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Indie Fund goes for artistic award-winner Gorogoa
Gorogoa is heralded for its intricate, hand-painted art and unique approach to puzzle gaming, aspects that have earned it the top prize from the Good Game Club in 2013 and an award for Excellence in Visual Art from the 2014 IGF. These have also helped make Gorogoa the next game to receive support and financial assistance from Indie Fund. With the Indie Fund backing, Gorogoa is due out on PC and Mac in early 2015, with a mobile launch to follow. Gorogoa is the first major release from developer Jason Roberts. On the surface, the game appears to be a straightforward point-and-click puzzler, but it becomes more complex as players pull scenes from one panel into the others, crafting tightly woven stories as they go. "Gorogoa is just jaw-droppingly beautiful, and this is especially remarkable because it's one person doing the programming, design and artwork," Indie Fund partner Aaron Isaksen says. "If this was a children's book it would win the Caldecott Medal. The gameplay is also quite intriguing; the connections that you make between locations, objects, and visuals is deliciously non-linear in a way we don't experience in the real world." Download a demo of Gorogoa on the game's official website. [Image: Jason Roberts]
38 Studios developers finally speak up
Though it seems like we've been reporting on 38 Studios forever, we still know precious little about the Boston-area company that has attracted so much industry talent and generated so much buzz with little more than a code-name for their top-secret fantasy MMO. We got a little preview of the 38 Studios approach when Steve Danuser moderated a panel on building community at ION, and now another interview has bubbled to the surface to give us even more insight on the burgeoning developer juggernaut.Steve Danuser and Jason Roberts sit down to explain (as vaguely as possible) their approach to the challenges of entering an ever-crowded MMO space. They riff about about building on the model developed by Everquest and seemingly perfected by World of Warcraft, working with a fan community before they've even announced their game, and their long-term hopes for community management and engagement. It's really no substitute for concrete information about Copernicus, but it seems like we're finally getting closer to the point where that sort of information is going to leak out.
