The past year has been rough for a lot of smaller studios, and the latest casualty may be Forgotten Key, developers of the rather lovely exploration adventure Aer: Memories Of Old. Despite the game being well received, the obviously talented studio say here that they've struggled to find investors and keep the lights on. Unless something changes soon, the team will disband. Kindly, they've released prototype demos of two games they were hoping to make. Vind is a spiritual successor to Aer (though not a sequel), and Down The Well is an exploration adventure inspired by Scandinavian folklore. Trailers for both are below.
]]>Video games, you may have noticed, are often a little bit horrid. All sorts of naughtiness, and a distinct lack of people just being kind to one another. What are we like?! But fortunately there are games that make an exception to the potty-mouthed meanies that dominate, and today I celebrate them and their cuteness with a collection of lovely screenshots.
]]>While it still bears some reputation as a scrappy little browser-game toolset (and that's no bad thing - it enabled much of the GMTK 2018 jam recently), ubiquitous game development platform Unity has spread to all corners. While I don't have a single creative bone in my body, the Humble Unity Bundle contains a pile of Unity tools and assets to build your dream game. Even if you're not the creative type, there's some good Unity-based games in here too, including ninja sneak 'em up Shadow Tactics, teen horror adventure Oxenfree and moody tearjerker The Last Day Of June.
]]>I had a play of Aer [official site] last year and, while very early in its development, it was already a really rather attractive and endearing thing. Lots of lovely flying, which is inexplicably rare in gaming. A year on, a new trailer has emerged, and gosh, it's still looking like something rather ace. And hopefully coming out this autumn.
]]>I'm stealing this line from a YouTube commenter: Journey - Peasant Edition. Those're probably the best three words you could come up with to describe AER [official site], a little indie game in the works from Swedish studio Forgotten Key.
]]>I can only imagine the sighs that must have emanated from all working on Aer [official site] when Ubisoft's Grow Home was released last month. Not because the two games play alike - the similarities are only slight. But wow, do they look the same. The polygonal design of both renders gorgeous green foliage against cerulean skies, growing on floating islands. Aer, of course, has been around since late 2013, while Grow Home was announced then released within the same few weeks. Were Aer due to release soon, its thunder could have been considerably stolen. So it's perhaps oddly fortunate that the flying/exploring adventure isn't out until 2016.
]]>I really like it when videogames are beautiful. Not just in the "OMG graphics so realistic that I must existentially entertain the notion that the entire universe could just be a hyper-advanced computer simulation" sense, either. I'm talking about games that create a glittering maw of sights and sounds that licks its lips and proceeds to swallow me whole. These overwhelming visions of other worlds - places I've never even dreamed of, but now desperately long to live in. Aer, if I'm very, very lucky, will turn out to be one such experience. It's a gorgeous sandbox adventure set in a strange, naturalistic, old sky world. You play as a girl who can transform into a bird at will, as we all secretly wish we could.
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