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Our Verdict
Transgressive like Grand Theft Auto hasnt been for years, Hotline is violent, quick and compulsive but lacking in depth.

need to know

Expect to pay: £7/$10
Release Out: now
Developer: Dennaton
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Multiplayer: Nope
Link : www.hotlinemiami.com

Tear out a man's throat and steal his bat. Knock a man down with a door and pound his skull into the tiles. Hurl the bat at a third man, climb on top, and pour scalding water on his face to watch him squirm. Take his machinegun and run, dancing, up the stairs towards more killing. Immediately get shot, die, and start again.

It only takes one bullet, stab or punch to kill you in Hotline Miami, but your fragility isn't designed to encourage caution. Instant and frequent restarts instead lead you towards frantic repetition: it wants you to play recklessly, failingly fast and then urgently try again.

By the time you've completed your first mission, you'll discover two things: first, your movements no longer look reckless. Practice has made your steps purposeful, and your every killing blow is part of a choreographed movie fight scene in which brutal murder is performed to a soundtrack of heavy beats.

The second is that Hotline Miami has indoctrinated you into its way of thinking. Without realising it, you've been bolted to the brain of the protagonist: a silent, crummy man performing senseless acts of violence in a neon 1980s acid trip.

Once you're hooked, it's easy to get carried away. This game is designed to inspire a fever, and a certain kind of gamer is going to love it. It's confident, brash and conceptually complete in a way that makes it hard to imagine what its designers might have done differently.

But shake off the bloodthirsty mania and you'll find a tight, efficient game, content with providing cheap thrills. Slice a man's intestines out with a samurai sword, then kick his friend's head against a wall until it bursts. Press your thumbs into a man's eyeballs until he stops struggling, then shoot his dog. If you die, you'll do it again. If you succeed, you'll do it again on another mission. All Hotline Miami wants from you is that you kill, or be killed, and enjoy doing it.

There are hints of something more, but just hints. After each successfully completed mission, it tallies a score based on the method and manner of your killing. Get enough points and you'll unlock new weapons – ninja stars and samurai swords and beer cans and dozens of others. You'll also unlock masks that give your character a special power. Dress like Lassie and dogs won't attack. Slip on a monkey mask and a close-up kill will end with the enemy's weapon in your hands.

There are also hints at a deeper mystery. Each mission is bookended by brief moments in the protagonist's life, including a romance conveyed wordlessly via the changing state of your apartment. There are bizarre conversations with three men in animal masks. And there are the phonecalls, their sources unknown, that request your services.

But don't expect answers to these mysteries. Hotline Miami may well just be about the world's worst temp, mistaking his assignments for a euphemistic incitement to murder.

This turns out to be a relief. Too often videogames flail around in an attempt to justify the player's actions. Your wife and young child were killed, which justifies Max Payne's rampant bloodlust. You're Skyrim's chosen one and the dragons are attacking, so it's probably fine that you kill and steal indiscriminately.

At best, these justifications are nothing more than clichés, at worst they're intellectually dishonest: a mask we wear in front of the world to hide what we aren't yet able to explain. In Hotline Miami, you're compelled to murder by nothing more than a phonecall and a propulsive disco beat.

The Verdict

Hotline Miami

Transgressive like Grand Theft Auto hasnt been for years, Hotline is violent, quick and compulsive but lacking in depth.

We recommend By Zergnet

Ron Gilbert still wants to buy the Monkey Island IP

Ron Gilbert, creator of The Secret of Monkey Island, really wants to make another Monkey Island game.

Ron Gilbert, creator of The Secret of Monkey Island, really wants to make another Monkey Island game. He's pursued the cause quite publicly, writing last yearthat he'd reached out to rights holders Disney. Despite Gilbert always envisioning the The Secret of Monkey Islandas a trilogy, Disney nevertheless displayed no desire to part with the property – though they've licensed it out in the past, most notably to Telltale Games.

The thing is, Disney announced earlier this month that it was pulling out of games development and publishing altogether. That move caused a fuss among Disney Infinity fans, but questions have also been raised about the other dormant properties belonging to the company. Among these, of course, is both Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion.

Dear @Disney," Gilbert tweetedtoday. "Now that you're not making games, please sell me my Monkey Island and Mansion Mansion [sic] IP. I'll pay real actual money for them."

Gilbert went on to say, in a Twitter exchange, that "money isn't the issue" when it was suggested that he band together with Tim Schafer to crowdfund the endeavour via Fig. The ball is quite unambiguously in Disney's court, and at this stage it just seems cruel to not let Gilbert make another damned monkey game. The world would be a better place.

Purchasing the IP back from Disney would give Gilbert the creative control he needs to make another Monkey Island game. "I don’t know if I could make Monkey Island 3without complete control over what I was making and the only way to do that is to own it. Disney: Call me," he wrote last year.

Indie Intermission Sunday Round Up: Why Does It Always Rain On Me

Welcome to the Sunday Round Up, the time of week where I look over the games I Have selected over the week and put them in one place.

Welcome to the Sunday Round Up, the time of week where I look over the games I Have selected over the week and put them in one place. This week has seen some great games spanning a few different genres, all with very distinctive styles.

They Came From The Sea is a great little game about battling all manner of sea creatures. The game has been created in a fantastic Gameboy / early Nintendo styled graphics. The graphics and music feed into the game to create a very fun little arcade game to give you a much-needed break from your day.

Don’t Rain On Me is a very interesting little title that will have you using all your dexterity to try to dodge the rain. You control a child who is terrified to get wet and by the power of the keypad can try to dodge the rain.

No One Has To Die is a very compelling game that allows you to forge your way through the many different story lines to unravel the true story of the game. Although the game concept is very simple the story behind the game is really what makes this game so unique and well worth your time.

Anonymous Messages takes the Slender concept and runs away with it in a new direction. In Anonymous Messages you find yourself trapped in a wood with little memory of what had happened. It is up to you to find all the messages and unravel the mystery of these strange woods.

Thanks again for looking over this weeks selection of online games, I hope you enjoyed the games I have selected above. I hope everyone has a great Sunday. Be sure to check back tomorrow for an all new Indie Intermission .

If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!

Hotline Miami gets patched, plus story DLC in the works

Accompanying a fairly run-of-the-mill patch that fixes and tweaks mask perks, adds support for lower resolutions, and saves grades correctly (among other things), Dennaton Games' Dennis Wedin has revealed that there is Hotline Miami DLC in the works.

that fixes and tweaks mask perks, adds support for lower resolutions, and saves grades correctly (among other things), Dennaton Games' Dennis Wedin has revealed that there is Hotline Miami DLC in the works. When asked onif there were any plans for future content, he said "yes there is :) if people enjoy the game and want more we have a storyline driven DLC in the plans with new characters and diving further in the story."

He went on to say that they also "have some things we are gonna do with HLM in a future update," before firmly closing his mouth like Zippy from Rainbow. We do know, however, that one Coming Thing is controller support, which is expected to be included in the next patch. Everyone who's playing Hotline Miami at the moment - what would you like to see added as DLC? More masks? More levels? A non-violent 'talk to the bad guys' option?

[Thanks to Blue'sNews].

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition 8K gallery

We recommend By Zergnet

Love Me Not’: A Flower Defense With Romance

‘Love Me Not’: A Flower Defense With Romance
In chessy romantic dramas, people pick off flowers’ petal and keep on saying to themselves: “(S)He loves me, (S)He loves me not”.

In chessy romantic dramas, people pick off flowers’ petal and keep on saying to themselves: “(S)He loves me, (S)He loves me not”. It’s a classic scene that never ceases to amuse me. Love Me Not , however, while being inspired by the same thing, this game isn’t so romantic as you think. Yes, it’s an action “flower” defense game on your smartphone.

It’s an old classic mechanic from as far as Missile Command in 1980s, or perhaps more recently,. Controlling a flower with the phone’s accelerometer, touching one the petals will propel it and will shred any evil hearts. Your petals regenerate over time rather quickly, but it’s troubling when enemies approach from all sides and you’ve got nothing left. Needless to say, your game ends when one of the evil hearts reach your flower style.

It’s all pretty old and nothing new, but the what’s interesting here is the theme itself. It’s a surrealistic background with vector-shaped flowers, thorns, evil-looking hearts and love-hanging-branches. Something like their previous game, Blast Ball. The color tones and landscape theme change as you make progress later in the game. While working well enough most of the times, the accelerometer turns a bit annoying occasionally due to the lack of a calibrator. There is only one mode without any form of online leaderboard or achievement. The only chiptune soundtrack is rather repetitive, playing itself all over again from the main menu though.

Despite the rather limited gameplay, I wouldn’t denied the amusement of viewing psychedelic art inspired by “(S)He loves me, (S)He loves me not” at one buck though.

For more information, visit the developer’s website. Love Me Not is currently available on iOS App Storeand Android Google Playat the cost of $0.99.

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Our Verdict
A cerebral and spooky sequel that expands on the franchises story and themes, while slightly dialing down the terror.

It's a sign of a good horror game when the mere act of holding down the W key to progress through the next hallway requires you to remind yourself “You're not going to die. It's okay. This isn't real.” Such is the case with Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. But unlike its predecessor, the scares aren't what make it so memorable and worth your time.

A Machine for Pigs moves Amnesia's timeline along from The Dark Descent's 1839 to 1899, ditching the Teutonic Castle Brennenburg for a sprawling factory complex in the heart of London. Electric lighting has removed the original's tinderboxes and fuel containers. Your only lantern-related concern will be deciding whether it's more important to see or stay hidden. Descent's sanity system has also been stripped out, along with collecting laudanum to recharge your health.

Leaving through the front door: Never works, but always worth a shot.

The result is a much simpler game, mechanically. But you won't find yourself missing the old systems. You won't have time to miss them while dealing with the shambling enemies that wait for you in the darkness. And whereas Dark Descent most often forced you to run and hide, most of Machine for Pigs' malignant horrors will have to be actively circumvented. This serves to build tension, but at the same time, takes some of the mystery out of the equation. In the majority of encounters, you will know where the enemies are, and they won't know where you are.

Unless you screw up. If you screw up, then they will know where you are. Then you will be screaming. And then you will be dead.

All things considered, A Machine for Pigs simply isn't as terrifying as Dark Descent. But it's terrifying enough to be worthy of the Amnesia label, and has enough interesting ideas elevating it to stand on its own as an exceptional experience. It's difficult to say anything about the game's final act without spoiling it, other than that it's fantastic and goes places you would never expect. There are fewer “water cooler” scares that you'll talk about with your friends, but the ending is likely to be discussed at length in the same fashion as BioShock Infinite.

I really, really hope this thing is just for pigs.

Dark Descent distinguished itself by using helplessness to explore the emotion of fear. A Machine for Pigs adds to this palette, exploring the connections between fear, rage, and sorrow. At times, it even ventures into how strong motivations can transmute horror into a sense of empowerment—all without compromising the game's conflict-limiting mechanics. Dark Descent took you on a steady journey into an ocean of madness. A Machine for Pigs will hold your head underwater until you're about to drown and then bring you back up for air, again and again. And one of those times you resurface, you may discover you've learned things about yourself other than the fact that you need a new pair of underpants.

The Verdict

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

A cerebral and spooky sequel that expands on the franchises story and themes, while slightly dialing down the terror.

We recommend By Zergnet

Ron Gilbert says modern adventures "get too lost in story"

Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick drew in more than $626,000 in Kickstarter support for their new game, Thimbleweed Park .

. It's a point-and-click adventure in the style of the LucasArts classics of the 80s and 90s, and in fact the Kickstarter pitch described it as "the true spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island," two games (among many) they helped create. And that, Gilbert told our sister site, GamesRadar, means puzzles, not story, will be the priority.

"Classic adventure games were really about the puzzles," he said. "We want to get back to that. Puzzles drive everything and it seems that modern adventure games tend to get too lost in story, and puzzles are just something tacked onto that. Also verbs. I loved the verb interface and I do think something was lost when adventure games got rid of them."

Perhaps predictably, he also believes that games have gotten easier since he got into the business. "That’s not necessarily a bad thing, there are very different kinds of people playing games these days and they are a lot more ‘casual’," he continued. "But there are also people that like hard games, especially adventure games, and for us the difficulty is part of making a classic adventure game."

I agree wholeheartedly that modern games are easier than their forebears from decades past, but in the case of adventure games I don't actually mind at all. Story-focused adventures like Primordia, Book of Unwritten Tales, Machinarium, and Memoriaare what drew me back to the genre after a serious early-90s burnout on Sierra-style fare; and to this day, few things enrage me as quickly as having to open a stuck window with nothing but a coffee cup, a handful of badger fur, and toothpaste. Fortunately, Thimbleweed Parkwill have an "easy mode" for players (like me) who don't want to put up with a game that's designed specifically to confound them—a smart concession, I think, to changing times.

Burn Zombie Burn Shambles onto iOS

Top-down zombie slaughter game, Burn Zombie Burn , by Tick Tock Games , has made the jump to iOS and is now available in the Mac App Store .

. After a PS3 and Android platform release, Burn Zombie Burn has been providing many hours of brainless, chaotic, zombie smashing at the hands of Bruce, a man who was just trying to enjoy some quality time with his girlfriend, Daisy.

BZB gives players an arsenal of weapons – for example, a chainsaw and a minigun – to mow down zombies in an attempt to survive as long as possible, with the highest score possible. With bonuses, kill chain combos, and an array of weapons, there’s a lot of ordinance to put between Bruce and the dead. The game title suggests barbecuing the dead, which may make them drop more items and create a better score, but the flames make them move faster, putting Bruce in more danger, so char-grilling large hordes is a risk-reward tactic.

With a simple goal of preserving the lives of the Bruce and Daisy while obtaining the highest score possible, Burn Zombie Burn builds a pick-up-and-play environment that can be enjoyed anytime. A wide range of enemies, such as exploders, dancers, and fire-farters, await the player in large, undead numbers, so gamers will want to keep moving and fighting at all times.

For $6.99, Burn Zombie Burn can be obtained from the Mac App Storeon devices running OS X 10.6 or later, or from Google Playon Android 2.3 and up for $3.50. Will you be turning the undead to ashes anytime soon?

4k Screenshot Showcase: Dear Esther

For some, Dear Esther stretches the concepts of what it means to be a game.

Every week, keen screen-grabber Ben Griffin brings you a sumptuous 4K resolution galleryto celebrate PC gaming's prettiest places.

For some, Dear Esther stretches the concepts of what it means to be a game. "It's got no fighting or people in it so it's more like a book or something," they say. Which is weird, really, as there's a very simple method of defining what is and isn't a book. If it's on Steam then that's means it's not a book. Simple. A word of warning, however: this doesn't necessarily mean that if it's not on Steam then it's definitely a book, because plenty of things not on Steam are not books, like tractors and prosthetic limbs and that. Anyway, get a load of these 4K stalactites in this not-a-book round-up of shots from Dear Esther's old caves.

Download the full-sized image here.

Download the full-sized image here.

Download the full-sized image here.

Download the full-sized image here.

Download the full-sized image here.

Help test Thimbleweed Park's voicemail puzzle

Ron Gilbert says that puzzles will be the focus of his retro adventure game Thimbleweed Park , and it turns out that one of those puzzles involves a phone and a bunch of answerphone messages.

, and it turns out that one of those puzzles involves a phone and a bunch of answerphone messages. Thanks to a comment on Kickstarter, you can soon leave Gilbert a voice recording that could show up in the game, presumably as a fun easter egg when players get the puzzle wrong.

Here's Gilbert explaininghow the puzzle came to be.

"One of the Kickstarter reward tiers was to appear in the Thimbleweed Park phonebook. During the Kickstarter, someone in the comments suggested that it would be neat if they could also record a voicemail message. Not being above stealing a good idea, we quickly added that and pretended we thought of it all along.

"We've delayed [gathering] all the names and voicemail messages because we wanted to make sure we were getting all the right information. We've implemented the phonebook and puzzle with dummy information and now we're ready to start gathering names and voicemail recordings."

Understandably, Gilbert and co. want people to test the voicemail system first, before the website goes live in mid-January. You can sign this form nowto help do that, but be aware that you'll probably need to re-record your message when the time comes, as "any information submitted during the test will not be used in the game".

You can test the voicemail system whether you were a Kickstarter backer or not, though it's not clear whether the same will be true of the website, when that launches in January.

Explore creativity in Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament

Artists often live for their creativity, but can be struck by moments of almost no inspiration, and that’s what the game Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament is about.

is about. In the 3D adventure game, players take the role of Sketch, an unfinished drawing that is trying to find out what it was supposed to be. (Note: the screenshots include a lot of intentional white space.)

Sketch can hear the voice of the artist who drew him as he attempts to regain inspiration. As the artist draws other things on the paper with his pencil, Sketch must make his way towards them, ultimately hoping to become a completed drawing. During the game, players are able to collect new abilities that help Sketch progress through the paper and reach new areas in the infinite white landscape.

As mentioned, the game is fully narrated by the artist, telling a story that mixes the inspiration behind the artwork being drawn with a personal self-discovery monologue at the same time. Through the short 5 levels that it presents, players can see actual unfinished drawings from the game’s developer, as well as 25 other artists.

Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament is already available for PC, Mac and Linux on Steamat a price point of $3.99 until August 11, after which time the game will be sold at the full price of $4.99. Further information and a look at the developer’s background are available at on the website.

Amnesia devs tease new game with ARG

The studio behind Amnesia, Frictional Games, have been leading fans on the Frictional forums along a breadcrumb trail of clues over the last few days, a trail that leads to this announcement for A Machine of Pigs, due out in "FALL TWO THOUSAND TWELVE." The page also features the above bit of concept art, the last of a series of hints that suggests Dear Esther developers The Chinese Room may have some involvement with the project.

Amnesia fans have documented the series of clues in this wiki, which includes map references for China, a Hebrides island similar to the location of Dear Esther, and the Smith Tower in Seattle, which contains The Chinese Room, all of which seem to indicate that the Dear Esther devs have a hand in the new game. The Chinese Room sitementions GameB, "a secret project due for development and release sometime in late 2012."

Beyond that, very little is yet known about the game, beyond the concept art above and the image on NextFrictionalGame.comand the odd strange message like this one:

"THE EVIL MAY HIDE THE GREATER EVIL. BUT THE EVIL ALSO HIDES THE GREATER GOOD. THIS WORLD IS A MACHINE. A MACHINE FOR PIGS. FIT ONLY FOR THE SLAUGHTERING OF PIGS."

What do you reckon, robotic pig flight sim?

Thimbleweed Park story trailer spotlights murder in a strange town

A new trailer for Thimbleweed Park , the deliciously Lucasarts-like retro-adventure being developed by Maniac Mansion creators Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, has made its way to the 'tubes.

, the deliciously Lucasarts-like retro-adventure being developed by Maniac Mansion creators Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, has made its way to the 'tubes. And I am here to tell you that it is good.

Gilbert criticized modern adventureslast year for putting too much emphasis on their stories, and said Thimbleweed Park will focus on puzzles instead. I'd expect no less from a game so thoroughly steeped in the SCUMMtradition, but even so I'm intrigued by the mystery that this trailer teases. I also like the promise that the game will have “all the charm of the golden age and none of the stupidity,” as the release that accompanied the trailer put it. “Dead ends? Ha! Ridiculous puzzles? Not in this town. Leave those rose-colored glasses at home, because you sure as hell won't need them in Thimbleweed Park.”

The obvious X-Files vibe, leavened with a hint of Naked Gun, is right up my alley too. Thimbleweed Park is slated for release late this year. Find out more at thimbleweedpark.com.

Leviathan Games Surfaced New ‘Besieged 2’ Gameplay Trailer

While the successor of the original popular castle defense game Besieged was promised by the developer Leviathan Games with a June release, we have a closer look today with a gameplay trailer.

Controling a group of archers to fend off waves of undead invaders, the player is tasked with timing and choosing the right arrows to keep the enemies down and  the castle safe. Adding to the basic defense mechanic is an RPG upgrade system utilizing resources collected throughout the game. Besides looking pretty and colorful, the game does not seem to attempt any revolutionary feature. It’s the same bone with a slightly different flesh we have seen over again, which might either delight or sadden fans or gamers alike.

Besieged 2 is slated for a June release. Keep tuned with IGM Mobile for more information. Meanwhile, the original Besieged is available on App Storeand Google Playfor free.

Humble Indie Bundle 8 discounts Hotline Miami, Awesomenauts, Dear Esther, and more

Summer has always been a bit of a lull when it comes to video game releases.

Summer has always been a bit of a lull when it comes to video game releases. It's the time of year where we hear more about the upcoming fall releases rather than actually, you know, playing games . Luckily, we have the Humble Indie Bundle 8to keep boredom, UV rays, and those treacherous, shark-filled oceans at bay.

The Humble Indie Bundle traditionally features recent indie darlings for the low, low price of “whatever the hell you want”, and this year is no exception. No matter what you pay, you'll get access to Little Inferno, Awesomenauts, Capsized, Thomas Was Alone, Dear Estherand their soundtracks (and Steam keys if throw in a dollar or more). Linux users should be happy to know that the Linux versions of these games are also debuting with the bundle.

Forking over more than the average purchase price (a modest $5.72 as of this writing) will net you Hotline Miami and Proteus plus its soundtrack. Yes, you might be saving up for the pricey GTX 780that your annoying friend already has, but maybe you could skip eating today?

Like always, you can choose where your money goes, rationing out which developers and charities get your hard-earned bitcoins. You have a full two weeks to decide who gets what while stocking up on harpoons for the inevitable shark invasion.

Thimbleweed Park Kickstarted to the tune of $626,000

The Thimbleweed Park Kickstarter hit its $375,000 goal just a week after it launched , but the final tally is much higher than that: Just north of $626,000, meaning that all stretch goals, including full voice acting and mobile versions, have been met.

Thimbleweed Park is a brand-new, old-fashioned videogame in the style of the great LucasArts adventures of the 80s and 90s. It's being developed by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, two of the main guys responsible for those games, who have billed it as a "true spiritual successor" to Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island.

"The support for Thimbleweed Park has been completely and totally overwhelming," they wrote in the most recent. "Would people want big pixel graphics? Would people want a true classic point & click adventure game? Do people want verbs? Do people want challenging puzzles? Will threatening to microwave a pretend hamster work? We had so many questions, but I think they all got answered."

With the Kickstarter done, a proper development blog will get underway on January 2 at thimbleweedpark.com, which for the moment is just a placeholder with a couple of images and a link enabling pre-purchases of the game.

...

Jump to Section: Best Price Comments Pros Blowing things up Nods to Super Metroid Giant robot battles Cons Moderately short length Being immobilized Moronic enemy leader It’s almost uncanny how easily a romantic hike into the rocky mountain wilderness with your new girlfriend can turn into an explosive, power suit-fueled rumble through the secret underground complex of militaristic revolutionaries

The Walking Dead and Far Cry 3 score big at BAFTA Video Game Award nominations

BAFTA have released the nomination shortlist for the upcoming 2013 round of their Video Game awards.

BAFTA have released the nomination shortlist for the upcoming 2013 round of their Video Game awards. PS3 exclusive Journey tops the nomination leaderboard - it's up for eight categories. But Telltale's The Walking Dead and Ubisoft's Far Cry 3 aren't far behind, receiving nods in seven and six categories respectively. There's also strong indie recognition. Dear Esther is nominated for five awards, Thomas Was Alone for three, and both Proteus and Super Hexagon both receive a mention.

The ceremony takes place on March 5th, and will streamed live on Twitch.tv. Tune in to find out if we live in a world where CoDBlOps2 can be given an award for "Game Innovation".

Action

Borderlands 2

Development Team

Gearbox/2K Games

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Development Team

Treyarch/Activision

Far Cry 3

Dan Hay, Patrick Plourde, Patrik Methe

Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft

Halo 4

Development Team

343 Industries/Microsoft Studios

Hitman: Absolution

Development Team

Io – Interactive/Square-Enix

Mass Effect 3

Development Team

BioWare/EA

Artistic Achievement

Borderlands 2

Development Team

Gearbox/2K Games

Dear Esther

Robert Briscoe

Thechineseroom/thechineseroom

Far Cry 3

Jean Alexis Doyan, Genseki Tanaka, Vincent Jean

Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft

Halo 4

Development Team

343 Industries/Microsoft Studios

Journey

Development Team

That Game Company/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

The Room

Mark Hamilton, Rob Dodd, Barry Meade

Fireproof Games/Fireproof Games

Audio Achievement

Assassin's Creed III

Mathieu Jeanson

Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft

Beat Sneak Bandit

Simon Flesser, Magnus "Gordon" Gardebäck,

Simogo/Simogo

Dear Esther

Jessica Curry

Thechineseroom/thechineseroom

Far Cry 3

Dan Hay, Tony Gronick, Brian Tyler

Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft

Halo 4

Development Team

343 Industries/Microsoft Studios

Journey

Development Team

That Game Company/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Best Game

Dishonoured

Development Team

Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks

Far Cry 3

Dan Hay, Patrick Plourde, Patrik Methè

Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft

FIFA 13

David Rutter, Nick Channon, Aaron McHardy

EA Canada/EA

Journey

Development Team

That Game Company/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Mass Effect 3

Casey Hudson

BioWare/EA

The Walking Dead

Development Team

Telltale Games/Telltale

British Game

Dear Esther

Daniel Pinchbeck, Robert Briscoe, Jessica Curry

Thechineseroom/thechineseroom

Forza Horizon

Development Team

Playground Games/Turn 10 Studios/Microsoft Studios

LEGO: The Lord of the Rings

Development Team

TT Games/Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment

Need for Speed Most Wanted

Development Team

Criterion Games/EA

The Room

Mark Hamilton, Rob Dodd, Barry Meade

Fireproof Games/Fireproof Games

Super Hexagon

Terry Cavanagh, Niamh Houston, Jenn Frank

Terry Cavanagh/Terry Cavanagh

Debut Game

Deadlight

Raul Rubio, Luz Sancho, Oscar Cuesta

Tequila Works/Microsoft Studios

Dear Esther

DanielPinchbeck, Robert Briscoe, Jessica Curry

Thechineseroom/thechineseroom

Forza Horizon

Development Team

Playground Games/Turn 10 Studios/Microsoft Studios

Proteus

Ed Key, David Kanaga

Twisted Tree Games/Twisted Tree Games

The Room

Mark Hamilton, Rob Dodd, Barry Meade

Fireproof Games/Fireproof Games

The Unfinished Swan

Ian Dallas, Nathan Gary

Giant Sparrow/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Game Design

Borderlands 2

Development Team

Gearbox/2K Games

Dishonored

Development Team

Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks

Far Cry 3

Patrick Methè, Jamie Keen

Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft

Journey

Development Team

That Game Company/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

The Walking Dead

Development Team

Telltale Games/Telltale

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Development Team

Firaxis/2K Games

Family

Clay Jam

Chris Roem Iain Gilfeather, Michael Movel

Fat Pebble/Zynga

Just Dance 4

Alkis Argyriadis, Matthew Tomkinson, Veronique Halbrey

Ubisoft Paris/Ubisoft

LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes

Jon Burton, Jonathan Smith, John Hodskinson

TT Games/Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment

LEGO the Lord of the Rings

Development Team

TT Games/Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment

Minecraft: XBOX 360 Edition

Development Team

Mojang/4J Studios/Microsoft Studios Xbox LIVE Arcade

Skylanders Giants

Paul Reiche, Fred Ford, Scott Krager

Toys For Bob/Activision

Game Innovation

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Development Team

Treyarch/Activision

Fez

Development Team

Polytron Corporation/Microsoft Studios Xbox LIVE Arcade

Journey

Development Team

That Game Company/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Kinect Sesame Street TV

Development Team

Soho Productions/Microsoft Studios

The Unfinished Swan

Ian Dallas, Nathan Gary

Development Team

Giant Sparrow/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Wonderbook: Books of Spells

Development Team

London Studio/ Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Mobile & Handheld

Incoboto

Dene Carter

Fluttermind/Fluttermind

LittleBigPlanet (Vita)

Tom O'Connor, Mattias Nygren, Lee Hutchinson

Tarsier Studios/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

New Star Soccer

Simon Read

New Star Games/New Star Games

The Room

Mark Hamilton, Rob Dodd, Barry Meade

Fireproof Games/Fireproof Games

Super Monsters Ate My Condo

Development Team

Adult Swim Games/Adult Swim Games

The Walking Dead

Development Team

Telltale Games/Telltale

Online - Browser

Amateur Surgeon Hospital

Development Team

Mediatonic/Adult Swim Games

Dick and Dom's HOOPLA!

Adam Clay

Team Cooper/CBBC

Merlin: The Game

Development Team

Bossa Studios/Bossa Studios

Runescape

Development Team

Jagex/Jagex

The Settlers Online

Christopher Schmitz, Guido Schmidt, Rainer Reber

Blue Byte Software/Ubisoft

SongPop

Olivier Michon, Thibaut Crenn, Daouna Jeong

FreshPlanet/FreshPlanet

Online - Multiplayer

Assassin's Creed III

Damien Kieken, Mathieu Granjon, Yann Le Guyader

Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft

Borderlands 2

DevelopmentTeam

Gearbox/2K Games

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Development Team

Treyarch/Activision

Halo 4

Development Team

343 Industries/Microsoft Studios

Journey

Development Team

That Game Company/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Need For Speed Most Wanted

Development Team

Criterion Games/EA

Original Music

Assassin's Creed III

Lorne Balfe

Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft

Diablo III

Development Team

Blizzard Entertainment/ Blizzard Entertainment

Journey

Austin Wintory

That Game Company/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Thomas Was Alone

David Housden

Mike Bithell/Mike Bithell

The Unfinished Swan

Joel Corlitz, Ian Dallas, Peter Scaturro

Giant Sparrow/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

The Walking Dead

Development Team

Telltale Games/Telltale

Performer

Adrian Hough (Haytham) - Assassin's Creed III

Danny Wallace (The Narrator) - Thomas Was Alone

Dave Fennoy (Lee Everett) - The Walking Dead

Melissa Hutchinson (Clementine) - The Walking Dead

Nigel Carrington (The Narrator) - Dear Esther

Nolan North (Nathan Drake) - Uncharted: Golden Abyss

Sports/Fitness

FIFA 13

David Rutter, Nick Channon, Aaron McHardy

EA Canada/EA

F1 2012

Development Team

Codemasters Birmingham/Codemasters Racing

Forza Horizon

Development Team

Playground Games/Turn10 Studios/Microsoft Studios

New Star Soccer

Simon Read

New Star Games/New Star Games

Nike+ Kinect Training

Development Team

Sumo Digital Ltd/Microsoft Studios

Trials Evolution

Development Team

Antti llvessup, Kim Lahti

RedLynx/Microsoft Studios

Story

Dishonoured

Development Team

Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks

Far Cry 3

Jeffrey Yohalem, Lucien Soulban, Jeffrey Yohalem

Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft

Journey

Development Team

That Game Company/Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Mass Effect 3

Mac Walters

BioWare/EA

Thomas was Alone

Mike Bithell

Mike Bithell/Mike Bithell

The Walking Dead

Development Team

Telltale Games/Telltale

Strategy

Dark Souls: Prepare To Die

Development Team

From Software/Namco Bandai Games

Diablo III

Development Team

Blizzard Entertainment/Blizzard Entertainment

Football Manager 2013

Development Team

Sports Interactive/SEGA

Great Big War Game

David Moss, Steve Venezia, Paul Johnson

Rubicon Development/Rubican Development

Total War Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai

Development Team

The Creative Assembly/SEGA

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Development Team

Firaxis/2K Games

BAFTA Ones to Watch Award in association with Dare to Be Digital

Pixel Story

Martin Cosens, Thomas McParland, Ashley Hayes, Benhamin Rushton, Luke Harrison

(Loan Wolf Games)

Project Thanatos

Hugh Laird, Andrew Coles, Thomas Laird, Alexandra Shapland, Thomas Kemp

(Raptor Games)

Starcrossed

Kimi Sulopuisto, Vili Viitaniemi, Minttu Meriläinen, Petri Liuska, Andrew MacLean

(Kind of a Big Deal)

Given that they've been recognising games for a few years now, shouldn't BAFTA update their acronym to reflect the fact? BAFTGA, maybe? BAGFTA? Perhaps not.

Tomb Raider beats Ron Gilbert's The Cave to top Green Man Gaming sales chart

Lara Croft knows a thing or two about spelunking - the exploration of caves.

Lara Croft knows a thing or two about spelunking - the exploration of caves. Though the dark recesses she probes in her next outing for PC are mainly in her own head, rather than of the literal variety.

The British heroine - starring in the March reboot of Tomb Raider- is back at the top of many folks' 'most wanted' list, judging by the latest sales chart from online retailers Green Man Gaming. She's beaten off competition from another pre-purchase game - The Cave- which does thrust players underground. The adventure is the brainchild of legend Ron Gilbert of Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion fame and forged with the help of Tim Schafer's Double Fine Productions, so it's no wonder people are DRAWN to it. CAVE. DRAWN. See?

Other pre-purchase games getting people excited enough to get their order in early include the return of Dante in Ninja Theory's Devil May Cryreboot - in at number seven - and the revival of EA's SimCitywhich is at number nine.

There's no room in the chart for long-time GMG community favourite Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, with sneaky assassin Dishonoredsneaking in at number 10.

Here's the chart in full, people...

1. Tomb Raider(pre-purchase)

2. The Cave(pre-purchase)

7. DmC: Devil May Cry(pre-purchase)

9. SimCity* (pre-purchase)

*Not available in some regions

Brought to you in association with Green Man Gaming.

Game Changers: Elite

Game Changers: Elite In the early days of computing, the vast majority of games were small in scope and rather casual. Whether they involved trying to score more points than an opponent in a game of virtual ping-pong or moving a character across platforms in a linear title with three lives they, in some sense, restricted the player by asking for prescribed tasks to be performed. Elite changed the

Pay what you want (above $1) for Game Music Bundle 4, with Dear Esther, Spelunky and more

Whether you're partial to the melancholy strains of Dear Esther, the thoughtful plinky plonky accompaniment to Indie Game: The Movie or the bluesy rawk of Shoot Many Robots, there's probably something in the latest Game Music Bundle to tickle your ears.

Whether you're partial to the melancholy strains of Dear Esther, the thoughtful plinky plonky accompaniment to Indie Game: The Movie or the bluesy rawk of Shoot Many Robots, there's probably something in the latest Game Music Bundle to tickle your ears. You'll get the soundtracks mentioned above along with Spelunky and Retro City Rampage for any donation over a dollar.

If you pledge more than ten dollars you'll receive tier two of the bundle, which includes the "exclusive Joypad EP, featuring a never before heard preview from Zelda: Twilight Symphony." The excellent Hotline Miami EP, the Kanto Symphony EP, Peter Hollens and Lindsey Stirling's rendition of the Skyrim main theme, Adventures in Pixels by Ben Landis, Jottobots and Pop Methodology Experiment One OST.

That's a lot of notes for $10. You can listen to excerpts of all the tracks on offer and buy the bundle from the Game Music Bundle sitenow. The bundle will be available for another five and a half days.

The Cave release date and price announced, will support Mac and Linux

Sega have announced that the Double Fine developed, Ron Gilbert headed 2D adventure platformer The Cave will be arriving on PC on January 23rd.

Sega have announced that the Double Fine developed, Ron Gilbert headed 2D adventure platformer The Cave will be arriving on PC on January 23rd. The price has been confirmed as £9.99/$14.99/€12.99 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

In The Cave, you select three characters (from a total of seven) to take through a sentient, talking cave. In other genres that would be the sort of sentence that would illicit no small amount of surprise. As an adventure game, it barely warrants the slightest eyebrow raise. While the puzzles promise to be classic adventure gaming in their weird and outlandish solutions, The Cave aims to reduce frustration through the constant movement and activity required from the platforming.

You can read our rather positive hands-on impressions here, and below are the two released character trailers that hint at what to expect.

Porco Rosso-inspired Flight Simulator Takes to the Skies

Taking as much inspiration as possible from games and anime like Porco Rosso and Talespin , with their love of airplanes, French studio La Moustache is developing their own flight combat simulator, BOMB: Who let the dogfight?

Players will venture into the skies through different scenarios, while mastering their pilot skills and taking down their foe’s airforce.

Besides being focused on action and air combat, the developers are also working to make the game a humorous adventure. Players will be able to jump into one of eight classic-futuristic cockpits for a single-player campaign full of funny characters and 17 missions, which take place in unique landscapes. Some missions are serious, like delivering cargo or taking down a fleet of sky pirates, while others are just purely silly, like harassing neighbor islands by dropping advertisement leaflets.

A multiplayer option will also be available, where up to 16 players can join a single dogfight and see who is the best in different game modes. The devs recommend the use of joysticks to control the planes, although using a controller is also possible; using the keyboard is viable, but not recommended. BOMB will also support other controllers like fightsticks and TrackIR, and the use of an Oculus Rift VR is suggested for great cockpit views, for those who have it.

BOMB: Who let the dogfight? is already available on Steam for PC, Mac and Linux at a price point of $11.99 USD. For those that are interested, more information can be found on game and future updates on their websiteand Twitterpage.

Dear Esther sells 50,000 in one week

When Dear Esther turned a profit in six hours it was already obvious that it would exceed expectations.

it was already obvious that it would exceed expectations. Dear Esther's Indie Fund backers were originally unsure about funding Dear Esther, but it looks like their faith has been well placed. It sold 16,000 copies on Steam on day one. A week on, it's sold more than 50,000.

Developers, Thechineseroom made their sales public over on the Dear Esther blog, saying that the 50,000 figure is "an extraordinary amount for an indie release."

"It shows that there's a real audience for this type of work, and responses have been amazing. Not only have we received amazingly positive reviews, but the response from fans has been outstanding," they add. You can read our thoughts in the PC Gamer Dear Esther review.

Dear Esther's success is bound to inspire others interested in crafting contemplative, narrative games, but also proves that this sort of work can draw a profit. It helps that the chineseroom have pushed the Source engine far enough to create the extraordinary screenshotsand evocative trailersthat piqued player interest ahead of release. Dear Esther has elegantly paired artistic intent with strong technical ability to create a package polished enough to justify that price tag. Hopefully other indie developers looking to replicate Dear Esther's success can pull off the same trick. PC gaming will be the richer for it.

The Cave: plundering the depths of Ron Gilbert's new adventure game

The Cave is an old fashioned adventure game in disguise.

The Cave is an old fashioned adventure game in disguise. The videos and screenshots show characters running, jumping over gaps and climbing, but these are momentary interludes. There's no inventory, and you play as three characters instead of one, but The Cave is fundamentally about exploration, observation and methodical puzzle solving in the guts of a sentient, talking cavern.

The thought of a new adventure game from Ron Gilbert and Double Fine conjures up certain expectations, but The Cave isn't founded on the nostalgia that inspired the Double Fine Adventure Game kickstarter. This is Gilbert's attempt to modernise the genre for a new audience.

"We need to get out of the trope of point-and-click, massive inventories," he told me at a preview event earlier this week, "we need to evolve a little bit and try to address what modern gamers like in adventure games."

The clickable hotspots and characters that would normally occupy a couple of screens in a classic point-and-click adventure are stretched across several storeys of underground passages. You can switch control between your trio of team members at will and march them to different corners of the chatty catacomb. Characters, signs, stalls and switches based in one corner of the maze will provide the tools and details needed to progress each puzzle elsewhere.

As I explored the triple-tiered zone, criss-crossing relationships started to emerge. I found myself thinking this: "aha! I can ask the magician to make the dumbbell invisible and then carry it up to the scales of the guy who wants to guess my weight so I can fool him, get his golden ticket, buy the pink bear and give it to the woman blocking the exit."

See, I told you it was an adventure game. You can only carry one item at a time, and there's a bit of running and jumping between NPCs, but the bizarre logic sequences that make up the quirky double helix of adventure game DNA is present in every puzzle.

The thirty minute section I played was set in a carnivalesque section populated by talking cardboard cut-out characters. They ran stalls that would grant me golden tickets if I beat their challenges. There are multiple solutions to many of the puzzles, which can be exploited more speedily using your chosen characters' unique abilities.

Let's see if you can guess what each character's power is by looking at them. These are the three characters I controlled during the preview. Highlight the hidden text next to each picture to see if you're right.

The Hillbilly

Go on, you can guess what the Hillbilly's power is. It's something that ALL Hillbilllies can do. "BREATHE UNDERWATER FOREVER?" That's right! Good job. Have a golden ticket.&nbsc;&nbsc;

The Twins

This pair can create a ghostly apparition of themselves. It's ideal if you want to hold down a switch remotely. What's that, why doesn't one twin hold down the switch while the other completes the puzzle? I ... er ... look over there! A flying Octopus!

The Scientist

The scientist can … science at things. She strokes her chin, a bleepy bloopy machine giggle sound happens and glowing equations float around her head, hacking nearby machinery.

The powers may be weird, but they're occasionally useful. I felt a bit special bypassing a puzzle with the scientist that would otherwise take longer, but it's hard to see how The Cave will test these abilities in more complex scenarios. Almost all of the cave's challenges are solvable by any combination of classes, which means there's little room to stretch each individual character's puzzling potential.

They're also strangely mute. Double Fine's artists have done a great job of characterising them through their movements and mannerisms, but they feel more like puzzle solving puppets then characters. Why are they there? What links them together? What's the Cave's motive in all this? If it's going to be more than a tactile, roaming puzzle game, The Cave will have to explore these questions and add a bit of narrative thrust to all that spelunking.

My expectations are coloured by Gilbert's prestigious history. When I think about why I enjoyed adventure games so much, it's memories of Guybrush Threepwood and Manny Calavera that spring to mind, not the memory of the time I had to trap a rat in a box to give it to a sailor and get to the next screen.

I asked Gilbert what he enjoys most about making games. "I really like telling stories, and that's one of the reasons that adventure games appeal to me, so they're primarily about stories and I kind of like that side of designing games. I love creating worlds."

The Cave's world is surreal, with a curiously creepy undertone and a welcome dash of morbid humour. Each of the seven characters has been drawn to the cave to realise their most cherished desires, and there will be sections of the catacombs dedicated to each character, but with little narrative framing and no dialogue to chew on, my first impressions were clouded by the perennial uncertainty of a Lost viewer. Is all of this going somewhere? I wondered.

There's an interesting experiment in the works here, though, one that may yet surprise. "I'm trying a bunch of things in The Cave," said Gilbert. "Hopefully a bunch of those will be successful, maybe some of them not so successful. And then as I make new ones I'll just not do the unsuccessful ones, do more of this, try some new things."

Knock Turtles Down a Peg in Turtle Punch

Ever looked at a turtle and thought it needed a good punch in the face?

Ever looked at a turtle and thought it needed a good punch in the face? Finnish studio Exoskeleton Games has, which is why they just released their free arcade browser game, Turtle Punch .

The aim of the game is to teach turtles a lesson, and also control a spinning ball with four paddles. The ball is then set on fire and whacked at the turtles. Each turtle destroyed earns points, and higher scores are possible by keeping the fire going and getting a combo. Losing the ball means game over, and with each hit of the ball, it speeds up. The turtles also try to distract with jokes, while other creatures, both friend and foe, occasionally show up to help or hinder. High scores can be viewed globally, by country, or by ball, offering a few ways for gamers to find their name at the top of at least one leaderboard.

It is possible to collect new balls and compete for the top of the leaderboard, but gamers will have to register an account to do so. However, only a username, password, and home country is needed, so it’s recommended by Exoskeleton for the full Turtle Punch experience. Turtle-punching gamers can also expect regular updates, bringing new balls, new jokes, and new sea creatures to befriend or avoid.

It’s worth noting that Exoskeleton Games actually loves turtles, so no turtles were harmed in the making of this game. As Turtle Punch is a free browser game, those interested can head over and play the game now. For more information on Exoskeleton Games and anything else they’ve got in the works, visit their website, or like the game’s Facebook page.

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs due later this year

When clever ARG-crackers uncovered this message on nextfrictionalgame.com , the internet leapt to the conclusion that the next Frictional game would be called Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and that it would be coming out later this year.

, the internet leapt to the conclusion that the next Frictional game would be called Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and that it would be coming out later this year. It was even rumoured that the game was being created in collaboration with Dear Esther developers thechineseroom.

As it happens, the internet was absolutely correct. A Machine for Pigs is set in the same universe as Amnesia but features new characters and a new setting. thechineseroom's Dan Pinchbeck told Joystiqthat the game takes place in the same horror-laced alternate history as its predecessor, but won't continue the same story. It's set in 1899, when wealthy industrialist Oswald Mandus returns home from Mexico and lapses into a months-long coma during which he dreams of a terrifying machine. When he wakes, the machine is real: and presumably what follows is an entirely pleasant experience in which no-one is dismembered.

The combination of Amensia's panic-inducing physical scares and Dear Esther's top-tier writing and atmosphere makes for a really promising collaboration - to the extent that 'promising' means 'bum-clenchingly terrifying'. I'm also starting to suspect that the machine isn't really for pigs. Just a hunch. Better to be safe than sorry.

PC Gamer US Podcast #339 - Designated Marksman

Lock, load, and roll out with T.J., Logan, Evan, and Tyler as we share our experiences on the war-torn battlefields of PlanetSide 2, and bring you news from every wavelength of the PC gaming spectrum.

Lock, load, and roll out with T.J., Logan, Evan, and Tyler as we share our experiences on the war-torn battlefields of PlanetSide 2, and bring you news from every wavelength of the PC gaming spectrum. Far Cry 3? XCOM? Ron Gilbert? We've got it all. Plus, is talking about whether or not games are art, in itself, art? Were we too hard on Telltale's The Walking Dead? Why am I still typing when there's science to do? Just hurry up and listen to...

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext. 724 or email the MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

Subscribe to the podcast RSS feed.

@logandecker(Logan Decker)

@ELahti(Evan Lahti)

@tyler_wilde(Tyler Wilde)

@AsaTJ(T.J. Hafer)

@belsaas(Erik Belsaas, podcast producer)

République – Metamorphosis: Episode 2 Released Today

Today marks the day that acclaimed iOS indie game, République , gets its second episode, along with a list of updates and improvements for its first episode, too.

, gets its second episode, along with a list of updates and improvements for its first episode, too. If you’ve not heard of it, République is developed by Camouflaj– an indie studio comprised of some of the industry veterans behind F.E.A.R ., Halo 4 and Metal Gear Solid . I thought that might get your attention.

République , which will play out over a total of five episodes, tells the story of Hope, a young woman who escapes the fascist prisons of The Overseer in Episode One. In Metamorphosis, the second episode, Hope seeks out a sympathetic mentor to help her through these confusing, fascist times; his name is Señor Luis Octavo (voiced by Marcelo Tubert), and he happens to be a librarian. The library is expected to play an important role in Episode 2; a 13,000-foot labyrinth that pushes Unity to its limits, while also providing the action, exploration, puzzles that gamers have come to expect from the series.

Not only this, but Episode 2 also aims to bring players a little closer to Hope as she sees reality as it is for the first time in her life. While Episode 2 brings you closer to Hope, here’s the list of what Episode 2 brings to République:

Metamorphosis Library: A stunning new environment that pushes the iOS hardware Three Mind-Bending Puzzles: Created in collaboration with Kostya Stankevych, creator of Blueprint 3D 3D Map: A stunning 3D representation of Metamorphosis – one of the most requested features – is added to Episodes 1 and 2 ARC Prizrak: A new guard type with randomized patrol routes and protective armor New OMNI Abilities: New voyeuristic abilities enable the player to see through walls and monitor Prizrak patrol routes Improved Performance: Optimized performance gains from Unity 4.5, most notably on iPhone 4, iPad mini and iPad 2 EP2 Soundtrack: All new soundtrack from composer Zinc LeMone, now available on iTunes. Part 3 of Video Documentary: A candid look at the development of Episode 2 is available as a free download for Season Pass owners

If you’re looking to continue Hope’s journey through République , Episode 2: Metamorphosis can be unlocked now as a $4.99 / £2.99 / €4.49 / AU$5.49 / in-app purchase, available on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch from the App Store. Camouflajplans to release the remaining episodes in three to four-month intervals, and for all the information you’ll need about these future instalments, stay here with IGM.

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Our Verdict
A trip through a brilliantly conceived landscape that rewards attentive engagement with a moving story
You wander the cliffs, caves and sheep-pens of a windswept Hebridean island.

You wander the cliffs, caves and sheep-pens of a windswept Hebridean island. A single voice reads out fragments of letters, and through these you gain snatches of information about the island and other people who took a walk similar to yours.

Their stories bleed into each other: the travel writer who visited the island in pursuit of a legendary hermit. The shepherd stranded here without friends or family, whose situation reflects the hermit's. Dear Esther is about heavy subjects: isolation and tragedy tie the island's visitors together.

It began life as a Half-Life 2 mod that preferred story to shooting. It was a slow-paced experience more than a game, praised for the way it adapted first-person exploration to tell a complex tale of grief, illness and loss. Its hour-long playing time and experimental ambitions were a natural fit for a mod, but it remains mesmerising as a paid-for title.

The island contains clues both material – an abandoned home, a shipwreck – and abstract, in the form of markings that adorn the walls of cliffs and luminous caves. To the game's credit, there's no Lost-style magic answer lurking in a hole somewhere: what you're exploring are the emotional consequences of a tragedy that happened in modern-day Britain, played out against a mysterious but grounded backdrop. The only thing you shoot is thoughtful looks at your monitor.

The order in which you receive the narrative is switched around every time you play, certain locations serving as focal points. The game always starts with a letter to the Esther of the title, but the next chunk of spoken text varies, and the game spits out different soliloquies as you meander between the island's sequential areas. Dear Esther doesn't ask for much physical input, but the story it has to tell wouldn't work in any other medium: while the basic facts don't change, randomisation can substantially change the emphasis. Connect the strands of information, invest yourself in the sketched plot, and your brain will fill-in the rest as the island takes on an ethereal reality.

Dear Esther never asks you to solve a puzzle to progress, and it's better for it. You can stop to look at a circuit diagram that's been scrawled onto a cave wall, take a few minutes to untangle its cryptic meaning – but there's no powered-down door that requires you to do so.

As a game, it will draw criticism from those uninterested in narrative for not challenging the player: for all the evocative atmosphere, it's still an hour of wandering around and listening to a man speak. But the lack of puzzles is necessary: it's crucial to the experience that you're allowed to keep moving at your own pace. With puzzles, it would just be a slightly more depressing Myst. Without puzzles, the visuals and narrative are allowed to take precedence.

Dear Esther's atmosphere is the core of the game – it's all of the game – and that's a direct result of the haunting level design. Here, something as mundane as a lonely cottage on a hillside can end up lodged deeper in your gaming memory than the dragons and spaceships of countless other games. The script also deserves praise. It charts a course through vastly different topics you never realised you cared about before – folklore, the Bible, shepherding, travel writing, guilt and medicine – and turns them into something meaningful without speaking down to its audience.

Dear Esther provokes thought and feeling in a way few other games do. Stripped down to its constituent parts, there's very little game here at all. But at the same time, it's a story that only games give us the freedom to hear.

The Verdict

Dear Esther

A trip through a brilliantly conceived landscape that rewards attentive engagement with a moving story

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Chris is the editor of PC Gamer Pro. After many years spent turning beautiful trees into magazines, he now oversees our online coverage of competitive gaming and esports.

We recommend By Zergnet

The Cave preview - hands-on with Ron Gilbert's latest adventure game

Seven characters enter a cave three at a time.

Seven characters enter a cave three at a time. Each is an archetype fit for a Hanna-Barbera cartoon—the hillbilly, the adventurer, the twins, the knight, the scientist, and the monk—and each is harboring a memory or fear terrible and violent enough to also have appeared in a '50s-era cartoon. Whether they've done or will do these awful things is intentionally unclear, but for our sake, their journey of self-discovery has a narrator: the cave. Not in a metaphorical sense, like how a 300-year-old building "really tells a story" according to tourists who are inexplicably all architecture experts. It's a sentient, talking cave.

Over two decades in the making

Legendary designer Ron Gilbert has been working on the idea for The Cave for over 25 years—it even predates his Commodore 64 classic, Maniac Mansion. The talking cave was always part of the plan, but the trailers suggest that his idea has radically transformed since he worked on Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island: it looks like a platformer, with timed jumps and everything.

After playing the hillbilly's story, I can confirm that at least one of The Cave's chambers is definitely a Ron Gilbert adventure game. The running and jumping kept me active, and now and then I had to stick a landing, but it was mostly in pursuit of puzzle solutions. Death is possible, but it isn't failure: if a character falls too far or drowns, he or she is whisked back to solid ground.

Gilbert calls The Cave an "evolution of adventure games." By emphasizing constant movement instead of the classic click-and-take-a-terribly-slow-stroll-across-the-screen approach, players are always occupied while they work out puzzles. For me, it's like pacing to think.

Another evolution is the lack of an inventory. I was skeptical, but the limitation prevents overabundance of items from being used as a complexity crutch. Instead of grabbing everything I saw and hoping it would be useful later (if I even remembered I had it by then), I usually identified a problem before finding the item needed to solve it. When I discovered a barbell, for example, I knew just where I should take it, if not what I was going to do with it when I got there.

A hillbilly romantic

The hillbilly's story, like the others, is directed and narrated by the sentient cave. The cave has materialized a carnival, and the hillbilly is motivated to impress a cardboard stand-in for "The Amazing Two-Legged Woman"—the one who got away, we assume—by scoring enough carnival tickets to gift her a teddy bear. Winning carnival games earns tickets, and the barbell seemed most appropriate for the weight guessing game. If the cardboard carny guessed my weight incorrectly, I would win, but he wasn't fooled when I carried the barbell onto the scale. I won't spoil the solution, but it was satisfying: not an absurd logical leap, but not instantly obvious, either.

That weight puzzle was a one-man job, but many required teamwork. Before starting the game, a team of three characters is chosen, and each brings their own story area and special ability. For this demonstration, the hillbilly, adventurer, and monk had been recruited. The teamwork is pretty simple: the monk pulls a lever while the adventurer turns a dial, the adventurer rides a merry-go-round while the monk mans the generator; the hillbilly traverses a flooded passageway with his special ability—holding his breath indefinitely—while the others wait for him to clear a path.

This also means that most puzzles have multiple solutions. I wouldn't be playing the hillbilly's story if he weren't one of my characters, so his super-human lungs are required, but my other characters could have been any combination of the remaining six. For one puzzle, I used the monk's telekinesis ability to retrieve an inaccessible item, but nearby bits of the environment clearly offered different solutions for different parties.

Zynga's new game supposedly a blatant, unabashed, shameless rip-off of NimbleBit's Tiny Tower

There are plenty of cheap knock-offs on the iOS store. There's a clone of StarCraft, League of Legends, Call of Duty - you name it, there's an original copy of it. But usually, these soulless photocopies are made by no-name developers, and usually it's a small company ripping off a big company (or it's Capcom not realizing it was publishing a 'Splosion Man rip-off). That's what makes Dream Heights

Dear Esther turns a profit in five and a half hours, sells 16,000 in a day

A post on the Indie Fund site responsible for backing the development of Dear Esther says that the team have recouped their investment of $55,000 in just five and a half hours and is currently the third best selling game on Steam .

"To be honest, we are a little surprised by how many people bought Dear Esther so quickly," say the Indie Fund. "We were expecting the game to have a niche appeal. In fact the situation is quite different." Dear Esther has so far sold more than 16,000 copies in its first day.

The Fund were slightly reluctant to fund the game in the beginning because they were worried it go down well with Steam's mainstream audience. "We appear to have been very wrong about all this," they say. "We are happy to have been wrong."

For our verdict on Dear Esther, check out our Dear Esther review.

The Cave is Ron Gilbert's new game, it has ice toads, a theme park and at least one dragon

Double Fine have released the first details, screenshots and trailer of Ron Gilbert's new adventure, The Cave.

Double Fine have released the first details, screenshots and trailer of Ron Gilbert's new adventure, The Cave. A bundle of jagged jigsaw imageshave been teasing the title for a short while now. It turns out the seven characters shown in those mugshots can be recruited into a band of three adventurers who must investigate a talking cave. But this is NO ORDINARY TALKING CAVE, there's an underground theme park, a castle and a fully armed "nuclear tipped ICBM" hidden within its dripping subterranean bowels.

"If you enjoy rappelling, spelunking and dark rocky caverns then be prepared to be disappointed! And then intrigued. And then AMAZED," says the cheerful press release. The seven adventurers, including The Scientist, The Adventurer, The Time Traveler, The Hillbilly, The Monk and a pair of tiny twins, must combine their unusual talents to overcome the cave's traps. It's due out "early 2013."

It's worth mentioning that The Cave is NOT the Kickstarter project that Double Fine successfully secured funding for recently. That will be a different project entirely. This is one that Gilbert has been working on for a while. "The concept of The Cave has been bouncing around in my head for many, many years," he says, "and then the little voices that tell me to do things said it was time to make the game."

InExile Reveals The First Gameplay Video Of ‘Wasteland 2’

It has been a while since we’ve seen the incredible work InXile Entertainment is cranking into their kickstarted sequel, Wasteland 2 .

. With this latest development update, they’ve graced us with a captivating video of alpha gameplay. In the video, development director Chris Keenan narrates the example mission and shows off the implemented features.

At the beginning of the video the focus is the audio. InXile Entertainment has big plans to weave the radio into the fabric of the Wasteland 2 universe. In the latest development update, the team suggests that the radio will play “a vital role in communication, reactivity, and mood setting. There will be a host of cults who are broadcasting their propaganda while other calls will be the locals who seek the help of our rangers. We have many interesting ideas on how to use the radio in novel ways.”

The user interface for Wasteland 2 is customizable: you can drag and drop and rearrange all UI elements to fit whatever configuration you want. In addition, your characters themselves are in your complete control, with the ability to upload your own photos for their character portraits.

InExile has made their focus on both content and quality clear. The textbox in the UI will give the player important text for all the areas they explore and can provide hints for things in the environment that they can interact with.

The gameplay video also gives a good example of what kind of combat the player will face. As soon as a character or enemy takes damage, the world shifts into a turn-based order. This makes your placement of your allies before combat begins all the more important.

While the development team stresses that they are only “just past the halfway mark”, what we can see in this early game demo that there’s a lot to look forward to in the final version. You can learn more and follow development at the official Wasteland 2 website.

Payday 2: Hotline Miami DLC announced

Overkill has announced a Hotline Miami DLC update for Payday 2, being created in collaboration with the indie murder-'em-up's developer Dennaton Games.

Overkill has announced a Hotline Miami DLC update for Payday 2, being created in collaboration with the indie murder-'em-up's developer Dennaton Games. There's little to go on, besides a new live-action trailer. How the top-down jazz slaughter of Hotline Miami will work with the co-operative heists of Payday 2 isn't clear. Hopefully the connection will run deeper than some animal masks and an amazing soundtrack.

A Q&A about the releasefails to provide much in the way of information. According to Overkill, the project exists because they "fucking love Hotline Miami," which is as good a reason as any. They do confirm that the DLC pack will contain a heist, and that "you'll find out about the rest come end of September."

Payday 2's Hotline Miami DLC is due out on 30 September.

Ron Gilbert reveals more character art for upcoming game with Double Fine

More concept art for Ron Gilbert's unnamed project with Double Fine has crept onto the legendary game designer's blog over the weekend.

over the weekend. The five pictures show off The Scientist, The Adventurer, The Time Traveler, The Hillbilly and The Monk, and the brief description of each suggests that they're all going to playable characters. A multi-protagonist game by one of the men behind Day of the Tentacle? Yes please.

The five images all join together into a single panorama in the manner of a jigsaw, which I have failed to recreate in the picture above because I am stubborn and also bad at jigsaws.

Expect to see more of the game at E3 early next month. As this isn't related to the crowd-funded Double Fine Adventure project, it's probably not going to be a point-and-click in the traditional sense - Gilbert revealed the first art for the game back in November. As the Double Fine Kickstarter was in part designed to determine whether players still wanted traditional 2D adventures, it would seem unlikely that Double Fine were secretly cooking one up in the background. Nonetheless, the art has the same charm that marked out the great LucasArts adventures of the 90s. We're looking forward to finding out more.

The NotAGame Collection Interview : NotABad Way To Support Child’s Play

Since 2003 the Child’s Play foundation has been improving the lives of children in hospitals with the use of video games, toys and more.

foundation has been improving the lives of children in hospitals with the use of video games, toys and more. Last year they raised nearly $8 million dollars to benefit their cause, and are hoping for an even better push this year.

I recently had a chance to sit down with Simon David, a UK music producer and teacher who has recently released The NotaAGame Collection , a video game-inspired album in support of the Child’s Play foundation.

From the dulcet tones of Journey , a song inspired by Fez , to the fast-paced, adrenaline inducing Hotline Miami -inspired track Pixelgun, this album has a lot to offer for a very modest minimum donation of £5 GBP.

Make sure to check out Simon’s official NotAGame Collection websiteif you’re interested in the album, and click the embedded video to check out our great interview!

Retake Your Kingdom from Pixelated Monstrosities in Castle in the Darkness

Developers: If you have enemies move in a sine wave in your action platformers, then you are a terrible human being.

Monsters: If you leave one knight alive during your raid on a kingdom, they will inevitably be the one person who is capable of getting strong enough to defeat you all. Be thorough. Sloppy work results in a lot of trouble down the road.

Now that I’m done giving advice, I can dive straight into Nicalis, Inc and Matt Kap’s Castle in the Darkness , which is now available on Steam.

Monsters have attacked and the Kingdom of Alexandria is in ruins; you know the drill in this pixelated Metroidvania. You’ve got over a hundred weapons, pieces of armor, and magic spells to help yourself out, which will be necessary because the knight is very tiny guy in a world filled with very, very large bosses. Luckily, the player character doesn’t seem bothered by swinging around a sword twice as large as he is when attacking the creatures that roam the halls. Expect to use that sword quickly, though, as the game moves at fast speeds, requiring twitchy reflexes as things go bad. This game was designed by Kap, whose previous work was on 1001 Spikes, Legend of Raven , and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth . So, it’s safe to say that things will go bad for players.

I see you in that trailer, Medusa-head-like enemy moving in a sine wave. Don’t think I don’t see you.

Castle in the Darkness is available for $5.99 on Steam(on sale now for $4.97). For more information on Nicalis, Inc, you can head to their websiteor follow them on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. For more on Matt Kap, you can check out his website, or  follow him on YouTubeand Twitter.

Hotline Miami 2 gameplay footage is 80 minutes of surreal music and ultraviolence

Unsurprisingly, Hotline Miami 2 doesn't look very different to the original Hotline Miami.

doesn't look very different to the original Hotline Miami. As a result, you may not want to watch this 80 minute gameplay video in its completion, unless to enjoy the oddly discomforting ambient synth music (interspersed with chainsaw sounds, but y'know).

There are a few points of interest: the new level editoris shown off at various points, while the sequel's new weapon dual-wielding is amply shown off right from the beginning. According to YouTube uploader LennyReviews, the footage is of a very early build, so level layouts may not be final. Gameplay takes place across the first two acts, during which we are promised no story spoilers.

Speaking of the level editor, Samuel Roberts went hands on with the tools at E3 2014, and came away impressed. "I love what I saw of the editor, and I seriously want to try my hand at creating a Hotline Miami level that's of a professional standard, as it were," he wrote. "While Dennaton isn't looking to talk about the story of the main game, it feels like this is the component of Hotline Miami 2 that we'll be talking about for years to come.

Double Fine Kickstarter campaign ends tomorrow, Schafer makes last call for donations

There are only 36 hours left to contribute to Double Fine's adventure game kickstarter campaign .

. So far 75,766 backers have contributed $2,801,103 to the project. Quite a lot more than the initial $400,000 target, which was surpassed within hours of the campaign going live.

"We're still pushing for more because the more money we have, the more awesome we can make the game, the more people we can put on it," Schafer says in the final call for donations in the video above. "we really have been enjoying the statement and attention that this project has been getting and we can think we can even make a louder statement about what we're doing here."

The entire development process for the new game will be filmed by 2 Player productions. The footage will be arranged into a documentary that will be released alongside the game, so backers can see how their investment has been put to use. Live developer chats and interaction with backers will keep everyone up to date with Double Fine's latest plans.

Top backers get a few extra perks, including lunch with Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert. For a sense of what that might be like, check out the lovely half hour chat between Schafer and Gilbert below, in which they talk about their love of adventure games, and Monkey Island's four origin stories.

Hotline Miami 2 E3 preview: "You can make Hotline Miami 3" in the sequel's level editor

It's a hell of a sign off to the series, giving fans the tools to make new levels forever.

Dennaton doesn't want to make Hotline Miami3, so how about you do it instead?

It's a hell of a sign off to the series, giving fans the tools to make new levels forever. Yesterday I met Dennaton's Dennis Wedin in a caravan next to Hooters at E3 and he talked me through it. The level editor is comprehensive and clearly designed with the aesthetic of Hotline Miami in mind, allowing players to create a decent level for the game in under ten minutes.

Wedin illustrates this for me by doing just that, dropping some basic floor tiling in, picking objects to decorate each room then placing enemies around, too, choosing between the different types and selecting individually what weapons they carry. Lastly, Wedin drops the enter/exit vehicle in there, selects play then expertly slays everyone in sight. That was very cool, and fans are undoubtedly going to get a lot out of a toolset that's been kept so accessible.

"It's built from scratch by Jonathan, our programmer," Wedin tells me. "We feel that it's super simple. We can't make it any simpler than this, which feels nice, because we want people to pick it up right away. If you want to make hard levels for your friends, it's going to be super easy to do that, then we're going to add a lot of tweaking to it when people dig deeper. All they need to do is follow five steps and the level is done."

Players will be able to make collections of levels, and the plan is to offer storytelling potential, too. "We hope to have it so you can basically recreate Hotline Miami, that is the plan. We'll see how much will be there upon release, we might add stuff later on, see how people treat it. We want to add it so you can make intros, outros, and stuff like that." I ask Wedin if any of his developer friends have thrown up any interesting levels, and he says people are creating cool patterns along the floor. As for me, I sit wondering if I can create a dog shelter level where the prisoners have taken over the asylum. It looks perfectly possible.

All of this will bring some closure for Dennaton, who will end Hotline Miami as a series with Wrong Number. "We feel like it's a good way for us to complete it, because Hotline Miami 2 will be the game we make in the Hotline Miami universe, So it feels nice: 'we're done. Here. just keep on going if you want to. You can make Hotline Miami 3 if you want to. Just do it.'" I think this will ensure the fiction of Hotline Miami lives long after the second one comes out later this year.

Every one of the 500-600 assets are indexed in the editor, and easy to find by keyword. "If I want to build a kitchen, I type in kitchen and you get everything that has kitchen in the title." You can also select any music you like from the game's soundtrack, which I'm convinced will be a popular choice. "We wanted the editor to feel Hotline Miami-ish, so it doesn't look Windows grey or anything like that." Look at the screens for evidence of that—it's a pretty level editor. "I erase walls by holding the right button. All the commands are listed [here on the screen], so you don't have to go to a manual, so here's what you can do at a certain stage."

I ask about Steam Workshop support, and that's one thing that hasn't been figured out yet. "How we share the levels is still a thing for the future, but of course the point is to be able to share your levels with friends. But how it's going to be made, if it's in the game? We'll see."

I ask Wedin if players can import their own sprites. "That's something I'd love to see and if we could work it out. I would love to give them a sprite sheets of all the enemies and their animations, and they can just paint over it. So a good animator could just screw your animation. But it's one thing I can't say will be in there."

I love what I saw of the editor, and I seriously want to try my hand at creating a Hotline Miami level that's of a professional standard, as it were. While Dennaton isn't looking to talk about the story of the main game, it feels like this is the component of Hotline Miami 2 that we'll be talking about for years to come.

Graph: how Double Fine raised $450,000 for an adventure game in eight hours

Not long after the creator of Minecraft offered to fund a sequel to their much-loved Psychonauts , Double Fine looked to a different source to fund a different game.

, Double Fine looked to a different source to fund a different game. Kickstarter lets anyone donate to a project in return for rewards proportional to their investment, and they don't have to pay anything unless the project gets enough pledges to go ahead. Double Fine set out to raise $400,000 for a point-and-click adventure game, in 34 days. They raised $450,000 in eight hours.

It's a fantastic and exciting accomplishment that reflects how the games industry is shifting towards one where passion, as much as mass market appeal, can make games happen. But, much more importantly, it involves a bunch of nerdy numbers I can make a graph from.

Double Fine give increasingly ridiculous rewards for donations of amounts varying from $15 to $150,000. As you'd expect, the cheapest options were the most popular, but not proportionally so. Which of them actually made Double Fine the most money? I know, because I made a graph.

INTERESTING STUFF! So while the $15 donation was the most popular, it wasn't actually the biggest earner. In fact, the $250 option made more money. The very expensive options did make less money, but if anyone goes for the maximum donation, $150,000, that single transaction will become the biggest moneymaker for the whole project. As it stands, that's the 3,513 people who chose the $30 option, making a total of $105,390 at time of writing.

The difference in rewards between the $15 option and the $30 option are actually very slight - just higher-def documentary, unspecified 'extras' and the equally unknown soundtrack. The popularity of that option was probably motivated more by a desire to be a supporter of the project, rather than someone simply pre-ordering it for the minimum possible amount.

Since they're not listed in full on the Kickstarter site, and it helps to make sense of the data, here's exactly what you get for each reward amount:

PLEDGE $15 OR MORE

4622 BACKERS

The finished game in all of its awesome glory on Steam, exclusive access to the PC Beta on Steam, access to the video series, and access the private discussion community.

PLEDGE $30 OR MORE

3513 BACKERS

HD download of the documentary series with extras, Digital game soundtrack, and all previous reward tiers.

PLEDGE $100 OR MORE

1003 BACKERS

Original "Double Fine Adventure" poster (suitable for framing) exclusive to the campaign, special thanks in the game's credits, and all previous reward tiers. (posters will be shipped for free in the US, and for $10 internationally)

PLEDGE $250 OR MORE

296 BACKERS

"Double Fine Adventure" Poster autographed by Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and the rest of the design team, and all previous reward tiers.

PLEDGE $1,000 OR MORE

31 BACKERS

Mini portrait of YOU, painted by the game's artist, and all previous reward tiers.

PLEDGE $5,000 OR MORE

5 BACKERS

Larger original painting of art used in the final game, and all previous reward tiers.

PLEDGE $10,000 OR MORE

1 BACKER

Lunch with Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert, a tour of the Double Fine offices, and all previous reward tiers.

PLEDGE $15,000 OR MORE

Dinner with Tim Schafer and key members of the dev team.

PLEDGE $20,000 OR MORE

Dinner and BOWLING with Tim Schafer and key members of the dev team.

PLEDGE $30,000 OR MORE

Picture of Ron Gilbert smiling.

PLEDGE $35,000 OR MORE

Undoctored picture of Ron Gilbert smiling.

PLEDGE $50,000 OR MORE

Become an actual character in the game.

PLEDGE $150,000 OR MORE

Tim Schafer (that's me) will give last four remaining Triangle Boxed Day of the Tentacles, in original shrink-wrap.” (Limit of 1) (Holy crap, what am I thinking? I only have four of those!)

Double Fine don't show numbers on their site for how many people, if any, have bought the crazy expensive reward options. But I'm guessing we'll hear about it if someone grabs the $150,000 one. Now that the game has easily surpassed its funding target, it'd be an even more lavish gesture to pay that much. Notch'll probably do it.

Become a Master Gem Thief in Miko Mole

Miko Mole is a new stealth-action puzzle game by developer EnseaSoft.

is a new stealth-action puzzle game by developer EnseaSoft. Players guide Miko, a mole with a passion for shiny gems, on his quest to become a master thief. This game blends gameplay mechanics from titles like Boulder Dash , Worms , Stealth 2 , and Unmechanical while adding a few touches of its own into the mix.

Players will guide Miko deep into mines which happen to be owned by a corporation known as Evil Corp. Evil Corp also happens to be very protective of what they consider is theirs, as each level requires quick reflexes and strategy to avoid the many obstacles, surprises, traps and tricky puzzles. A host of many enemies such as bats, skunks, and rats are also standing in the way of Miko and his goal. Players can manipulate certain objects in the environment if they are stuck, granting them access to otherwise closed-off areas. Throughout the game, players will unlock gadgets like a headlamp and eagle’s eyes to help Miko on his quest for gems.

Miko Mole is slated to be released sometime in October for PC on Steam. To learn more about the game and the developer, EnseaSoft, visit their website, like them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter.