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PlayStation Plus nabs Road Not Taken, Dragon's Crown in August
Sony has unveiled next month's PlayStation Plus lineup, announcing that subscribers will receive free downloadable copies of Road Not Taken, Crysis 3, and other featured games across its platforms in August. PlayStation 4 owners will receive Polytron's brain-bending puzzle-platformer Fez and Spry Fox's stylish roguelike Road Not Taken. PlayStation 3 subscribers get Crytek's futuristic FPS Crysis 3 and Ed Key's first-person exploration game Proteus, while PS Vita owners can look forward to Vanillaware's fantasy-themed beat-'em-up Dragon's Crown and Digital Dreams' "infographics action game" Metrico. Fez, Proteus, and Dragon's Crown are also available as Cross-Buy titles for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita. All featured games will be freely downloadable for PlayStation Plus members in North America when the PlayStation Store updates next Tuesday. [Video: Sony]
Infographics platformer Metrico charts a PS Vita release next month
The world's first and so far only "infographics action game," Metrico, is gearing up for a PS Vita launch in August, developer Digital Dreams revealed today. Metrico is a minimalist side-scrolling platformer in which players navigate mazes of bar graphs, pie charts, and other statistics that form level layouts. The game's starring characters can change the world around them by running and leaping at specific moments, and more complex elements like percentage indicators and jarring angles are introduced as gameplay progresses. Metrico will premiere for the PS Vita via the PlayStation Network on August 5 in North America. [Video: Digital Dreams]
Putting personality in pie charts with Metrico
Metrico is a platformer about bar graphs, pie charts, statistics and angles, asking players to repeat motions in order to shrink and grow their surroundings and advance through various vague landscapes. It's minimalistic and the presentation is concise – your character (a boy or girl) is a silhouette, and the surrounding objects are largely monotone. The build we played in August was rough, but almost one year on, the game is starting to round out. The animations are smooth, the puzzles border on frustrating difficulty without actually becoming a chore, and the game takes advantage of all of the Vita's senses. A fingertip on the back touch pad aims a line to measure angles, the bumpers shoot a projectile, and you use the touchscreen to select the gender of your character. Metrico feels like it's almost done, and Digital Dreams CEO Thijmen Bink says it might be ready for launch in a few months' time. The team has to polish the final levels and do one more, tiny thing: add a story.
Bar graphs, pie charts, boys and girls in Vita platformer Metrico
Metrico will feature two character options when it launches on Vita in the spring: a boy and a girl. The avatars are silhouettes that leap around an environment of pie charts, bar graphs, angles and statistics, with each step and jump altering the immediate surroundings. When we played Metrico at Gamescom last year, it was in pre-alpha, but the game's fundamental platforming and puzzle mechanics were striking. One errant step and the pathway in front of the avatar was impossible to cross, but a teleport restart system made it easy to try again (and again). There was only one playable avatar at that time – a boy in a hoodie – but now there's a lady in a skirt and sneakers, too. Digital Dreams CEO Thijmen Bink tells Joystiq the decision to add a lady avatar enriches the story: "There are a few reasons; the most important one is that we want all of our players to be able to identify with the avatar they are playing. Another important reason is narrative. The choice actually strengthens the story we wish to tell." We'll hear more about Metrico's story and its updated gameplay at GDC next week.
Metrico: The Vita game about pie charts, bar graphs and platforming
The developers at Digital Dreams don't hold degrees in mathematics or business, nor are they big statistics nerds, but their first Vita game, Metrico, takes place entirely on a landscape of bar graphs, pie charts, percentages and angles. If anything, CEO Thijmen Bink and Lead Designer Gene Nellen resemble the character jumping around the numerical landscape – a man in a hoodie. Well, it's the silhouette of a man in a hoodie: Metrico is a clean, crisp platformer in a minimalistic art style, with 3D objects shaded in flat, friendly blues, pinks and grays. It's intended to draw focus on the character's movements and how his actions impact the environment. Jump and the platform in front of him may rise with each leap. Walk back and forth and another platform might shrink, making it possible to jump on top and continue. Bink and Nellen want players to notice how often they perform certain actions, such as walking to the left or hopping up and down, and the shifting graphs visualize these motions in ways that can't be ignored, since at times an errant leap can make a section impossible to complete.
Vita game Metrico uses infographics as landscapes
A mysterious Vita game called Metrico was Among Sony's announcements for Pub Fund games last night at GDC. The PlayStation Blog now has the first info and trailer of the game, a platformer in which infographics serve as the landscape.Metrico is the first game from new Dutch developer Digital Dreams. "We have a short history in AAA development but quickly found out that we wanted to start our own company and work on our own projects," said Level Designer Roy van de Mortel. "As a small indie company we strive to create elegant and meaningful experiences in the form of downloadable console games."A prototype of Metrico previously won the "Best Design" award from Indiepub's Indie Propeller Awards.
