Five of the top six spots on Xbox Live Arcade aren't just Japanese; they are all ports of classic titles. When we asked Microsoft Games Studios VP Phil Spencer about the observation, he said he could challenge the assumption that ports and existing IPs dominate sales on the platform. His ammunition was Limbo, the superb platformer that kicked off this year's Summer of Arcade.
"Our number one Summer of Arcade game is Limbo," Spencer said, "by a long stretch." Other games in the five-week lineup included updates of classic titles like Hydro Thunder and existing - and highly visible - IPs like Castlevania and Lara Croft. "I think there was a time when Live Arcade was about IP that people knew," Spencer acknowledged, while conceding that those games are "always going to be important."
"It's changing though," he said. "I really think coming out of Braid, Shadow Complex, Limbo [...] that it's changing a little bit. We see that in the market, that it's becoming less about iconic IP that people know and it's becoming more diverse." And that's a good thing for everyone involved, including Spencer. "I love Limbo. I think Limbo's probably my game of the year right now." Us too.
The IndieCade 2010 festival, an annual event held in Culver City, California which celebrates independently-created games, is doing a couple things differently for this year's awards presentation. The first is that all 32 of the finalists are nominated for every award category, such as "Technical Innovation," "World/Story," and the slightly more obscure "Sublime Experience." Check out the full list of categories and their lengthy list of contenders just past the jump.
Oh, the second difference for this year's show? It's going to be hosted by LeVar Burton. In short, it's shaping up to be the best awards show ever.
#xbox360
By setting its action in a literal out-of-body experience, Limbo changes our perception in two major ways that make it essentially and marvelously different than its peers. More »
#comedy
Newgrounds user Tenacious T imagines a bleak future when Activision's worst people create Limbo II: The Bar's Been Lowered, the sequel to the beloved indie hit Limbo. It has celebrities! Predator missiles! And ... color. More »
According to Gamasutra, Limbo - which kicked off the Xbox Live Arcade Summer of Arcade last month - has sold over 300,000 units. The outlet spoke to Jeppe Carlsen, level designer for Limbo, who discussed some of the design philosophy behind the game. Carlsen noted that the team had a few goals that Limbo had to adhere to from the beginning, including the overall mood and the decision that it would contain no tutorial text whatsoever.
With many of the game's puzzles punishing a player at the slightest misstep, Carlsen stated that "it's important that you also treat him nicely." In other words, while death is frequent, it's also entertaining and educational. Ideally, players learn something about the puzzle with each death.
Another philosophy: Make sure the correct solution is "fairly easy to execute" and that incorrect solutions are obviously wrong. Making incorrect solutions obvious aids players in discarding them from other possible solutions, nudging them toward the correct one. After all, there's no better motivator than grisly death.
#indie
2D platformers like Limbo and Braid have created deep metaphorical experiences, but can gamers appreciate them? And can their success move game literacy into new genres? More »
#review
A boy wakes up in a forest. He is nothing but a silhouette and a pair of brightly glowing eyes. To the right is death, despair and, perhaps, a way out. So he goes there. This is Limbo. More »
When trying to work out the best way to describe Limbo, I keep coming back to Edvard Munch. I've always been fascinated with Munch, an artist most famous for painting The Scream. It's his other works, however, that tend to stick with me, particularly his Madonna. As a work of art, Munch's Madonna presents the viewer with seemingly disparate imagery, at once both alluring and disquieting. It's dark, a little disturbing, and yet it's also engaging and beautiful.
It looks like the upcoming XBLA platformer Limbo isn't headed to the PS3 or PC after all. After the ESRB listed the game for the two additional platforms, we contacted Playdead for more information and, according to Playdead's Dino Patti, the game is not coming to either the PC or PS3. "We are only launching the title on XBLA," said Patti. "You won't see a PS3 or PC version this time around, sorry." He added that he's "not sure where the mistake was made" but Playdead has requested that the ESRB remove the PS3 and PC labels from Limbo's listing.
According to the ESRB, it looks like the Xbox won't be the only platform stuck in Limbo this summer. Assuming the recent ESRB listing is accurate, Playdead's terrifying, striking platformer is also headed to the PlayStation 3 and PC. Definitely good news if true, given how much we enjoyed the game's brooding atmosphere earlier this year.
We've contacted Playdead for confirmation on the listing and will update this post with any new info.
Playdead Games has finally created a gameplay trailer of its upcoming XBLA game, Limbo. Although the game has been in development for four years, this is the first promotional effort from the studio comprised entirely of in-game footage -- albeit just a small glimpse of Limbo's haunting monochromatic world.
Don't be fooled by the seeming simplicity of the gameplay seen here. While Limbo is a platformer, it features many unique physics-based environmental puzzles, which aren't well demonstrated in this brief teaser. Also not featured in this video: some of the most scarring, gruesome death sequences we've ever seen in a game.
