Game of the week
Devil May Cry and Ni No Kuni have kept plenty of gamers busy over the past two weeks, but this week sees a return to the typically quiet January release schedule. Luckily that provides me with an opportunity to highlight some smaller indie games that hit the Steam platform in the past couple of days.
The first of those titles is Proteus, a minimalist first-person experience set in a vibrant world. The player controls the game’s soundtrack by exploring a mysterious island and encountering a myriad of unique creatures along the way. As the Steam page description states, “think Doom meets Brian Eno.”
The second game to come to Steam this week — today in fact — is Antichamber, a first-person puzzle game that has received its fair share of attention over the past few years with numerous indie game awards and nominations. Now that the official release has finally come, even more gamers can have their minds twisted into pretzels.
I’d go into more detail, but I’m not even sure I can describe Antichamber after seeing gameplay videos. Let’s just say the puzzles are incredibly complex and deal with Euclidean space. Fans of the Portal series should definitely take a look at it.
This week in news
Last week’s THQ auction resulted in noteworthy developers and franchises changing hands, but one company that was not picked up was Vigil Games. The makers of the Darksiders franchise did not appeal to any potential buyers, but some staff members from the company now have a new home.
German video game company Crytek recently opened a new studio called Crytek USA in Austin, Tex. The team includes 35 former Vigil employees, including former co-owner and general manager David Adams. The Darksiders intellectual property remains up in the air, though the possibility of Crytek snatching up the franchise exists.
The demise of Vigil Games came as a surprise to many considering the critical success of the Darksiders series. I was especially fond of last year’s Darksiders II, a game that improved upon its predecessor in nearly every way. Sadly, both games did not sell well and video game publishers seem to be focused on sure bets at this point.
So we may never see a third Darksiders game, but any project from the former employees of Vigil Games is worth keeping an eye on.
ANTHONY LABELLA can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.
