This week on Zed Games Paul leads the team with Zahra And Caroline taking the to the mics to bring us all in gaming news, reviews, community and culture. But first, Cam brings us the week in old man #GamingNews, just so the team can clarify the Helldivers Misinformation Mixup and Paul talks the wholesome surprise stream of the Indie Brew Aussie Indi Showcase. Then Paul is confused at the lovely unique story of Highwater and its Pirate Radio DJ from Demagog Studio, and Zahra gets stuck climbing into the VR title The Pirate Queen from Singer Studios. Paul rounds things off to talk narrative games in the upcoming digital festival LudoNarraCon 2024.
Valve has posted a job listing. Nothing new, except that it gives us a hint of what’s to come, with the listing looking for someone to ‘prototype, ship, and support’ a virtual reality headset, saying “At Valve, we are pushing the boundaries of virtual reality experiences… The main scope of this position is to prototype, ship, and support consumer gaming products leveraging visual-inertial tracking, camera passthrough, environment understanding, eye tracking, and hand tracking.”
This certainly isn’t Valve’s first foray into VR, but it does signal a push to get ahead in the VR headset market.
Metaverse Isn’t Popular
Decentraland, a Metaverse project, hasn’t exactly been flourishing. It’s a sandbox environment where users can buy and sell virtual real estate, and has a market cap of $1.2 billion. The number of active users over a 24 hour period? 38.
Dencentraland do point out that active users are defined as unique blockchain wallet addresses, which leaves out users who just use it as a place to socialise and hang out, which may bring numbers up to 8000 users per day.
Doom’s On Notepad Now
You’ve seen Doom on PC, consoles, calculators, pregnancy tests, and more. Now get ready for 60 frames per second Doom gameplay in notepad, the very same notepad you have at home. It is playable, using text to create the visuals, much like ASCII art. In very quick, simplified terms, notepad is being used as a monitor, with other software running in the background doing the hard work.
Splatoon Gets a Bit… Rowdy
Nintendo had to release a public statement recently, reminding players of Nintendo’s streaming guidelines, and more specifically, how open streamers are to legal actions. Why? Streamers had started a trend of using chroma-key to superimpose explicit adult videos over the enemy’s ink, essentially treating it as a kind of greenscreen.
As it goes against Nintendo’s streaming guidelines, they can now take down posts, videos, and streams, and even pursue legal action.
AGDA Winners
The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association has announced the winners of the 2022 Australian Game Developer Awards. Judging goes through 70 game industry professionals, with winners from 13 categories announced, plus an additional 4 cultural awards, resulting in this year’s awards being filled with the highlights of what Australia has to offer.
Cult of the Lamb has left with four awards, including Game of the Year.
Julian Wilton, Creative Director of Massive Monster, says “After experiencing our success overseas, it was an amazing feeling to see our game really resonate with Australians as well. We received such strong support locally and we love that it’s being enjoyed, not just for the gameplay, but also for the art and music.”
Raymond Corrigan, the creator of Earthlingo, won the Rising Star award.
Ryan McMahon, art director at Playside Studios, won the Ambition award.
Clara Reeves, CEO of Hipster Whale, has been recognised for her ongoing contributions to the Australian games industry with the Adam Lancman award.
Gameloft Brisbane has come away with the last cultural award with the Studio of the Year award.
And now for some upcoming games!
October 13
The Case of the Golden Idol – PC
The Darkest Tales – PC, XBO, Switch
The Eternal Cylinder – PS5, XSX
Fueled Up – PC, PS4, XBO
GOAL! The Club Manager – PC
Kao the Kangaroo: Oh! Well DLC – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch
Lost Eidolons – PC
Sunday Gold – PC
Triangle Strategy – PC
Trifox – Switch
Winter Games 2023 – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch
October 14
Dragon Ball: The Breakers – PC, PS4, XBO, Switch
NHL 23 – PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO
No More Heroes 3 – PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO
PGA Tour 2K23 Standard Edition – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO
In studio: Jody Macgregor, Candi Payne, Lee and Razor.
It’s our Radiothon special celebrating 4ZZZ’s “mid-life crisis” and 40 years on-air… so we go retro! We review Pac-Man 256, the latest version of the iconic arcade smash hit by Crossy Road developer Hipster Whale. King’s Quest is a modern “re-imagining” of the classic point and click adventure game, starring Christopher Lloyd and an all-star voice cast. We review Chapter 1: A Knight to Remember (we’ll return to it later for a discussion about the complete game). Razor presents a special segment on The History and Culture of Pinball , featuring Riff Randall and Chelle McIntyre.
We chat with Sanatana Mishra, designer of Assault Android Cactus, a twin-stick shooter for the PC (coming to PS4/PS Vita later this year). We discuss the game creation process, the definition of “bullet-hell” and hear the story of how a 3-person studio gained the support of Sony.
Jody gives us some first impressions of the sub-atomic puzzler “Particulars” (Steam early access)
