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Pixel horror finds a Home on PS4 in October
Home, the pixelated horror game from Benjamin Rivers, is due out on PS4 on October 28, "just in time for Halloween," Rivers writes on the PlayStation Blog. The Vita version will come out soon after, and it is a Cross-Buy game, meaning those who buy it on PS4 automatically get it on Vita, too. Home will be on sale for $3 for the first two weeks after the PS4 launch. "Home has been a weird little trailblazer, and it now has the honor of being the first title developed entirely within YoYo Games' Game Maker Studio environment to natively hit PlayStation consoles," Rivers says. "It's pretty amazing as an independent developer to be able to make console games, and I couldn't think of a better home for it (pun totally intended)." In Home, players wake up as a man with no memory of how he ended up alone in a stranger's house. As he makes his way to more familiar territory, he finds things that jog his memory, and the story changes as players decide what objects to pick up and what information to digest. We heard Home would hit Sony consoles this year back in March. [Image: Sony]
Opening the valve: Steam Curators rule the front page
Ask a hundred independent developers what impacts their sales most and you'll likely get a hundred different answers, but among the more popular ones will be the topic of discoverability, the ways in which prospective buyers are able to find lesser-known video games. Platforms like the App Store and Steam see a lot of foot-traffic in their featured sections, and even brief visibility for independent developers can make for a massive difference in their bottom line. As more games have made their way to Steam via regular release, Greenlight and Early Access, it's become vastly more difficult for a new game to be discovered. Enter Steam Curators, Valve's means of placing the weight of game recommendations on those outside its walls. The service launched this week and allows any person or brand (such as your friends here at Joystiq) to compile lists of games their followers should play, shifting the scope of the store's front page to include recommended games and a section for popular curators. Given Steam's incredible popularity and its status as a "must-have" piece of PC gaming software, Steam Curators is a major step for the service, and developers hope that it might heavily influence independent game sales.
Home dev's oddly romantic sci-fi adventure, Alone With You
Alone With You is a sci-fi exploration and adventure game that throws off creepy and romantic vibes in equal measure. Coming from Benjamin Rivers, the creator of horror game Home, this sounds just about right. Alone With You is due out in 2015 for PS4 and Vita. You're the last living member of a terraforming party on a planet that's due to implode in a month's time. The escape pod is broken, it's the only one left, and everyone who would know how to fix it is dead. The colony's AI is still on, and with its help, you recreate the missing party members to fix the pod and get the heck out of Dodge. "As for the romance?" Rivers writes on the PlayStation Blog. "Well, let's just say that recreating your former colleagues might not be as straightforward as you imagine; they may be interested in more than just technical details. No matter who you are, you'll be able to take a crack at love – and your choices will affect how the story ultimately plays out." [Image: Benjamin Rivers]
Indie horror Home scrolling to PS4, Vita (no, not that Home)
Indie horror Home is coming to PS4 and Vita later this year, and just to reiterate, we're talking about the game by Benjamin Rivers, and not a bunch of trendily-groomed avatars. Rivers confirmed the PlayStation versions of his pixel-art side-scroller include everything added to the game since its 2012 launch, and he also teased the possibility of new content. In Home you play as a man who wakes up alone in a house that isn't his, and he doesn't remember how he got there, or a chain of morbid recent events. As you help him make his way home you come across certain things that stir the man's memories, but the kicker is you get to choose what those memories are. Did you open those drawers and rifle through their contents? Did you take the gun or not? As you play and make those choices, bits and pieces of the story change - sometimes subtly, sometimes less so. Today's news follows Rivers' recent tease of his next game, Alone With You, which he describes as a psychological romance adventure that's about exploration, escape, and love. [Image: Sony]
Home creator taking on exploration, escape, and love in Alone With You
Alone With You is an upcoming game from the man behind the indie side-scrolling psychological horror Home, and he's looking to bring a unique approach to another genre of storytelling. This time, it's romance. While a teaser trailer doesn't reveal much beyond a triforce of exploration, escape, and love, Home creator Benjamin Rivers told us about his plans for Alone With You back at last year's GDC. A year's a long time a game development and Rivers' plans may be different now, but here's what he had to say when we spoke to him last. "It's not a grinding game or anything like that, but I want to take a lot of what you do in those relationship games like Persona and offload some of that to people," Rivers said in March 2013. "I want to basically take a game that makes you feel as cool as you do in Persona, as far as relationships, [being] as connected," he continued, "but see if I can do it without making it so video game-y, but still make it where people maybe even have a more powerful reaction because they buy in." There's no word yet on platforms or release dates, but Rivers plans to spill more on Alone With You at this year's GDC, which takes place later this month. [Image: Benjamin Rivers]
Benjamin Rivers' Home now available on Mac, temporarily 50% off
Benjamin Rivers' atmospheric psychological horror jam Home, which originally launched on PC in 2012 and on iOS back in June, is now available for computers of the Macintosh persuasion through Steam and the Amazon Indie Store. As with the recently-updated PC version, the Mac port of Home includes all of the new/modified content found in its iOS cousin. To celebrate the release, Home has been discounted to $1.49 until August 14, and while this sale is only active on Steam as of press time, Rivers tells us that Amazon should be following suit shortly. As an added bonus, folks that have already purchased the PC version will receive the Mac version for free, which means that there is no longer a safe, computery haven in existence from the seething terrors contained within Rivers' pixel-art nightmare.
Daily iPhone App: Home is a creepy but well-constructed tale
Home probably isn't for everyone, but a certain type of audience will really love it. The game is an indie title originally put together for the PC by a developer named Benjamin Rivers, and it's in the horror-adventure genre. The controls are very simple: You walk left and right by tapping on either side of the screen. You can look up by tapping up, and you can interact with objects in the environment by double-tapping on them when you're close. That's it. But Home works its magic in other, weirder ways. Early in the game, your character finds a flashlight, and most of the game just involved wandering around a creepy house, slowly finding photos and items that reveal just what the experience is all about. Text appears when you interact with items, but it's all in the past tense, so you're playing out a story that has already happened, and the choices you make are part of the story being told. It's a fascinating experiment in storytelling, and while it can get a bit macabre at times, this is an indie experience that does a whole lot with relatively little. Home is available for US$2.99 on the App Store now, and though the award-winning indie title already has its fans on the PC, it's a solid addition to Apple's iOS lineup.
Benjamin Rivers' Home spooking up iOS this Thursday, OSX this summer
One-man indie development studio Benjamin Rivers' side-scrolling pixel art horror game Home will be available for iOS devices this Thursday, June 20. The Universal App will cost $2.99 and feature new content, new terrifying environments to explore and updated story elements. Rivers has also established a website to showcase the spooky real-world environments people play his game in – anyone who Tweets, Instagrams or Vines their eerie gaming location of choice using the hashtag #homehorror has a chance of making it into the collection. Meanwhile, the OSX version of Home should be released sometime this summer, Rivers announced, adding that the improvements made for the iOS version of the game will be transferred to existing and future desktop versions at some point in the future.
'Home' creator Benjamin Rivers wants to make a psychological dating sim
Benjamin Rivers has spent the last three years working on his atmospheric indie pixel-art horror game, Home, which started spooking up PCs through Rivers' official site last June and terrified a much larger audience once the game hit Steam last August. Despite being a tremendous labor of love, Rivers is ready to move on to his next project, which may be a romantic effort of a different sort."Well, I made a joke on Twitter like a month ago," Rivers told me during GDC, "where I was like 'Hey guys, if I did a horror game with a dating-sim element, would people play it?' and people were like 'Yeah!' Playing things like Mass Effect while finishing this game, playing Persona, that element of a really relationship-based game where you chase stuff like that, that's kind of my new jam."Like Home, Rivers' next game will likely still be two-dimensional and will focus on psychologically influencing the player in subtle ways, though this time the goal will be to induce emotional attachment to a fictional character, rather than instill terror. Not that love isn't terrifying in its own right.
Home to hit iOS 'hopefully before summer,' Android port still a possibility
Benjamin Rivers' Home, first released on PC last year, will be legitimately terrifying iOS and Mac users "hopefully before summer," the one-man studio told us during GDC. "If I could do this before the summer, that would be ideal, but that all depends on getting certified and making sure that all the bugs are worked out," Rivers said.While Home's mobile port has never had an official release date, the original plan was for the game to come out much earlier this year. "The scope of getting this thing re-ported was a huge thing," Rivers said. "I use Game Maker, and they have a new suite of tools which lets you do iOS, Android, all that stuff. The unfortunate thing was that they came out with all that stuff after the game was released, so I've basically been spending the last six to seven months re-coding the whole game to match the new suite and to get everything up and running."Rivers' work re-coding the game for iOS may have been time consuming, but it also may allow him to release an Android version of Home some time in the future. "Theoretically, it's easy to do Android because it's all running off the same code base," Rivers told us. "What I want to do is target the most popular phones and make sure that it's good. If things go weird and wonky, it's so easy to ruin that immersion, so I don't want it to be like 'Oh yeah, it'll totally work on your three year old HTC 2.1 device,' it can't do that."As a result, Rivers anticipates that an Android version of Home would likely be optimized to run on a small selection of the most popular/common Android handsets, such as Samsung's Galaxy S line of devices.
Benjamin Rivers' 'Home' coming to Steam this Friday, only on Steam from then on
Atmospheric pixel-art horror indie Home will be available on Steam starting this Friday, August 31, and will subsequently no longer be available directly from developer Benjamin Rivers, as was previously the case.Home's $2.00 price tag will be bumped up to $2.99, but it will also now include a PDF manual similar to the real-life manual included with the Old-School Collector's Edition, with the possibility of this new digital version containing "something extra." Additionally, anyone who purchased the Old-School Collector's Edition will receive a free voucher for the Steam version of the game.Players who purchased the non-Collector's Edition of Home can expect "updates and support for their purchase in parity with the Steam release (now and in the future)," according to Rivers.%Gallery-163578%
Snapshot: Home (PC)
There are so many games out there we couldn't possibly review them all. Welcome to Snapshot, where we highlight games that might fall outside our usual coverage but are still something we think you should know about. Today: Home for PC. Home doesn't take more than an hour or two to complete – and you'll have to do so in one sitting, as there is no save system – but that doesn't mean it won't have a lasting effect. As a horror-themed adventure game, the simple, pixelated 2D presentation belies Home's ability to disquiet and unsettle. It serves as a great reminder of what older games once taught us: With a little bit of coaxing, imagination can take you a long way.%Gallery-153906%
Benjamin Rivers' 'Home' arrives June 1, pre-orders start today
Home, the pixel-art horror/adventure game that first caught our frightened little eyes last October will be available for the PC on June 1, in your choice of "Regular" and "Old-School Collector's" editions.Home's Regular Edition rings up at $2.00 and entitles you to a DRM-free download of the game, whereas the Old-School Collector's Edition has been created specifically for "players who love classic packaging and think physical media is more than just a delivery method." At $20.00 (plus shipping and handling), the Collector's Edition includes a "classic-style" manual, "exclusive game-universe artifacts," a town map plus "mapping tools to help you find your way" and "maybe some other delicious secrets."Pre-orders go live today, and everyone that pre-orders either version will receive a set of wallpapers as a bonus tchotchke. Take a look at the Collector's Edition and some shiny new screenshots in the gallery below, if you dare.%Gallery-153906%
'Home' is a pixel-art horror adventure game from Benjamin Rivers
We've got a bit of a penchant for the macabre here at Joystiq, and as far as we're concerned, horror themes are drastically underrepresented in both adventure games and pixel art. It's a massive oversight in the industry, but one-man indie development studio Benjamin Rivers may fill that esoteric void in our blackened little hearts with Home, a "unique horror adventure." In Home, players wake to find themselves trapped in a strange and mysterious house, with no recollection of how they got there, or who put them there. Beyond its charming aesthetic, Home's main selling point is its dynamic plot, which is said to unfold in a myriad of different ways, depending how the player completes certain tasks, and in what order. No word yet on platform, price or anticipated release date, though we suspect a PC/Steam release to be most likely. Consider our interest thoroughly piqued.%Gallery-137330%
