Chat with Unavowed lead developer Dave Gilbert at 3PM EDT
While other point-and-click adventure game developers have moved on to greener pastures, Wadjet Eye games has kept its feet firmly planted in the house that pixel-hunting built, releasing Unavowed just last week on Steam.
If you haven’t had a chance to check out Unavowed yet, it’s a solid entry in the classic PC games genre that not only tells a solid fantasy story, but contains some neat design upgrades that other developers should pay attention to.
To learn more about making those new features, we’re going to be streaming Unavowed with lead developer Dave Gilbert today at 3PM EDT over on the Gamasutra Twitch channel. Be sure to join us in Twitch chat to ask Gilbert your own questions!
And while you’re at it, you can follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel for more developer interviews, editor roundtables and gameplay commentary.
Don’t Miss: Crafting an evocative score for Hollow Knight
A musical score is a great way of guiding the player’s emotions. It can offer important clues about the world the player inhabits and indicate the severity of the obstacles being encountered. The 2D action-adventure title Hollow Knight, developed by Team Cherry Games, is an excellent example of this.
In the game, you play as the character Hollow Knight who must explore a ruined kingdom buried beneath the ground. Along the way you’ll collect power-ups, discover new areas, and defeat ancient evils, with your actions underlined by a hugely atmospheric soundtrack by composer Christopher Larkin.
The music for Hollow Knight presented many challenges for Larkin. The most significant being how to create an evocative score with distinguishable leitmotifs. He employed several solutions to achieve this, like using dynamics and varied instrumentation to differentiate tracks from one another, maintaining contact with the development team to ensure the score matched their interpretation of the characters, and taking the time to listen to a variety of influences for new ideas.
According to Larkin, the initial brief that he received from Team Cherry was to compose a soundtrack demonstrating a sense of “dark elegance using minimal instrumentation”, but that remained “classical and melancholic.”
The score includes numerous tracks featuring little more than piano and strings, though there are certainly sections where he felt it was possible to add some intense sounds and instrumentation into the mix.
“We definitely started with the soft piano and viola in the opening menu and “Dirtmouth,” but we pull out all the stops for the boss battles.” says Larkin.“That said, the melancholy and a certain sadness is still evident in a lot of these, underneath the crazy runs and shredding.”
“There are some areas that have very unique instrumentation,” he adds. “We have harp, marimba and other earthy tones for “Greenpath.” We have very Gothic, cold-sounding organ for “Soul Sanctum,” and we use Kalimba, wine glasses and guitar harmonics to give the shiny, crystal sound for Crystal Peak.” In these situations, the visual qualities and the context of the areas have a large impact in the choice of instruments and sounds.”
Some of the tracks required additional musicians and live instruments in order to bring them to life. On “City of Tears,” for example, Larkin employed the talents of soprano singer Amelia Jones to achieve its ethereal quality. While, across the soundtrack, Timothy Cheel’s viola playing contributes a variety of emotions.
Soprano Amelia Jones can be heard on the “City of Tears” track.
“Adding live playing gives the score an element of human touch, and a certain organic sound,” suggests Larkin. “But I think what it really does is give an extra dimension to the musical content. A new interpretation of a melody or idea which I otherwise wouldn’t have done.
He elaborates, “Where I couldn’t get the live performance in, I try to always sculpt my sequenced score to imitate live players. I’m always thinking about how and where the players need to breathe, or change their bow, even if it is the computer playing it back.”
The impact that this has is that it makes each theme feel more individual, as performers can contribute their own nuances to the piece.
While writing the soundtrack, there were several occasions when taking the time to exchange ideas with others helped to improve the finished score. One clear example he notes is with the boss theme Hornet.
“The team and I would always discuss the layout and the character of each area at length,” says Larkin. “But even then, things didn’t always go right the first time. In the case of Hornet for example, I sent the team a sketch of the track which, while it sounded cool, had quite a heavy bass riff.”
The dev team noted that Hornet’s character is quite sophisticated, elegant and swift despite her deadliness. By better understanding Hornet’s character, how she moves, and how she behaves, Larkin was able to alter the track to better suit the animations and the artwork that the development team had put together.
This comes across in the completed version of the track, as her movements are matched by a more elaborate string accompaniment that implies her speed and grace.
This wasn’t the only input on the soundtrack however. Larkin listened extensively to multiple composers while creating music for the game, including contemporary and classical artists.
“Joe Hisaishi has always been a big influence,” Larkin says. “You can definitely hear that in the piano and strings pieces. Same with James Newton Howard and his beautiful romantic cues from King Kong.” He continues, “Classical music also finds its way into my work, especially Mahler and Rachmaninov in developing long themes, as is evident in the White Palace.”
Referencing a diverse selection of music was extremely important for Larkin. It led him to try out lots of new ideas during the process of recording. The “Mantis Lords” theme is a notable example of this.
It was intended as a deliberate nod to the music of Vivaldi and has a sound unlike anything else on the score. This can be heard by the prominent use of harpsichord and its frantic arrangement. These qualities contribute significantly to the characterization of the Mantis Lords, giving them a particularly threatening and regal presence.
The effect of all these measures is a soundtrack evoking a proper sense of place and character, while also fostering an emotional response from the player. Though the score is clearly linked by its elegiac tone and recurring piano, you never really hear the exact same combination of sounds or a similar intensity from the individual tracks.
It’s because of this that Larkin’s score can be considered a success. By drawing from a wide range of voices and inspirations, and making intelligent use of equipment available to him, he managed to insert a great deal of personality into the score. His leitmotifs add greater detail to the world, and also to facilitate the game’s storytelling.
We know you’re busy and might miss out on all the exciting things we’re talking about on Xbox Wire every week. If you’ve got a few minutes, we can help remedy that. We’ve pared down the past week’s news into one easy-to-digest article for all things Xbox! Or, if you’d rather watch than read, you can feast your eyes on our weekly video show above. Be sure to come back every Friday to find out what’s happening This Week on Xbox!
Inside Xbox is Live from gamescom on Tuesday, August 21 Inside Xbox kicks off one of the world’s largest video game shows with a live broadcast direct from Cologne, Germany on Tuesday, August 21 at 7:30 a.m. PDT/10:30 a.m. EDT on Mixer, Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Our gamescom content will include the latest on Forza Horizon 4, Sea of Thieves… Read more
What’s New with Xbox Customer Support Team Xbox is always working to bring you great games, enhanced capabilities, and new ways to play and connect with your friends. As a support team, we want to provide fast and effective help whenever you need it and in the form that works best for you. We’re bringing you new features and new ways to connect… Read more
Inside Xbox One X Enhanced: Shadow of the Tomb Raider Many of gaming’s most compelling stories come from those who’ve helped to create our favorite Xbox One games. In our Inside Xbox One X Enhanced series, these creators will share the behind-the-scenes accounts of the work involved in enhancing these epic games for Xbox One X, how they’ve helped chart the course… Read more
See Maps and Multiplayer in Action in New Battlefield V Trailer We’re only weeks away from the Battlefield V open beta, and the latest trailer shows the four debuting maps set early in World War II. The trailer’s packed with shots of heated battles showcasing improvements of game mechanics central to the Battlefield franchise, like chaotic 64-player battles, supreme destruction, and… Read more
Defuse a Bomb with Your Friends in Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes We’re super proud to have launched Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes on Xbox One today! Defusing bombs isn’t something that can be done solo though, so I wanted to give you a rundown of what to expect. You’re going to need to cooperate with your friends to solve these perplexing puzzles before time runs out… Read more
Add Something New to Your Xbox Controller Collection Keep your controller collection as current as your Xbox Game Pass membership. Today, there are two new Xbox controller options to choose from: the Xbox Wireless Controller – Phantom Black Special Edition and the Xbox Wireless Controller – Grey/Blue. The Phantom Black Special Edition will ship to retailers… Read more
Graveyard Keeper Digs Itself up on Xbox One and Xbox Game Pass Graveyard Keeper is a game about choices, dark humor, and making profit from bodies of fallen RPG heroes, and is available beginning later today on Xbox One and Xbox Game Pass. Over two years ago we were coming off the launch of Punch Club and brainstorming random ideas for what a next game could be… Read more
Call of Cthulhu’s Creeping Terror Coming to Xbox One October 30 Horror comes in many forms. The sudden strike of the hammer, the slow drip of a blood-soaked corridor, the crunch of a monstrous creature feasting on bones. Each evokes their own emotion, their own feeling. What we’re most proud of in Call of Cthulhu is our atmosphere and the creeping sense of dread we chose to evoke… Read more
The Two Sides of Space Hulk: Tactics, Coming Soon to Xbox One Warhammer 40,000 returns to Xbox One with Space Hulk: Tactics, an enhanced adaption of the classic turn-based strategy board game, coming October 9, and now available for pre-order on the Microsoft Store. In Space Hulk: Tactics, Marine Terminators face off against merciless alien Genestealers in the tight confines of a space hulk… Read more
Rainbow Six Siege Free Weekend Starts Tomorrow for Xbox Live Gold Members With more than 35 million players, the Rainbow Six Siege community is growing bigger by the day. If you haven’t yet experienced the tense, tactical gameplay of Siege, you’re in luck. All Xbox Live Gold members will be able to try out the full Rainbow Six Siege experience for free beginning Thursday, August 16… Read more
Turning the Metal up to 11 in Coffee Crisis, Available Now on Xbox One Hello, Xbox fans! We’re excited to bring Coffee Crisis, our neo-rogue brawler to the Xbox One today. I wanted to introduce the game and explain what makes this dark brew of beat ’em up action so incredibly metal. Right out of the gate, Coffee Crisis hits players with a hard and heavy plot. An evil, deep space race of aliens… Read more
Tips and Tricks for Wailing Heights, Available Now on Xbox One Wailing Heights, a body-hopping adventure game that lets you sing your soul into hand-drawn hipster vampires, vegan werewolves and soul-singing zombies is now available on Xbox One. The puzzles are inspired by classic adventure games such as Monkey Island, Broken Sword and the more recent Thimbleweed Park… Read more
10 Insider Tips for Airheart’s Colorful Airplane World Above the Clouds In Airheart, your goal is to get to the top of the skies and catch the legendary skywhale. To succeed, you’ll need to battle pirates and drones, catch lots of fish and most importantly: stay alive! You play as Amelia, a young pilot, and fisherwoman wishing to reach the edge of the world and make the big catch… Read more
Road Redemption Coming Soon to Xbox One With Road Redemption, we focused on making sure its gameplay is immediately satisfying, while still offering depth and rewards for those who spend time to master its systems. We believe this should be the goal of all action game developers. Within the first five minutes of launching the game, you’ll be knocking opponents… Read more
Getting Started in MUT with Madden NFL 19 Madden season is here and it’s time to get your stick skills in game shape and start dominating those intense head-to-head match-ups. Madden NFL 19 brings the digital NFL experience to a new level. Whether you’re a returning player or this is your first season, there’s tons to dive into. You want to build your NFL dream team… Read more
To celebrate the Summer of Devolver Digital we’ve kindly been provided with 10 North American eShop Download codes for Crossing Souls on Nintendo Switch. All you need to do is answer the question below and we’ll pick 10 lucky winners at random and assign them a code, simple right?
About The Prize
In Crossing Souls the player will be able to control five different characters, mixing each one’s unique abilities and weapons to overcome all the challenges and obstacles ahead of them. You will explore lots of places, interact with hundreds of NPC from different periods of time, solve puzzles, look for secret places and treasures, and fight against enemies in order to save your loved ones.
How To Win
It’s simple, login or register and answer the question, we’ll randomly select the winner(s) and contact them via email.
Enter The Competition
Please login and then answer the following simple question:
Please note that this competition is only open to residents of North America.
Rules
Closing date for entry is midnight Sat 1st September 2018, winners will be contacted via email, prizes will then be provided by download code or gifted directly to the console. You may only enter once, duplicate entries will be removed. You must be a North American resident to receive the winning prize. Please read our full competition terms and conditions before entering.
Opening Doors to Collaboration with Open Source Projects
One of the biggest benefits of open source is the ability to collaborate and partner with others on projects. Another is being able to package and share resources, something Michelle Noorali has done using Kubernetes. In a presentation called “Open Source Opening Doors,” Noorali, a senior software engineer at Microsoft, told an audience at the recent LC3 conference in China about her work on the Azure containers team building open source tools for Kubernetes and containers.
Her team needed a way to reliably scale several containerized applications and found Kubernetes to be a good solution and the open source community to be very welcoming, she said.
“In the process of deploying a lot of microservices to Kubernetes we found that we wanted some additional tooling to make it easier to share and configure applications to run in our cluster,’’ she explained. “You can deploy and scale your containerized apps by giving Kubernetes some declaration of what you want it to do in the form of a Kubernetes manifest.” However, in reality, she added, to deploy one app to a cluster you may have to write several Kubernetes manifests that utilize many resources hundreds of lines long.
In 1986, teenage jujitsu artist Ryo Hazuki returns to the dojo of his father, Iwao Hazuki, only to witness his murder by a Chinese man, Lan Di. Lan Di steals a mysterious artifact known as the Dragon Mirror. Ryo vows to avenge his father's death and sets out tracing Lan Di's path.
The first game in the series, Shenmue begins the tale as Ryo travels around Yokosuka, Japan, gathering clues about his father's murder and dealing with nefarious gangsters along the way.
The sequel Shenmue II continues Ryo's quest, this time crossing the sea to Hong Kong, China. Ryo ventures deeper into the criminal underworld, meeting martial arts masters who aid him on his journey and offer insight into his father's death, and unravels the mysteries of the Dragon Mirror that his father kept hidden.
Gameplay:
* Take the role of Ryo Hazuki.
* Explore a 3D open world searching for clues, examining objects, and talking to NPCs.
* Battle enemies and bosses making full use of the moves of Hazuki-style jujitsu.
* Beat quick-time events (QTEs) and mini-games.
Key features:
The best Shenmue experience
Pioneering Dreamcast classics available for the first time on PC
Updated user interface
Choice of modern or classic controls
Japanese audio available for the first time for a global audience
Fully scalable screen resolutions
An epic legend
A tale of revenge on a grand scale
Solve the mystery of your father's murder
An experience never to be forgotten
The world feels alive
Talk to anyone, scour the world for clues
NPCs live independent lives on their own schedule
Faithful recreations of 1980s Japan and Hong Kong, China
Distract yourself with arcade games, collectibles, duck racing, and more
Apple & US carriers partner on 200GB iCloud promo ahead of new iPhones
By Roger Fingas Sunday, August 26, 2018, 05:16 pm PT (08:16 pm ET)
Apple and the four major U.S. carriers are offering two free months of iCloud’s 200-gigabyte tier to some people looking to upgrade their iPhone this fall.
The promo, noticed on Reddit, is only available to new (paid) iCloud customers, and is nominally meant to ensure they “have enough space to safely back up all the important things on your iPhone, like photos, videos, files, and apps” so the data can be restored once a new phone arrives. The link above mentions Sprint in the URL but should also work for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
Apple has actually been offering 30-day trials of its paid tiers since May, so in reality the new promotion is simply an extra month on top of that. People who sign up will also be charged $2.99 per month after the deal expires, unless they cancel.
iCloud only includes 5 gigabytes of data for free, which for many people is just enough for a single device backup. In the U.S. Apple charges 99 cents per month for 50 gigabytes, $2.99 for 200 gigabytes, and $9.99 for 2 terabytes.
The company is expected to reveal three new iPhones next month at its usual September press event. These include 5.8- and 6.5-inch OLED models, and a less expensive 6.1-inch LCD device. It’s possible that Apple could once again bump up maximum local storage to 512 gigabytes, which would keep iPhones competitive with Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9.
The Happytime Murders Review: A Very Dirty Muppet Movie
When the first trailer for The Happytime Murders arrived, it was clear what kind of movie this was going to be. It's a dirty version of the Muppets. What's more, it's from director Brian Henson, son of Muppets creator Jim Henson. The potential for something cool and different was obvious. The only question is whether the movie would hit the mark or not.
As it turns out, for the most part, it lands pretty well. The Happytime Murders is set in a world where humans and puppets coexist. When the former stars of a 1980s TV show get murdered, disgraced former puppet cop Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta) and human detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) are forced to work together to find the killer. It's a pretty straightforward murder mystery that just so happens to be loaded with foul-mouthed puppets, lots of violence, and one wildly awkward sex scene.
Still, the story actually works. While it's not hard to figure out who the villain of the film is, figuring out their motivations is a different story. The plot also opens up a world that would be very interesting to visit again in future movies, should that be in the cards.
As simple and interesting as the story is, though, there is one major problem with The Happytime Murders. This adult puppet movie is simply too adult. There is a certain novelty to the idea of puppets that curse, have sex, and do horrible things. In practice, though, it's very easy to take the joke too far. Throughout the film, puppets and humans let the cursing fly so gratuitously and frequently that the impact of it simply wears off. It happens so often that it ceases being funny and instead seems like the movie is trying too hard to be edgy. How many times can a character drop an F-bomb in the span of two minutes before it means absolutely nothing? That's something The Happytime Murders is keen to explore.
Likewise, with graphic content, this movie doesn't seem to know when to stop. In the red band trailer, there is a sequence where one of the puppets has an orgasm that lasts so long it overstays its welcome a bit. Somehow, though, it's even longer in the movie. There's an audience for gross-out humor that will undoubtedly find themselves giggling at these moments in the film, but just a bit of restraint would have greatly improved the movie.
There's still plenty to like about The Happytime Murders, though. Strangely, building this odd world where humans and puppets live together in something far less than harmony is where The Happytime Murders excels most. From the beginning of the film, it's explained that puppets are seen as less than, and often subservient to, humans. They're the target of verbal and physical abuse, and some of them spend their time and money in an attempt to transform their looks to appear more human, while others have bought into the idea that they exist only to entertain humans.
Chances are you're not expecting the dirty puppet movie to examine racism in America at all. However imperfect a comparison it may be, though, it's one of the things The Happytime Murders does well. What's more, setting the film in Los Angeles, a city with a massive immigrant population, goes a long way in illustrating the divide.
The cast is another piece of the puzzle that fits well. While Melissa McCarthy is mostly doing the same thing she always does--yelling and falling down, while cursing--she somehow manages to have chemistry with a puppet. However, there is an odd running joke throughout the film that everyone thinks she's a man. It might have been funny once or twice, but by the third, fourth, or fifth time that particular joke is revisited, it's just tired.
The biggest standout of the of the movie is Maya Rudolph, who plays Phillips' secretary Bubbles. She serves as a potential love interest for the former cop and manages to have many of the movie's funniest moments, whether at her desk in Phillips' office or out in the field helping to solve the mystery.
If you're expecting to see some of your favorite Muppets in the film, you'll be disappointed. None of them make cameo appearances. After all, the Muppets are owned by Disney. Still, it will be impossible to look at the puppets in this film without knowing they were designed by The Jim Henson Company. Likewise, Muppet veterans Barretta, Kevin Klash, and Alice Dinnean make up the puppet voice cast.
In all, The Happytime Murders is a fun and very interesting film to watch. It's as close as you'll ever get to a Rated-R Muppet movie and sets up what could become a potential franchise that would be exciting to revisit--just maybe with a little restraint next time.
The Good
The Bad
A simple, easy-to-follow plot
There's so much cursing that it makes the foul language mean nothing
The use of notable Los Angeles locations helps ground the movie
It's not hard to figure out who the killer is
Its examination of racism was very unexpected
The puppet sex scene lasts way too long
Maya Rudolph blows the rest of the cast out of the water
Video: Understanding your market to make indie games sell
In this GDC 2018 talk, Infinite Monkeys Entertainment’s Erik Johnson analyzes trends in the Steam marketplace and explores how his game, Life Goes On, failed to match the market.
Johnson explains market fit and how critical it is for the success of modern indie games, providing a postmortem market analysis of Life Goes On and discussing how to evaluate a game’s commercial potential.
He also covers how to keep on top of market trends and what it means to know your target audience, and i’s an informative talk that’s definitely worth watching, so developers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so now that it’s freely available on the official GDC YouTube channel!
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.
Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.
While writing the soundtrack, there were several occasions when taking the time to exchange ideas with others helped to improve the finished score. One clear example he notes is with the boss theme Hornet. 
Referencing a diverse selection of music was extremely important for Larkin. It led him to try out lots of new ideas during the process of recording. The “Mantis Lords” theme is a notable example of this.
