A number of staff at Bossa Games, the UK game studio behind the Surgeon Simulator games, I Am Bread and more have recently been impacted by layoffs, it’s been confirmed.
19.12.2023 - 10:41 / gamesindustry.biz
Trade body UKIE has maintained a lovely tradition for several years now: celebrating a UK Game of the Show at Gamescom.
The task of finding a winner has fallen onto GamesIndustry.biz for the past couple of years now, last year leading us to the wonderful Shadows of Doubt.
There were many worthy contenders this year again, but our decision went towards a title that channelled the perspective-shifting cleverness and striking visual identity of a Monument Valley or a Carto: Paper Trail, from Newfangled Games.
"The game is like a top-down puzzle adventure where the key mechanic is being able to fold the level that you're on," explains Newfangled CEO Henry Hoffman. "Each level has a front side and a back side. What's really interesting about that is when you fold over the front and the back, the two worlds merge together and you can use that to solve puzzles in interesting ways.
"We didn't realise at the time, but it gave us a whole bunch of really interesting paper-based mechanics. What's nice about that is it's got this top-down perspective, which creates these really interesting optical illusions and extra paths."
Hoffman is no stranger to perspective-shifting titles as he is best known for being the creator of 2016's colour-changing puzzler Hue.
"I've been working in indie games for 15 years or so," he says. "But the problem I found with the model that we were following is you start up a new company, you make a game, you have a publishing deal, you get some money that you can pay yourself back with, and then you wind down that studio and then do the same again. It became this cycle of starting up and closing down studios which I did for a while – we were able to sell the [Hue] IP [and] our studio [Fiddlesticks] to Curve Games so that was good, but it meant that there was a real talent churn."
Having repeated this cycle a few times, Hoffman was keen to build a "long-term sustainable studio." He had worked with his brother (art director Frederick Hoffman) on Hue and it's with him that the initial idea for Paper Trail was brainstormed, too.
"I remember my brother had a piece of paper that he drew some random pictures on and he started folding it over and we thought that was really interesting, that you could create a side-scrolling puzzle game doing this, where you fold the level over and navigate between the two worlds," he recalls.
"We started messing around with different viewpoints as well, we did a full top-down view which enabled us to create paths that redirect the player, which provided much more space for gameplay, whereas with a side-scroller you're bound by gravity so you're always going to be on a single play field of a single dimension.
"Full top-down games are aesthetically kind
A number of staff at Bossa Games, the UK game studio behind the Surgeon Simulator games, I Am Bread and more have recently been impacted by layoffs, it’s been confirmed.
Microsoft has announced the first library update for Xbox Game Pass in 2024, with a great batch of games that includes Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake, Hell Let Loose and plenty more.
Microsoft has announced the first library update for Xbox Game Pass in 2024, with a great batch of games that includes Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake, Hell Let Loose and plenty more.
Focusing on the key campaigns of the US air force during World War 2 was something executive producer Gary Goetzman and his partners, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, "had always talked about" in the wake of their hit shows Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010).
India is increasingly and rapidly stepping up its game in space missions and discoveries. With a number of new upcoming missions planned by the space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), India has also laid out its investment plans for a monetary contribution to the international astronomical collaboration project, which includes over 16 nations. The collaboration between the nations will be developing the world's largest radio telescope called the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which will be responsible for studying galaxies present in the universe. Additionally, it aims to make available the data as to evolution of our galaxy. Know what the project is about and how and when it will be ready to conduct research.
A new patch for the Sega Saturn version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night just dropped, and it seems we might finally have a definitive way to play the original Metroidvania classic in English with all its bonus features and no compromises.
Fallout: London has been in the works for five years now, culminating in a seriously impressive mod for Fallout 4 that’s essentially a brand new game set in a radiated England rather than North America. After missing its planned release window in 2023, it now has a full release date - and it’s only a few months away.
One of 2023’s biggest cinema trends was the way accomplished filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan, and many more delivered some of the most creatively and commercially successful work of their careers. There was just something in the air this year, as one major artist after another took big swings that connected.
There are a lot of ways to judge a great performance. In 2023, as in every year, some of the year’s best movies were quirky, colorful, boundary-pushing challenges to the cinematic status quo, and some were low-key, emotionally intense stories, either tracking the lives of famous historical figures or just trying to evoke the pains of real life. Our list of the best performances of the year honors both extremes: outsized performances that tickled and surprised us, and realistic ones that made us forget we were watching a performance. Here are our favorites among the many great performances we saw in movies in 2023.
As 2023 comes to an end, cybercrime has become a critical issue. Insomniac Games, the famed developer of Marvel's Spider-Man and its sequel Spider-Man 2 became the latest victim of a lack recently. Nearly 1.6TB of information including developer builds of the upcoming Marvel's Wolverine, timeline of upcoming games, as well as personal data of employees were put online by hackers. While this hack was shocking, it isn't the only one suffered by a major gaming developer in recent years. Just last year, Rockstar Games was hacked and 90 early development videos of GTA 6 were leaked online. Sometime later, it was concluded that a teen was behind the hack, and now he has been sentenced to life in hospital prison.
New rules have been laid out by regulators in China that aim to reduce the amount of money gamers spend within video games.
Few works of historical fiction have been so imaginative in premise, yet so dull and lackluster in execution. Freud’s Last Session puts a powerhouse pair of actors, Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode, in the shoes of two renowned real-life figures, Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, as they engage in theological debate. But the resultant conversation, based on the play of the same name by Mark St. Germain (who co-wrote the screenplay with director Matthew Brown), would be laughed out of a high school philosophy club. Despite the caliber of its performers — especially Hopkins, who’s in the most fascinating phase of his career with works like The Father and One Life — Brown’s film is an utter dud.