I eat other people's food when they're full

Hi everyone! Today is an exciting day as Microsoft’s Game Dev Day and Games Ireland Gathering 2013 are happening at the Aviva stadium. Of course, I’ll be attending and relaying all the news, interviews and highlights I can humanly do.

Check back over the coming days, as I’ll be updating as I can produce the work. I’m planning on attending talks for Construct 2 and Cocos-2DX, along with the keynotes and other scheduled events. I’ll also try live Tweet as much as possible during the event, keeping you up to date with what’s happening.

If you want to contact me for any reason, hit me up on Twitter!

The Stream of the day is available here.

Young indie developer bitSmith Games released its first title, Kú: Shroud of the Morrigan, last week. I had the opportunity to interview level designer Paul Conway, in which we discussed Kú’s influences, the appeal of iOS and the struggles involved in being an indie dev in Ireland.

Let’s start at the beginning. How did bitSmith Games come to be?

 The team was formed out of a mix [of graduates from] Dublin Institute of Technology Master courses. The game was initially their final project but D.I.T. are great with IP ownership so let the team continue developing it commercially. Over the course of the next year, we got a place on the NDRC Launchpad program and received CSF, which is a €50,000 investment available to high potential start-ups. This helped grow the team and allowed us to finish the game.

No doubt you’ve played Slender: The Eight Pages, the simple but eery horror from the mind of Mark J. Hadley. The game became a surprising success, being passed on through word of mouth and has frightened thousands in the process.

But you’re done with the game. You may have found the 8 pages, you probably didn’t (waster) but you’ve had your fill. So what next? 

You could get your horror fill from the recently released Resident Evil 6 (which got pretty mixed reviews) and spend 50 euro. But you don’t want to do that. You want FREE STUFF!

So here you are, SCP - Containment Breach. The game’s official description reads as follows: 

The game is set in a containment site of The SCP Foundation, a secret organization dedicated to containing and researching creatures, items and places that threaten the normality of the world. You’re thrown into the boots of a Class D, one of the Foundations disposable human guinea pigs. Unfortunately things hit the fan, a massive containment breach occurs and you end up alone in the darkness with the escaped entities roaming around the facility. Your goal is to make it out alive. You can also attempt to search the facility for documents and other clues to figure out what led to the breach, and do your part in fixing the situation.

The aim of the game is to escape subject SCP-173, a stone structure who enjoys snapping the necks of his victims but can only move when not in direct eye contact with someone. Containment Breach’s hook is the fact you have to blink periodically, allowing SCP-173 to move at startling speed towards you. A small bar quickly whittles away, which creates a tense atmosphere when you run into SCP-173 in the dark and brooding rooms of the containment site.

The rooms you trek through are randomly generated, guaranteeing no two playthroughs will be the same. The random nature of my exploration of the facility added to the atmosphere and sense of dread I felt while playing. And while I was screaming. Under my covers.

So give it a try, personally I think it’s even scarier than Slender and it’s evven halloween, so why not? You can download the game for free here. 

The games I’m planning on playing this summer:

Currently Playing: 

• Just Cause 2 (PSN)
• Sound Shapes (PSN)
• Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD (PSN)  
• Plants vs. Zombies (PSN)
• MediEvil (PS One)
• MotorStorm: Apocalypse  (PSN)
• Rock of Ages (PSN)

Pretty sure I’m missing some games

Downloaded/Bought (And Waiting) to be Played

• Borderlands
• Bastion (PC)
• The Binding of Isaac (PC)
• Dead Space 2
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
• GTA: San Andreas
• Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC)
• Tribes: Ascend (PC)

To be played (Maybe):

• Journey (PSN)
• The Sly Cooper Collection
• The God of War Collection
• Rage
• Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
• Killzone 3
• Resistance 2
• LittleBigPlanet 2  (Free with PlayStation Plus)
• inFamous 2 (Evil play through)
• Crysis 2
• Catherine
• The Ratchet and Clank Collection
• Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions
• I would put Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and Dead Souls down but they are too biiiig.
• Max Payne 3
• Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Completed:

• Uncharted (Hard Play through)
• Lollipop Chainsaw (My Review for Lollipop Chainsaw)
• Beyond Good and Evil HD
• Heavy Rain  Didn’t Platinum it (Womp Womp)
• Outland
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
• Spec Ops: The Line

Now, obviously there isn’t enough hours in the day to play all these. So, I’ll be playing what I can pick up, what’s in the shop, what’s there to rent. I also plan on buying a Vita in September, so I’ll be playing games like Rayman: Origins and Rocketbirds on that. 

If you think of something that might interest me, hit me up!

Those in bold are must plays!

Or how the Apocalypse can be positive.

The unthinkable has happened. A little less than two months ago, my magic portal, my source of euphoria, my opium, perished. Yes, my PlayStation 3 died.

Well, its most important function did at least. The blu-ray drive went kaput and no longer reads discs of any kind. After just one year of having this beautiful machine it decided to call it quits. Naturally of course, I went through the five stages of grief. There were tears, angry tantrums and sleepless nights.  Over the course of all these stages I tried in vain to fix my enchanting Foreman grill. Sadly these attempts didn’t work and left the PlayStation in a worse state.

I will at some point have it fixed (or better yet replaced), but this terrible circumstance I find myself in has provided me with an interesting perspective: I wasn’t appreciative enough of what I was playing.

Over the last year I’ve bought upwards of 30 games, and enjoyed the hell out of the majority of them, but I was spoilt. I wasn’t giving the experiences a chance, too busy trying to plough my way through a game to get onto the next one.  Naturally I gave certain games a large amount of attention, but for other games I feel I didn’t do them the justice of taking my time and enjoying them.

Of course this is the predicament that befalls most gamers today, too many games and not enough time. Some time away from your gaming hobby sheds light on your habits and overall whether you’re getting as much out of your cash as you possibly can.

My time isolated from disc based media has also provided me with an even deeper respect of digital distribution. The PlayStation Store has saved my gaming life. The main games I played on my PlayStation were story driven games with very little time given to arcade games ie. Shatter, Pacman Championship Edition DX. I’ve almost been forced to play these games in a way, which is not a bad thing at all. Overlooking these games was a biiiiiig mistake. My reliance on the PlayStation Store has also shown how little retail games are on the store. Sony is getting better at releasing them on the Store, but we need more. 

The last positive I found about my PlayStation breaking: Looking to other sources for gaming. I now have a Steam account and am trying to get into PC gaming. W, A, S and D aren’t currently my best friends, but we’ll become pals I’m sure. My ignored PSP is even getting some time in the spotlight, opening me up to new experiences.

So all in all, I guess I’m grateful that my PlayStation broke. It’s given me a new understanding of the games I play and what it is to be a gamer.

Now… Anyone want to pay for its repair?