A few weeks ago Escape Goat came to Steam and like many people I decided to give it a go. Escape Goat is a pure puzzle platformer and offers really fun mechanics that will keep you playing "just one more level." The Steam version supports Mac, Linux and Windows out of the box and I found the controller support to be superb. After getting hooked in by Escape Goat's retro charms I wanted to ask its creator Ian Stocker about the game and if there will be more Goat adventures coming up.

jdodson: Escape Goat was recently released and was just Greenlit on Steam. Now that people have played it I am curious what your reaction to the launch and peoples responses have been?

Ian Stocker: The Steam launch and GoG launch both went great, they were profitable and introduced the game to thousands of new players. It was great to see the Steam forums light up with comments and feedback on the game.

jdodson: Escape Goat has a really awesome premise. I am curious how the concept was born and when you decided to start working on it?

Ian Stocker: Escape Goat started as a new project, with no existing code, on January 1, 2011. The working title was Bastille, and it was going to be a single-screen puzzle game that would take place in a prison. The goat theme was added later, when some friends and I found a Reddit thread on the best misused English idioms. Escape Goat was the top voted answer, and that's when I decided to adopt it as the title and theme of the game. That was probably about three months into development.

jdodson: Is the Goat a witch and does the her purple color factor into her magical-ness in some way?

Ian Stocker: This is up to the player to determine! He does have a lot of magical properties though...

jdodson: What games have you been playing recently?

Ian Stocker: I haven't played a lot of new games, but I do dip in on Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, a classic roguelike you can play on the web. It can devour whole hours of time without you realizing it, though, so beware!

jdodson: Escape Goat is a really tight platformer with some unique concepts. How did all the different aspects of the platforming come together? Did you start with a grand vision or just put in elements and work with them until they worked?

Ian Stocker: It was built up piece by piece, with only some vague concepts of what I wanted to see in the game. I knew I wanted it to show the whole room at once, with no scrolling, like classic puzzle games (Adventures of Lolo, Solomon's Key). And I wanted the controls to be similar to Mega Man, Alucard from Symphony of the Night, and Robot Unicorn Attack. The concept of machinery and mutable environments was discovered early on when I put stacking blocks and laterally moving gearblocks in the game. As soon as I saw them working, I knew this had to be the hook for the game. It took six months to get it bug-free though, since I had never done any physics programming before, and this game needed a unique physics implementation.

jdodson: Escape Goat is out, curious what’s next for you? Escape Goat 2 or some game updates?

Ian Stocker: Yes, I'm finally able to resume work on Escape Goat 2 now that EG1 has been handled on Steam. I still need to push updates to the DRM-free marketplaces, and there will inevitably be a few more support requests, but now I am able to spend a significant amount of time finishing up EG2.

jdodson: I want to thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Before we wrap things up, is there anything you’d like to leave us with?

Ian Stocker: Thanks for covering my game and interviewing me, and if you check out my games, be sure to let me know what you think: www.magicaltimebean.com/contact

IGN recently released a new website cataloging the history of Mario. Starting with his early roots in the game Donkey Kong, IGN new site is an fun jaunt down memory lane. IGN parented with HTML5HUB to create the Museum of Mario entirely in HTML5, so if you are flash adverse this is your jam.

http://mario.ign.com/

Speaking of doing awesome things in HTML5 with Mario someone recently recreated Super Mario Brothers in HTML5 and released it as Open Source on Github. You can play each level from the original game and also play a special random world mode where each level is procedurally generated. Check it out.

http://www.fullscreenmario.com/
https://github.com/Diogenesthecynic/FullScreenMario

The Easter Egg Hunter brings us another great video, this time cataloging his top 10 Gameboy games. I can't say I really disagree with him on much here as the games he lists are great. His number one is no surprise as that would be mine as well. Link's Awakening is not only the best Gameboy game but it tops my list for Zelda games too. The more I think about Zelda games the more I realize, yeah, for me it's the best one.

"You wield a device that can make any item any size. A tree, a wall, an enemy, a passing cloud, even the levels themselves are all "SCALEable". Space is relative in the game so progress is as much conceptual as it is physical. The unique mechanic of SCALEing is inspired by games like Portal and The Swapper. Progression through the game is freeform and open like Mario 64 or early Zelda overworlds. It’s all about exploring and discovering secrets!"

In what may very well be one of the best Kickstarter videos I have seen, SCALE looks to impress. Not only do the game mechanics seem neat but they drop a few story hints in the video I am really interested in. That said, the SCALE train to rad-ville doesn't stop with that as they are adding the talent of Ben Prunty (FTL & Gravity Ghost) & Danny B (Meat Boy, Binding of Issac) to do the score. Adding more awesome to injury the game will also feature the super swanky voice stylings of Ashly Burch (Borderlands 2 Tiny Tina) & Sarah Elmaleh (Gone Home).

I saw SCALE at PAX this year and it was beautiful. The game was already quite playable and many people gathered round the booth to see it in action.

So what do you think, does SCALE "weigh up" to your expectations? Are you going to back this project? Will they add Shigeru Miyamoto as a contributor late in the project as a surprise ending? Will dogs and cats finally get along?

Who knows, but what I do know is that SCALE looks great and I am looking forward to getting my hands on it.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1188957169/scale

The awesome folk over at CineFix on YouTube created a video showcasing what The Shining may have looked like if it were given a NES version. Taking serious nods from Manic Mansion this faux game gives the movie a pretty good treatment. Many of the iconic scenes such as the tricycle scene are recreated here, but the 8-bit translation loses much of the haunting effect. That said, I wonder how well a game like this would have done being a recreation of the movie itself?

In a time not too long ago Blizzard was making something called "Blizzard DoTA." Well it turns out IceFrog owned the trademark to DoTA and he went to work for Valve and after a bit of a legal showdown, Blizzard renamed its DoTA game to Blizzard All-Stars and Valve kept the DoTA mark. Well now it seems Blizzard has finally settled on "Heroes of the Storm" as the name for its new MOBA and dropped a bit more news about it.

Oh and did I mention it will feature Heroes from the Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft universes? The new reveal trailer made by the guy behind Starcrafts reveals the new bits and it seems Blizzard will unveil more details at Blizzcon 2013.

I wasn't excited for a standard Blizzard MOBA but now after seeing that it will feature heroes from each of the Blizzard properties I am pretty curious about it. That said, League and DoTA 2 have huge followings now so it seems Heroes of the Storm has a pretty tough climb ahead. That said, Blizzard is pretty entrenched in the e-sports scene, it may be able to pull it off.

What do you think are you interested in Blizzards new Heroes of the Storm?

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/heroes/

"Our incredible fans have been flooding our inboxes, telling us they want more Borderlands 2 content. We heard you, which is why back in August, we announced Headhunter 1: TK Baha’s Bloody Harvest, the first of the downloadable Headhunter add-ons. Today, we’re happy to let you know that TK Baha’s Bloody Harvest will be hitting Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Steam and Mac on Tuesday, October 22nd – just in time for Halloween!

These Headhunter add-ons offer additional adventures that set you off on a series of missions in new areas that culminate with you taking down some rather unique bosses and claiming their heads to wear as your prize."

It seems Gearbox isn't getting off the DLC train with Borderlands 2 quite yet. Really like the concept of this DLC as it seems to add enough new content for hardcore BL2 players but also seems compelling enough for armchair players to play in smaller bursts. Since Borderlands 2 has been given the Game of the Year treatment I wonder if they will put out a "Even more Game of the Year Edition?"

Gameplay footage:

http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/10/16/borderlands-2-tk-bahas-bloody-harvest-commentary

Release Notes:

http://www.2kgames.com/blog/borderlands-2-headhunter-1-tk-baha-s-bloody-harvest-available-on-october-22nd

I recently watched an XBox One marketing video that I thought was interesting enough to comment on. If you know me I am no Microsoft fanboi or hater, I exist mainly in the "meh" space. That said, after watching this video I felt was worth talking about. I don't think I am alone on this one either so chime in with your thoughts.

The main premise of the video is the XBone is "future proof." They do this by claiming the XBone is built "for the future" and talk about the cloud, increased voice commands and the new Kinect camera. Whereas some of these features are cutting edge for sure, I don't think they strike at the heart what it means to build a console for the future.

IT HAS TEH CLOUDS SO WE HAS TEH FUTURE!

In the video Microsoft claims that because of the cloud, future games can use "cloud compute" to offload CPU intensive tasks so your XBone won't need to be upgraded. But already some games handle logic primarily on servers like MMO's or PC games such as Diablo III. Some game clients simply render the graphics and to combat cheating, the majority of the game logic is handled server side. So some games offload some compute to "the cloud" but for the majority of single player games this offload makes little sense unless publishers want to inject some form of DRM(Simcity 5 anyone?). So really, this isn't the future or very novel, this is happening now.

better voice commands

Am I the only one that doesn't care about voice commands? I don't think I am dipping into luddite territory here, I have a smarphone that handles voice recognition and everything, I just don't care about doing that with my TV. Hell, this may be a case of "this shit would be awesome if I just tried it once" but nothing is currently broken when I use a remote with my TV and console. There are a few scenarios when I am using my phone where I use voice commands but that usually involves driving and its so I don't crash and die. When I am hangin' out on the couch with my console I can't imagine too many scenarios where I need voice commands.

Nothing wrong with adding awesome features to consoles, I just think what matters most to making your console work in the future is more than a feature someone may or may not want.

kinect can see 6 people in the room and is way better than it was

The video shows a scenario where the Kinect camera detects 6 people in the room and automagically adds them to a game that is being organized. Ill respond with as much as I was moved by the demo of it.

the thrilling conclusion

As far as I am concerned there are more important things a console maker should do to get it "ready for the future."

Have the stuff I bought work now and in the future. Don't make me throw away all my old stuff with each upgrade cycle.

Seriously, how hard is this to get guys? Yeah, it's really super that Kinect can now make me a ham sandwich but none of my games port over to the new system and they likely won't in the next upgrade cycle either. How bout all the hardware I bought, is that ready for the future? Nope, need to buy all new gear... but hey guys we have really neat voice commands now!

Hear me out here, adding new features to consoles isn't bad. But for the things that matter to me most it seems like the XBone is a step back from the 360 because the 360 could play XBox games. Also understand I don't mean to just point the spotlight at Microsoft here, Sony isn't much better with the PS4 in this regard. But for all the talk about "future readiness" Microsoft and Sony haven't proven to me that they respect the one thing that matters the most. The games.

"Nuclear Throne is Vlambeers latest action roguelike-like about mutants fighting their way through a post-apocalyptic world. The radioactive waste in the world allows mutants to get ahead by mutating new limbs on the fly, the abundant availability of powerful weaponry make the quest to become ruler of the Wasteland one fraught with peril."

Many awesome new games have come to Steam Early Access lately and Vlambeers Nuclear Throne is no exception. Hot on the Indie Games obsession with rogue-likes, nuclear throne spins it up some into a post-apocalyptic mutant gun shoot fest paradise. Right now the game is only available on PC but they do have this to say about where it will eventually be ported to:

"Will the game be available on Mac, Linux, Xbox One, Wii U, Wii, 3DS?

All we know for sure is that the game will be available on PC and later for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. We should have no real trouble porting to Mac, but as always we're going to be cautious and not announce that fully in case it turns out there are problems with that. Since GameMaker 8.1 doesn't compile builds for most platforms, we won't know for sure until we try. We'll try when we're done with the PC builds."

Hotline Miami was a Game Maker game and it came to both Mac and Linux, so it is technically possible but I am not sure what the eventual will be for porting Nuclear Throne.

That all said, the game looks wicked shooter-iffic and like all the games on Steam Early Access on my radar, I am very interested to see how the game progresses. Because, you know, a game about mutants shooting stuff up? Yeah, that needs to be awesome.

"In Spacebase DF-9, you’ll build a home among the stars for a motley population of humans and aliens as they go about their daily lives. Mine asteroids, discover derelicts, and deal with the tribulations of our distant future: meteor impacts! Explosive decompression! Unbearable loneliness!"

Double Fine just released Spacebase DF-9 on Steam Early Access for Mac, Linux and Windows. It was a game that came out of the Amnesia Fortnight that is now being given the full game treatment. The game looks very interesting and seems like something I would appreciate. A rogue-like sim game with a space edge to it and a level of random AI emergence that looks fun to experience.

Double Fine really seems to have jumped head first into doing something that many other Indie Games do, which is to say get a playable build of the game to players and see what they want from it. They are even taking things a bit further by releasing a set of developer goals so you know the direction they are heading in.

If you try this one out, let me know what you think.

http://spacebasedf9.com/devplans
http://store.steampowered.com/app/246090