QCF: Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Ep4

This Review was Frelanced by Johnathan Sawyer; you can find his other work here.

n 2012, Zeboyd Games picked up what was thought to be a dead series with Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, and with it, brought life back into it with the release of Episode 3. The risk seemed great into changing it into a classic console-style RPG, but it wound up being a major improvement over the two previous games. While the game itself was a blast, missing story elements and other needed improvements prompted a little to be desired.

But here we are in 2013 with the release of Episode 4. it takes every aspect of Episode 3 and either corrects or improves upon any issues that one would have seen in the last episode, and definitely leaves all of your senses smiling (you know, if they had mouths).

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QCF: The Night of The Rabbit

aedalic Entertainment pulls double duty as developer and publisher to bring us their game vision, The Night of the Rabbit. It’s an adventure title of the point-and-click variety that saw release on PC and Mac on May 29, 2013. Characters, story, exploration, and visuals tend to be the driving point for most point-and-click adventures, and I’m happy to report that The Night of the Rabbit delivers in all categories.

The story book scenery is flat out beautiful. From the rich warm colors of a setting sun to the aurora borealis bristling over the arctic, you can tell the art team put their very best effort into their work and had fun doing it. My wife (who doesn’t typically play video games) was immediately drawn in by the game’s presentation. That says a lot about the influence a great art team can have on a product.

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QCF: Game Dev Tycoon

ame Dev Tycoon is a game I've wished for since playing Game Dev Story back in 2010. I couldn’t tell you how much I played that game. In fact, it was my game of the year back then. So when picking up Game Dev Tycoon and diving in to a deeper, more fleshed-out version of that same experience, you’d think that I'd be jumping for joy the entire way through. However, what I really discovered is a game so difficult to wrap my head around that it's almost a cautionary tale about the current state of game development.

GDT starts you out as an indie developer toiling away at your computer and developing games in your garage. There's no real narrative in place, so you just start making games back in the early days of gaming before the NES even launched. Being that you're a one-person game making machine, you begin to pump a text adventure here and military strategy game there. Once you gain a little money you can invest in developing your own engine and research new types of games.

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QCF: Guacamelee

very culture possesses a title of incredible significance, one that grants the individual who bears it fame and the opportunity to leave behind a legacy for those who succeed said title; the proud lineage of the luchador is such a title. Majestic forces of strength in the ring, these masked heroes symbolize the principals and codes of virtue as they launch from colorful ropes and transform into deadly flying emissaries of justice against their opponents—Lucha libre is storied lifestyle and that’s what Drinkbox Studios’ Guacamelee aims to deliver, and it does just that, and surprisingly more.

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Life Through The Pixel Glass - 04/18/2013

h man, you guys -- it’s been forever and then some since we’ve done a Life Through The Pixel Glass, hasn’t it? Well from all of the review games we’ve been catching up with on top of the Bioshock Infinite Game Club that rode the coat tails of GDC and PAX East, it’s needless to say that we’ve all been pretty busy. That’s why we’re going to go ALL OUT in this latest one. It’s going to be the biggest LTTPG feature we’ve done up to date.

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Press Pause Radio at GDC13!

t’s over everyone, the gauntlet of video game events is OVER! George and Sean return from GDC and get in touch with Toast as they talk about a myriad of topics from the 2013 Game Developer’s Conference—sessions concerning the evolution of storytelling in games, post-mortems, tons of indie games, The Phantom Pain, Nintendo Web Framework, and PS4 social functionality? Yeah, it’s all here and more on the latest podcast, some audio issues occurred unfortunately but the episode is still very much listenable.

Rate and subscribe to us iTunes today, follow us on our new Twitch page, mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, and be sure to stop by at our Forums and register as well!

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GDC 2013: Getting serious with Ben McGraw about Sully: AVSRPG

stablished genres are constantly met with the challenge of keeping things refreshing while still applying the rules and distinctions that adhere to the structure of what makes the genre what it is. One of these established genres in particular is the JRPG. For every quality and merit you could argue for these types of games, there’s another waiting to combat it. The genre has become one of the most divided between gamers for over the last 10 years, but one man, among others, wants to help usher JRPGs back into its former limelight.

Anxiously sitting at the local Starbucks caddy-corner near the Moscone, I awaited the arrival of Ben McGraw of Breadbros Games after meeting him earlier this week to discuss his current project, Sully: A Very Serious RPG. As I finish spreading the cream cheese on my bagel, we prepare to discuss one of the most promising JRPG games from the indie scene yet.

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GDC 2013: Lost Orbit and Finding All Audiences

ne of the greatest challenges in game design involves designing titles that successfully cater to everyone. If a game seems too simplistic, veteran gamers may dismiss it entirely. If it’s too difficult, you lose another potential audience of would-be players, therefore robbing more individuals of an experience they could have had otherwise.

The Canada-based studio PixelNAUTS aspires to conquer this challenge while designing Lost Orbit, their newly announced title which they’ve been developing in the past two months.

“The hardest challenge is getting something that feels good,” designer Alex Golebiowski told me. “Above all else, that’s what you have to get right first.”

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