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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Catball Eats It All

Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Tyson and Matt Anderson of Broken Compass Studios share the artistic influences of their Kickstarter-funded mobile title, Catball Eats It All. Yes, it stars a cat shaped like a ball. You know you're intrigued.



What's your game called and what's it about?

Tyson Anderson: Our game is Catball Eats It All. From a story standpoint, it's about a voracious little furball that eats everything in sight, and... that's it! Short and sweet. From a gameplay perspective, it's an action-puzzle game based around navigating and optimizing paths through levels and mastering responsive play controls.

As a graffiti artist, how did NoseGo get involved with Broken Compass?

Matt Anderson: We all met through a mutual friend Jeff, who is now our very talented producer. Yis Goodwin -- aka NoseGo -- had expressed a desire to make a game featuring his work, and Tyson and I have been working in games for a while. Jeff, in true producer-ly fashion, put the people together, and the magic was there. We clicked, and our visions, both as creators and as a business, quickly solidified.

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WWE WrestleFest on iOS today, coming to XBLA, PSN, PC, Android in 2012

Well, this is definitely the craziest thing to happen in wrestling games in quite some time -- and wrestling is a sport built entirely on human insanity. WWF WrestleFest, the classic arcade game by Technos, has been updated for release on iOS by THQ. The new "WWE Wrestlefest" has smoother graphics and an updated roster of wrestlers (a rostler, if you will) including John Cena and Randy Orton, alongside old-school wrestlers like the late "Macho Man" Randy Savage. It's also been modernized with "an extensive downloadable content program."

The app is available in a free "Lite" version and a $2.99 "Premium" version for iPhone, and both "Lite" and paid for iPad.

THQ also plans to release this new WrestleFest on XBLA, PSN, Android, and PC, sometime in 2012. So we hope the new version is good.

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'A MAZE. Indie Games Award' is open for submissions, amazement

The A MAZE. Indie Games Award 2012, held during the Deutsche Gamestage in Berlin from April 26 to 27, is now taking submissions and will award one single indie game the "Most Amazing Indie Game" title, which would be a pretty awesome thing to put on your resume. The winner is selected by a "high-profile international jury" to be revealed in March, and will receive €5000 ($6,599) and a suitably "amazing trophy."

Submissions are open to anyone and everyone, for a fee of €45 ($59) through March 30, with finalists announced in mid-April. This is just a hunch, but now might be the time to build that rat-maze game you were thinking of at 2 a.m. that one night -- the one with the makeup-testing and cancer-treatment levels. Again, just a hunch.

Idle Thumbs Kickstarter includes exclusive game, neat artwork

It seems everyone's got a Kickstarter nowadays. Double Fine just surpassed $2 million, inXile is going to use Kickstarter to reboot a classic and now the Idle Thumbs video game podcast is using the site to finance its future.

The interesting thing about this Kickstarter campaign, however, is that it includes an exclusive game called Thirty Flights of Loving by Blendo Games. It's a sequel to the one-man indie development studio's previous effort, Gravity Bone, a spy-based affair blending adventure and first-person shooting elements. Thirty Flights of Loving will be given to all backers who drop $30 or more down.

If you want to throw down more cash, Vincent Perea and Graham Annable, the artists behind The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and Puzzle Agent, respectively, will toss in some of their doodlings. So hurry up and help the crew finance their -- oh, they already hit their goal? Okay then, head on over if you want to pay for some stuff you want.

Skyrim Interactive Map App is a world of microtransactions

Still wandering aimlessly around Tamriel, trying to remember where you left your giant pile of buckets? Get out your phone and get some help. Publisher Prima Games just released an official Skyrim map app, beating the fanmade Dragon Shout to the punch.

The app comes with a world map and 9 capital city maps for free, with other detailed locations available through in-app purchases. You can drop pins on points of interest (say, Bucket Stack Alpha) and zoom in 3200%.

While we're a bit shocked that portions of the Skyrim map are behind a paywall in an app that is nothing but maps of that one game, we must concede the point that Skyrim is irresponsibly huge.

Gabe Newell: Valve is excited about wearable computers, open hardware

Finally, we have a concrete reason for the eternal delay of Half-Life 2 Episode 3: Valve head Gabe Newell is more interested in wearable computing. OK, that's not directly why Valve hasn't announced a new Half-Life title, but wearable computing and hardware development are definitely something Valve is interested in, Newell told Penny Arcade Report.

Wearable computers -- think Star Trek communication badges, wrist-bound touchscreens or SixthSense -- are seeing a resurgence, and Valve is doing its own research into how they might function as gaming devices. Wearable computers now are "way higher resolution, way lighter weight, much better battery life," and Valve is doing its own research into this technology through biometrics, and is excited to see where it goes, Newell said.

"So we're thinking of trying to figure out how to do the equivalent of the [Team Fortress] incremental approach in software design and try to figure out how would you get something similar to that in the hardware space as well," he said. If Valve were to produce hardware, it would be something easy to iterate so customers don't have to buy 10 million devices, Newell said. Of course, that's if.

"Well, if we have to sell hardware we will," Newell said. "We have no reason to believe we're any good at it; it's more we think that we need to continue to have innovation and if the only way to get these kind of projects started is by us going and developing and selling the hardware directly then that's what we'll do."

No company is safe from irrelevance, as far as Newell sees it, and even Microsoft and Sony can suffer the same fate as Atari and Commodore if they continue to create closed systems and don't innovate. "As soon as Valve stops doing interesting, innovative work we're gonna be left behind," Newell stated, unfortunately missing the "left for dead" pun opportunity.

Fake Pokemon Yellow ends up on iOS App Store

A fraudulent version of the Game Boy Color classic Pokemon Yellow has somehow made it through Apple's approval gauntlet and wound up on the App Store. Published by "Home of Anime" with Daniel Burford listed as the author, the "game" runs for $0.99 and has a one-and-a-half star rating after 1,352 reviews. According to said reviews, the app crashes after the title screen and cannot actually be played.

As if the simple existence of a Pokemon game on the App Store weren't enough of a red flag, the listing's screenshots aren't even from Pokemon Yellow, they're actually from Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green. The app's description also contains unattributed "press quotes" and a statement that "all trademarks and copyrights are owned by their respective owners," because everyone knows that admitting your copyright infringement absolves you of all responsibility, right? We've reached out to Apple for comment.

Editor's Note: My faulty, old-man brain confused the fact that Pokemon Yellow launched with a Poke-themed Game Boy Color, with it actually being a Game Boy Color game (which it was not). I've exploded an Electrode in penance.

Robota: Vengeance pits robots against genetically modified dinosaurs



Robota: Vengeance
would be your average CGI robot-warfare game featuring gladiator-style combat with genetically modified dinosaurs, if not for three important factors:
  1. The franchise was created by Academy Award winner Doug Chiang, lead designer on Star Wars: Episode 1 and 2, and creative director for Industrial Light and Magic, working on Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Forrest Gump and other titles.
  2. Robota will be released for iOS and Android as the first full-scale rival to Infinity Blade.
  3. It has genetically modified dinosaurs.
Developed by indie studio SiXiTS, Robota: Vengeance has players build their own custom robots, and then battle giant, evil robots and -- did we mention? -- genetically modified dinosaurs, all while discovering the secrets that lie within themselves. SiXiTS is holding a Kickstarter to fund the project, asking for $100,000 from potential fans to bring Robota to mobile devices and the web.

Check out the video above and if you're intrigued, head on over to its Kickstarter page, and gauge how much you want to invest in genetically modified dinosaurs. We mean, Robota: Vengeance. Same thing.

The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Forbidden Island

Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Sean Wilson of international indie studio Button Mash Games explains how his iPad title, Forbidden Island, is contributing to the tabletop game's renaissance.


What's your game called and what's it about?

Forbidden Island is an iPad board game where one to four adventurers cooperate to capture the four ancient treasures hidden on a sinking island. As the game progresses, parts of the island sink into the ocean, making it more difficult to collect the treasures. The game is based on the award-winning board game designed by Matt Leacock and published by Gamewright.

How were you able to create a licensed game as a brand new indie company?

This was really a combination of confidence and luck. We reached out to Matt Leacock, the original game designer, and expressed our interest in making the game. We created a small gameplay demo and explained our passion for the project and Matt put us in touch with Gamewright. They believed in our enthusiasm and plans for the game so they agreed to work with us. They gave us the freedom to take the game design in the directions we believed were best, but pushed us to reach further than we would have if we didn't have any outside feedback. The game has tons of improvements directly because of their ideas.

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Assassin's Creed Recollection free on iPad for a limited time

We enjoyed our time with Assassin's Creed Recollection, enough to recommend it to you now that you don't have to pay for it. For a limited time, the iPad app is available free of charge.

Assassin's Creed Recollection is a real-time trading card game where players aim to capture territories. There's a story mode, online multiplayer and Game Center support -- oh, and stabbing. It wouldn't be Assassin's Creed otherwise, would it?

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