Overland
Latest
Apple Arcade's best selling point: Games you'll actually want to play
Despite being just $5, Apple Arcade still seems like a tough sell for some gamers, who are already bombarded with other monthly services like Xbox Game Pass. And I'll admit, as someone who doesn't spend much time on mobile games these days, there wasn't much about the service that truly excited me when Apple announced it in March. Sure, a library of mobile games that you can easily play across iOS devices, Macs and the Apple TV sounds nice, but I've already got way too much to play on other platforms. After spending some time with a few of Apple Arcade titles last week, though, I'm convinced it'll delight diehard gamers and casual players alike. Yes, there's a lot more than Frogger to choose from.
Game development is better with friends at Finji
Canabalt creator Adam Saltsman founded Finji, a collaborative development studio, in March. Finji offers publishing and other services to developers, and it runs on revenue share for each project – for Saltsman's new apocalyptic survival game, Overland, this means each of the four development team members will split revenue from the game "basically forever" once it's released. Finji works with other developers on their own games, such as Infinite Fall's Night in the Woods, and Fernando Ramallo and David Kanaga's Panoramical, which is also backed by Polytron Partners. So far, the collaboration is going better than he'd hoped, Saltsman says. Developers use a combination of text messages, Skype and Google apps to get their work done, and they're figuring out the kinks among everyone's schedules. Most of the team is local to Austin, Texas, but they do have to deal with some time zone confusion and melding different work habits.
Overland: A lonely game filled with monsters
Overland is not a zombie game. It's a turn-based survival story set in an apocalyptic wasteland filled with monsters, and it plays out as if action figures from Half-Life 2 and Stephen King's The Stand were on a road trip across a chess board, creator Adam Saltsman says. It is a horror game, in a sense. "It is intended to be scary or unsettling or lonely, but I don't think it will be compared to Resident Evil or Amnesia," Saltsman tells Joystiq. "The thing I'm most interested in right now is, what if the people in a roguelike-type scenario weren't heroes and could not become heroes ... how do they manage? I like that feeling of vulnerability more than the feeling of 'horror' exactly. As a team we're definitely investigating things that are lonely and vulnerable and beautiful more than 'scary' so far, I think."
