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This art dealer wants to hang an indie game on your wall
Dutch art dealership and gallery Cook & Becker has been selling fine art prints from video games for a few years now. Thanks to partnerships with companies like Capcom, Naughty Dog, DICE and BioWare, it's offered artwork from critically acclaimed titles like The Last of Us, Mass Effect, Okami, and Mirror's Edge. Now, it's wooing indie developers into its ranks with a new initiative called the Cook & Becker Indie Program. The first fruits from the effort came last month with the release of artwork from Ronimo Games' Awesomenauts, and it's signed deals with both Vlambeer and The Astronauts -- Ridiculous Fishing and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter prints are coming soon.
Joystiq Streams: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter blind play giveaway
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is weird. Really weird. So weird that it really has to be seen to be believed. While the Joystiq review certainly had fine things to say about it, Richard Mitchell's bold description of its unsettling strangeness has merely piqued our curiosity rather than sated it. Emboldened by resurrected forest mystery Twin Peaks, Vanishing's siren call is now irresistible. We will stream it together, blind and unknowing, ready for what may come. Starting at 4:00PM EST on Joystiq.com/Twitch, we'll be streaming The Vanishing of Ethan Carter as Anthony John Agnello (@ajohnagnello) plays it for the first time. Apparently forest astronauts happen. Awesome. Richard Mitchell (@TheRichardM) will be hanging out in the chat, offering moral support, and giving away Steam codes for Vanishing gratis. Joystiq.com/Twitch at 4:00PM EST, just like we do every Tuesday and Thursday. Chances are we'll be streaming some weirdness on Friday too! What will we be streaming? Follow us on Twitch to find out. [Images: The Astronauts]
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter review: Weird tales
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is unlike any video game I've ever played. It naturally shares elements with other games, of course. It's played from a first-person perspective. It relies on the familiar structures of mystery and horror. And yes, its inhabitants have a proclivity for scattering their diaries, letters and newspaper clippings everywhere. All of these pieces combine to tell a very engaging, supernatural story, but that's not what makes The Vanishing of Ethan Carter special. The difficult part – from the perspective of the person writing this review – is that I don't want to spoil a single second of the stuff that really shines. It's impossible to completely avoid that in the words that follow, but I'll try to summarize by saying this: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter revels in the fact that anything can happen in a video game, and that those happenings are made more meaningful by the interactivity of the medium. It gets a hearty recommendation from me. If you need a little more to go on, and you're willing to expose yourself to one teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy spoiler – I promise it won't ruin anything – then please read on.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter due next month, new gameplay video
The appearing of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is nailed in for September 25 on Windows PC, priced at $20 in North America and £15 in the UK on both Steam and GOG. Meanwhile, the "first to console" PS4 version is due sometime in 2015. The Astronauts was founded by the same people who founded People Can Fly, the studio behind the enthusiastically violent Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgment. Yet as a new gameplay video shows, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is about discovering the causes of homicide rather than being one of them. You explore the clues lurking in the world's reddened greenery as you try to piece together the events that led to young Ethan Carter's disappearance following a violent murder. There's also a paranormal element, as you can tap into the memories of the murdered to help reconstruct the chronology of events and unearth the answers hidden in the scenery. Peruse below the break for that new video which features 13 minutes of gameplay with explanatory narration by The Astronauts' Adrian Chmielarz.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter appearing this summer
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, a "weird fiction horror" game from some of the developers behind Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgment, will come out of the fog (or wherever it is Mr. Carter vanished to) sometime this summer. Eurogamer reports that the game's creator, Adrian Chmielarz, said to expect the game roughly four months from now. While that would estimate Ethan Carter's disappearing act to take place in September, Chmielarz also said that the game would release more toward the middle of summer. "We are going to have probably the worst possible release date, which is the middle of summer," he told Eurogamer. "It's hot and it's summer - do you really want to play a game about autumn?" Chmielarz said that while the summer 2014 window is for a PC release, Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game are a distinct possibility. He and his team currently lack dev kits for either system, but Chmielarz plans to "bug" Microsoft and Sony once work on Ethan Carter has wrapped. [Image: The Astronauts]
Trio of gifs paint The Vanishing of Ethan Carter as pretty, eerie
Screenshots are so 2009, so instead developer The Astronauts has opted to issue three new glimpses at The Vanishing of Ethan Carter in the Internet's favorite movie format, the gif. Problematically, The Astronauts are duly proud of their work and wanted to make these gifs as grand as possible, resulting in moving images that were approaching 20MB in size. The above gif, and the two below the break, have been reduced in size and quality to prevent our readers' computers from bursting into flames, but if you'd like to see the original versions visit The Astronauts website. That gif above is a demonstration of what The Astronauts call "photogrammetric technology," a process that makes rendering highly detailed scenes both quicker and more efficient. It won't replace artists per se, but will instead augment their work.
First moody shots of investigation game 'The Vanishing of Ethan Carter'
The first four screenshots of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter are in-game, during gameplay moments, developer The Astronauts promises. There are no cut-scenes in the game at all, though the screens look more like oil paintings or concept art, showing a beautiful forest marred by moments of blood and signs of death – precisely the tone Ethan Carter is going for. Ethan Carter is a first-person discovery game starring occult detective Paul Prospero. Paul is a simple, serious man, and he knows that this will be his last case, one way or another, as explained in the game's beautiful mini-comic (which is accompanied by gentle music and sound effects). Ethan, a young boy, disappears after a brutal murder, and Paul must uncover the dark mysteries of the town to find him. The Astronauts, composed of former People Can Fly developers, are focused on immersive storytelling and "clammy unease," creating a psychologically creepy mood more than making people jump from their seats. Ethan Carter is due out this year for PC. "With its mixture of a beautiful world with the haunting and macabre, this story is for adult players," The Astronauts writes. "That said, there is no combat in our game. If our game leaves any scars, you won't be able to see them. Also, we want gamers to experience the story of Paul and Ethan at their own pace, and without the need for sedatives."
The Astronauts and Ethan Carter steer away from 'mammoth-sized' games
The Astronauts are working on an eerie, macabre, non-combat game called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and while we're still not sure exactly what it is, one thing is certain – it's not AAA. After founding People Can Fly, working on Bulletstorm and Gears of War, and leaving to start an indie studio, designer Adrian Chmielarz says AAA games have lost their appeal."We're no longer excited by mammoth-sized games," Chmielarz tells Games Industry International. "We're still very interested in high quality, but now and in the future we want to focus on smaller projects."The Vanishing of Ethan Carter will involve death and murder, but won't feature any shooting. It's a game of discovery, similar to Dear Esther, but with more corpses, as Chmielarz describes. Horror is thriving on the indie scene, he says, and he hopes Ethan Carter shows that video games can offer a broader range of experiences. But if no one understands this approach and the game bombs, The Astronauts may need to come back to Earth."If we don't slip, we'll have just enough money for this first project, and then it's sink or float," Chmielarz says. "Kickstarter was tempting, sure, whether we like it or not it's a great marketing tool and gives your project that extra visibility boost. But we think that Kickstarter should only be used by those studios for which there's just no other way without losing their freedom. We're just old-fashioned this way."The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is due out on PC this year.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter will be combat-free, focus on exploration
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is the recently announced (and kind of creepy) new game from creative lead Adrian Chmielarz, formerly of People Can Fly, where he worked on violence-ridden games like Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgement. But while those games celebrated a proliferation of firearms, Chmielarz says his new title will be quite the opposite: There won't be any shooting at all.There will be some death, however. "Take Dear Esther, add gameplay, murder and corpses," Chmielarz said to Eurogamer this week. "That's the closest to what The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is." Dear Esther was a first person exploration game more than anything, but Chmielarz added to expect slightly more interactivity in the new title. Players will play as a detective (presumably researching the titular mystery), and will find clues as the game goes on. Chmielarz said that "the focus is not on mind bending puzzles, but on unsettling discoveries."He also said he was considering supporting the Oculus Rift, and other 3D displays and devices. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is set to launch on the PC later this year.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter brings 'weird fiction horror' to PC this year
The founders of People Can Fly – responsible for Bulletstorm and currently Gears of War: Judgment – have flown the coop to begin another studio, The Astronauts, and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is their first game. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a "weird fiction horror" game inspired by macabre 20th century tales, set for a PC launch this year and developed in Unreal Engine 3."What we care about the most is that the players feel like they're really there," game designer Adrian Chmielarz says. "Immersion is our number one priority. It's a game about exploration and discovery. We're not abandoning the gameplay – on the contrary: We're trying to strip it down to the bone and make sure it's always meaningful and truly makes the experience better."Chmielarz, along with co-founders Andrzej Poznanski and Michal Kosieradzki, premiere The Vanishing of Ethan Carter with the above teaser, showing a content old man stoking a fire sparked by a teddy bear in a sweater and an assortment of shoes and clothes. We never heard that particular bedtime story as children.
The Astronauts is new studio from People Can Fly vets
People Can Fly vets Adrian Chmielarz, Andrzej Poznanski and Michal Kosieradzki are back with new studio The Astronauts. Showing that there is no bad blood between the trio and their former overlords at Epic Games, the team is creating an unannounced game for 2013 using Epic's Unreal Engine 3."We've worked with UE3 for the last six years, and we know its power," said Astronauts co-founder Chmielarz. "Choosing Unreal Engine technology for our future was the textbook definition of a no-brainer."The trio's former colleagues at People Can Fly are currently working on Gears of War: Judgment, the latest in the chest-high walls franchise, which will leave cover for retail on March 19, 2013.PS: We can't unsee the Obama logo, so join in our madness.
