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Best of the Rest: Ludwig's picks of 2014
ATTENTION: The year 2014 has concluded its temporal self-destruct sequence. If you are among the escapees, please join us in salvaging and preserving the best games from the irradiated chrono-debris. Jazzpunk Jazzpunk is likely to be misunderstood, or impossible to understand, by design. You could say explanation comes as an insult to its eccentricity. The gist of it is that you're a spy completing missions in a surreal, robot-dominated world, the kind you might dream up after dozing off in the middle of a late-night Leslie Nielsen movie marathon. And while the convoluted wordplay wouldn't feel out of place in a Zucker spoof - in Japan, for example, you're asked if you prefer kimonos or kistereos – the barbs of reality are what really make Jazzpunk stick. Take its odd vision of dystopia, which is regularly mocked through one-off minigames (like a first-person shooter dubbed ... Wedding Quake). Here, you can put on a special visor that lets you see and blast nonsensical Wi-Fi passwords as they dance in the air around you. I mean, that's weird, but ... think about it. The concept is kind of weird to begin with, right here on Earth. Taken as a form of escapism, then, Jazzpunk is silly without taking you too far from the truth.
For a good time, call Devolver
Founded in 2009 in Austin, Texas, Devolver Digital has gained a reputation for introducing the mainstream audience to games with undeniable personality that might have otherwise been overlooked. "When you read Twitter and you follow a bunch of game developers, it's easy to forget that most people outside of this bubble don't really know of many of the games that you hear about all the time. The concept of 'indie' games is still mostly unknown," Mark Foster of Titan Souls developer Acid Nerve told Joystiq. "Devolver kind of breaks out of the bubble and draws more attention to it – makes more people aware that these smaller budget games exist and that some of them are awesome."
Gods Will Be Watching grants 'mercy' in recent update
Gods have been watching you, Gods Will Be Watching players. And after many a curse word was thrown at the screen and much hatred – loving hatred – was poured from your souls, developer Deconstructeam has opted to grant mercy. Yesterday, Gods Will Be Watching was given "The Mercy Update," which adds three new difficulty levels, all of which are designed to make things a bit less crushing. Puzzle Mode and Puzzle Mode Light both remove the element of random chance from the game, focusing instead on the puzzles our hero, Burden, is faced with. Puzzle Mode retains the original difficulty of said puzzles, while Puzzle Mode Light makes them a bit easier. Narrative Mode is the easiest of the bunch, as it turns the game into a narrative experience, "without a heavy challenge," according to the game's Steam page. Apart from introducing new difficulty levels, The Mercy Update includes a number of bug fixes, including one where a woman would come back to life if her child was threatened. The mercy bestowed by this update, in other words, is not for all. Sorry, immortal mama. [Image: Devolver Digital]
Gods Will Be Watching Review: Morality After Math
Gods Will Be Watching is one of the best games I've ever hated. It's more fun to unpack than to play, and easier to admire than love. It looks like a classic point-and-click adventure, with pixel-thin characters standing on stilt legs as they spew sci-fi exposition in chunky text, but Gods Will Be Watching is no cousin to the classic LucasArts line. And unlike those games, it enjoys killing you.
Gods can be listening to the Gods Will Be Watching soundtrack
The soundtrack to Deconstructeam's Gods Will Be Watching is available on creator fingerspit's Bandcamp page for your listening pleasure, publisher Devolver Digital recently announced on Twitter. We've taken a few looks at the point-and-click PC game over the course of its development, up to and beyond its July 24 release date. It ain't exactly sunshine and rainbows as you make decisions regarding who lives and who dies as you and your team travel across the galaxy. But then, you could probably have guessed that, with tracks like "The Face of Genocide" and "Suicide Mission to Save the World" on the game's soundtrack. Heck, the very first track is titled "Self-Justified Sacrifices." But while the music may not be particularly cheery, we can't deny its quality. Have a listen and give your day a dose of drama. [Image: Devolver Digital]
Live Look: Gods Will Be Watching
Gods Will Be Watching, the new adventure game from Spain's Deconstructeam and publisher Devolver Digital, doesn't like you. It has absolutely no problem telling you very quickly just how much it doesn't like you. Across the science-fiction parable's six diverse chapters, just one wrong decision on how to help protagonist Sergeant Burden survive can result in multiple deaths. You will die, the dog will die, a robot will be wrenched apart for parts. The game is so demanding that Joystiq thought a primer looking at the first two chapters of the game might be helpful. Here's an overview of how to come close to completing the first chapter of the game and also a demonstration of how quickly things can go south in its fraught hostage situation. At the end is a quick sample of the game's second chapter, in which you have to survive brutal torture. Good times! [Images: Deconstructeam]
Gods will be launching tomorrow, prepare with trailer
And on the twenty-third day of July, lo did publisher Devolver Digital bestow upon the world a new trailer for Deconstructeam's point-and-be-sad-click game, Gods Will Be Watching. And thus did Joystiq readers weep, for they knew the many feels the game would bring on the morrow, when it releases in both standard and collector's editions. And those that did not know of Gods Will Be Watching, they saw that Joystiq did stream the game with developer Jordi de Paco, and thus knew that they could learn more about the game. Which, again, tells quite the sad tale. Seriously. [Image: Devolver Digital]
Gods Will Be Watching the game's July 24 release
Gods Will Be Watching, the point-and-click adventure of not happy things, will be available July 24 on PC, Mac, and Linux across many of your favorite digital distribution platforms (Steam, GOG and Humble). The game will be available in a stress and panic versions, which are simply being named "standard" and "collector's edition." The standard edition includes... the game. The collector's edition adds in the official soundtrack with 20 tracks, 50-page digital art book and 40-page comic book. These items are all digital so you can't break them in depressive desperation. This is why we can't have nice things!
Joystiq Streams: You, Me, and Gods Will Be Watching [UPDATE: It's over!]
Gods Will Be Watching is appropriately named. The idea of all-powerful beings observing you – passively omniscient, always there and out of sight – is disconcerting, and Deconstructeam's adventure game conjures up that paranoia with just a title and the angular look of its pixelated stars. That the game then twists its psychological knife by asking you to confront starvation, isolation, and desperation on alien planet is downright mean. Not to mention engrossing and seductive. Every time the game makes something horrible happen, whether its your camp attack, a stolen hostage or one of your compatriots going stark raving mad, you can't wait to see what happens next in its dire sci-fi world. Joystiq Streams is not immune to Gods Will Be Watching's cruel charms. We'll be streaming a new preview build of the PC version of Deconstructeam's game at Twitch.tv/Joystiq at 4PM EST. Developer Jordi de Paco will join Joystiq's Jess Conditt and Anthony John Agnello to discuss how to make a game that's as harsh as it is beautiful. Joystiq Streams airs every Tuesday and Thursday at 4PM EST on the Joystiq Twitch channel and right here at Joystiq.com. [Images: Deconstructeam]
Point-and-click thriller Gods Will Be Watching stares down a June launch
Gods Will Be Watching is a dark, depressing and mentally taxing point-and-click adventure from Deconstructeam and Hotline Miami publisher Devolver Digital, due out in June for PC, Mac and Linux. Note that when we say "dark, depressing and mentally taxing," we mean it in the most fun way possible. That's this game's shtick: It places Sgt. Burden in the middle of violent interstellar tensions and asks him to decide who lives, who dies, who eats and who gets tortured – including himself – in a number of unpleasant scenarios. At times, it's either his crew or the world. Gods Will Be Watching mixes puzzles and decision-making with pixelated violence and psychological struggle. "Our team set out to make a new breed of point-and click-adventure and capture the feeling of having to make heavy decisions with sometimes dark consequences," Deconstructeam founder Jordi de Paco, says in a press release. "We understand that Gods Will Be Watching is a departure for the genre but think we have an opportunity to break new ground in storytelling and the weight of decisions." Gods Will Be Watching launches on Steam, GOG and Humble in June. It started as a Ludum Dare 26 game, and you can play that original jam project right here. Pre-orders for a DRM version plus a Steam key are up now at a 10 percent discount, or $9. [Image: Devolver Digital]
Crowdfund Bookie, August 11 - 17: 7 Days to Die, Yatagarasu Attack on Cataclysm
The Crowdfund Bookie crunches data from select successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns that ended during the week and produces pretty charts for you to look at. It was an active week in crowdfunding, as the Kickstarter campaigns for 7 Days to Die, Legend of Iya, Tangiers, Balrum, Candle, Collateral, Codename Cygnus and Crypt Run as well as the Indiegogo campaigns for Yatagarasu Attack on Cataclysm and Gods Will Be Watching came to a close. Open-world survival horror game 7 Days to Die earned the most money this week ($507,612), and had the most backers of the group, with 13,876 people funding the project. Another open-world game, a vehicular combat game called Collateral, had the highest average pledge per person, with each backer averaging $53.52. Take a gander at the week's results and our fancy charts after the break.
Gods Will Be Watching you on PC and mobile in 2014
Gods Will Be Watching, the game jam darling-turned-full-fledged-game about survival and moral dilemmas from Deconstructeam, is coming to PC and mobile devices in 2014 thanks to a successful IndieGoGo campaign and partnership with Hotline Miami publisher Devolver Digital, who matched the crowdsourced funds. The full version of GWBW will take protagonist Captain Burden well beyond the game's original premise of surviving on an alien planet, but you can get a taste of what lies ahead by checking out the original version of the game here. Just remember: gods will be doing that thing they do.
Gods will be watching you play Gods Will Be Watching
Gods Will Be Watching was a Ludum Dare game jam project that had players survive 40 days in a virus-prone, wintry forest with crew members teetering on the edge of insanity and no contact to the outside world – unless you fixed the radio. Maybe. Developer Deconstructeam took this original idea and expanded it into a full game of moral choices, torture and "just following orders," and asked for 8,000€ on Indiegogo. So far the team has raised 14,981€ and has 12 days to go. The full version of Gods Will Be Watching will feature six levels, new cinematics and a fresh empathy system that improves the game's AI. The levels will include running a hostage situation, where players must maintain a balance of calm and terror in the hostages, and possibly kill one (or two, or three) as an example to the other victims. Another level gives the protagonist 48 hours to live as a virus works its way through his body and he tests experimental vaccines on his colleagues to find the cure. And, of course, there's the "survive 20 days of torture" level. Play the original Gods Will Be Watching here for a taste of the moral and scientific conundrums facing players in the full game. Gods Will Be Watching should launch on PC, Mac, Linux and mobile with this funding, and the next stretch goal of 25,000€ will add online leaderboards.
