Bastion
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Indies react: PAX East as a showcase for small studios
Like so many PAX shows before it, this year's PAX East showcased a ton of indie games -- the gaming equivalent of a Williamsburg dubstep show, if you will. In our experience at this year's event, larger industry players like EA and Bethesda showed off their titles with hired hands and private theater viewings, choosing to exhibit older demos rather than new content. The indies and smaller studios, on the other hand, were out in force. Beyond bringing playable versions of their games to the show -- even Fez was playable, for the first time in several years of development -- the indie studios brought themselves. They continued the tradition of directly engaging with attendees and, often, solicited game-testing feedback on the fly. "I approached PAX East as a three-day playtest session. I learned so much about what works and what doesn't just from standing in the back and observing how people played the game," Fez co-developer Phil Fish told Joystiq. "It's also an amazing morale boost to be told by so many people that your game is great."
Bastion's story narrated on XBLA this summer
Bastion, Supergiant Games' beautifully hand-painted isometric action-RPG, is coming to Xbox Live Arcade this summer, thanks to a publishing partnership with Warner Bros. Interactive. It'll also be on PC "later this year." Bastion follows "The Kid," who travels through a destroyed world whose paths are constantly rebuilt around him, as he attempts to reach and give power to "The Bastion," a location that will somehow restore the world. Along the way, a voiced narrator tells the story of exactly what is happening on screen.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing strategies for early Bastion of Twilight
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow and decorative cross stitching (who knew he was so crafty?). Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Last week on Spiritual Guidance, I said we'd be spending the next few weeks examining the new raid dungeons in Cataclysm and how to heal them as a priest. This week, we'll be in The Bastion of Twilight to see the first two bosses, Halfus Wyrmbreaker and the twin dragons, Valiona and Theralion. As far as dungeons go, The Bastion of Twilight is nothing to scoff at. It is probably the hardest of the three available raid dungeons (four, if you actually count Tol Barad -- which I don't, because I have to maintain my reputation of being pretentious and aloof). Despite this, the first boss, Halfus Wyrmbreaker, is an unusually easy encounter in comparison to the others in The Bastion of Twilight, and that's why we're here today. Let's take a look at why.
Bastion is Supergiant Games' first title, playable at PAX
When Supergiant Games opened its doors during GDC earlier this year, it revealed it was working on a digital title to be released in 2011. This week, Giant Bomb unveiled that title -- it's called Bastion and should be available for public consumption by next summer. Supergiant explains Bastion as an "action role-playing game set in a lush imaginative world, in which players must create and fight for civilization's last refuge as a mysterious narrator marks their every move." The "mysterious," somewhat lyrical narrator makes his first appearance in the game's trailer -- which we've dropped after the break. Considering Supergiant's pedigree (ex-EALA Command & Conquer devs) and how beautifully detailed this initial media is, we have high hopes for Bastion. The game will be playable at PAX Prime this weekend as part of the "PAX 10."%Gallery-101176%
PAX 10 winners announced for PAX '10
The ten independently-developed games that will be featured on the show floor at PAX Prime 2010 have been announced. There are a few recognizable names in this year's PAX 10 collection, including Super Meat Boy and Retro City Rampage-- but there are also plenty of lesser-known (but assuredly spectacular) indie titles in the mix as well, like the pictured Fowl Space. Check out the full list of featured titles posted just past the jump, or catch a glimpse of each game in the gallery below. If you want to give the games a once-over at PAX Prime, you might want to grab one of the remaining one-day passes for the event. %Gallery-97577%
All the World's a Stage: Joining the right circle
One of the most common difficulties many roleplayers face is that of finding other people to roleplay with. To help overcome this challenge, All the World's a Stage presents a guide to finding roleplayers in three parts: "finding the right realm" for roleplaying, "joining the right circle" of roleplaying friends, and "wearing the right mask" to attract other roleplayers to you.So, here you are. You decided that you want to give roleplaying a try, so you picked an RP server and started leveling up. You even tried roleplaying with one person you met along the way, saying "Hail, traveler! Would you like to undertake this task with me?" Things were going along quite nicely for a few minutes until the other person said, "Dood, this quest suxxors, lol," and you realized that something had gone horribly, terribly wrong.A mystery baffles roleplayers everywhere: why is it that even on a space like an RP server, set aside for roleplaying, it can be so hard to find other people to roleplay with? Even if you have thoroughly researched the question of which server is the best place for roleplaying, still you will not be happy there until you find a circle of friends whose roleplaying you can appreciate, and who appreciate yours in return.
Joystiq interviews Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios
Yesterday at the Develop Conference in Brighton, Jennie and I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with the founder of Lionhead Studios, Peter Molyneux. We chatted about the issue of hype, frustrations surrounding PC gaming and Peter's early days in the industry, amongst other topics.Fable was pretty much portrayed as one of the most open games of all time, but in terms of hype, it failed to meet the high expectations that you gave the game. There was even a forum post where you apologized about this: why did it get to that level?Well, it started with this fatal line that I made and that was that I wanted to make Fable the greatest role playing game of all time. I kinda still defend that because I honestly don't see the point in making a game that you don't honestly believe has a chance of being the greatest game of all time. I meet the press quite a lot, every 6-8 weeks there's some sort of press interview. The way I work then is to get a system in, play around with it, polish it, make it better. Sometimes I leave it as it is and sometimes I throw it away.
