Tonight's Annapurna Interactive Showcase brought us 30 minutes of fresh game announcements, putting a lovely (and hopefully final) full stop on this year's notE3 / Summer Game Fest period. While most of the announcements were updates on games we already knew about, there are a couple of cool new things in there that I'm personally quite pumped for, including a new Blade Runner game being developed internally at Annapurna Interactive, a new Keita Takahashi joint about a kid stuck in a T-pose of all things, and a new ghostly biking game from the team behind Nidhogg. I'd highly recommend watching the showcase in full if you can, but in case you need a quick refresher of what happened, or are just short on time, we've rounded up every announcement in order below.
]]>My wonderful co-hosts are both away this week, leaving the responsibility of writing the podcast post to the person least capable of doing so. I am but a humble video boy! My only job is to cut out the big "ums" from the audio mix, not writing words about the things we did a chat about! Thankfully this week Indiescovery is all about change, as we're experimenting with a brand new format. A group review! We've all been playing Dredge, the eldritch fishing adventure by Black Salt Games, and hoo boy do we have some thoughts about it. Spoilers: much like Katharine, we all think it's really really good.
Elsewhere, the review bonanza continues. Rachel's been rewriting fiction in Storyteller, I've been reclaiming the wasteland in Terra Nil and Rebecca has been dating hot monsters in Romancelvania. We also chat about burgers, olives and our current hyperfixations because hey, this is an episode of Indiescovery after all.
]]>Storyteller is a make-your-own drama puzzle game, taking place on the pages of a book and within empty comic-ish panels on those pages. For each puzzle you're given a set of characters and scenarios (the Baron, the Knight, the Queen; a wedding, a kidnap, an execution) and are tasked with arranging them in a combination that fits the story title you're given (The Queen Marries). It's playful and cute, with surprising depth that draws inspiration from classic stories. It's also very short. I'd wager you'll have hunnerpercented Storyteller in two hours max, which will sound like mana from heaven to some, but may disappoint you if you've been waiting for Storyteller for over a decade.
]]>I first played Storyteller around eleven years ago, which is also the first time RPS wrote about it. It was a story-building puzzle game in which players constructed three-panel comics by dragging and dropping characters and items such that they combined in delightful, dramatic ways.
It looks to still be that, more or less, now that it's coming out in greatly expanded and polished form next week. Watch the launch trailer below.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Crikey, there are a lot of games coming out this year, aren't there? When I first asked the team to put together their most anticipated games for 2023, I was thinking we'd have a reasonably sensible number of things we were all looking forward to, you know, somewhere in the region of the 43 games we highlighted at the start of 2022. Very quickly, though, it became apparent that, actually, there are simply loads of games the RPS Treehouse is personally excited about this year, and cor, it would be rude not to include every last one of them. I'll be upfront: there are a fair number of TBA games on here that probably aren't going to come out in 2023, but as ever, we remain hopeful and optimistic all the same. So let's dive in.
]]>Last night’s Nintendo Indie showcase gave us fresh looks at many exciting indies. Chief among them was Storyteller, a narrative-puzzle game we first saw ten years ago, and has now confirmed a release date of March 23rd. The game’s comic-strip puzzles let you remix classic stories, like Dracula, using various props, verbs and nouns. A game for all the literary nerds out there.
]]>I thought Storyteller seemed promising when I first heard about the puzzle game way back in 2012, after it won the Nuovo award at the IGFs. Now that it's finally almost finished, I am delighted to play a demo in the Steam Next Fest and report back that yes, it's clever and quite delightful. Each puzzle presents you with a cast of characters, a few verbs and nouns, and an outcome which you must achieve by arranging everything in comic strip panels. Simple, clever, satisfying, and surprisingly funny.
]]>Tonight, Annapurna Interactive held their very first E3-like showcase, showing off loads of games they're publishing over the next year or so, as well as revealing new developers they're working with. We saw new gameplay for Stray, Neon White, Skin Deep, and a very special announcement from Outer Wilds developers Mobius Digital about a cryptic new expansion.
If you missed the stream, read on, because we've made a big list of everything that happened at the Annapurna Interactive Showcase.
]]>The trailer for Daniel Benmergui's Storyteller showcases an exploration of the art of storytelling, but only if it's a tragedy. Playable demo available on Steam.
]]>Storyteller is a rather novel thing, both in that it's unlike pretty much any other game and that it offers very convenient opportunities for wordplay. The comic-book-esque mini-story creation puzzler has been in development for quite some time, and each peek offered by developer Daniel Benmergui has only increased the flow of questionable liquid from my slavering chops. I wants it, precious. I wants it. I am, then, somewhat disheartened to hear that he's putting Storyteller on temporary hold, choosing to instead focus developmental fire on a commercial version of his free "quick RPG" Ernesto. Don't get me wrong: it's very good, but perhaps not quite as potential-packed as Storyteller. Fortunately, this detour is still worthwhile, not to mention (hopefully) brief.
]]>Games and storytelling have never exactly been the most natural of bedfellows - what with our medium's love of frequent, control-arresting cut-scenes and exposition-heavy codexes, among other things. But Storyteller creator Daniel Benmergui's making it look easy in a way that will hopefully elicit a rhythmic chorus of face-palms and "oh, duhs" from developers the world over: by keeping things simple. In short, the idea is to "solve" a brief, few-panel-long story by inserting items and characters as you see fit. The result? Heartbreak, romance, drama, laughs, suicide, amnesia, and more. It's looking quite special, in other words. Craft a love story for the ages between it and your eyeballs after the break.
]]>One of the annual highlights of GDC is the Experimental Gameplay Workshop (EGW). Although not a workshop, and featuring the nonsense word "gameplay" in its title, it's an excellent afternoon of developers showing a big crowd some of their more esoteric ideas. I've never been in a room where excellent game mechanics receive a delighted round of applause before. Below is a summary of what was shown.
]]>Today in our series of interviews with (almost) all the finalists in this year's Independent Games Festival, it's the turn of DIY narrative-building game Storyteller, from the creator of lovely curios Today I Die and I Wish I Were The Moon. Storyteller is nominated for the Nuovo award. Here, Ludomancy's Daniel Benmergui talks Argentine game dev, how Storyteller creates a unique comic based upon your in-game decisions, and answers the most important question of all.
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