"In the third of our three StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm preview videos, Community Manager Cloaken takes a look at how eSports looks to be evolving with the coming expansion, the look and feel of the multiplayer game, ladder play, and more."

Coupled with the majority of Indie Kickstarter and Greenlight games, I add SC2: Heart of the Swarm to my most anticipated games in 2013 list. Next month can't come fast enough!

Who else is going to pick this up at launch? Bueller, Bueller...

Many outlets are covering the new PS4 unveiling including Twitter, but for the part of you not following all that, I have compiled some interesting bits about the PS4. Please add the things you find interesting to this thread.

The confirmed specs will be 8G RAM, X86 CPU, hard drive and new video card. Not much in the way of details, but a few confirmed facts that were speculation just a few months ago. They didn't say much about if it will come with BluRay, but I can't imagine it won't. The new DualShock 4 has a touch pad and seems a bit nicer of a design but largely the same. No huge need to change the controller much, in my opinion its already quite good.

Blizzard announced Diablo III will ship on the PS3 & PS4 confirming to me that this current generation of consoles will get way more life that the last ones.

Did you see any bits in the unveiling you found interesting?

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/02/20/2353229/sony-announces-the-ps4
http://us.battle.net//d3/en/blog/8717945

Over the last few weeks I have heard a fair amount of praise about the Skyrim score but only just recently picked up the 4CD set. Over the last week or so I have been listening to Jeremy Soule's score and needed to say a few words about it.

If you love ambient, earthy scores weaved with the right amount of classical you need to pick this up. The song featured in the video above "Masser" showcases how elegantly Soule weaves various elements to immerse you in Skyrim's Nordic ascetic.

Often times with other game scores I come to a song that is thematically out of place or more pomp and show than substance. The Skyrim score contains songs that are woven elegantly together in a way that start to finish there are no out of beat moments. Soule's score earns its high moments by taking the listener a journey. In fact, Soule's score might stand alone in terms of thematic elements that fit together, in my opinion. In the age of the iPod, where composers write each song to stand alone, often times this makes a score a tough thing to listen to start to finish. Soule's Skyrim score doesn't institute this philosophy and is a refreshing take on what a video game score can be.

Clocking in at 3 hours and 38 minutes the score doesn't feel its length and find that the end comes faster than I want. Soule's Skyrim score made me an instant fan and I am going to actively seek out more of his body of work.

RetroLiberty is a cool YouTube channel dedicated to retro games. I appreciate both guys on the channel because the production value is much better than the average retro video faire. In this video they are discussing their top 10 NES games. I track with them on the list for the most part, but personally would have handed the top spot to The Legend of Zelda. Mario 2 would have been my number 2.

I also slightly disagree with them in that Super Mario 3 was not a perfect game. I argue it would be perfect if it had a save feature so its close but not entirely perfect. The version that ships on Super Mario All Stars shipped with a save feature and the graphics were a bit nicer too. But I digress, check out RetroLiberty and their top 10 NES games video, its quite a bit of fun.

Oh and happy Retro Tuesday!

http://www.youtube.com/user/RetroLiberty

Typically the new games I am the most excited about launching are Triple A studio titles. For many years, to me, they have been the pinnacle of rad. But starting this year that has changed. My most anticipated games coming out this year contain only one large studio title and the rest are from Indie companies.

Since I reject the hipster lifestyle I can attribute this to a shift in gaming at large and my gaming tastes evolving. For the last few years, Triple A titles primarily released on consoles have ruled the roost but this is changing significantly as more great Indie companies release awesome stuff. This stuff isn't just on consoles, its primary release is PC and often tablets and phones. Its a pretty awesome evolution too as the average Indie company can, for the most part, release a game a year while some Triple A titles can be in development for 5 or more.

Plus many of the games just look like fun. And I wanted to share with you what games I am looking forward to being released in 2013. The list I would have written in December is now, much, much larger but if you read the site as much as I do, most of these games won't come off as too much of a surprise. But its fun to collect them all for posterity sake.

• bit Dungeon II: KintoGames sequel to the horribly addicting browser & iOS Dungeon crawler. From the occasional post on the Kinto blog it looks like BD2 will include co-op, which is a pretty awesome trend in many of the games on my list. Apparently I love playing games with friends or something.


• Mew-Genics!: Team Meat's next game. They had me at the soundtrack and I have heard through the grapevine they will drop some more meaty news soon. Regardless, I am really excited for Edward McMillens next game.


• Monster’s Ate My Birthday Cake: This is the first game I ever Kickstarted and I can't wait for this to drop. The visuals, play control and goal of this game really floored me. I like fun puzzle games and I can't wait to play this on my phone and PC. Visuals featured above.


• Hammerwatch: A retro themed Gauntlet styled hack-n-slash featuring co-op? I can't help but think this game is an answer to my geek prayers. This games pixel art ascetic, concept and dungeon crawling really look quite cool. Can't wait to feed this to my Wizard...


• Delver’s Drop: Fluid gameplay, built for replayability & awesome graphics mean Kickstarter <3. I hope they blow the door out on their goals so we can get more stuff added to this one.


• Stardew Valley: Don't judge me for wanting to chop grass and wheat all day. So I like tending livestock and getting all sustainable crops with my farm.. its all good! Add in 4 player co-op... I don't know if ill sleep.


• Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm: I can't tell a lie. I love Starcraft. Zerg is my most beloved race. I pre-ordered the Collectors Edition. How could I not, its like a game about... Zerg.

http://kintogames.com/
http://www.mewgenics.com/
http://sleepninjagames.com/
http://www.hammerwatch.com/
http://delversdrop.com/
http://stardewvalley.net/
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/game/heart-of-the-swarm-preview/

Just when you get to the base... Its all over.

An interesting time lapse video of TJ Townsend recreating a scene in doom in high res. You can download the scene as well.

http://elemental79.deviantart.com/art/Doom-Pinky-Demon-Blocks-the-Exit-353835625

Eric Barone is the creator of Stardew Valley the new open-ended country-life RPG with co-op. After posting information of the game to Cheerful Ghost I realized that most of you were as excited about seeing this game and needed to know more about it. In the original thread I asked people to submit questions for the interview and @WhiteboySlim & @scrypt stepped up the the challenge. I wish Eric well and a speedy launch of Stardew Valley!

jdodson: The first time I saw the Stardew Valley video my mind exploded in excitement. The game seems to focus on a community & co-op and I noticed an in game conversation about crop sustainability. As you were coming up with the concept for Stardew Valley what were some of your goals with it?

Eric Barone: I've always been a huge fan of the Harvest Moon games... but missed the feel of the first couple of titles in that series. I always craved another game in that style, but with "even more stuff". That's what got me started on Stardew Valley. In writing dialogues and stories for the game, some of my own personal interests and concerns inevitably get injected into the game. That's why you'll see some things about sustainability, the environment, existential angst, fear of failure... these are things I actually care about myself. So I guess my goal is not only to make the game I always hoped for, but also to connect with people out there through a shared understanding and experience.

WhiteboySlim: I am curious what game inspired you while making Stardew Valley?

Eric Barone: Well, there's an obvious harvest moon influence, as well as all the other old SNES RPGs I played when I was younger... but I also played a lot of minecraft, terraria and sim city during development so far, and definitely drew some ideas from those games.

jdodson: Since you have been showcasing Stardew Valley on Steam Greenlight and the web I wonder what you reaction to the response has been? Has anyone demanded you add guns, loot and hats?

Eric Barone: People haven't made too many demands, but there's definitely been a lot of requests for different things, including guns, loots and hats hehe. I like to hear everyone's ideas... if something seems really popular and not too insane to add in then I'll probably do it.

jdodson: There haven’t been a lot of games focusing on a thriving farm. I think the last one I played was Farmville and it was WAY too simple to be awesome. I wonder how you have approached adding a deeper element to Stardew Valley than just plant, harvest, plant.

Eric Barone: I want players to always have multiple ways to accomplish the different goals they strive for. So, if you didn't want to farm, you could just spend all day in the mines instead. Or you could become an all-star fisherman and cook the finest seafood platters. I am still working on the game, but I really want to add in more open-ended farming features, like crop or animal breeding, as well as plenty of end-game content to keep the game interesting for a long time. The possible area you can farm is actually pretty massive, so you'll need a lot of special equipment to be able to reach your full potential as a farmer.

WhiteboySlim: The video showed off quite a bit of combat. (Is that an orc at 1:24?) But I noticed the list of skills they mentioned don't seem to relate at all to combat. Will combat be a major part of the game, and if so, how will your character improve their fighting ability?

Eric Barone: Combat can be a substantial part of the game if you want it to. There's always other ways of getting the items you need than exploring deep into dangerous areas, though. Your character will improve fighting ability mainly through finding better weapons and accessories. You can also eat cooked meals and drink beverages to give yourself temporary boosts to combat skills and to heal yourself in dangerous situations.

jdodson: Lets say I have an awesome run in Stardew Valley but I want to start over from scratch. Is the game setup for multiple runs or is it fairly linear?

Eric Barone: There is a story in Stardew Valley, which includes little scripted cutscenes. So if you start another game you might have to watch some of those again, unless I include an option to turn it off. However, there are plenty of things that are less linear and will be worthwhile to try in different ways... for example, you can try to marry another person or make choices that affect the community in one way or another.

jdodson: What is your favorite riddle?

Eric Barone: What has it got in its pocketses?

WhiteboySlim: As far as the co-op goes, can you provide some more details about how that will be handled? Will co-op work over a LAN or will it be internet only? Will the other players just be dropped into your town as visitors or will you all exist within the same town?

Eric Barone: Co-op will work on both internet and LAN. What I'm planning is that any farm you create could work as a potential "server"... so there will be some way of setting your farm as "open", and then your friends can stop in and play with you. Friends could even set up a permanent home in your valley. So it's kind of up to the you and the people you play with as to how closely you want to play together--as a full co-op, or as separate valleys with visits to each other.

jdodson: Will the game allow you to change your appearance, house, clothing or allow any other kind of customization?

Eric Barone: Yes, there will be many ways to customize your game, including but not limited to furniture, flooring, wallpapers, accessories, haircuts, and houseplants.

jdodson: In the trailer it says you can “uncover the secrets of the caves.” I wonder if you can give us a bit a spoiler? What's so secret about the caves?

Eric Barone: The caves are deep and very old... There are rumors of strange, intelligent creatures living down there, in the darkness. Some say they snatch things from people's houses at night.

Scypt: I'm wondering if there are any story elements, or adventure objectives.

Eric Barone: There are story elements that will give you goals to strive for... and there will probably be smaller quest-like objectives as well, with satisfying rewards to make them worthwhile. All of these will be optional.

jdodson: In SimCity you could select things that would destroy your city. Like an earthquake, fire or in the Super NES version Bowser would rampage through your City like Godzilla. Will there be any events that could wipe out your crop, livestock or house? Sorry, I love things that have post apocalyptic elements. Speaking of, I have an idea for Stardew Valley 2. Or rather, Stardew Valley 2232. A few survivors are still on the earth and have formed a small society. Plants are growing again, some animals survived. Same game as Stardew Valley BUT its for the survival of the human race and the advancement of plants and animals on the earth. Throw in some mutants and an evolved Squirrel race that want to wipe out humans and I think we are talking a million units shipped. Throw in a Steam sale and its early retirement!

Eric Barone: haha interesting idea! I don't want to punish players randomly with terrible storms or hurricanes... but then again, in real life farming can be a challenge! I think that most disastrous things in Stardew Valley will be avoidable somehow, so you never feel like the game is trying to make you irritated and depressed and without hope...

jdodson: I am wondering what the coolest feature in the game is for you and the people that have played it so far?

Eric Barone: So far, I've really enjoyed giving myself tons of resources and just designing a really cool looking farm. But that's just me. Another one who's played Stardew Valley says she likes exploring and discovering new areas and monsters in the mines!

jdodson: Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions before we go are there anything you want to say about Stardew Valley or its post apocalyptic survival sequel?

Eric Barone: I'd like to invite everyone reading this to come visit http://www.stardewvalley.net and help shape the future of this game with your comments, ideas, and encouragement! :)

(Maybe your apocalypse sequel idea will really take off ;)

Thanks for having me on the site!

After trying out the Alpha of Peanut Butter Fingers 2D cover shooter Ur Not a Hero, I was impressed. I decided to ask them to talk to me about the game and the next steps because I am really interested in the story behind it and when the final may make its appearance. Because, the world needs more violent 2D cover shooters to round things out.

jdodson: You recently released Ur Not A Hero in Alpha. I wonder how this has been going for you? How have people been responding to it?

John Ribbins: It’s all a bit of a shock really. I read indiegames.com pretty much every day and I opened it up on Monday and saw UNAH at the top of the page. I think I literally went “eep”. The following response on PC Gamer and the subsequent number of downloads was a total surprise. I’ve put out games before and had a couple of comments and downloads, so to have people writing about it and making YouTube videos has been super nice. I have to admit that when I saw that people were playing it I got a bit scared because it’s still so rough and broken, but the response has been really encouraging. It’s nice to see people having fun with it and it’s great to get critical feedback at this early stage.

jdodson: I wonder what changes you need to make to Ur Not A Hero before you release the final version?

John Ribbins: Yikes. There’s a big to-do list. I rushed to do an Alpha before Xmas because I just wanted something out, get some feedback so far. There’s a ton of stuff that’s simply missing, the interface is completely horrible to use, and some screens are literally just text, the list goes on! The levels too are really just placemarker, a lot of them are just testing different features right now, in the final version there will actually be a difficulty curve through the levels, getting gradually harder, as opposed to completely random. There’s more playable characters too. The alpha was really about seeing if people enjoyed the mechanics of the game and to get the level editor fully functional so that we could build stuff. From here it’s about actually creating proper game levels and taking on board all the feedback to make what we do have better.

jdodson: I have a recommendation for a playable character in Ur Not A Hero. A bald character, mid 40s with a plain white shirt and no shoes. Has a machine gun and during his special attack he says “Yippee Ki Yay Ye Motherfucker!” Saying this makes him go a bit faster, take less damage but afterward his feet are red and walks with a bit of a limp.

John Ribbins: I just tried to draw him:

http://i.imgur.com/1MQWth8.png

But he kinda just looked like an old hobo guy, not Mr.Willis. I think it’s the stubble. Anyway, that’s awesome, I guess he’s highly susceptible to broken glass and can’t shoot cops? But he keeps coming back, to do sequels of increasingly lower quality…

jdodson: Any plans on doing a Kickstarter to finish the game?

John Ribbins: So far the game is something that me and Danny have been developing in our free time. Having had such a positive response from people has inspired us to get cracking and finish the game. How we go about that is something that we’re exploring at the moment. KickStarter is certainly an option, as is Steam Greenlight. We’re currently developing a game with Sony for the Playstation VITA, so there are lots of options. I wouldn’t want to pigeon hole us into anything specific right now.

jdodson: I am sure you thought about the game quite a bit before you started working on it. At what point did you realize you Ur Not A Hero needed to be an actual game?

John Ribbins: That’s a tricky one. I’ve wanted to do the Slide/Cover thing in 2D for a very long time. Last year I started making a tile map editor just for the challenge of it. I realised I could make it do the 2D levels I’d need for the cover based game and I had a pretty nice AI engine for characters navigating the maps, so I decided to give it a go. Basically knocked out a 1 level demo with just the machinegun guy, some crates and a few baddies in a weekend and got some people to play it. Have to thank Jemma, Aaron and Peter at Lunar Software, Dean Gifford from Preliminal and Peter Silk from Surprised Man and my lovely girlfriend for playing it and giving me a ton of feedback, which then helped me figure out what to do with it. I’ve been a bit naughty really, there’s no design doc or anything like that, it’s more been a case of people suggesting stuff that sounds super cool, prototyping it in the game and then seeing if it works. Now that the alpha is out we’re being a lot more structured in how we move forward.

jdodson: What is the tech used in Ur Not A Hero?

John Ribbins: It’s made in Click Team’s Multimedia Fusion 2. I can write code but I don’t particularly want to, so it’s perfect for me. Once you’ve build your engine in MMF it’s easy to focus on creating gameplay as opposed to worrying about render pipelines or whatever. That said, once you start trying to get MMF to independently control 30 different characters, things get a bit tricky. I’m actually surprised it doesn’t lag.

jdodson: Was the art made by yourself or are you working with an artist?

John Ribbins: I drew and animated the characters, but credit for pretty much everything else goes to Danny Pearson @lambdansack. Danny has worked at my games studio for a couple of years and he had some free time so started making tons of assets for the game. The simplicity of the art style was initially about speed, but we kind of like it. We keep putting shiny nice things in, then hating them and making them into squares instead. The engine randomises the objects in a scene every time you play, so there’s a ton of assets to draw. Danny has been a legend in that respect. That said I think there’s only about 30% of the final asset list completed.

jdodson: What platforms do you want to support? Any thought to Mac or Linux?

John Ribbins: Right now it’s a straight PC title, ultimately I’d like to support Mac too. Further down the line I’d like to look at other platforms, like XBLIG or VITA but right now it’s more about getting the core game done. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Linux, so I’ve no idea if I could support it or not!

jdodson: I saw Jaws 3 recently and it blew my mind. It was at Sea World and mother Jaws and Baby Jaws busted into the park. Hilarity ensued. At the end as mom Jaws exploded its actual “jaws” came at the screen and hovered around for 15 seconds. Not sure this is a question but it was extremely noteworthy.

John Ribbins: Hmmmm a Roy Scheider character with a harpoon….

jdodson: Ur Not A Hero mixes a lot of awesomeness. ln one level you simply kill all the gangbangers and in another level you need to survive a Police raid. At times it feels like an awesomely campy 80s action movie. I wonder what some of your influences were in making Ur Not A Hero?

John Ribbins: Thanks. I’m glad you enjoyed the awesomeness cocktail. It’s been a bit of a mashup really. Once we had the cover system and editor in place, we could start adding characters and missions and it kind of grew from just picking stuff we thought was cool. The Heist levels are totally a homage to Payday the Heist. Max Payne and Sam Fisher are kind of obvious I guess, but they’re really just hints to how the characters work. “oh it’s Max Payne, I bet I can dive and shoot…yep”. I love trashy action films, like the Gary Daniels stuff from the ‘90s so I guess that fed into it too. Through the studio I’m at we work in a (generally) quite organised fashion, with design docs and spreadsheets and timeplans, so it’s been really liberating with UNAH to be like “shall we make SWAT guys come down ropes when you crack the safe?” and then just doing it, even if it takes a week. The weirdest thing is when people say like “oh hey, this is totally from that bit in X”, and I’m thinkin’ “I’ve never even seen X, but OK, yeah, it’s from that”. I think when you’re designing you absorb a lot of influence kinda via osmosis. Sometimes you don’t realise that something influenced you until someone else points it out.

jdodson: Paramount Pictures comes to you and wants to buy the rights to Ur Not A Hero for a full length feature film. They low ball you with buying the movie rights for $25,000. What do you do?

A. Table flip

B. Chair throw

C. Scream “Show me the money”

D. Cave in and accept the offer

E. All Of The Above

John Ribbins: Hold on, there’s not an option to tell them no.. at least not without damaging furniture.

jdodson: What video games come to mind as games that you really enjoy and inspire you to make games?

John Ribbins: Ah that’s not fair! Thats like the hardest question, I’ve played a fair number of games. New(ish) : Super Meat Boy, Hotline Miami, Chivalry, Punch Quest, Spelunky, Happy Wheels. Old(er) : Cabal, Mercs, Carmageddon, original GTA, Quake.

jdodson: Peanut Butter Fingers has released a few other games as well. I just played Hack, a game that admits to being “more violent than pacifism.” In Hack you go head to head with another Gladiator and it has a “paper, rock scissors bloody offspring” vibe. From start to finish, how long did it take to release Hack and what were your goals for making it?

John Ribbins: Ha, cheers for giving it a go! I put it together one afternoon for fun, it was just a super unfair 1 player game. A buddy of mine came over that evening and we tried making it 2 player, then got quite drunk and spent about 3 hours solid just playing it. I don’t think it’s a game, because it’s totally unbalanced, it’s more a simulator for stabbing your friends and laughing about it together. I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

jdodson: I want to thank you for doing this interview John. Anything else you want to let us know about that I missed?

John Ribbins: Thanks for getting in touch with me to do it. I guess thanks to all the people that have downloaded it and played it, it’s been totally awesome to see people having fun with it. I think I’d also like to promise people that it’ll get finished, but that there’s only 2 people trying to make the darn thing, so please be patient! We’re also holding down real jobs and have to choose between UNAH and sleep. Finally, I was massively disorganised when the game came out, and didn’t really give anyone a place to go to get updates etc etc. If you’re interested in staying in touch, getting the next build and so on, then please follow me up on twitter @flappyfingers, or check into my website, www.peanutbutterfingers.co.uk. I’ll be trying to updates as soon as possible.

Lots of love and some cake.

http://peanutbutterfingers.co.uk/

"Delver's Drop is a 2D Action RPG with fluid physics-based movement, snappy combat, shifting dungeons, and a rogue's gallery of individually leveled character classes. With an emphasis on mystery and dynamic gameplay experiences, the game features randomization for infinite replay, enigmatic puzzle permutations to unravel, multiple narrative paths, customizable character growth, and layers of secrets to unearth."

Lately I have seen a fantastic amount of great looking games from indie studios that __NEED__ to be made. I backed this project after reading about it and watching the video. I really enjoy the dungeon crawling genre and want to see more of these epic takes on it. The art style of Delver's Drop is very lush and I like how the game control looks. I recommend you look into this game and if you feel so inclined, send these guys some Kickstart & Greenlight love.

http://delversdrop.com/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixelscopic/delvers-drop
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=124366711