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Lucas Pope's Mars After Midnight hits the Playdate console on March 12
Panic just held a games showcase for its portable Playdate console and announced a March 12 release date of Lucas Pope’s Mars After Midnight. Pope also made Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn.
There’s a Playdate games showcase on February 28
Panic is holding a developer’s showcase for its Playdate portable console on February 28 at 12PM ET. The presentation will feature the new game from Lucas Pope, among other titles.
Indie favorite ‘Papers, Please’ has sold 5 million copies
The surprisingly emotional and strangely addictive dystopian document thriller ‘Papers, Please’ just turned ten years old and has officially sold five million copies across multiple platforms throughout the past decade. To celebrate the milestone, developer Lucas Pope and his company 3909 LLC released a web game called ‘LCD, Please’ that allows players to go through certain aspects of the original title.
Document thriller ‘Papers, Please’ heads to phones on August 5th
Nearly a decade after it propelled creator Lucas Pope to indie game stardom, “dystopian document thriller” Papers, Please is finally coming to phones.
Limited Run Games shows the Vita some love as it revives 14 games
It's not unusual for games developers to use E3 to announce upcoming titles, but it is pretty leftfield for a studio to reveal plans to launch 50 -- FIFTY -- forthcoming releases. But that's exactly what Limited Run Games has done. At its press conference during the expo, the company -- which specializes in producing physical copies of otherwise digital-only independent console games -- announced a slew of new projects and crossovers for the Switch, PS4, Nintendo 3DS and the system that just won't die, the PlayStation Vita.
iPad version of Papers, Please to get nudity restored in update
Papers, Please arrived on iPad this week, but an initial build depicting nudity when players searched the bodies of travelers was rejected by Apple on the grounds of containing "pornographic content." That decision appears to have been reversed however – developer Lucas Pope recently tweeted about a conversation with Apple concerning the denied version, claiming that Apple described that rejection as a misunderstanding. Pope added that Apple has also suggested he resubmit the build that includes nudity. Though news of the rejected build drew ire from fans, Pope stated that the Apple representative "made it clear" that the decision was based on a mistake in their procedures rather than a response to backlash. Pope estimates that an update to restore the option of nudity should be available by next week. Papers, Please will also eventually travel to Vita, though Pope is hesitant to give a launch window for that version, suggesting he "probably announced it too early." [Image: Lucas Pope]
Rejoice! Papers, Please will get pixelated nudity after all
Papers, Please -- the hit PC game that launched on iPad today sans the not-at-all graphic nudity of the original game -- will be getting a patch to restore the low-res boobs and butts to their former glory. Developer Lucas Pope has announced that Apple contacted him and explained that the original rejection for "pornographic content" was a simple misunderstanding, and that he should submit an update to bring the sexy back, so to speak. For those who would rather avoid the nudity anyway, the game includes the option to turn it off, but as the nudity itself is barely there to begin with, it's probably not going to ruffle many feathers anyway. As far as the update's availability, Pope says it should go live sometime next week.
iPads, Please: Paper-pushing game hits iOS sans nudity
Immigration inspection game Papers, Please will reach iPad tomorrow, the game's creator Lucas Pope revealed on Twitter. The game, which has players accepting and rejecting immigrants attempting to enter the fictional state of Arstotzka, first launched in August 2013 on PC and Mac and reached 500,000 copies sold as of March. The iOS version of the game is slightly different than its PC sibling, however. Pope noted that the search scanner photos in the game no longer have the full nudity option, as Apple "rejected that build for containing 'pornographic content.'" Papers, Please will receive a PlayStation Vita port, though Pope expressed uncertainty in February on how that version would work, given that the handheld system presents a lot of "interesting UI challenges." The developer also tweeted today that he handled the iPad version on his own, but that there's no estimated launch date for the Vita version, adding he "probably announced it too early." [Image: 3909]
Humble Indie Bundle returns with Gunpoint, Gone Home
Humble Bundle breaks away from its recent mobile focus with a new Humble Indie Bundle, offering up downloadable PC versions of SteamWorld Dig, Gunpoint, and Gone Home for a buyer-chosen price. Pay any amount for Humble Indie Bundle 12 and you'll get stealth-puzzler Gunpoint, hack-and-slash dungeon crawler Hammerwatch, and mining-themed sidescroller SteamWorld Dig. Beat the average purchase price (currently $7.38) and you'll also get Fullbright's atmospheric exploration game Gone Home, monochrome shoot-'em-up Luftrausers, and immigration inspector sim Papers, Please. Humble Indie Bundle 12 also offers an Early Access key for Prison Architect with purchases totaling $10 or more. Bundle proceeds benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play Charity. [Video: Humble Bundle]
Papers, Please creator unveils 1-bit mystery Return of the Obra Dinn
Lucas Pope, the designer behind the surprisingly thoughtful Papers, Please, has revealed his next project, a first-person mystery set aboard a ghost ship using what he calls "1-bit rendering." Pope describes Return of the Obra Dinn as unlike anything he's done before. "There'll be less creativity with the gameplay and instead I want to experiment with the rendering, story, and a few technical features," Pope wrote on the TIGForums. "I'm hoping to capture a compelling mystery with suspense and twists in the limited space of an old merchant sailing ship. It won't be the typical 'collect items and look for clues' structure. There's a slightly cool gameplay hook but I won't go into details on that until much later." Though Pope is building Return of the Obra Dinn in the increasingly ubiquitous Unity 3D engine, the game will feature a notably archaic aesthetic. "I'd like to capture the detailed black & white look of old Mac games in a realtime 1st person game," said Pope. "I plan to push it grittier and less cartoon-like than those old games; the hard part will be keeping everything legible without it becoming an unreadable mess of dithered pixels." Pope has yet to determine a release date for Return of the Obra Dinn, but those looking for more information can find a full rundown of the game's plot and his goals as a designer on the TIGForums. [Image: Lucas Pope]
GOG 'limited stock' flash sale discounts 100 games, one at a time
GOG.com is having another one of its big sales, this time with flash sales on 100 different games. The online retailer is discounting one game at a time with a limited number of available copies, and as soon as that stock counter runs down to zero, the next game goes up on sale. The sale's going on right now - at the time of writing Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut is on offer at $3.74. Other games set to feature at some point during the sale include Papers Please, Divinity: Dragon Commander Imperial Edition and Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sale. [Image: Lucas Pope]
Gone Home and Papers, Please sweep Games For Change Awards
The Games For Change Festival hosted its annual awards ceremony on Wednesday night, honoring socially conscious games in three categories: Most Innovative, Most Impactful, and Best Gameplay. Game of the Year, the fourth and final award, was given to a game that embodied all three categories. Some 140 games were nominated, and a panel of experts in gaming, media, education and philanthropy whittled those selections down to eight finalists. Lucas Pope, though not in attendance at the awards, dominated the stage. Papers, Please, Pope's brutal game about playing a border crossing guard in the fictional communist nation Arstotzka, won both the Most Innovative and Best Gameplay awards. Speaking with Joystiq via email after the awards, Pope shared his thoughts on why his game seems to resonate so strongly with players. "It puts players in an unfamiliar position and asks them to make difficult decisions with no easy answers," said Pope. "The subject matter is unique enough to get people interested, so the challenge for me was to hook them early with the core gameplay, then build on that with an interesting story." Most Significant Impact, the award given to games about social issue that also encourages players to develop empathy and respect for the subject, went to Electric Funstuff's The Mission US: A Cheyenne Odyssey. Mission US simulates life for the Northern Cheyenne tribe as it confronted the institution of Native American reservations in the 19th century. The Games For Change Game of the Year award was given to The Fullbright Company for Gone Home, their divisive first-person adventure. Steve Gaynor and Karla Zimonja accepted their award in a brief video message which, as the ceremony's host put it, may have been the first ever selfie acceptance speech. Papers, Please and Gone Home both received year-end accolades from Joystiq and numerous other outlets. Lucas Pope offered some insight into why games that address social issues are gaining traction amongst players. "I think the changing audience is related to generations and technology," explained Pope. "I grew up playing games my entire life so they're a natural form of expression and entertainment for me. I don't necessarily look to games for only straight up fun times, and I'd say most of my generation is the same way. At the same time, the tools and resources to create games have exploded in the last five years. It's much easier now to make smaller games that reflect personal experiences. With more games like this being made, there's naturally going to be an audience to play and enjoy them."
Papers, Please, Gone Home, and more named finalists at the 11th Annual Games for Change Awards
The 11th Annual Games for Change Festival kicks off in New York on April 22, shining a spotlight on video games and developers pushing the medium not just as quality entertainment or educational tools but as venues for social justice. On Tuesday the organization announced its finalists for the Games for Change awards, honoring eight games for their gameplay, innovation, and their impact in highlighting specific issues from underage drinking to the dangers faced by migrants crossing the US-Mexico border. At least two nominees were amongst Joystiq's favorite games of 2013.
Papers, Please and The Last of Us honored at GDC awards show
Designer Lucas Pope came close to apologizing for his frequent appearance on stage at 2014's Indie Games Festival Awards, collecting award after award for Papers, Please. The dystopian game of bureaucracy and hard-earned immigration was recognized by a panel of industry peers for its considered narrative, game design, and ... downloadability? Pope couldn't help but poke fun at the vestigial "Best Downloadable Game" category, noting the distinct advantage of making a game that's a quick 40MB download. Papers, Please also won for innovation in the Game Developers Choice Awards, the more mainstream half of the evening's show. Naughty Dog's own take on dystopia, The Last of Us, won here for best design, best narrative, and best overall game of the year. (This despite fellow nominee Super Mario 3D World having some pretty sweet overalls.) For the rest of the winners, including some gongs for Device 6, Risk of Rain and Grand Theft Auto 5, please see below.
Papers, Please documents 500,000 copies sold
Papers, Please, the game in which you bureaucratically decide the fate of hopeful immigrants, has surpassed 500,000 copies sold, according to the BBC. Created by former Naughty Dog developer Lucas Pope, Papers, Please was a 2013 favorite among many members of the Joystiq staff. In a delightful bit of serendipity, Pope and Papers, Please shared the stage with Naughty Dog during yesterday's BAFTA award ceremony. Papers, Please took home the BAFTA for Strategy and Simulation, while Naughty Dog's The Last of Us was crowned Best Game. Papers, Please is available now on PC, Mac and Linux. Pope is also considering a port for PlayStation Vita. [Image: 3909]
The Last of Us high-fives at BAFTA awards, indies do well too
The Last of Us only delivered wins on half of its BAFTA Games Award nominations, but since it was nominated ten times, the Naughty Dog game didn't do so bad. The Joystiq Game of 2013 picked up the Best Game award at last night's ceremony in London, along with Best Story, Action & Adventure, Audio Achievement, and Performer - that went to Ashley Johnson for her portrayal of Ellie. Other big-budget games did well with Grand Theft Auto 5 and Tearaway both walking away with three awards, but it was also a good night for indie games. The Gone Home team went home with Debut Game, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons won Game Innovation, and Papers, Please stamped its name on the award for Strategy & Simulation. For the full list of nominees and winners, head over to BAFTA. Also, be sure to check out Steam's one-day-only sale on a selection of the nominated games. [Image: Sony Computer Entertainment]
Papers, Please dev split on how to handle PS Vita port
Lucas Pope, creator of border-crossing management game Papers, Please, has expressed interest in a PS Vita port, but is unsure if he should handle the port himself or hand it over to a third-party studio. "Up until now, I've been the only guy who's ever touched the source code or anything related to the game. And that's just kind of a control issue," Pope told VG247. "For a Vita version, I'm 50 percent I want to do it myself and 50 percent I should just hand it off to somebody who knows what they're doing and can take it over for me." Last year, Sony formed a third-party production division whose chief responsibility is facilitating ports. "I do want to do a Vita version, but the thing is there's a lot of kind of interesting UI challenges to make it work well on Vita: much smaller screen, much smaller hit targets. So that kind of stuff interests me to try to figure out how to make it work well on Vita," Pope said. "So that's the part of me that wants to be really involved in the port, but the other part is like, 'I got to do something else, I got to move onto something else' so I haven't really decided what to do there." In Papers, Please, players assume the role of an immigration worker checking passports at a border checkpoint for the fictional communist country of Arstotzka. Papers, Please made its debut last year on PC and Mac; a Linux port launched earlier this month. [Image: 3909]
Civilization 5 mod adds playable Papers, Please nation
Glory to Arstotzka! The bleak Papers, Please nation is now a playable world power in Sid Meier's Civilization 5 thanks to a Steam Workshop mod from Snakeeater337. Arstotzka comes to Sid Meier's Civilization 5 replete with its own unique units, buildings, custom dialogue and music. Arstotzka has its own custom Border Guard unit, a cheaper version of the Rifleman that gets combat bonuses fighting on native soil. There's also the Border Checkpoint building, which adds protection from spies and produces extra gold each turn. Arstotzka begins the game with its custom "Glory to Arstotzka" trait, which increases worker production at the cost of population happiness and city growth speed. All cities also start with a free worker. The only downside to this mod is that it requires Brave New World, the latest expansion for Sid Meier's Civilization 5, in order to play. Sid Meier's Civilization 5: The Complete Edition, along with several other games bearing the eponymous developer's name, are currently available in the Humble Sid Meier's Bundle. [Image: Snakeeater337 on Steam]
Best of the Rest: Jess' picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Skulls of the Shogun I have a pre-existing penchant for human skulls as decoration, so maybe that's why Skulls of the Shogun still resonates so deeply with me, despite it launching way back at the beginning of the year – before GDC, before E3, before Gamescom, before the reveals and launches of two next-gen consoles, before the holiday madness. Through all of that, Skulls of the Shogun remains a purely joyful, fun strategy game, complete with morbid humor, accessible mechanics and a lovely Saturday-morning cartoon style. Developer 17-Bit has a precise hand, and the team's attention to detail and flow makes Skulls of the Shogun sing across platforms: Xbox 360, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Steam and iOS. Skulls of the Shogun started the year off in the right way for me, so it's fitting to give it another nod at the end of 2013. Cheers, skull-chewers.
Best of the Rest: Xav's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Splinter Cell: Blacklist Splinter Cell: Blacklist was my Game of the Year for 2013. It's hard to name another game that offers so many different experiences in one box as Blacklist, and even more arduous to name those that have hit the nail so squarely on the head as Ubisoft Toronto (and others) did with Sam Fisher's latest escapade. For franchise fanatics – of which I am one – Blacklist delivered an explosive concoction of everything: the exemplary action of Conviction, the tense stealth of Chaos Theory, and the sublime multiplayer of Pandora Tomorrow. Though its action-movie storytelling can't compete with the likes of other narrative successes launched this year, Blacklist continually entertains throughout its campaign. Its co-op modes are outstanding and its competitive multiplayer is frantic. It's gorgeous, addictive, and, for all these reasons and more, it's my favorite game of the year.
