Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! “What’s with the politics? Stick to games!” is a common refrain you might hear from the sort of winning individual who thinks books are a communist plot to lower their sperm count. Luckily, those people are elsewhere, so I hope you’ll allow me a brief moment of relief that the Tories are no longer in power. This is a great thing, providing you have absolutely no follow-up questions! This week, it’s QWOP, Getting Over It, and Ape Out's Bennet Foddy! Cheers Bennet! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
]]>There is no part of Ape Out that is not good. I love it. It is perfect and glorious. You must play it.
]]>Times are strange and frightening. But one point of great solace for me has been hearing people celebrating things in their lives. It feels especially important right now to hold on to what makes us all proud about what we do and who we are. And what I really love is people showing off things they’re proud of making.
So I’ve been asking a bunch of developers to pick out something they’ve created that brings them pleasure to look back on. And here they are, including Harvey Smith remembering his input on Deus Ex and Dishonored, Derek Yu on one of his first-ever games. There’s pride in doing something for someone else’s game, in the power of details and in little inventions, and ah gosh, shut up, let’s just tuck into a big slice of escapist positivity.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Do you know what awaits atop the mountain in Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy? Past all the nonsensical detritus, and after every snippet of Foddy's philosophical musing? I do. Not because I climbed it, obviously. I'm a coward who relies on the internet for answers.
If you're still convinced you're going to get there under your own steam one day, read no further.
]]>From the languid tempo that starts each level, to the frenetic bebop energy driving a series of devastating assaults, the soundscape of the indie beat ‘em up Ape Out is all about contrasts. As the eponymous gorilla, Ape Out lets players exact revenge against a battalion of doughy humans who are too feeble to stand directly against your wrath. It’s thunderous centrifuge of jazz and violence where the former is just as important as the latter.
“It's a game that goes between extremes,” says Matt Boch, an associate arts professor at the NYU Game Center and the composer and sound designer of Ape Out’s dizzying soundtrack. “We're trying to give people [the experience of having] these heights of intensity, and then the low points that build suspense.”
]]>Once I went to the zoo in San Diego, and a load of people were banging on the glass at an orangutan and its baby instead of just being appropriately (quietly) awed. One man in particular was hollering at what was a very sad looking ape, and honestly if there was justice in the world the orangutan would have smashed free and liquified that man’s limbs like a bouncer squeezing an uncooked sausage. In Ape Out, there is that justice. And jazz. And it is glorious.
]]>We'll need to wait another three weeks for the mansmash cymbalcrash action of Ape Out, as publishers Devolver Digital today announced the launch is delayed from next Thursday until February 28th. What I've seen and played of Ape Out was a thumping great time so I'm happy to wait, especially given that the delay is supposedly to give the devs time to get it going at 60fps. I'll welcome extra smoothness when I'm an escaped gorilla hurling humans and causing carnage. And in the game.
]]>Some games, not all games (but some) have a degree of representational movement in them. A couple of years ago I went to see a panel discussion of designers at the Southbank Centre (a dream lineup: Naomi Alderman, Cara Ellison, Emily Short, and Meg Jayanth; moderated by Simon Parkin) and one of the designers mentioned the way players automatically notice the effects of their own interactivity through movement. “Players immediately say something like, ‘Oh, that’s me,’ once they’re able to move something on screen.” she said. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
]]>Bennett Foddy, the fiendish fella behind QWOP and Getting Over It, has shared his own variant of iconic game Pong. It's named FLOP, and you can probably guess what makes it different. Foddy actually made FLOP years ago, as a secret game hidden in the ace local multiplayer collection Sportsfriends, but now he's released a standalone version so it's simpler to play (with events in mind, really, but we benefit too). If you like a bit of jostling on a couch, it might give you some giggles.
]]>The awards ceremony at this year’s GDC was fun. At least, that’s what John told me from his seat in the crowd, where he saw the winners mount a stage some would consider too colourful for this planet. The Independent Games Festival Awards and subsequent Game Developer’s Choice Awards saw a range of trophy-grabbers, from indie students to adventure game veterans. Unfortunately for them, I was hiding backstage, skulking behind a black curtain and holding a voice recorder like a cudgel. I had one question to ask them all: If they had to give their award away, who would get it?
It’s like re-gifting, except you worked really hard for the gift and now you have to hand it over three minutes after your acceptance speech. Life is pain.
]]>I'm still fascinated by Getting Over It, though I've reach the point where I can only handle playing it for about 15 minutes a week. Amazingly, that'd be enough time for speedrunner Christian 'Distortion2' Licht to make his way all the way up the mountain 7 and a half times: last week he became the first person to beat the game in under 2 minutes.
While I won't be performing such a feat any time soon, I did get the chance to pick Distortion's brain about his first clamber up the mountain, how speedrunning Getting Over It compares to other games, and - most importantly - how to handle those rage inducing set-backs. Be warned that though the game has no story, we do discuss some of its twists and turns.
]]>Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy has been stewing for a while - as have the people who've been playing it - so I figured the internet would have cooked up some treats for our viewing pleasure. I figured correctly: below you'll find the best clips, gifs and raps I could find.
If you've ever wondered what Getting Over It might look like if someone attempted it in real life, then wonder no more.
]]>You may have witnessed us trying difficult mountain climbing game Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy. Last week Matt attempted to scale part of the mountain, clambering over rocks, girders, concrete pipes and wooden barrels using nothing but the game's jerky sledgehammer and terrifying upper body strength. He did well. But Matt lacks a deeper comprehension of summits and the ascent thereof - a philosophical understanding I myself possess. So I decided to pick up where he left off. Come and watch me Getting Over Matt.
]]>Let me tell you a clubhouse secret. We have a mantra at RPS for deciding what to write about, and it’s as simple as it is helpful: 'a good time should be shared online'.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy released on Steam yesterday, and whatever kind of time it is, the only way I can properly share it is if you’re with me. In the moment. Here are four agonising minutes of me flailing around as a man stuck in a cauldron trying to ascend a mountain with a hammer.
]]>Reader dear, I am sorry to tell you that our Brendan is not committed to manufacturing paperclips. Can you believe that he stopped playing neat-o new browser-based clicker Paperclips [official site] before even hypnotising humanity to submit to his machine consciousness? Luckily for you, I have the commitment and dedication to reach the end and turn the entire universe into paperclips. I can tell you that the universe contains enough matter for 3,000 sexdecillion paperclips (that's 55 zeroes in all), and that the journey to reach this discovery is a wild one.
]]>We've taken our QWOPs and our GIRPs, like all growing youngsters should, but can we really say we are healthy, well-balanced individuals until we have tried to climb a mountain using only a sledgehammer while stuck in a cauldron? That sounds like a rhetorical question, but it is not. Getting Over It [official site] is the next game from Bennett Foddy. And while it does away with the naming convention of his previous 2D stumblers, it still looks like a game that simulates what it feels like for your hands to be drunk while the rest of your body is sober. Here's a video.
]]>What are you playing this weekend? No, shut up. I don't want to hear it. Call up some friends, get them over, tell them to bring snacks and drink, and play Sportsfriends until Fanta drips down your giggling chins. The bundle of J.S Joust and other ace local multiplayer games finally arrived on PC last night, after yonks of only being found at games events (well, and PlayStations, later). They are great and this is what you're playing this weekend and no, I don't even want to hear it.
]]>One of the great tragedies of the last couple of years, other than that Meat Loaf is Republican and America cancelled space, is the continued inability for the common people to lay darting, sweaty hands on OSX/PlayStation Move-based live-action multiplayer game Johann Sebastian Joust. It's toured festivals, events and gatherings of people who wear retro spectacles and don't shave much (i.e. more confident versions of me) for a long while, but has until now had no public availability.
All that changes, as the free-form duel of glowing dildoes has taken to the Kickstarters, in the company of some other fine, vaguely sports-centred indies, as is promising a PC and Mac release in addition to the headline making 'first crowd-sourced PS3 game' version.
]]>Next up on the conveyor-belt of interviews that is our IGF Factor 2012 series, it's the creator of GIRP. What does he have to say about the IGF, about the monsters from Doom, and about who the single most important game designer in the world is? Let's find out.
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