And there you have it. Just like that PAX is over and done with. I saw a lot of great things this weekend, many of which I’ve chosen to expand in larger articles that you’ll see trickling in across the next few days. Here are some of the choice bits I saw today before skipping town.
Eco – Strange Loop Games
Can a bunch of random PAX attendees band together to stop a meteor from destroying earth? Eco set out to answer that question at the show this year, and the answer probably won’t surprise you much.
The obvious comparison to make when looking at Eco is Minecraft but there’s much more to the game than just wandering around and building things. Instead players are faced with a loftier goal: don’t go extinct.
There are numerous ways in which the planet can meet its end, and to a large degree many of them are directly caused by the players. Chopping too many trees down will lead to deforestation. Killing too many of the local wildlife will throw off nature’s balance. Yes, you can mine and refine ore but you’re also going to have to deal with the trailings they leave behind so that you don’t poison the land around you. Of course sometimes the threat is much more obvious, like the giant meteor that loomed over the earth during the PAX demo.
Beyond that the game also features a law system that will allow players to view statistics about the world (how polluted it is, animal populations, etc.) and then vote on what regulations can be put in place to keep things safe. Right now the system just stops players from breaking the law, but the game’s creator John Krajewski indicated that perhaps there would eventually be a deeper legal system, with players hunting down criminals, etc.
For the PAX demo a single world was provided for players to roam and at the end of the period we would see whether or not the players were able to successfully set the world on a course to repel the meteor barreling towards it. The show wasn’t technically over when I saw the game, but by the time I got there things weren’t looking good. This isn’t really a failing on the game’s part. It’s a pretty tall order to pull a player off of the show floor, put them in a game with a bow and arrow and a deer right in front of them and expect them not to shoot it.
It’s still early, but you should be playing Eco with twenty nine of your best friends sometime next year.
March Of Industry – Archive Entertainment
March Of Industry tells the simple story of building and running a weapons manufacturing facility. As you create your facility you’ll find yourself combining elements like tin and vodka in order to create devastating items of destruction such as the cheeky titled “Putin’s Gym Shorts”
Players have a pretty wide range of freedom, allowing players to lay out conveyor belts as they see fit to create the well oiled death machine of their dreams. I got to see some of that freedom when I arrived at the booth and found a woman playing who seemed to have even surprised the creator with a system that would recursively drag items through the upgrade process on a loop.
The game’s creator RobbyZ tells an interesting story about how the game began its life in a game jam, but quickly turned into a full blown project after he let a friend try it out and found that what was supposed to be a quick ten minute session suddenly turned into a ninety minute one.
The game is actually fairly close to completion and you can expect to see a final version as soon as the next couple months.
Albert And Otto – KBros Entertainment
Albert And Otto tells the story of a small boy and a magical bunny on an adventure through a dark and exceptionally deadly world. Albert (the boy) will sometimes use Otto (the magical rabbit) in order to solve the puzzles littered throughout the game’s world. Otto is generally used for simple tasks like having him hold down a switch or push a button but there are also sometimes scenarios where you’ll briefly control the character as well.
Aside form puzzles and platforming Albert is also equipped with a firearm which I found myself using liberally on the birds littering the demo level.
It’s impossible to see this game and not make the comparison to Limbo, both when considering the art style, and the terrible (although less detailed) deaths that can be forced upon Albert. Obviously the shooting gameplay sets it apart, but it’s also promised that the story will go to some dark places, maybe even darker than Limbo.
If you’re interested you can check out this demo which features an older build of the game. You can expect the final version of the game to land this fall.
