Judas Interview: How Ken Levine Is Building on BioShock With 'Narrative LEGOs'
Renowned designer Ken Levine invited IGN's Ryan McCaffrey and The Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley to Ghost Story Games in Boston, where we spent six hours playing a recent build of his new narrative-driven single-player first-person shooter Judas, followed by a lengthy conversation with the award-winning game designer to discuss the long wait since BioShock Infinite, bringing the "narrative LEGOs" concept to life in Judas, what the game is all about, and much more. You can watch the entire interview in the video above, but before you do, we figured you might want to know a little bit about Judas first. So we'll share the basics, without spoiling anything: Judas is a first-person narrative-driven shooter that, from a moment-to-moment gameplay perspective, will feel familiar to BioShock fans. You have a gun in your right hand and various organic powers on your left hand.
Story-wise, you play as Judas, a young woman aboard the Mayflower, a city-sized spaceship on a multi-generational mission to save humanity by transporting what's left of it from Earth to a new planet, called Proxima Centauri. You start the game having been reprinted (yes, meaning you were dead), where you'll wake up and begin interacting with the holographic projections of the three leaders who run the ship: Tom, the ship's head of security who wants to protect all of humanity by ensuring that the Mayflower's original mission stays on course; Nefertiti, the ship's Nobel Prize-winning doctor who wants to create a civilization of full robots with no human flaws; and Hope, who wants your help deleting herself because the existential crisis of her existence leads her to the conclusion that deletion is the only way to end her suffering. Further complicating matters is that the three of them are a family: Tom and Nefertiti were married, and Hope was their adopted daughter. It's up to you to side with whomever you feel like, but whatever choice you make has consequences. Doing a favor for Tom might piss off Hope and/or Nefertiti, and vice versa.
This constant push and pull is at the heart of Judas's player-driven narrative, and it means that no two playthroughs are ever likely to be the same. That's the "narrative LEGOs" in action, and what we talk a lot about in the course of the interview. Enjoy!
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The roguelike Sworn has been announced - an open playtest is available until March 31:
Sworn - Official Announcement Trailer
SWORN is a 1-4 player co-op action rogue-like. Explore and reclaim a fallen Camelot from the reign of a corrupted Arthur and his Knights of the round table.
Alexander Chernyavskiy talks about Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy
To go with the launch of the Kickstarter campaign for their new title, Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy, the ATOM Team development team has been kind enough to answer some of our questions regarding their latest game. If you are into Swordhaven, don't hesitate in checking its Kickstarter page! We also have a French-translated version of the interview right here.
Hello, and thank you! Could you introduce yourself?
I'm Alexander Chernyavskiy, one of the writers and game developers for Atom Team, a small indie crew of 10 guys spread across Europe, making video games. Our previous projects were the two post-apocalyptic titles: ATOM RPG and its stand-alone sequel/expansion - Trudograd. Right now we're working on our third game- Swordhaven : Iron Conspiracy.
How did you get the idea for Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy?
Almost every developer has a backlog of projects they want to work on. Talking about ATOM, the idea of creating a Fallout-inspired RPG has been with us since 2008, simply because we're fans of the series
The idea for Swordhaven came from different sources that I'll avoid naming so as not to spoil some parts of the game, but mainly we wanted to try and develop something new and fantastical.
What are your influences for the development of the game?
I'd say our main role models are Baldur's Gate 1 (as well as other Infinity Engine titles), Neverwinter Nights, and a mostly forgotten Black Isle project called Lionheart. That's not all, of course. But to list every game that possibly influenced us in creating Swordhaven seems like a futile undertaking.
Since when have you been working on Swordhaven?
We discussed its concepts and mechanics on and off for a year and a half now, but the really intense part during which we created most of what's going to become the Kickstarter demo took us less than a year.
What are your plans for Swordhaven?
If we get the Kickstarter support we require, late 2025 will be the time we'll introduce our biggest and most complex game yet to the world Before then there will be a period of early access, when we'll collaborate with our players to improve the game before launch.
Geneforge 2 - Infestation Release Livestream and Q&A #2
Release stream! Take a look at the new unique, open-ended fantasy RPG in an alien world.
Geneforge 2 - Infestation is a truly open-ended fantasy adventure in a unique world of alien fantasy. You are one of the Shapers, wizards with the awesome power to create life. Want a tool, a trap, an army? You summon it into existence. You create mighty beasts, and they totally obey you. Usually. Almost 90 zones to explore and 50+ hours of gameplay. Multitudes of skills, abilities, factions, treasures, and servants to create.
Geneforge 2 - Infestation is coming out March 27 for Windows and Macintosh. We're celebrating the game with several developer streams. Come see the game and ask questions!
This livestream is done by the developer, a grumpy indie developer veteran who has been making his odd, low-budget, fun adventures for 30 (!) years. Enjoy learning about Geneforge and the indie games business from a fun old crank.
IGN interviewed Swen Vincke about Baldur's Gate 3, Larian and the game industry:
Baldur's Gate 3: Director Swen Vincke Answers All Our Questions About Foregoing DLC, AAA Development, and More
"As far as we are concerned, the chapter is closed."
At the Game Developers Conference 2024, Larian Studios head Swen Vincke gave an incredibly detailed talk entitled "The Secrets of Baldur's Gate 3." In it, he divulged a number of new details about the game's development, ending on the bombshell that Larian would neither be making DLC for Baldur's Gate 3, nor making Baldur's Gate 4. The studio is moving on.
Shortly after his talk, IGN had the pleasure of sitting down with Vincke to talk about... well, everything. The talk we'd just heard, the news he dropped, how the studio is doing post-release, how he feels about the games industry, all of it. We've already written up some of the biggest new reveals Vincke shared with us during that conversation, such as the playable Ketheric Thorm and the studio's plans for additional detail in the game's evil endings. But Vincke shared so many cool insights during our hour-long chat that we felt we needed to share them all with the world. Here's our (lightly edited for clarity) full conversation with Vincke from GDC:
Do we want to start with the elephant in the room? I mean, you kind of dropped a bombshell at the end of that talk, right? You're not doing Baldur's Gate 4. You're not going back to the world of D&D. Obviously you're working on something new, the studio is not going to implode tomorrow. You said a little bit in the talk, but why not Baldur's Gate 4?
Vincke: Well, we started actually thinking about it after Baldur's Gate 3, because of all the success, the obvious thing would've been to do DLC. So we started on one and we started even thinking about BG 4, but we noticed very rapidly that our hearts were not ticking faster. We hadn't really had closure on BG 3 yet, and just to jump forward into something new felt wrong. We also had spent a whole bunch of time converting the system into a video game, and we wanted to do new things. There were a lot of constraints in making D&D, and the 5th Edition is not an easy system to put into a video game, and we had all these ideas of new combat that we wanted to try out, and so they were not compatible. You could see the team was doing it because everybody felt like we had to do it, but it wasn't really coming from the heart and we're very much a studio all about being from the heart.
Scribe RPG: A 2D open world action, adventure, RPG
Combines retro platformers and point and click adventures feel, with beautiful graphics and feature rich game play.
Our intention is to create a feature-rich RPG that combines everything we love from old point-and-click adventures, action games, and puzzle platformers of the late 80s, all of this without the constraints of old technology, and with a strong emphasis on exploration gameplay throughout. We want to push pixel art aesthetics to their limits and use present technology for gameplay features and content that would never have been possible in the early years of computer games.
PAX East 2024 - Kristala is Dark Souls But With Cats
Cats and souls-what do they have in common? Correct. Cats do have souls. That isn't where I'm going with this. I'm talking about a Cat soulslike called Kristala.
Kristala lets you play as a cat person, and yes, you can customize them. I stopped and played a demo at the Astral Clocktower Studios booth at PAX East. Not only did I play the game, but I spoke with Co-Owner and Marketing Director Sarah Schaffstall about the game. She fed me all kinds of juicy details. Let's see what all this meowing is about.
MASTERING MAGIC AND UPGRADING EQUIPMENT ARE YOUR KEYS TO SUCCESS IN AILUR
In this dark fantasy RPG, you will be tasked with two main objectives. You'll need to master all six of the different magics and lift the curse afflicting the world of Ailur. A magic shard crashed into the world and shattered into six pieces. Six clans each took over a piece of the shard and learned unique magic.
GamingBolt compared the PS5 and the PC Version of Horizon Forbidden West:
Horizon Forbidden West PC Graphics Analysis - How Does it Stack Up Against the PS5 Version?
With this feature, we take a look at Horizon Forbidden West on PC and analyze its aspects ranging from graphical features to performance and much more.
Horizon Forbidden West is a sequel that takes what worked in the original and amps it all up to eleven with a bigger open world that's bursting with vivid locales to explore and a myriad of things to do. Guerilla Games has finally brought this wonderful experience to PC with the aid of Sony-owned Nixxes Software, the same team that assisted in developing the PC port of Zero Dawn.
The transition from PS5 to PC in terms of the gameplay is obviously pretty smooth, but how does it fare on a technical level? How far can you push the game on PC? And what are the performance metrics? With this technical analysis, we take a look at Horizon Forbidden West on PC and how it compares to the PS5 release.
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