Let's Play For Honor And - Steve And Chris Play Games
/Here is Chris and I play some more For Honor! Remember to subscribe on YouTube!
Recent Reviews
New Trailer For Where Cards Fall - Coming Fall 2017
/Snowman announced today that Where Cards Fall will be coming Fall 2017 iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac and PC. With the announcement they also delivered a new trailer which you can see below:
From the blog post, Snowman described the game a bit more in depth:
It may look cinematic, but what you’re seeing here is a real glimpse of our gameplay and story. In Where Cards Fall, you’ll build houses of cards to form and shape the world around you. These houses not only help you move through imaginative puzzles, but also bring to life vivid memories of adolescence.
This particular memory is of teenagehood in the suburbs. Filled with far more cacophonous uncertainty than the playful magic of the forests, the suburbs are home to a crucial question: who will you become? Would you rather remain comfortable at home, or venture into the world outside?
Where Cards Fall is expected to hit PC, Mac, and iOS devices this Fall, so in the meantime, make sure to download the studio's previous game, Alto's Adventure.
Original Youtube Videos
Capybara Games And DrinkBox Studios Featured In Latest Humble Bundle
/One of the biggest Humble Bundles - the Humble Freedom Bundle is out giving players a huge amount of games, two of them featuring some of Toronto's finest.
Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition from Drinkbox Studios, and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP from Capybara games is featured in the bundle which can pick up right here.
Capybara Games
For Honor Let's Play - Original Video
/Hey there! Watch Chris and I play For Honor, and make sure to subscribe!
Original Video
13AM Games And iam8bit Bringing Runbow Soundtrack To Vinyl
/In a surprise announcement today, 13AM Games announced they are partnering with iam8bit to bring the Runbow soundtrack to vinyl. You can check out the full page right here, with preorders opening up tomorrow.
Podcast
For Honor Out Now - Launch Trailer
/Ubisoft's medieval action game For Honor is now out on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. For Honor has players controlling Knights, Samurai, or Vikings in a war of factions - you can check out the trailer below:
For Honor is developed by Ubisoft Montreal, with our very own Ubisoft Toronto helping out with various things in the game, similar to Watch Dogs 2, and Far Cry Primal.
You can pick up the game for your platform of choice over at Ubisoft's website. I was also given a code, and will be posting plenty of videos on our YouTube channel (which you should definitely subscribe to). See you on the battlefield!
Ubisoft in the news
Alone With You Out Now On Steam
/The sci-fi romantic adventure game Alone With You from Benjamin Rivers is out now on Steam. The originally PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita game is currently enjoying a 15% discount on Steam which you can check out right here.
I enjoy Alone With You when it came out last year, you can check out the video review below:
Featured
Embers of Mirrim Announced - Coming Spring 2017
/Creative Bytes, a indie developer in St. Catharines, announced Embers of Mirrim last month, an adventure platformer coming to consoles and PC later this year. The developer did also take to the PlayStation Blog to discuss the game:
As you can see in the teaser trailer, Embers of Mirrim is an adventure-platformer featuring a powerful creature, Mirrim, with the ability to split into light and dark entities called Embers. As Mirrim, you can explore the dramatic landscape using opposing Embers to affect creatures and relics in the world in exciting and unexpected ways.
The Light and Dark Embers are independently controlled by the left and right analog sticks and offer new ways to solve puzzles, overcome obstacles, and traverse through the world. While developing the mechanic, we found it satisfying to seamlessly transition back and forth between the traditional platforming and dual stick flight!
The game will be coming to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC in Spring of 2017. In the meantime, give Creative Bytes a follow on Twitter.
Original Video - Let's Play More Binding of Issac And Talk Trophies
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Featured
Original Video - Let's Play Binding of Issac
/Not a Toronto game, but Chris and I did play some Binding of Issac. Check it out, and subscribe!
Original Videos
Original Video: We Are Doomed Let's Play And Day One DLC
/Hey everyone! Another Friday, another Youtube video. remember to subscribe!
Original Video
Mervils: A VR Adventure Comes To PSVR This Month
/London developer VitruviusVR have already released Mervils: A VR Adventure on Vive, and Oculus, and now PlayStation users will get a taste of the Fantasy RPG later this month.
With merely a sword and a few coins your quest begins in the Mervil Countryside. The pages of the Great Mervil Book have been scattered throughout the land and the dark sorcerer Balazar the Evil has risen from the shadows. It’s up to one brave hero, to collect the lost pages, rebind the Great Book, and defeat Balazar once and for all. Will that Mervil be you?
TorontoGameDevs.com Podcast
Ubisoft Announce Battle For Canada
/With the For Honor launch just around the corner, Ubisoft has gone ahead and launched #BattleForCanada, a website where you complete a survey and then battle for Canada with the three factions from For Honor.
#BattleForCanada
On February 11, Canadians are invited to fight alongside members of their chosen faction to conquer Canada and celebrate the honour of battle. Warriors will be able to fight using their phone as a weapon and watch the battle unfold online. Wielding their phone like a virtual sword, warriors will make slashing movements to recreate the combat moves from For Honor. Warriors will score points for their faction depending on the range, speed and force of these strikes.
An interactive map on ForHonorCanada.com, as well as on a giant billboard at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto, will show the state of the three armies battling it out in real time. As an added moment of celebrity, the best warriors will see their name and faction featured live on Yonge-Dundas Square and the most memorable warriors will be featured in an animated trailer after the battle.
So make sure to head over to ForHonorCanada.com, complete the survey and check out For Honor on February 14th on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
For Honor
Interview: Aakaash Rao, Composer For Valley Discusses Creating The Soundtrack And More
/A few months ago, I was reached out by Aakaash Rao, the composer for Valley from Blue Isle Studios, asking about an interview. I really dug the soundtrack in Valley so I of course said yes! You can check out the interview below, and a lot of Aakaash's work can be found right here.
TorontoGameDevs.com: Thanks for doing the interview! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? What your role was in creating Valley?
Aakaash: Thanks for reaching out! I’m a game composer based jointly in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Chicago, and I had the privilege to compose the soundtrack for Blue Isle Studios’ Valley.
TorontoGameDevs.com: How long have you been creating music? What other games or projects have you worked on?
Aakaash: I’ve been composing ever since I learned to play piano as a child, but I only got into games a couple of years ago. Since then, I’ve worked on several PC, console, and mobile titles — I particularly enjoy writing story-driven soundtracks for RPGs. One of my larger project, a voxel-based sandbox called Planet Explorers, came out late last year.
TorontoGameDevs.com: What was the design process like for Valley? Did you have free range to create the music you thought would fit the mood, or was there specific notes from different members of the team?
In general, I had a lot of creative freedom. One thing I really appreciated about working with Blue Isle is that I had a working build of the game almost from day one — which happens a lot less often than you might think. The game itself was a fantastic source of inspiration, and I’d often hit upon ideas while exploring the landscape or leaping around in the L.E.A.F. suit.
That said, the other two members of the audio team (Brenden, the audio and technical director and Selcuk, the SFX designer) definitely gave me plenty of input through the process. I’ve worked with a lot of big audio teams in the past, and I think there’s definitely a “too many cooks spoil the stew” effect when too many people get involved in the music, but Selcuk and Brenden did a great job of balancing their own visions for the game’s soundtrack with my ideas. The live musicians with whom I worked also gave me some very helpful input, particularly in regards to using world instruments with which I was not familiar.
TorontoGameDevs.com: There's a lot going on in Valley. There are open world elements within forested areas, buildings, underground mines, etc. You get to move really fast, and jump extremely far as you traverse this world, but there is a lot of historical pieces from the 40s told to the player while they are playing. How did this contribute to the overall soundtrack for the game?
One of the biggest challenges in tackling projects of this scope is balancing variety with cohesiveness. You don’t want to bore the player by repeating the same motifs over and over, but you also don't want a complete musical disconnect between the themes associated with different areas. For example, I made a conscious choice to write sweeping orchestral music for the outdoor areas and more distorted, electronic music for the darker indoor environments, but I approached the indoor areas with a mindset of muting and warping the outdoor style rather than selecting a whole different musical palette. Amrita, the theme for the final level and one of my favorite pieces from the soundtrack, blends pads and electronic sounds with some warped live flute.
There’s a lot of subtle melodic and textural motifs weaved into the soundtrack, so the idea is that they help weave the disparate elements together. This is probably more of a subconscious phenomenon — I doubt that most people are listening intently to recognize the musical motifs as the play the game — but I think it does contribute to the player’s immersion. This is most important at the end of the game, where the final track states outright a lot of the themes that previous pieces have been hinting at. As I’m sure your readers who have finished the game can attest, the ending of the game is definitely a cathartic experience, so I hope that the final piece reflects and amplifies the feeling of cleaning and completion.
TorontoGameDevs.com: In your mind, what game excels with its soundtrack?
I’ve always been a huge fan of Nobuo Uematsu’s work on the early Final Fantasy. These were some of the first games I played, so there’s an element of nostalgia, but I still think it’s absolutely incredible how much emotion he was able to convey under the console’s technical constraints. Arnie Roth’s Distant Worlds albums include some fantastic orchestrations of Uematsu’s work. More recently, I’ve also really enjoyed Austin Wintory’s Journey and Gareth Coker’s Ori and the Blind Forest.
TorontoGameDevs.com: Is there anything else you'd like to tell our readers? What can we look forward to next?
As I mentioned, Planet Explorers came out last year. I’m also currently working on a strategy RPG called Liege, which is a dark, strategy-driven RPG somewhere between Fire Emblem and A Song of Ice and Fire. Now that I’m done with Valley and Planet Explorers, though, I’m keeping my eye out for interesting new projects — I’d love to do a more intimate soundtrack for an RPG or puzzle game.
Thanks so much to Aakaash for taking the time, and remember that Patreon's got access to this interview early. You can check out Valley on Steam, and all of Akaash's work right here.
Past Interviews
Phantom Compass Gives Us A New Auto Age: Standoff Trailer
/Happy Saturday! Toronto developer Phantom Compass released a new trailer for Auto Age: Standoff which you can check out below:
I also managed to find some gameplay footage from late last year, make sure to follow the team on Twitter. Auto Age is expected to hit sometime this year.
Phantom Compass In The news
While it is certainly fun for a while, it suffers from the same problem other mobile games on Steam do: Cube Samurai: RUN!’s price tag of $5:49 feels a little steep for the amount of time you might ultimately get from it, so I’d recommend installing the mobile version and giving it a go on the commute to work or on the toilet and see if it’s the sort of experience you’d enjoy on the PC. This aside, it certainly does seems like it would make for an equally fun mobile experience, but it doesn’t do anything exceptionally different than what most people have seen in an infinite runner before.