It s often said that the more restrictions you re working against, the more creative you ll become. We re planning to test that theory to its limits next Friday at PAX West, where our Nate will be inviting a team of developers to puzzle their way around some real thinkabouters in Rock Paper Shotgun s Game Design Hotseat.
How could you make a grand strategy game with only six old Casio calculators for display? How would you design a massively multiplayer online beat em up? What about an FPS controlled with a trombone? We won t be posing these questions (because we ve just put them here and that ruins the surprise), but we ll be posing questions just like them, and giving the team a tablet to sketch out their workings as they scramble for answers.
Even in the midst of E3 Hell Week, it’s nice to see that smaller studios keep on kicking. Today, Failbetter Games rolled out their next major update for Victorian space-train RPG Sunless Skies. There’s a new officer to add to your crew, sporting a positively nautical set of whiskers and with his own story arc to follow. Old Wonders Of The Skies will now have story events attached to them, you’ll find new agents to get missions from, and The Reach appears to have a bit of a fungus problem developing. Yet more reasons — and all free — to return to riding the aetherial rails.
Failbetter Games' superb interstellar narrative adventure Sunless Skies will soon be expanding once more, this time courtesy of the story focussed Vagabond Update, which arrives on 12th June.
Central to the free new update is the Amiable Vagabond, a new officer able to accompany you on your journey among the stars. Described by Failbetter as "a gentleman of the skies (and no fixed abode) who will take you to the abandoned quarters of the sky", the Amiable Vagabond brings a selection of new mysteries to explore.
"Experience a tale of fortunes lost, found, and lost again," says Failbetter, "Meet the 'skylarks': the community of ragged wanderers who rove the heavens, and help them find the way to the Sugarspun Garden - a place surely too good to be true..."