around in the game the same way they do in real life: by moving their feet.
You only have 18 minutes to complete 'Black Future '88'
While a number of games have incorporated a countdown timer to increase the pressure upon players (looking at you, Dead Rising), few have taken it to extremes quite like Black Future '88, a wild new synthpunk platform shooter from indie studio Superscarysnakes.
Hands-on with the sci-fi game that falls apart as you play
You're never going to play Clunker Junker in your living room or on your desktop PC, no matter how many GPUs it has. Hardware is the issue here, but it's not a matter of processing power -- Clunker Junker requires two LED-adorned arm cranks, plus four crates with glowing lights and doors that come crashing down when they're unlatched during gameplay. The game itself, to be fair, runs on a laptop, but that's about as traditional as this thing gets.
With 'Siren,' Unreal Engine blurs the line between CGI and reality
Epic Games has been obsessed with real-time motion capture for years, but the company is now trying to take its experiments with the technology one step further. Enter "Siren," a digital personality that it created alongside a few prominent firms in the gaming industry: Vicon, Cubic Motion, 3Lateral and Tencent (which just became a major investor in Ubisoft). The crazy thing about Siren is that she comes to life using live mocap tech, powered by software from Vicon, that can make her body and finger movements be captured and live-streamed into an Unreal Engine project.
The video game industry is finally asking where the women are
Ubisoft is participating in the Women in Gaming Rally at GDC this week. It's one of the first things the 20 or so journalists pooled between the open bar and the canapes on the second floor of Hotel Zetta were told -- mentioned right after the evening's embargo information and just before spokespeople split the reporters into three groups and shepherded them to their appropriate meetings. There were three sessions, each 20 minutes long and covering distinct topics: Online ecosystems, artificial intelligence, and new studio openings. After each session, the groups would rotate to see the next presentation, for an hour total of on-the-record, Ubisoft-centric back-patting and glad-handing.
'What The Golf?' is the perfect game for people who don't care about golf
Just when you thought we couldn't find any weirder games at GDC 2018, here comes another one. What The Golf?, created by Copenhagen-based developer Triband, is being billed as the perfect anti-golf adventure. That's due to the fact the title defies the sport's strict rules -- like a set number of holes and, um, using round balls -- in favor of silly, sometimes absurd mechanics that make it feel like anything but a game about golf. Instead of swinging at balls, here what you try to drive to the hole can be a house, a rag doll or (because why not) a cute horse.
'Children of Morta' and the power of modern pixel art
Children of Morta made me incredibly happy, scared, sad and fiercely determined, all within the span of 10 minutes and using only pixel art -- plus a few modern bells and whistles. It comes from Dead Mage and publisher 11 Bit Studios, and it's an isometric hack-and-slash game starring the Bergsons, a family of fierce fighters on a mission to save their home mountain from an evil corruption. Each family member has a special skill, and for my playthrough at GDC, I chose to battle as the youngest daughter, a fire mage.
Giant scissors are your controller in this quirky first-person action game
There's this small world inside GDC 2018 called Alt.Ctrl.GDC, where you'll find a booth full of quirky games that incorporate physical objects into their story. With Scissors the that than (the latter part pronounced "da da dan," according to its Japanese developer), you use giant scissors as your controller and as the main weapon inside the actual game. Before we get into the premise of Scissors the that than, you should first know that the physical pair that acts as a controller only has a joystick on the left handle (which you use to move) and a red button on the right one that starts the game.
Hands-on with Oculus Go: Comfy, wireless VR
Oculus Go might be the virtual reality industry's best chance at pushing the medium into the mainstream. Tethered VR devices are unwieldy and generally require a beefy PC rig to run properly; mobile headsets offer a taste of what full, immersive VR has to offer, but they're limited by smartphone specs and battery life. Standalone headsets are the future of VR, and while the Oculus Go isn't the first device in this category, it's an accessible and high-quality option backed by the marketing power of Facebook. Oculus Go is a $200 headset rumored to hit the market at Facebook's F8 conference in May, but the company is showing it off, for the first time, on the GDC show floor -- and we've already gone hands-on.
How Facebook plans to colonize gaming
Facebook is in the middle of a public relations nightmare, caused by reports that research firm Cambridge Analytica used its site to harvest data from 50 million user profiles. But, that's not stopping the company from talking up the potential of its platform, in this case as it pertains to gaming. As part of Facebook's GDC 2018 announcements, it revealed last week that any developer can now make Instant Games, thanks to new tools that let them create HTML5-based web titles for Messenger or the News Feed. Additionally, Facebook has made it easy for devs to build livestreaming features directly into their PC games, without any capture hardware or software required, in a clear attempt to challenge the likes of Twitch and Youtube.
Tim Sweeney wants Unreal to power the cross-platform revolution
It's 2018 and developers are finally taking mobile games seriously -- or it's the other way around, depending on whom you ask. "I think what we are seeing is now these AAA games from traditional PC and console developers going mobile, and they are among the most popular mobile games that exist," Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney says. Epic CTO Kim Liberi jumps in and adds, "I think it's almost the other way, I think it's that mobile developers are taking games more seriously."
Tobii's EyeCore will make next-gen VR experiences even more immersive
VR and AR may be the next big thing immersive experiences, but so far, their user interfaces have been anything but intuitive. Conventionally, head-mounted displays have operated under the assumption that its users are owls: their eyes are locked in their skulls, facing forward requiring them to use their noses as VR cursors. Tobii is working to change that by integrating eye tracking into the next generation of head-mounted displays.
'Below' is going to come out this year, seriously
Capybara Games announced Below during Microsoft's 2013 E3 conference, sandwiched between details about the Xbox One, which would hit retail later that year. When it launched, Below was going to be console-exclusive to the Xbox One for an unspecified amount of time, and it immediately captured the imagination of fans and press. It was a visually powerful game, showcasing a tiny protagonist who explored caverns that stretched for miles beyond the screen, hiding mysteries and adventure around every corner. Below served as a testament to Microsoft's commitment to being a hub for innovative games, regardless of whether they were created by mainstream studios or independent developers.
'Apocalypse Cow' is a platform game inspired by 'Wreck-It Ralph'
One of the best things about attending GDC is that, more often than not, you come across some of the best-looking independent titles. Today, that honor goes to Apocalypse Cow, a cinematic adventure game that draws inspiration from animated films like Wreck-It Ralph and genre-classics such as Super Mario. This 2D platformer, developed by an indie studio called Monsters, features the story of a character named Penny who tries to figure out what caused a glitch in a digital universe made up of video game worlds -- hence the homage to Wreck-It Ralph.
Skywalker Sound and the challenges of making audio for VR films
Lauded Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, best known for his work on movies such as Birdman and The Revenant, last year nabbed a "special" Oscar award for his VR exhibition Carne y Arena. The virtual reality project, dubbed Flesh and Sand in English, takes viewers into a world where they can experience what it's like to be an immigrant trying to cross a border. As much as visuals were important to tell this story, one of Iñárritu's focus was to also to create the most immersive sounds -- which can be complicated when going from traditional film to a completely new medium like VR.
