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Monster head-turner GNAH changes name to GNOG
Someone pass the Eggnog – or just the GNOG, if you're feeling saucy. Montreal gaming collective KO-OP Mode has changed the name of its new puzzle game from GNAH to GNOG because of a trademark dispute over the original title. KO-OP Mode tweeted the name change and co-founder Saleem Dabbous broke it all down in an email to Joystiq: "We changed the name since there was a trademark dispute with a company that owned the mark 'GNAH,' so we decided to go with GNOG, which is short for gnoggin (the "G" is silent). It's always difficult to change the name of something you love, but GNOG has really grown on us after a few months of secretly using it, and it's hard to look back." GNOG is a blend of Rubik's Cube puzzles and Polly Pocket, where players explore the miniature worlds within the heads of themed creatures, clicking and pulling on the inside of a head to impact the face and vice versa. During the Horizon conference at E3 2014, KO-OP Mode showed off a new version of the game, playing through a series of giant floating monster heads.The monsters included one shaped like a boat with lifesavers as eyes, and a rotating ship's wheel and cabin on the inside of the nautical monster's head. See a short, off-screen video of that monster below.
Gnah's monster-poking puzzles head to Steam
Gnah, the head-turning puzzler from Montreal gaming collective KO-OP Mode, is coming to Steam for PC, Mac and Linux, complete with Steam Play, cloud saves and "maybe even controller support," the developer says. KO-OP Mode hasn't set a launch date, though Gnah has a release window of 2014. In Gnah, players poke around the heads of giant monsters, interacting with their faces and then turning them around to mess about inside of their craniums, hoping to eventually find the exit. Playing with the inside of a monster head affects the outside, and playing with the outside changes the inside. All giant monsters are beautiful on the inside, of course. Previous iterations of Gnah featured a tiny boy inside of the monsters' heads, but after playtesting, KO-OP Mode has decided to ditch the character in favor of liberated gameplay: "When you were on the outside, you could manipulate any part of the monster, and when you'd flip to the inside, you could play as the kid and interact with objects within the kid's reach. Unfortunately this turned out to be not very fun – the more free-form play of the outside of the head was much more enjoyable and it was frustrating to switch to the kid and be limited to only what they could reach." Gnah had a spot in the GDC Indie Megabooth, and responses to the gameplay tweaks were "awesome," KO-OP Mode says. [Image: KO-OP Mode]
