News Bites: Snack-Pack Edition
As you may have noticed, this is my second News Bite today. With any luck, I’ll be writing these fairly frequently. Anyway, onto the topic at hand.
It’s no stretch to say that this is the most excited I’ve been after simply reading about a game concept since first I lifted a gamepad. I mean, just look at this:
(All pictures taken from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. I hope they don’t hate me.)
That’s not some exquisite painting — or at least, not of the typical, static variety. It’s a screenshot from the game! Love looks as though it could finally fulfill the secret dream of all cel-shaded games — to actually be a painting in motion.
But what is Love, exactly?
Well, in the most basic of terms, it’s a mini-MMO. But beyond that, it’s a living, breathing, procedural world. See, the development staff is chock-full of talent, but all of that talent is packed tightly into a single guy — art, gameplay, programming, everything! That’s right, there’s still room for “indie” development in today’s crowded, sequelitis-infested marketplace.
As a result of the development team’s slight lack in quantity, much of the game world will be procedural; algorithms will serve as God’s right hand in Love’s picture-esque setting. And here’s the cool part: We’ll serve as the left hand.
Players will create villages, deform terrain, and discover methods of item creation that — in a community-oriented twist — will be for the benefit of not just the intrepid players who discover them, but for all other colorful adventurers as well. With any luck, griefers will think twice before killing those who are putting bread on their figurative tables.
(Rock, Paper, Shotgun, have I mentioned how nice you look today?)
It seems that Games 2.0 (or 3.0, or whatever we’re calling it) has finally arrived. In a Worthplaying article, I predicted that LittleBigPlanet would be the harbinger of gaming’s next earth-shaking step, but with XNA (more on that little occurrence later), Love, and so many others stepping up to the plate, the preemptive champion might just find itself dethroned and relegated to mere groupie status. But hey, at least it’ll have comrades-in-arms.
