A sequel is coming for excellent cooperative heist game Monaco, publishers Humble Games announced today. Jim Rossignol's Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine review in 2013 was pretty straightforward: "This is one of the most important independent games this year, and might well end up being one of the best-loved games of the decade." I don't think it panned out quite that way, partially because indie games grew so larger and more mainstream than expected across the decade, but the IGF Grand Prize winner is still a cracking game. And Monaco 2 looks pretty.
]]>There aren’t enough heist-focused video games. You’d think the ludicrous success of Grand Theft Auto V would’ve led to more Ocean’s inspired capers, but no. Where are all my Nespresso-drinking, salt and pepper hair-having protagonists? At least the spirit of Clooney and Friends can be found in Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine.
]]>Team, we have six hours to pull this job. Gav, you're running interference. Bev, you hack the cameras. Kev, you blow the door. Maeve, you're on the safe. If we do this right, we'll all saunter out of here in slow-motion carrying black holdalls filled with free copies of wonderful heist game Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine [official site] as our theme song blares and, just behind us, rozzers rush in to find the safe empty. But we've only got until 6pm today (10am Pacific). At 6, the alarm goes off, the security gates slam down, the floor is electrified, the dogs are unleashed, and we'll have to pay if we fancy a play.
]]>Tooth and Tail [official site] is to Command and Conquer what Monaco was to an actual bank heist. If you took an RTS and threw it into a pot then burned off all the fat, you'd be left with something that looked a little like the latest from Andy Schatz and his team at Pocketwatch Games. But would you lose some of the flavour as well? I played the game at GDC (Pip beat me, as usual) and spoke to the team about its design, artistic and mechanical.
]]>Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we'll make it to the end.
]]>Last year Monaco creator Pocketwatch Games announced an in-development RTS game by the name of Armada. Then they changed the name to "Lead To Fire", before realising that nobody would know how the hell to pronounce the first word. So now it's called Tooth and Tail - and there's a first set of screenshots and details below.
]]>If one thing has become clear to me over the last couple of years, it's that Those Who Game need even more ways to spend their cash on discounted games. In the lull between digital sales events that are engineered with more precision than Black Friday's SWAT support, wallets are exposed to a paltry forty two thousand bundles and Steam has not yet incorporated second-long flash sales into its infrastructure.
Good news arrives in the form of Indie Piñata, a collection of games selected by developers. They're all on Steam and if you own one, you qualify for discounts on the rest. I'm not particularly interested in the discounts (too common), but I am intrigued by the idea of dev-curated collections. Particularly now that keeping track of 'new' releases on Steam has become rather difficult.
]]>With Pocketwatch Games starting work on its "RTS you could play in a party setting" Armada, it's time to stop coddling Monaco and set it free into the big wide world to stand on its own two feet. Run, Monaco! Be free! It's hard to let go, though, so Pocketwatch has packed one final patch for its darling little heist 'em up: cheese & Marmite sandwiches, a kiwi fruit (forgot a spoon though), a Tunnock's Tea Cake, and the fourth and final official Monaco campaign.
]]>Monaco developer Pocketwatch have announced a new game, which they are currently calling "Armada". This is, they stress, currently a working title, and the game is in the very earliest phases of development, having no real art to its name. But there is a strong concept, and they're keen to talk about that.
I caught up with pocketwatch man, Andy Schatz, to talk about the new game, which he described as "an RTS you could play in a party setting." Have a nose at that below.
]]>Another Humble Indie Bundle? What a strange turn of events. I thought for sure that Humble was going to suddenly and inexplicably shut down their massively successful enterprise this time around. I mean, they're on Humble Indie Bundle 11 now. What a gross number. Ten - nay, X - was so svelte, so confident. It plucked the olive from life's martini glass just so, and we all just wanted its gaze to fall on us for a single precious second. So seriously, what's even the point of having more Humble Bundles? Oh, right: amazing games and charity and stuff. This time around, the star-studded lineup includes Guacamelee, Monaco, Antichamber, and my personal favorite puzzler of 2013, The Swapper.
]]>[Earth-shaking slapping sounds can be heard in the distance, like fresh lard being cannon-fired at an ancient war drum]
Do you hear that?
[A glass of water ripples ominously; a largely decorative Jello mold does the same, but fails to be particularly frightening]
Something's coming. Something big.
[Dogs whine, horses stomp frantically, one or two people glance up from Western-shootout-caliber staredowns with Facebook on their phones]
It's... it's... SEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL.
]]>Delightful co-op heister Monaco is getting in the holiday spirit... of Christmas, for Halloween. The Jim-approved wonder has stolen from the, I guess, someone to give bounteous gifts to the poor/you, resulting in an update that will knock your socks off (or your entire Halloween costume, if you're going as gigantic sock). For one, there are zombies, because there are always zombies, but also the update's added an entire mini-campaign titled Monaco Origins that's rich with character-driven backstory. Details belooooooooooooooooow.
]]>What do you think of Monaco? Jim thought it was entirely delightful, and he was tickled neon pink (and neon every other color) by its roguish charms. This bit of his opinion rainbow, especially, is pertinent: "I particularly like The Hacker because he shows off what teeming systems the levels present. While anyone can hack a computer terminal, The Hacker can use plug sockets to send 'viruses' spinning around the level infrastructure. This allows you to disable alarmed doors, security cameras, and so on, but it also gives you an idea of how much there is going on in any single building. It’s a beautiful thing to see buzzing around you. It adds more life to a game that already feels fresh and awake and busy."
Basically, the levels are brilliantly intricate webs of life, interconnected circulatory systems that you must slice and dice piece-by-piece. But now dismantling is only one side of the coin, because Pocketwatch has released The Mole's Workshop, a free set of level editing tools with Steam Workshop integration.
]]>Monaco won the IGF in 2010 with a compelling prototype and a handsome smile. In 2013 it's being released as a sprawling, brilliantly-composed heist game that is poised, like a ludological cat-burglar, to steal our imaginations. The years of polish show in layers of features and detail, while the core idea that won the IGF - of single or multiplayer replayable heists - continues to produce gold on every playthrough.
This is one of the most important independent games this year, and might well end up being one of the best-loved games of the decade.
]]>I played a beta of Monaco about, ooh, two years ago. Back then, I was already impressed with the top-down steal(th) game's interesting take on co-op thievery. It was one of those games that already felt complete, and I expected a few months more polish was all it needed. Craig of two years ago was such an optimist! Well, we all know the truth, and the game did not make my launch window. I was made to look a fool! But I can't stay mad at Monaco. It will finally be out on April 24th, and there's a trailer showing of where all that time was spent.
]]>Being a good thief requires patience. Co-op heist darling Monaco, for instance, has been on the radar for ages (we first posted about it back before thievery was even invented, in the primordial mists of 2010), so it's methodically slipped in and out of hiding to avoid detection and subsequent ejection. Or, you know, it's a hyper-ambitious independent videogame, and hammering its many moving parts into working order was akin to coordinating a hitch-free heist of the world's foremost exceedingly loud clown shoe, whoopee cushion, and landmine museum. Regardless, its release is now finally, mercifully right around the corner.
]]>Andy Schatz' inspired multiplayer co-op heist game,Monaco, is a lot of fun. I'll describe that fun to you in more detail in another article. For now, though, with the game just a couple of months from release, have a read of my chat with the creator of the IGF-winning game. We talk Indie Fund, Kickstarter, Volcanoes, and the joy of beta testing. Read on!
]]>Monaco is one of the best co-op games I can remember, and it's also one of the best heist games I can think of. It also won the IGF, which means that you have plenty of reason to be interested in pre-order of Monaco. Yes, tempting isn't it? Very tempting... Perhaps you'd also like to see the game being played in brilliant fashion in a gameplay video? That's below, just to sweeten the pudding. Mmm!
Final release of the game will be around March, although Mr Schatz says he hasn't quite nailed down a date.
]]>Stealth game fans pay heed. Over the next two days RPS hosts a conversation between Nels Anderson, Lead Design of Mark Of The Ninja, and a number of other stealth-game luminaries, as they discuss matters of of sneaking and hiding in videogame form. Anderson talks to Patrick Redding, Game Director on Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Andy Schatz, creator of Monaco, and Raphael Colantonio, co-creative director of Dishonored.
This is part one, part two will appear tomorrow. Onwards! (But stay out of sight...)
]]>UPDATE: Andy has chose the winners. Check your email later tonight to see if you won. Winners list is here.
IGF winning heist game Monaco - which I can report is fairly brilliant - is having a closed beta. Yes, very closed, only a select few people are invited. And some of those people are you. Well, if you can be clever, anyway. Developer Andy Schatz is reading, and he's going to pick ten commenters from this thread to receive access to the beta. The keys will be sent to your RPS-registered email address by me, so if you can't check that for whatever reason, you might want to provide another. For your comment, please reason why you should get a key in verse. Haiku and limericks would be preferred.
Oldish Monaco footage below, too.
]]>If only Monaco Is Mine was being developed at the pace this video demonstrated. We'd all be heisting together, instead of picking at every little crumb of development info the haughty team tosses our way. What you're about to watch is a time-lapse in which a single-player level built, and therefore is totally spoiled for educational purposes. Dare you click the link? I think you're chicken. Buckaww!
]]>Hello! I'm supposed to be away today (don't envy me - I was doing my tax return, weeping, screaming, not having any fun), but I just wanted to stop in and share this level walkthrough of Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine with you. Even now, some sixteen years on from its original announcement, Andy Schatz and Pocketwatch Games' long in the making, IGF winning co-op heist is one of the games I'm most looking forward to right now. Here's a little taste of why I think that, as well as a bit of hot monkey action and some top mad piano noodling.
]]>Monaco, which is the indie heist game you will be going crazy for in 2012, has a video out! It shows the online multiplayer in action: you are going to be able to play peer-to-peer co-op with teams of burglars doing their business across the exquisitely-crafted lo-fi levels. Oh, you are going to enjoy this game.
]]>Monaco! There's a game I'm very excited about. Hopefully we'll have a ton to say about it very soon. Meantime, creator Andy Schatz is working on enfleshening his co-op, semi-free-form heist game, and one thing he's decided upon is making sure any hacking language and terminology used in it (i.e. when a character is hacking an in-game computer) is relatively convincing. That's where you come in.
]]>The happiest person I've met at GDC so far has been last year's IGF winner, Andy Schatz, the creator of 4-player heist game, Monaco. Why so happy? Well, the Indie Fund - an investment group set up by the World Of Goo creators 2D Boy and others - is funding his game, allowing him to hire a level designer and to focus on getting the game just right. "It's coming together so fast that we might go beyond the twenty levels of the story mode," Schatz told me. "We could end up having a bunch more multiplayer maps." And, having played some of that both with the rest of RPS, and yesterday with Schatz, I can confirm that this is Good News. The game will also ship with online multiplayer and an editor - an editor whose maps are miraculously encoded into the side-on loading screen images of the game. Magic.
]]>There are certain games which, when their names are uttered three times into a mirror, cause Peter Molyneux to appear. Following serious testing, we can confirm that Monaco is not one of them. And that's not all we know about Monaco, the game by Pocketwatch Games, aka Andy Schatz. We – all five – gentleman thieves of RPS recently played the IGF-winning four-player steal 'em up (John and I had to sit out by turns) in an special group contrivance. It was a fun time, a giddy time, like the south of France on a balmy night. Monaco!
This was the recent PAX build of the still as-yet-unreleased game, with four entire levels, and – for some reason - there's actually a video of us tackling one of them posted below. I've also penned some thoughts about the experience, which I previously looted from my brain, and those of my fellow conspirators.
]]>And the IGF winners have been announced and Monaco is the belle of this particular gaming ball, picking up two awards, including the Grand Prize. The incredibly atmospheric Limbo also picked up two awards, for Visual lookitude and technical prettiosity. The Grand Prize winner takes home $20,000 (Count 'em) dollars, with all of the other categories bringing home $2,500. Except for the D2D one, which is 10K. A run down of all the winners follows. Well done all. And lend us a fiver.
]]>Part of you wants to be upset with Pocketwatch Games. Why haven't they given us 2009's Unknown Pleasure Venture Dinosauria yet? That part is soon quashed when you see what Andy Schatz is working on. Monaco is a four-player co-op stealth game that's been shortlisted for both the Design and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Minimalist graphics. Exciting theme. Stealth. This one has RPS written all over it. Our interview with Andy, and footage of Monaco follows...
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