Aug 16, 2013

FTL, Fez and Gunpoint soundtracks among the highlights of Game Music Bundle 5

FTL: Faster Than Light

You can't play games all the time. Eventually your hands will degrade into coarse lumpy bone sacks, unable to perform rocket-jumps or micro small army men. At some point, you're going to need a rest. Luckily, in the downtime, you can still think about games, and listen to the music from games, and create plasticine dioramas of your favourite moments in games. I mean, I guess you could do something else entirely, but that wouldn't neatly lead into the news that the Game Music Bundle 5 is available, and contains some great indie soundtracks.

There's a two-tiered pricing system, with a purchase of $1 or more securing you these albums:

Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine by Austin Wintory
FTL: Faster Than Light by Ben Prunty
Fez by Disasterpeace
Gunpoint by John Robert Matz, Ryan Ike, Francisco Cerda
Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded by Austin Wintory
World of Goo by Kyle Gabler

Then, for $10 or more, you can grab a further 13 soundtracks:

FZ: Side F
FZ: Side Z
Monaco: The Gentleman's Private Collection
The Forge
Hero of Many
Marble Time
Super Panda Adventures
Anodyne Remix Album
Frog Fractions
Little Inferno
Anodyne
Me and My Dinosaur 2
Drox Operative

Frog Fractions soundtrack? Weird.

The standard bundle of six albums is almost completely excellent. The bigger bundle? Wildly more eclectic, but definitely worth a look, not least for the two excellent Fez remix albums.

The Game Music Bundle 5 will run until the 27th August.

Jul 19, 2013

GameLoading, a new documentary about indie development, seeks Kickstarter support

FTL: Faster Than Light

Indie gaming has gotten kind of huge over the past few years, and the internet's beginning to bulge at the seams with all the indieness going on lately. Indie Game: The Movie—whose special edition is being released next week—last year documented the lives of four indie developers as they put together their little-budget, big-name concepts. What of the thousands of other indie developers out there, though? A pair of filmmakers are seeking to answer that question with their newly revealed Kickstarter campaign for GameLoading: Rise of the Indies, a documentary that seeks to zoom out and look at the entire indie scene globally.

Studio Bento's already traveled the world in their quest to quiz ostensibly every indie developer ever, and a heap of interview footage has already been shot of game development greats such as Chris Avellone and Antichamber's Alexander Bruce; the Kickstarter campaign seeks to raise the funds for the team to travel even further, penetrating such mystical places as Romania and Belgium. Lester Francois of Studio Bento says that the film will be of special interest to PC gamers.

"When we started the film, I was surprised at how many indie developers are sticking to making games for PC," Francois tells PC Gamer. "It's great meeting developers not concerned with the iOS gold rush and content doing their own thing. We're very excited to be interviewing some of these PC developers, including the guys behind FTL and Kentucky Route Zero."

Pledging $15 will get you a digital download of the film, and there are also tiers including two indie games bundles. I've seen some of Studio Bento's footage so far, it's already looking really special. I'm especially eager to hear from the guys behind my latest favorite indie game, Kentucky Route Zero—to check out the full list of interviewees, check out GameLoading's website.

Jul 12, 2013

FTL: Faster Than Light’s music dissected and explained by its composer

FTL: Faster Than Light

Ben Prunty, the composer of the soundtrack for FTL: Faster Than Light, has published a “guided tour” of the motifs and themes that show up throughout the game’s 29 tracks. FTL is a remarkable game for a lot of reasons, including what is hands down one of the best recent musical scores around.

“he FTL soundtrack is very self-referential,” Prunty writes. “Lots of sounds, melodies and chords show up multiple times throughout.” Pulling up Prunty’s bandcamp page lets you follow along with his references, even if you haven’t purchased a copy.

“I actually wrote this melody a few years before,” Prunty writes about “The MilkyWay Melody,” a fast, twinkling theme that shows up in several places in the game. “I was challenging myself to write and produce a new piece of music every week for three months... hen I wrote the melody I was actually envisioning some kind of old DOS space game. When the opportunity came up to write for FTL, it made perfect sense to fit it in.”

The thing I love about analysis like this is that it makes perfect sense when someone points it out to you, but it never occurred to me while playing the game. There’s a reason that Mantis space always creeps me out, and it wasn’t until now that I realized it was Prunty’s devilish minor chords.

FTL was one of the earliest big Kickstarter success stories, was of our short-form game of the year winner in 2012, and helped launch the resurgence of indie roguelikes that seem to be everywhere these days.

Check out Prunty’s full writeup of the soundtrack and follow along on his bandcamp page. If you haven’t checked out FTL, it happens to be featured on the Steam Summer Sale right this instant.

Jul 1, 2013

FTL: Faster Than Light fans creating a first-person, multiplayer treatment in Garry’s Mod

Garry's Mod

Being a captain in FTL: Faster Than Light is a nerve-wracking experience. Hostile aliens could teleport onto your ship at a moments notice, an asteroid could take out life support, and you're constantly put in horrible situations with no clear solution. The responsibility is simply too great, but luckily a pair of fellow space-goers are working on a Garry's Mod gamemode that lets you demote yourself to the role of a single crewmember.

The mod, called Final Frontier, is a 3D representation of the cruel—but rewarding—roguelike we thoroughly enjoyed last year. Where your ships systems were easy to control from your tactical view, everything in Final Frontier must be managed by human players. Firing weapons, teleporting players, and unlocking doors requires a quick mind and quicker hands at the correct console.

The developers hosted a Q&A to elaborate on what their FTL-inspired mod entails:

“This game is (heavily (blatantly)) inspired by FTL, a game we all enjoyed playing but felt would be improved with multiplayer,” one of the developers wrote. “Unlike FTL, you control a single crewmember in first-person perspective, and must manually perform the tasks that FTL characters carried out by standing at their posts mashing keyboards. How well you perform your job is entirely dependent on the skill of the player at that task.”

The two modders say they’re only “prototyping the project in Garry’s Mod,” and that they’re only testing it internally, but plan to set up a public server once the mod’s main features are finished. I suppose I could take this time to look for a top-tier crew that’ll fight and die for me without question. Any takers?

Thanks, Rock, Paper Shotgun

Jun 29, 2013

Awooga! FTL Boarded Garry’s Mod

Garry's Mod - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Craig Pearson)

If gathering friends to play Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator is a bit cumbersome, and if you find FTL a bit lonely, then I’ve found the perfect game for you. Final Frontier is the result of a nasty transporter accident between the pair, where the Heisenberg compensators decoupled and they arrived on the SS GMOD screaming and inside out. The sick bay did its best, but all it could do is stabilise the life signs. To be honest, the gristly lump that was spat out looks pretty amazing. (more…)

Jun 26, 2013

Steam Trading Cards is now live

Half-Life 2

Just as promised, Steam Trading Cards is now live. The virtual cards can be earned by playing participating games on Steam, trading with other users, or buying on the Steam Marketplace. Complete a set to create a badge, earn rewards and XP, and level up. The user with the highest Steam level at the end of the year gets to high five Gabe Newell while announcing Half-Life 3. In space.

In other true facts, I'm already hearing from users playing the Steam marketplace to profit off the cards' initial popularity. One user I spoke to has been buying low and selling high to pad his Steam wallet, even creating scarcity by buying up low-value cards in quantity. I'll keep an eye on marketplace prices as more users start trading the collectibles.

I was hoping to find a good deal on a 1952 Mickey Mantle card, but unfortunately, baseball isn't a participating game. You can see which of the games you own are participating here.

Jun 24, 2013

Stare Into The Void: Infinite Space 3 Footage

FTL: Faster Than Light - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Craig Pearson)

Bing bong bing! Disclaimer: I am a backer of Infinite Space 3: Sea Of Stars. Do I need to disclaim that? It’s not like I’m an investor. I just gave them money to make a game I wanted to play, and I only backed at the lowest tier. If anything, I was making an investment in me. I pre-ordered happiness. Disclaimer: I am an investor in Craig, and Craig is well happy at seeing the first glimpse of Infinite Space 3: Sea Of Stars. Digital Eel‘s third entry in their farcical space roguelike series is making the transition from a top-down 2D adventure, to bulbous and spacious 3D. There’s a roomy video below. (more…)

May 30, 2013

FTL Update Released

FTL: Faster Than Light - Valve

Change Log v. 1.03.3

Tuning:

-You can now retrieve crew from a room when teleporting even if they are shooting at a door or walking, limit of 4 per teleport
-If you're carrying the Crystal alien from the stasis pod, the Rock Homeworld map will start with the appropriate quest marker to for the beacon that leads to the Crystal sector
-The Crystal Lockdown bomb is now available as a drop (from enemies or in Stores) in Rock sectors
-Shield Skill will level up when the shields absorb a hit, not when they recharge. This prevents turning the shields on/off to level up.

Major Bugs:

-Fixed: Bug that would sometimes cause an enemy ship not to get hit by asteroids in an asteroid field
-Fixed: Bug gave double rewards after victory when player teleporter was broken and crew 'used the shuttle'
-Jumping will now immediately provide invulnerability to solar flares, incoming boarding drones, and beams
-Can no longer open the ship upgrades screen in hostile situations using the hot key
-If the boss is destroyed, at that point game over will be blocked and your victory is assured even if your ship is exploding.
-Blast Door health will properly regenerate on safe (no current boarders) jumps
-Boarding Drones will no longer be hit by projectiles after they've successfully landed
-Boarding Drones will no longer be destroyed upon Boss Ship Super Shield regeneration
-Waiting in a nebula will no longer remove the sensor dampening effect
-Fixed: Sometimes enemy boarders wouldn't pursue any targets and just stand around.

Minor Bugs:

-Drones should no longer fly "into" the shields and fire past them.
-Dying crewmembers will stay dead if you Save & Quit + Continue. They will also remain unselectable and unmovable as soon as dying animation starts.
-Will no longer open the store / allow repair in the rare situation that you have 0 hull and should be dead
-Credits + Victory screen won't close if you accidentally tap a key - only escape will close it
-Missiles/lasers/asteroids/etc. will no longer collide with bombs since they are technically 'interior' objects
-The event where your crewmember goes crazy will have the correct race/name after going crazy
-You won't be able to waste your money choosing pointless repair choices at the repair station event
-Beam Weapons can now correctly cause breaches, but that will not come standard to current weapons to preserve balance so it's just for modders.
-Interior console glow fixed to display correct colors for crew levels
-Combat/Defense drones will properly trigger blue event options
-Drone / missile counts can no longer go negative
-Modding to have more than 4 shield bars will no longer make asteroids ridiculously terrifying
-Crew will no longer continue repairing a breach if the room is on fire, the fire will take the correct priority (as the animation shows)
-More grammar/typo fixes and minor animation/image polish