iGame Radio

Check out our great interview with OnLive’s Brian Jaquet during PAX 2011.
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We sat down with Mark Jessup and Lane Daughtry of Tinkerhouse Games at a booth in a little-known restaurant hidden away at PAX Prime 2011. This booth was their Booth, with quiet to boot. Tinkerhouse Games has released Current, what one might call a match-3 shooter, as well as a clever app called The Airhornsman, and are working on a children’s app called Monster Orchestra. We talk with them about their games, their philosophy about development, and why they left the traditional game dev scene to work on mobile game development.

 

Time to finish up our series of interviews from PAX Prime 2011, so we’re skipping this week’s weekly podcast to post up a few more PAX iGame Chat podcasts. First up is a great interview with Travis Baldree of Runic Games chatting us up about Torchlight 2. We talk about the changes between this multiplayer game and the original single-player, Torchlight, released 2 years ago.

We also talk a brief bit about where the plans for the MMOG are, and when the Mac version will be released.

UPDATE: Frima got back to me with a great screenshot, and a couple of corrections, including that they are the developers of the Facebook version of Pocket God.

Frima Studios, developers of the Facebook version of Pocket God, have a new quirky game up their sleeves. A Space Shooter for Free is the iOS version of their PSN arcade game A Space Shooter for Two Bucks. Showing the game off at PAX Prime last weekend, Frima talked to us about this arcade game in detail, complete with an arcade cabinet to play it. Also, a hint at their new tower defense game for iOS, Nun Attack (which Frima likes to call a “Tower Offence” game), featuring a team of covert nuns. Nun booth babes, FTW!

 

Audrey Leprince and Emeric Thoa have spent the past decade or so working with Ubisoft on Tom Clancy games, among other console games. But the lure of the mobile smartphone has brought them to the dark side. With the creation of The Game Bakers, they are now developing high quality mobile games where players experience an extra layer of depth and narration.

We spoke to Emeric at PAX Prime, where they were showing off their latest game, Squids. This clever and graphically rich game for iOS has players pulling on the squids’ tentacles to maneuver them through their environment as they seek to defend their world from invading evil crabs and snails.

Every year since 2008, a panel of game industry experts have selected ten Indie games from among dozens to be showcased at PAX as a selection called The PAX 10. These ten games have, in some way, shined in gameplay mechanics, design, audio, graphics, etc, and deserved to be showcased.

This year’s PAX 10 showed the popularity of the Mac and iOS platform. Six of the ten games were either developing their game for platforms that included Mac and/or iOS, or were in the process of porting their already released game over. A seventh is waiting for the Mac version of his game engine to be released (Unreal Engine 3).
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We had a great conversation with Josh Veloria of Telltale Games. iGame Radio’s Omaha Sternberg talked with Josh about the soon to be released Jurassic Park: The Game, the recently released episode two of Hector: Badge of Carnage, and touched upon the recently signed Walking Dead. Also, Josh hints at new projects for 2012.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to give you any feedback about Jurassic Park: The Game. Despite the fact that Telltale had demos running at PAX Prime, the only peripheral to interact with the game was an Xbox 360 gamepad. One wonders why Telltale would use such a device for a game that will be running on machines that will be using keyboards and mice, but there you go.

PAX Prime is starting in 0 minus 1 day, 17 hours, 51 minutes, and whoknowshowmanyseconds and counting. And that means iGame Radio will be there, covering your favorite Mac and iOS games here and to come!

We’ve already got a slew of meetings and interviews scheduled, so you can look forward to a bunch of great podcasts not just about specific games and hardware, but daily podcast summaries as well.

To give you some ideas of what is to come:

EVE Online: interviews with developers and why EVE is so hard to get into (OR is that a myth?)
Topware Interactive: updates about Two Worlds II, and the upcoming games Scivelation and Raven’s Cry (YUM!)
Runic Games: Torchlight 2…need we say more?
Red 5 Studios: Covering their game Firefall. (Gosh, I wonder why we’re meeting with them? ;)

And many more, both Mac and iOS.

Will you be at PAX Prime? If so, let us know so we can hook up. We’d love to know what your thoughts are on the Mac gaming scene in general and the PAX scene in particular. You can post a comment here, on our Facebook page, or email us to connect.

Penny Arcade has announced the finalists for the 2011 PAX 10, ten of the very best independent game developers, who will be showing their games at PAX Prime 2011. These developers will have free booth space during the three day event to show off their games.

Culled from more than 100 submissions, these ten developers have created games on platforms including Mac, Windows, XBLA, iOS, and Android. The winners were selected by industry experts looking for the best in gameplay, originality and overall fun-factor.

“Every year the showcase of new indie gems are one of the highlights of the show,” said Robert Khoo of Penny Arcade. “In always chasing the next big blockbuster, too much of our industry is dedicated to making the same game over and over again. The PAX 10 is one way that indies with innovative game concepts can get in front of the community.”

The winners include:

Atom Zombie Smasher for Windows, Mac, Linux by Blendo Games. The zombie apocalypse has come, and you must take strategic command of mercenary forces to conduct massive rescue operations. Use military forces such as snipers, artillery crews, and orbital bombardments to hold back the undead while the civilians escape.

Word Fighter for iOS & Android by Feel Every Yummy. A one-on-one word battling game that mixes rules from popular word games like Boggle and Scrabble and wraps them around a competitive fighting environment. Think “Street Fighter” meets “Words with Friends”, or word games mashed together with “Super Puzzle Fighter”.

The full list includes A Flipping Good Time, Antichamber, Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony, Snapshot, Solar 2, Splatters, and Vanessa Saint-Pierre Delacroix & Her Nightmare (all for Windows), and Fez (XBLA).

We note that though Antichamber is listed for Windows on the PAX site, the game developers site explicitly states that a platform hasn’t been announced yet, and that the game has been developed on the Unreal game engine. So there is hope that this game might actually become available for the Mac. This game looks especially yummy to us, with a very minimalist approach to design and graphics.

More information can be found at the The PAX 10 website. PAX Prime 2011 will be held at the Washington State Convention Center on August 26 – 28, 2011, and is currently sold out.

Penny Arcade has announced that David Jaffe of God of War fame will be keynoting PAX Prime 2011. The keynote will kick off three days of demos, speakers, competitions and concerts by some of the biggest names in gaming.

PAX Prime will include some of the hottest new games in the gaming industry including 2K Games, Activision, Bioware, Capcom, NCsoft and Turbine as well as table top/CCG power houses such as Wizards of the Coast and Privateer Press. Microsoft is hosting Halo Fest – the largest and most expansive live Halo experience anyone has ever seen – at the third floor annex of the Washington State Conference Center.

Attendees will also get their fill of nightly nerd concerts, including the return of favorites Jonathan Coulton, MC Frontalot, Metroid Metal, Minibosses, and Paul and Storm, as well as newcomers Supercommuter and The Video Game Orchestra.

PAX Prime is scheduled at the Seattle Convention Center on August 26 – 28. Passes are sold out, but you might still find one by searching the forums.