Braid

The Witness designer Jonathan Blow has shown off an early prototype of a new game. While not official in any capacity, the unveiling happened during his talk at the Reboot Develop conference in Croatia. Thankfully, it was livestreamed on Twitch, so we're able to get a look at it as well—it's been uploaded to YouTube by Daniel Bross, and you can see it in the embed above.

It looks like it's a puzzle game that consists of pushing blocks around. According to Blow, it's still very early on in development, as most of the work has been focused on creating the level editor and engine, which will be made available to other developers for free. He said that he "should make and ship" a game on this engine, so we could could end up seeing it come to fruition. And apparently, he's already thrown together more than 25 hours of single-player gameplay, but he noted that it's unpolished and the visuals aren't final.

It might be a while before we see or hear anything else about this untitled game, but we'll be sure to report back when something is revealed. Blow's last two games, Braid and The Witness, were both puzzle games that garnered many positive reviews. In fact, The Witness received glowing remarks from critic Edwin Evans-Thirlwell in PC Gamer's review

FEZ

We probably won't ever see Fez 2, but we can console ourselves, maybe, with this surprise, whopping patch for the original game, which has just been uploaded to Steam, three years after the game launched on PC. Update 1.12 whacks in a speedrun mode, better music streaming, and various other tweaks and fixes, as elaborated in this news post over on Steam.

To access that speedrunning mode, it appears you have to type in "--gotta-gomez-fast" after launching the game, although the post is a bit vague so I could be wrong.

Fez programmer Renaud Bedard began work on the patch over a year ago, an update he sees as the game's last:

" Since I shipped FEZ 1.11 I had little intention of making additional fixes or features to the game because I simply don t have the time with a kid and a fulltime job and working on FEZ is getting old after 9 years. So I did want to address problems that people have with the game, but I don t want to do it for the rest of my life. I had spent enough time away from the game that I was somewhat enthusiastic about coming back to it, especially if it s at my pace, and that it s my last time doing so."

Braid

Earlier today, The Witness and Braid creator Jonathan Blow posted an image on Twitter of what appears to be a makeshift catheter and a tub of his own pee. "Here is another thing I helped make, to help finish The Witness," Blow wrote proudly above the image, which has sent social media into overdrive.

Finding a way to urinate without leaving one's seat is an enduring concern for humanity, but few have nailed an adequate solution. Indeed, creating makeshift catheters is something society is more likely to frown upon than celebrate. It's more sensible to buy a professionally made one.

Still, is this merely a tub of apple juice, or is it a stinging indictment on video game development crunch time? Is that the right colour for pee? Does the lighting influence its hue?  

On January 17, Blow posted a Tweet which seems to suggest that if he is using a catheter to pee into during the development of The Witness, he hasn't been doing so for long:

Perhaps Blow's tube supplier had temporarily run out. Maybe he's been peeing into a catheter for many years now. Or maybe, just maybe, he borrowed a tube to make a pee joke on the internet, which he concocted and brewed over a five-day period.

What do you think? Is that really Jonathan Blow's pee? Please advise below.

FEZ

Originally released in 2013, Fez is a clever and tremendously popular platformer that, as we noted in our review, suffered from one particular shortcoming: "Being download-only, it's a pity that Fez can't somehow come packed with its most essential peripherals: a notepad and pen." Two and a half years later, that problem has been solved in the Fez Limited Edition—at least for gamers willing to pay the price.

The Fez Limited Edition is pretty much the opposite of a Black Friday deal, costing a whopping $100. For that, you'll get the notebook we wished for, "bound in red canvas with debossed gold foil inlay presented in a matching slipcase," as well as DRM-free copies of Fez for the PC and Mac, and the award-winning Disasterpeace soundtrack. It's physically small, measuring just 5.5" x 5.5" x 1.625", but the images on the Polyshop page really do look lovely. 500 are being made, and each one will be numbered and signed by Fez creator Phil Fish.

This is obviously for serious Fez fans only, but as an aficionado of swanky game boxes, I have to say that I'm impressed. The Fez Limited Edition is available for pre-purchase now, and has an estimated ship date of December 18; unfortunately for anyone looking for a killer holiday gift, Polytron warns that it "is not expected to ship in time for delivery before December 25." And if you'd just like to give Fez a try without all the fancy (and expensive) swag, it's also available for half price on Steam—that's $5/ 4—as part of the Autumn Exploration Sale.

Thanks, Gameranx.

World of Goo

The Humble Indie Bundle is back, but this time with a greatest hits collection featuring some of the best games from past bundles. It's an amazing selection for anybody that's new to indie games, or gaming in general. For everyone else, there's a pretty good chance you already own most of what's here.

As usual, the action is split into multiple categories depending on how much you're willing to pay. Whatever you pay, you'll get Super Meat Boy, World of Goo and Dustforce DX. Beat the average (currently $4.78) and you'll also get Dungeon Defenders Collection, Limbo and Braid. Finally, if you pay $1 over the average price (currently $5.78,) you'll get Risk of Rain and Antichamber. Whatever price you settle on, you'll need to pay $1 or more to get Steam keys for the bundled games.

After settling on a price, you can then decide exactly where that money will go. The sliders allow you to set how much of your cash will go to the developers, to Humble and to this bundle's two charities, Child's Play and Watsi.

The bundle will run until next Tuesday, June 16.

Super Meat Boy
Super Meat Boy Forever


In case you missed it: Team's Meat's teased A Voyeur for September turned out to be Super Meat Boy Forever, an auto-scrolling platformer starring everybody's favourite sentient cube of meat. Now, more details have come to light at PAX: details like it's "not an endless runner", and lots of other interesting stuff. Also the sad news that Mew-Genics Team Meat's cat-based cat game about cats is now on hold.

As an FAQ at the above link explains, Super Meat Boy Forever is "not a simple endless runner" and "not a one button game", but rather a meaty platformer featuring six chapters, a dark world, twice the bosses of Super Meat Boy, and "a vast randomly generated level structure" that will change the level layout after each death. There will be an endless mode, and Meat Boy will scamper along levels without you having to hold down an analog stick/d-pad, but the platforming does seem a bit more embellished than that in most endless running type games.

Team Meat's "goal with SMB:F is to design a new full length platformer for touch devices from the ground up to avoid tacking bad controls on an existing design. we want to make something that embodies the original Super Meat Boy but is designed around a simple yet intuitive control scheme allowing for pin point accuracy and surprisingly deep controls without the use of multiple buttons/analog sticks." Don't let that "touch devices" bit worry you: it's also coming to PC.

As for Team Meat's other in-development game, "Mewgenics is not canceled, we just put it on hold to work full time on this one. Once SMB:F is released we will hop back on it".

Super Meat Boy Forever looks like this:





Super Meat Boy
0


Team Meat, the two-man studio behind the indie hit Super Meat Boy, is apparently working on something entirely new called A Voyeur For September. You can ask me what it is, but I will tell you only this: It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a trailer.

Do you ever get the feeling that Team Meat has a little trouble staying focused? Back in October 2012, Edmund McMillen announced that the new version of Super Meat Boy the team was working on was being put on hold so it could focus on Mew-Genics, and then last month he revealed that Mew-Genics had also been put on hold so he and Team Meat partner Tommy Refenes can work on something entirely different.

That "something" has now come to light, sort of, as A Voyeur For September. All it is at this point is a snowy, distorted trailer consisting primarily of a creeper's view of somebody's living room, intercut with random, black-and-white clips of stuff. There's a website at avoyeurforseptember.com but it consists of nothing but a title, a copyright message, the Team Meat logo and the trailer in question.

In a post that went up earlier this afternoon, McMillen confirmed that Mew-Genics is "on hold till the next Team Meat game comes out," and said that it will be officially announced and shown later this month at PAX. So with nothing else to do until then, let's take a closer look:

Dandelions on the lawn. Men in ties. An empty room, through a window. Plants, and a man at a desk. More dandelions. A back yard. A punching bag? Upside down, in color then right-side up. A buzzing bee. The picture comes into focus. A goat head on the wall. A woman walks up the stairs. Dandelions. A sharp breeze. Life, to death; and from death, life.

Okay, fine. You explain it to me, then. You've got until August 29 to figure it out; after that, the doors to PAX will be flung open, and all the secrets will be laid bare.
Street Fighter® IV
The best living room PC games
Braid
Braid


Every week, keen screen-grabber Ben Griffin brings you a sumptuous 4K resolution gallery to celebrate PC gaming's prettiest places.

Like Braid's protagonist himself, webcomic artist David Hellman's soft, painterly style has stood the test of time, and while the visuals here aren't sharp like a Broken Age or indeed Broken Sword given that they were never intended to display at such ludicrous resolutions, this is at the very least a nice experiment.

Until now, to the best of my knowledge, there's never been a single 4K shot of Braid. Now there are 15, all worthy of your desktop wallpaper.



Download the full-sized image here.



Download the full-sized image here.



Download the full-sized image here.



Download the full-sized image here.



Download the full-sized image here.





Download the full-sized image here.



Download the full-sized image here.



Download the full-sized image here.



Download the full-sized image here.



Download the full-sized image here.





Download the full-sized image here.



Download the full-sized image here.



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Download the full-sized image here.



Download the full-sized image here.
Braid
vr1


Jonathan Blow, the outspoken developer behind indie hit Braid and upcoming puzzle game The Witness, has posted a pair of pictures hinting that virtual reality support may be coming to the Myst-alike. The images feature the unmistakable double-vision familiar from every Oculus Rift game demo, and as pointed out by an eagle-eyed commenter on Blow s site, the images are titled VR1 and VR2.



For all of the excitement around the Oculus Rift, including John Carmack s recent full-time devotion to the project, programming Rift support into games is still fairly rare. According to Road to VR, barely two dozen games have been developed with in-house Rift support.Luckily for VR enthusiasts, third-party drivers have added support to dozens more including Skyrim, Arma 2 and Mirror s Edge.



Getting to explore the lush island of The Witness with built-in VR support will be a treat, but there is a snag in this fantasy: The Witness will hit the PS4 before it comes to PC, and Sony is rumored to be launching a VR headset for its console. Still, once the work of building to VR headsets has been done, it should translate easily.
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