If you’re headed to PAX Prime this weekend, one booth you will want to hit is Indie game dev BitFlip Games. They’ll be showing off their debut title, Minion Masters, which they’ve billed as a digital boardgame. BitFlip has revealed a full slate of goodies for interested gamers, both who attend PAX and even those not so lucky, which include pre-order discounts, giveaways, and a contest.
The BitFlip Games booth hosts six stations of multiplayer Minion Master matches. Gamers can train with new in-game tutorials, challenge friends to matches, build customized decks, and dabble to their heart’s desire with the Level Editor. You’ll even get a chance to interrogate ask questions of the developers to get tips and tricks of the game.
BitFlip is also giving away limited edition Minion Master trading cards to everyone who comes by the booth. The cards feature the art of Raul Arbolea Santos and is the first ever collectible material available from the game. You can also pre-order the game at a 25% discount. The pre-order gets you into the closed beta running right now, as well as exclusive access to ‘Play with a Developer’ events, where you can join in weekly multiplayer matches with the BitFlip Games dev team.
Finally, BitFlip is running a Twitter hashtag contest that everyone is invited to participate in. Anyone who tweets with the #MinionMaster tag during PAX (Friday, August 31st at 9AM through Sunday, September 2nd at 6PM) will be entered to win. The Grand Prize winner will become immortalized as an in-game Minion. Two first prize Minion Master Founder’s Accounts are available and include the Minion Master game, instant access to the closed beta, and will receive every expansion released for the lifetime of the game. Finally, fifteen second prize winners will receive the complete set of Limited Edition Minion Master Trading Cards.
If you’re not familiar with Minion Masters, in this digital board game that merges collectible card game tactics with miniature war gaming strategies on a digital screen, players control armies of figurines on a hex-based board and summon their Minions using a custom built deck of cards. Minion Master will boast a Deck Builder, 6 player co-op and versus multiplayer, a Level Editor, and a constantly expanding universe of Minions to control.
BitFlip Games will be hosting a booth on the 6th floor, space #6011, open to all PAX attendees. And we’ll be interviewing them, so watch out for that podcast episode!
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.
