In the wake of this years many gaming disappointments, community fiascos and the ever growing disappearance of the sacred dollar menu at restaurants many wonder about the future of gaming and culture. Will the industry see a new wave of games that captivate us in the same way as the ones that came before? Or are we to be held in a creative limbo where everything created is the exact same as the things that came before? In a world of sequels, reboots and DLC packs some developers are taking the gaming basketball down the court and jumping up for a slam dunk. I was able to experience one such effort in developer Travis Newman's brand new game Animator's Nightmare. After experiencing the game I asked him if I could tap his creative energies and he was gracious enough to let us in on his process and creative vision.

I encourage you to experience the game first hand and you can do so by communing with the link below.

http://nrccstudents.org/newmant/flash/final_newman.html

jdodson: So congratulations on the successful release of Animator’s Nightmare. We all know that lots of game development is crippled by slipped deadlines, bugs and unmet expectations. How were you able to release the game nearly bug-free so quickly?

Travis: Not only did it release on time, but I was able to launch a few days early! The final code wasn’t due to the publisher for another three days. But as for the bug-free quality of the game, I’d have to attribute that to myself. Being the smartest person in the room has it’s advantages.

jdodson: How is it working with Epic Software to license the Unreal Engine for the game? I know they recently switched to a new flat price model that seems to have gained them much attention from Indie Developers.

Travis: Epic are amazing people. Who knew that you could easily wrap a Flash SWF into the Unreal Engine? This is truly next-generation thinking on their parts.

jdodson: Animator's Nightmare starts with a view of someone sleeping and the player can clearly hear crickets in the background. Are we experiencing a creepy telepath watching the player from outside a window and then later uses his mental abilities to invade the Animator's mind?

Travis: You know, I had the idea of all the symbolism in my mind, but I think I’ll let the player decide on this one. I don’t want to tell you how you should feel about something, or what symbolism you should see in the game. If you think you’re playing as the animator, or if you think you’re playing as a telepath, it doesn’t matter to me as long as you love the game.

jdodson: After watching Indie Game the movie I realized a couple things. First off, I am just like them in that I am a guy that loves video games. I am also strange and quirky and can talk for hours about nerd things. Since I shared so much in common with the people in that movie that later went on to become quite rich doing the things they loved I expect to achieve that level of success. Since it will happen for me any moment you must feel similarly being a creative so I wonder what your plans are for spending your first million dollars? I don’t mean to say we will stop at just making a million dollars, I bet we will make like 50 million dollars I just mean what you will do with your first million?

Travis: The first mil goes toward fixing world hunger. That should only take a million to fix, right? Then, you’re right, I’ll make 50 easily. The next 49 is all yachts, planes, and mansions. I’m in talks with ISA to customize a Granturismo already.

jdodson: With the social and cultural impact of Animator's Nightmare being so large have you considered releasing the game as Open Source?

Travis: I had no idea how huge it would be. With the next release, I’m definitely shipping the source. The next release will be transcendent, genre-defining art. I’m just worried about making it too hard for future developers to follow this up.

jdodson: So the first place where the game started becoming truly great for me is the first time I had to jump over the first static alien graphic. Something about pressing any key to jump and seeing the character fly upwards was magical. It’s as if my spirits were lifted with the key press. As you consider game design elements, how do you try to imbibe these emotional elements as a gift to the player through your art?

Travis: Look, I don’t pretend to be a master at evoking emotion. I don’t have to pretend. You’ve seen it. Not many people have been animators before, and I wanted to really make the player feel like they’re the animator, trapped in their animation software, and being attacked by their former creations. It’s terrifying, and if the player isn’t terrified, what’s the point?

jdodson: The moment in Animator's Nightmare where we all approached the dancing baby is iconic. I think it really allowed generations of gaming history to payoff in a way I haven’t experienced before. What aspects of game history influenced you here?

Travis: Ah, yes. The dancing baby. An homage to the dancing baby gif of the 90’s, and a tribute to my friend’s son. But it takes on whole new meaning when the baby is a danger, and must be jumped over. To be honest, game history didn’t influence me in this moment; I’m making *new* history.

jdodson: I’ve played Animator's Nightmare for around 36 hours and I am still not done with it! I appreciate how much time and effort went into creating a game that rivals Skyrim in terms of hours spent. How long did you target the single player campaign to take the average person to beat and what are your thoughts on other games that simply offer a couple hours of gameplay?

Travis: This is the beauty of the game, and not to spoil it for you but… the game never ends. You can only ever escape by being killed by the former animations. It’s a statement on how stress affects us all, and the inevitable end that we all must face.

jdodson: Fallout 4 was panned by many for it’s lack of graphical fidelity. The level of clarity and artistic vision demonstrated in Animator's Nightmare is truly breathtaking and seen more so when you jump over a chicken with a plain paint bucket grey background and a Microsoft Paint styled window in view. I can’t help but this this style is a statement but I wish you could elaborate more here?

Travis: Fallout 4 is terrible. Weird physics glitches, and many textures that just look jagged up close. That grey background you mention: did you see any texture issues? Of course not.

jdodson: Is there anything you want us to say before we wrap things up here?

Travis: Two things: First, why are you even reading this interview when you could be playing my game? Second, in case anyone read this far without realizing, all of this is for fun. I made a game for a class and Jon and I thought a faux interview would be funny. Any HR employee reading this considering whether to hire me, I promise I’m actually a very nice person.

Tim Schafer and Double Fine are at it again with a new Crowdfunding campaign to launch the development of Psychonauts 2. As seen in the video above they are enlisting the help of many people associated with the original game to cook up what looks to be a nice follow up to the original. The video is very fun and features a cameo by Valve overlord Gabe Newell and writer Eric Wolpaw that is work the price of admission alone.

To date Double Fine seems to have navigated a few Crowdfunding snafus with Broken Age and Spacebase DF9. I can't speak to Spacebase but I found Broken Age to be an incredibly fun game even though the funding efforts were a bit shaky at times. To address this they are not only raising money through Crowdfunding but also providing some themselves as well as working with a funding partner. Double Fine is also Crowdfunding this effort through their own crowd funding site called Fig. Fig allows people a choice of backing it traditionally or becoming an investor. The investor payback model is interesting and I suggest you take a look at it. I like the idea of supporting a game such that you could get a bit of the money back but so far, I am not sure what games have made this model work yet. That said it's a cool idea and I am interested to see what comes of it.

Are you excited for Psychonauts 2 and does this seem like something you are interested in backing?

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/psychonauts-2

Mark Hamill is one of the many actors that will appear in Star Citizen, the extremely well funded Kickstarter Space simulation game that has raised an estimated $99 million dollars with pre-launch crowdfunding. Apparently Star Citizen is bringing on some very talented actors such as Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson & John Rhys Davies to help tell the games story. Hamill is no slouch to lending his voice and acting abilities to gaming as my first memory of him outside Star Wars* was Adrian Ripburger in Full Throttle and went on to later star in Wing Commander and the voice of the Joker in the Batman comics as well as video games. In this interview with PC Gamer he talks about Star Citizen, Wing Commander and Star Wars. He also drops some hints at some possible Force Awakens secrets to do with his character but nothing by way of spoilers so his NDA payment is secure.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/squadron42

* I also have an early memory of Hamill post Star Wars in a film called Time Runner. I had a VHS tape of it I borrowed from some friends and watched it as much as I could before I had to return it. If anyone has this on VHS and wants to clear out some space, send it my way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_Xzu_Nfysc

EA is giving away the classic BioWare RPG Jade Empire so head over to Origin to redeem it while supplies last! While the digital supplies last. So basically until they run out of keys? Or does it expire? They don't really say so just click that link down there.

https://www.origin.com/en-us/store/free-games/on-the-house

One of the retro karts I picked up as this years Portland Retro Gaming Expo was Kirby's Dreamland on Gameboy. I have fond memories of Kirby on NES and since I wanted to pickup a Gameboy Advance at this years PRGE I decided to also get some classic Gameboy titles such as Metroid Return of Samus and Kirby's Dreamland.

A week ago I snapped Kirby's Dreamland in my Advance and started it up. Immediately I was reminded of how much fun Kirbys Adventure is on the Nintendo as it's nearly perfectly translated here to Gameboy. The play control is great and the platforming is super smooth. Kirby can suck in enemies and air that he can then shoot out as a projectile weapon as well as suck in air to float around the screen. Kirby may very well be one of the most overpowered characters in a platformer from his default set of abilities alone. So overpowered that in my first session I was able to complete the game with only dying two times. I bet with a couple more play sessions I could beat the entire game with only one life as the game doesn't really offer much of challenge. That said the game is fun and well worth the hour or so I spent playing it. The game does contain a cheat code you learn at the end of the game that unlocks a harder mode which I haven't tried but does promise an increase in difficulty. Kirby's Dreamland is a short Gameboy classic that doesn't offer much challenge but lots of fun and engaging platforming.

I am a StarCraft zombie from way back so when news of the final chapter of the StarCraft II series was releasing I zerg rushed to get it. Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm took the series into a much deeper and more interesting place and as seen in my numerous play sessions of both games. Legacy of the Void continues the epic saga and I can safely say that it's quite enjoyable and so far, a very entertaining ride. I don't want to spoil the game for anyone so I am going to not get too specific about anything I feel is related to the plot.

As the game launches you back into the StarCraft-verse things happen that I didn't expect but make sense with how Blizzard like to tell stories. After the initial couple missions things get very bleak, which makes sense considering they want you to feel like the odds are against you and you might not win. But since you always win in video games that you spend the time to complete this trope is honestly starting to feel a bit played out. It's not that I don't mind the odds stacked against you in a game, it's just that the lengths Blizzard goes to accomplish that seem entirely transparent. I'll try to explain what I mean without getting too specific about the story but at one point you come across a race that did very well in the last couple games and should be quite strong yet in one mission they are unbelievably devastated. "You mean all the stuff I did in the last games to build things up are wiped out in a mission or two? *sigh* sure Ok then." The only other thing I found a bit obnoxious was the Protoss have very well reasoned plans with clear objectives that keep getting figured out for not apparent reason. The game makes it plain that you are on the cutting edge of an idea and means to make you believe you arrive on location before the enemy does to only be hoodwinked by them as they have already arrived and are extremely well prepared. The game basically wants you to believe that when you come to some news first and leave right away the bad guys beat you to the punch... every... single... time. Again, this isn't a bad trope if you do it once or twice but it happens all the time.

That said the other aspects of the game are solid and extremely enjoyable. The diversity of missions is solid, the art direction is incredible and the music is top notch. If you loved the earlier StarCraft games you'd do well to play this one as it's a fitting end to the series.

After a string of summer events showing Starship Rubicon, winter approaches, and as such comes the incredible march of the holiday sales. Starship Rubicon will join the legions of games on sale and we want to give people an extra incentive to buy the game at its super discounted rate so today we are launching a demo. If you haven’t tried Rubicon and have always wanted to this is your chance! As everything awesome in the PC space the Starship Rubicon demo runs on PC, Mac and Linux and contains a tasty slice of the actual game in 3 playable ships and the entirety of level Sol level 2. As with most demos we keep some of the great stuff for the full meal deal but we think there is a lot here to try and it’s well worth your time.

For folks that may not know, Starship Rubicon is a modern take on the classic space shooter genre. It's a smart and challenging rogue-lite that features a unique control scheme, pixel art remixed with real NASA photographs, and an existential crisis about who is REALLY the monster.

In Starship Rubicon, Earth has been casually destroyed by a mysterious race of space-faring invertebrates. You are a fighter pilot whose cryopod has been collected by a possibly-insane AI, who has placed you in the unenviable position of being humanity’s savior. Shanghaied and alone, you must gather the remaining human survivors and traverse the surprising biodiversity of deep space to find a new home.

Download the Starship Rubicon demo on Steam now.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/372030/

Valve is making a big push into the living room and the new Steam Controller is a large part of that. As reviews pour in what I've read hasn't left me with a good impression. Based on some reviews you might think Valve is insane and the new controller is an abysmal failure but i'd like to offer a different perspective.

Valves new Steam controller is amazing at some things and meh at others. Overall though, it provides a great middle ground that doesn't prefer one PC game type to another, which I think gives people a skewed impression.

So let's talk about what the Steam Controller doesn't do well to get that out of the way. In my opinion the Steam Controller isn't great at first person shooters. Don't get me wrong, it's fine but compared to the XBox 360 controller or keyboard and mouse the Steam controller isn't great. The dual trackpads don't make for a great aiming experience but that doesn't mean you can't have fun using it. It's not just not ideal. Since FPS games dominate the gaming landscape this control perspective will dominate the Steam controller discussion. That said, if you verge into nearly any other game type the Steam controller does very well.

So lets dive into the games I tried and I'll talk a bit about each.

Portal 2

This experience was fine but from the couch the 360 controller is superior. Since Portal 2 isn't a twitch game the Steam controller experience isn't bad at all I just prefer the traditional game-pad or keyboard and mouse.

Fallout 4

Bethesda provided a default binding for the Steam controller, which is great in every way except aiming. It just never felt responsive enough. I feel like you have to flick with the trackpad way more than you should but if you turn the sensitivity up it feels too jittery. If you stick to VATS for attack things are fine but in my opinion the 360 controller is better from the couch.

Rage

Honestly Rage felt a bit better but perhaps I was just getting used to the Steam controller at this point. Again not a bad experience but for these kinds of twitch shooters a 360 controller might serve you better. Then again, I really can't play this game with the 360 controller either as I can't really hit anything. But you know, iD games were born on the keyboard and mouse and I find that a better way to play the game.

Little Inferno

Non FPS games are where the Steam controller shines and Little Inferno is a great experience. Had no issues with the game and found the couch experience to be extremely fun.

FTL

Whereas the controller isn't as accurate as a mouse this game is very playable on the couch. Since you can pause the game you can take a bit more time to do what you need. FTL from the living room wasn't something I thought could work but the Steam controller makes this possible.

Age of Empires 2

If you don't mind hunting and pecking for building things, Age 2 works OK. I'd dumb down the AI considerably because of that but if you need to play Age 2 from the couch it's possible. I don't love it but it works well enough.

Hearthstone

This was the first game I tried and it worked perfectly. No special mappings or anything, just load up the game and go.

Diablo 3

Frankly this worked better than I thought. Whereas I didn't do this, if you could import Diablo 3 into Steam you could bind the Steam controller properly to make this a extremely seamless experience. That said I just played by clicking the mouse and it worked way better than I thought it would. Valve made a great controller that works well with Blizzard titles, so thanks Valve!

Binding of Isaac

Since the Steam controller ships with a standard analog stick and physical buttons games like The Binding Of Isaac work just as well as a traditional controller. The community even has a really interesting binding set that takes advantage of the trackpads in a really unique way in that you can move and shoot using them by touch or click. It's one of the more novel uses of the Steam controller and I tip my hat to the people that made it.

Knights of Pen and Paper

Like Hearthstone, this game works very well as it is primarily driven by the mouse. Games like this is where the Steam controller shines.

Terraria

The best Terraria control experience in my opinion is on the PC with a keyboard and mouse. I've never felt comfortable playing it with a PS3 controller or even on my iPhone. The controls just felt awkward. That said, Re-Logic has an official binding set for the Steam controller that makes it one of the best ways to play the game. It's not as good as the keyboard and mouse but it's damn good and I was surprised how well it worked. It takes a bit to learn but offers a really interesting way to play the game you should try.

Escape Goat 2

This is another title that works flawlessly due to the analog stick and physical buttons. Great experience.

Guacamelee!

Again, great experience due to analog stick and physical buttons.

Kingdom Rush

The community keybindings make Kindom Rush work really well. I'd say I enjoyed the couch experience more than using the traditional keyboard and mouse. I even enjoyed it more than playing it on my phone.

Shovel Knight

One more game that works just as well as using a traditional controller due to the analog stick and physical buttons.

In Conclusion

In a diverse Steam library that demands to be played from the living room the Steam controller is superb. If your gaming diet is primarily first person games i'd recommend you trying the Steam controller before buying it. Since it's new Valve is updating it's firmware, fixing bug and Steam games are getting more community and official bindings. Based on the early reviews I didn't expect it to be good but what I found was a lot more fun and should get better with time.

Many of us grew up playing the original Legend of Zelda on the NES. That said, the NES wasn't the original launch system for the Legend of Zelda and James and Mike from Cinnemassacre talk about the original Famicom version. It differs from the US version and they discuss them as the play the game.

Pols Voice: A ghost with big ears and a weak point – he hates loud noises.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 recently achieved it's crowdfunding goal on Kickstarter for three new episodes. It's a little under halfway to it's further goal to full fund a full 12 episode season if the nerd crowd so desires. Either way we will be getting new episodes which is an awesome thing. If you were alive in the 90's you may have caught this show on Comedy Central and later on the SciFi Network. One yearly staple was MST3K Turkey Day where Joel and Bots would select 6 episodes to show over the course of Thanksgiving and record a new video segment to kickoff each episode. In the last couple years Turkey Day has been something they've continued through streaming and this year should be worth checking out.

Why not relax with this message from Internet sensation Joel Hodgson:

"If you've been watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 for a while, maybe you already know about a little holiday tradition that we like to call the MST3K Turkey Day Marathon.

Every year on Thanksgiving, we get together and spend the day giving thanks for our favorite meal: the cheesy movies that have been feeding Mystery Science Theater 3000 since we first aired on Thanksgiving Day in 1988.

Now that you're part of our family, I'd love for you and your family to become part of our tradition."

If you are interested in forgoing football in favor of 6 classic MST3K episodes there are a ton of options to stream it free online on their Kickstarter page.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/bringbackmst3k/posts/1420187/