Tiny Wings is similar in such a respect that you use one finger to play it; it’s simple, it’s fun, it’s visually fantastic and it’s very, very addictive.  Developed by Andreas Illiger, it tells a simple story of a little bird who has tiny wings (geddit?) so he cannot fly (awwwwww!), but he can use the hills and valleys of the world to launch himself skyward (yaaaaayyy!).

Control is as simple as this: press down on the screen to close his wings and increase downward speed on the downslope, release to open his wings and flap like a madmanbird on the uppety upside.  Not only do you have to contend with gravity, but night time is on your feathery tail, which makes your little friend fall asleep and stop his journey.  Needless to say, the better at jumping you are, the better you’ll fare against the timer.

The game is split into islands, with a specific colour scheme for each and with varying types of hill.  The hills themselves provide the biggest challenge; timing your finger presses and releases to maximise the speed and launch angle can be quite tricky to master, especially as you progress along the islands, but it’s very rewarding when you’re zooming along, out-flying the night.  The difficulty curve seems about right, with the first island being easy and each subsequent island getting progressively more difficult, but it’s all relative if you understand the underlying physics, which you’ll get in nearly no time at all.

Now, it wouldn’t be a self-respecting score-based game without bonuses would it?  You gain score automatically by the length of time you manage to spend in game.  Further to this are score coins which net you ten points a pop, and they’re always in a nice row to get you a good run and boost your counter by a significant amount.  You can also pick up blue speed coins which increase your speed, so these are handy if you mis-time a landing or takeoff and you’re set back in pace. Hitting big scores and massive jumps brings a smile to your mug, which is great, as so few games are able to lay claim to making me continuously smile along as I’m playing.

If you’re going fast enough and time your jumps well you can make perfect jumps, with three in a row putting you into fever mode and doubling any points you net – so long as you continue to get perfect jumps.  And if you’re going really really fast, you can even hit the lofty heights of the cloud level, which will net you even more points with a cloudtouch.  It’s a jumping point frenzy!

There are also in-game achievements set at tiered levels and will let you “upgrade” your nest as you obtain them.  Things like getting 5000 points on the first island, getting your first cloudtouch or staying in fever mode for 5 seconds will check off the achievements and unlock more for you to enjoy.  Unfortunately, there’s no Game Center support (yet), but there is OpenFeint available if you’re into the whole online leaderboard thing.

It’s cute, cheerful and colourful,  so kids, adults and big kids alike will enjoy it.  The music and sound is delightful, and the visuals are simply gorgeous: the’ve got an almost rusic feel, but it’s only one part of it and it’s more subtle.  The colour schemes work well together and island transitions make for some spectacular visuals, the most pretty being round about island four when the sky gets a nice red shade.

An interesting aspect is the procedural generation at play to change the colours and hills each day.  It’s a really simple yet effective way of keeping things fresh, so you’re not looking at the same colour schemes all the time.

Try as I might, I can’t find much to fault with it: it simply clicks and checks all the right boxes and works very well.  All I can say is well done Andreas! Keep making stunning games like this and I’ll keep buying them.

Pros:

• Cheap as any other cheapy cheapness iPhone game.
• Very fun, kid-friendly and colourful!
• Simple and very rewarding.

Cons:

• Erm, addictive?
• (clutches straws) No Game Center support (as of v1.0).

Normally, I’m not one who watches or pays attention to awards ceremonies, but this year I may be persuaded to watch at least part of it.  The “Ones to watch” category anyway.

You may remember a few months back we brought you a bit of coverage of the Dare Protoplay 2010 event?  Well, the winners from that have been entered into the GAME BAFTAS under “Ones To Watch”.  The three winning games were MUSH, Sculpty and Twang!, and they’re all fantastic little gems from student developers.

MUSH is the puzzle-platformer with the emotional twist from Angry Mango Games, developed for the Windows Phone. Sculpty comes from Team Tickle and is the shape-shifting platformer featuring a loveable blob on the iPad. With Twang!, That Game Studio takes a Ninja Rope and runs away with it in the form of a horizontal multiplayer racer on the Xbox 360.

Needless to say, I’m excited for all three developers and their games and I hope to see full releases and much greatness from these guys in the future.  I’d also like to see some multi-platforming action, especially from Twang!, which would be a definite purchase on my PS3.

Anyways, here are some video interviews I did with each of the Dev Teams:

Angry Mango

Team Tickle

That Game Studio

Good luck to the three teams, may the best game win, but you all deserve it for your lovely, lovely games.  Also, big thanks to all the guys I spoke to at Protoplay 2010; I hope to see your games come out soon and many joyous days to come for the games industry.  Keep up the good work!

UPDATE:

So, the Game BAFTAS came and went and we had a winner in the Ones To Watch Category.  Big congratulations to That Game Company and TWANG!.  Well done guys, you all deserved the award.

Commiserations to Angry Mango and Team Tickle, but well done for even getting nominated.

One word: character.

Poker Night At The Inventory certainly has plenty of character, with some excess to boot.  Developed by Telltale Games, who show their pedigree with some of the  Sam and Max games as well as some of the CSI games, and that one game with Strong Bad, it’s a unique poker game to say the least.  It’s strictly a single player outing and unfortunately your mates can’t get in on the action, which is a bit of a shame given the release through Steam, but I won’t hold that against it.

As far as poker games go, it’s not a bad package: straight up Texas Hold ‘em poker with five players (including yourself) duking it out with stakes of $10,000 (fictional).  However, Inventory shines out above the pack with its cast of characters: Max the Rabbit from Sam and Max, Strongbad from Homestar Runner, The Heavy Weapons Guy from Team Fortress 2, and Tycho Brahe from, well, Penny Arcade.

The cast is oddly chosen, to say the least, but it’s been picked well. With four completely different personalities and visual styles coming through it gives the feeling that these guys, if they were real, would meet up for regular games of poker. Strong Bad is, well, Strong Bad, Tycho retains his gallows humour and intellect from the comic (though his voice seems a little off), Max is hyperactive, psychic,  psychotic and faintly stabby, and Heavy is his typical Russian self, albeit without his precious Sasha, or the Sandvich in tow.

Another character in the game has to be The Inventory itself – a secret underground den of gambling, drinking and hedonism – nicely covered up with airs and graces and a vague anti-establishment vibe, which gives it a feeling of being set in a prohibition-era America, but strangely modern.  Let’s not forget a star turn from Reginald Van Winslow (Monkey Island), too, who plays the host and narrator for your games.

Each of the characters will occasionally buy in with a themed unlockable for Team Fortress 2, so if you own the game it’s a good incentive to play through it in order to get the four prizes, which are really just accessories to wear.  Progressing through the various challenges will also net you new tables and decks, offering a little bit of variety and customisation.

It’s a relatively small game, and some of the animations and phrases get churned out a little too often, but it’s good fun every once in a while when you just want to chill out with a nice drink.

It’s unlikely to win awards, or even be lauded for art or something, but it’s a nice distraction and it brings together some unlikely banter from the four characters.  If you like comedic games with a bit of a challenge, then I’m sure you can spare the pocket money to get this.

Pros:

• Well done crossover cast.
• Unlockables to be had for Team Fortress 2.

Cons:

• More poker game modes would be nice.
• Repeated animations and phrases get old, fast.

So, without further ado…

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Q: Can you give us a bit of background on Whisper Game Studios and the team?

John: Whisper Game Studios was born from an instant-messaging conversation in October 2008, between two gaming friends across the Atlantic from each other, myself and Corey Blakeborough. I was beginning my education into a career in Games Art & Design, and Corey was halfway through his education in coding languages (Java, C++, C#, PHP, and so on). We’d often spoken about repeating the online community and upstart legacy of our favourite Game Developers, such as Bungie.net, where the vast majority of our team originally met. It basically started with the simple, harmless question of “Hey, couldn’t we pool our resources together and start up a company too?” We certainly could. So we got to work on spreading the word, looking for people who wanted to help us out, and on 11th November 2008, Whisper was officially formed.

At first, we were a tiny team of 5. This was before we’d heard of the Xbox Live Community Games service (as it was called then), and we’d set our sights on starting small and making simple games in Flash (which are still available on our website, and we’re slowly adding to them). Once word got about our game Elysia (which was originally named after one of the main protagonists, “Quiff”, but was changed because not everyone knows how to pronounce it correctly, so that led to a few problems) being upgraded from just a Flash game to a full game on the Xbox Live Indie Game marketplace, interest spiked and more people started taking notice of our efforts.

We are now a team of 18, with our recruits hailing from Scotland, England, Australia, Norway, Washington, Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado and Canada. Each and every one of us works purely for the fun and the experience of it. Our hope is to one day have core team members migrate to a singular location, and form a physical studio, whilst retaining our cloud-based system for those yet unable to move (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but feel free to add to it).

We are constantly taking on people, and we don’t mind if you haven’t had much previous experience. As long as you’re a pretty cool, laid-back and talented individual willing to take some criticism and help us make some great games, you’re free to send an email to myself, and I’ll forward you to the right people. If you’re more musically inclined you can contact our Audio Director, Christi O’Donnell, who has her own start-up record company, Rare Pop Records, which we consider to be our sister company. They’re on the lookout for talented people who can do sound design, mixing, mastering and composing. They currently work in the cloud too, using the same setup we use.

Q: I understand that you use quite a unique, cloud-based development setup – can you explain to us how that works?

John: Currently, we split up our cloud into five key sections, using as many free resources as possible:

1. Communication – Using Skype’s Group-IM and Group-Call services. Segregated work-related and general chats helps keep order, as well as keeping people focused.
2. Collaboration – Using Dropbox’s simple file-sharing systems. Segregated folders for teams (i.e., Art, Writing, etc) is important as Dropbox only allows a small amount of space, which you can increase by referring friends to sign up.
3. Task Assigning – Using Huddle’s web-based ticket-software. Allows tasks to be assigned to individual or entire groups of people for collaboration efforts, as well as a handy calendar of events.
4. Subversion – Using Tortoise SVN’s server-based code-collaboration software. Essentially works as a code-only collaboration tool, allowing multiple coders to work on a single file without (much) conflict.
5. Susurration – Corey designed an entire back end area of our website designed exclusively for our employees to access important team-based information and resources, and allows authorized people to add, remove or edit content on the website.

With these, we can essentially replicate the exact same sort of software physical studios use in-house, whilst also allowing the team to communicate openly and freely with each other.

Q: Was this setup always the same or did it evolve over time?

John: Originally, we were all piled up in a single group-conversation on Windows Live Messenger. Which was fine when we only had about 5 of us on the team, able to simply send files to each other privately, and were just starting out, but when we began to expand, and conversations became increasingly difficult to stay focused on work, and instead led to mass memefests and sharing of custom emoticons (often spanning the entire screen), we figured we needed to make the shift to a better system.

So after doing some research, I started piecing together the cloud-system we’re using today, and it feels a lot more efficient and professional whilst still retaining that feeling of ownership and independence, which is what makes Indie Development so exciting to be a part of in the first place.

Q: Do you find that this setup is difficult to work with compared to a traditional development environment?

John: Having worked at a game company previously, as well as participating in Dare to be Digital 2010, I can safely say that yes, working in a cloud-based environment with team-members from all sorts of different time zones can be extremely difficult; especially considering that a lot of already have jobs or are on courses at Universities, or both. As a result, a lot of us, myself especially, find ourselves staying up until the early hours of the morning, throwing off our sleep schedule, and then struggling to get back to normal.

At one point, at the very beginning of Pie Collect’s production, back in June 2009, I was working with my friend, Scott Dunbar, who lived just a couple fields away from me. When we were both available to, I’d put my laptop and graphics tablet in a small suitcase, walk uphill to his house, and we’d work out of his shed; the sort that had electricity that ran on a ticket-based meter. The majority of the game was created in the weeks we spent working away in that shed, and I owe that to the simple ability to turn around, face Scott, and talk to him directly about what needed to be done for the game. Whereas, with our cloud-based development, there’s no set time for work, there’s no guarantee for if someone will be online to work with, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll reply in time before you have to get offline.

So in that respect, it’s very lacking, and isn’t helped by the fact that Skype will only actually send messages when both conversation participants are online at the same time, as opposed to MSN, where messages are stored and received even if one of the participants are offline.

Otherwise, with our collaboration tools like Dropbox, it’s completely efficient and easy to share files. You place a file down in a folder people are sharing, it’ll upload to the Dropbox site, then it will automatically download to everyone else’s Dropbox folder. Almost works like a Local Access Network.

Q: Pie Collect was your first project. Is there anything in particular you have learned from the experience?

John: Two words, really: Feature. Lock.

The simple arcade-styled game took us almost 2 years to get out the door. The game was based on the Flash games Corey designed on our website, and I figured that it would make a fantastic icebreaking title for us, to get to grips as a team as well as to understand the XBLIG process. And it was; we learned a lot of things that may have tripped us up if we had just started working on Elysia immediately (it also bought us plenty of time, too). Since its launch in November last year, the game was bought by over 150 people and trialled by over 1360 people in total. That’s about an 11% rate of purchase-trial counts. Which isn’t that bad, in the long run.

The game suffered from a combination of hacked hacks to fix hacks that were hacked to fix bugs, absolutely zero documentation about the game’s content, which essentially led to a widespread migraine amongst our coders (we actually lost a couple as a result of the project), and finally it was crippled by something that the XNA community fail for: a “code 4″ error occurred when the game was saved on a memory card and was ejected whilst selecting a storage device. This is one of the most hated issues regarding the XNA service, and a lot of people feel it is a hardware issue rather than the developer’s issues. It eventually got sorted and saved by our awesome coder, Tayler Wilbourn.

Whilst it doesn’t feature any flashy particle effects and superb graphics, it does have a retro theme that is its own (who liked my picnic blankets, by the way?), and there’s a certain addictive charm and replay value to it.

If it had flashier graphics, online multiplayer (Which it almost had, but essentially couldn’t due to how broken the base code was) as well as a few gameplay improvements I came up with and put on a list after mass-feedback from those who played it, and if it had actual achievements that gave out points, I think it would have been a lot more successful. But instead of polishing something that *might* be more successful and popular, we decided to go ahead and concentrate on something that we feel a lot of people are going to adore: Elysia.

Q: You’re now working on a couple of new projects, one of which is the platformer Elysia. Can you give us a summary of the games?

John: Elysia is a 2D puzzle-platformer game for the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace, where you control not just the usual platforming dude, but you also get to control a portable-platform character simultaneously, who you meet up with in the 3rd level of the game. You progress through levels by collecting Dream Orbs, which allow you to pass through Dream Gates, marked with a number of how many Dream Orbs you require to open it. There are various enemies and complex puzzles that require skilled use of both characters at once. The game begins rather airy and slow-paced to ease you into platforming gameplay as Quiff, but after you rescue the platform-cloud, Whisp, the environments and enemies become a lot more hazardous, complex and dangerous.

Whisp is more than just a handy platform; as a cloud he can transform into forms of weather, such as Lightning, Heat and Rain. These weather elements can be activated by kicking signposts and can help defeat certain enemies if used in the right order, and can also change the environment in order for you to progress.

Something dark and sinister has infected the world of Elysia. It came raining down in the form of thick, black sludge, changing everything it touched into an evil, mindless puppet. And so, as the unknowingly-chosen protectors of the world, it’s up to Quiff and Whisp to liberate the infected creatures’ souls, lay them to rest, and discover the source of the great evil. As the game progresses, you’ll encounter the evil umbrella, Ego, who will attempt to stall your progress. Chasing after him will take you to the ends of the world, and beyond, into what the two heroes never imagined possible. Quiff and Whisp discover their origins, and discover the dark secret behind the world of Elysia.

Our other project, codenamed “Heron”, is our attempt at creating a game with a solid universe and solid canon. After seeing how careless some game companies have been regarding their games’ canon, and watching the effect that has on their fans, we were very disappointed in seeing how little these companies cared to try and keep new content consistent with their game’s world and back-stories, for the sake of a cheap and easy storyline. The majority of our writers, led by S.P.C. Hapner, are collaborating together to create a timeline of events that span a multitude of games that compliment fun gameplay, whilst keeping canon entirely in check.

Heron is set on Mars in 2189, telling the story of its inhabitants who survived the events in 2145, when mankind first started work on terraforming and colonizing Mars when a massive rock was jettisoned from the moon after an unexplainable explosion occurred. The rock smashed into our home-planet, crippling it and killing all who resided. The people of Mars are now on their own with nowhere to go. Heron tells the story of the fight for survival, and the civil war that erupted, complete with genetic enhancements and mutations that were a direct result of initial attempts at adapting humanity for Mars’ atmosphere. The game is a 2D side-scrolling shooter which will feature a nice lengthy storyline as well as fantastic characters and environments. You can read more about it, follow along with the project’s Twitter feed, and see concept work on its project page on our site.

It’ll make an interesting change from the colourful cheerful world in Elysia, that’s for sure.

Q: A trailer for Elysia was released earlier this month, and it’s looking great. What was your inspiration?

John: We’ve taken inspiration from a variety of sources; some obvious, others not so much. In October 2008, I wrote the story and designed the characters after finishing playing the game Braid. I simply adored the art style and the slow-paced feel of the world, but most important, I loved the shock of the ending, and that feeling of awe when you realize the truth of what is happening. We wanted this game to bring platformer games back to the best platformer gameplay dynamics that existed in the 90s but seem to have been replaced with less fun elements nowadays. We wanted the environments to be extremely detailed and saturated; almost preschool.

The portable platform concept was loosely based on the Sonic and Tails “helicopter” mode from the old Sonic 3 game. It’s essentially the same sort of function, except the entire control scheme is based on the dual-control dynamic. Though if you have a friend who wants to play locally, or over Xbox Live, they can join you as Whisp, which can lead to a lot of fun and hilarious moments between friends, but a great coordinated team of two could potentially win the fastest time-trials if they know what they’re doing.

An old accidental inspiration of mine is the Brackenwood animated series. The animations and world of Brackenwood are amazing, vivid and beautiful. I wanted to capture that same feeling of freedom and paradise without taint by man.

The Dream Orbs, Dream Gates and Souls dynamics were loosely based on old 3D platformer traits from the Rayman, Spyro and (later) Crash Bandicoot series. It’s the sort of thing that really inspires exploration, and the drive of finding enough Orbs to enter through a Dream Gate that has some really cool stuff behind it, is something that’s extremely powerful for a developer to use in level designs.

A lot of the game is essentially our own design and creation however, and if there is a source of inspiration for it, it’s likely not something we’re aware of, we’re just combining things that we’d love to see done in a 2D platformer game. We really want Elysia to stand out on its own as something of its own style, and I believe it’s paying off nicely.

Our audio director, Christi O’Donnell, too, has found the perfect blend of instruments to compose Elysia’s signature sound. Her catchy melodies have had the team humming, clapping and whistling them to ourselves as we work. There are some very subtle elements of Zelda and Final Fantasy in there, but overall it’s Christi’s own sense of style that makes Elysia’s music what it is.

Q: What are you hoping will set Elysia apart from the thousands of other games available through the Xbox Live Indie Games service?

John: In a word? Community.

We’re incorporating as much statistical data, XBL functionality and unlockable content as we can into the game to provide our players with enough extras to keep them entertained for hours. As Xbox Live Indie Games don’t have any APIs to connect to servers outside of Xbox Live, we’re incorporating a code-based system, where the game will generate a code based on your Gamertag as well as all of the statistics based on your gaming habits and progress in Elysia, and you can then input this code onto your profile page on our website, and it will display your gameplay history. This is something that we’re certainly hoping to do; whether we can pull it off or not is a totally different matter, but we have a functional plan for it and it appears to work well, even just in our prototypes.

So from being able to share your statistics on site, you can compare your medals, unlocked costumes and progress with friends and other site-members. And providing we get the system to work, it’ll even be backward enabled to unlock content, limited to things like costumes, in the game if you sign up on our site and submit your first code. This opens up a lot of avenues for us, and like I said, it goes back to the community-based development we’ve been aiming at since being active members at Developers’ sites that pioneered this sort of thinking, such as Bungie.net with their Halo series. Whilst Bungie are able to send data from XBL directly to Bungie.net, we had to come up with a way to get around that for XNA, and I’m very glad to say we did.

Of course, if we somehow get XBLA publishing rights, that could quickly change. We’re planning on entering Dream.Build.Play. with this game this year (providing we qualify for entry), and as the winning prizes are large cash sums as well as access to XBLA development, we’re extremely keen to try out for that, as it would essentially give us the tools to do everything we’ve ever planned to do for Whisper, and Elysia.

Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to talk to you about who we are! It’s extremely appreciated.

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Once again we would like to give a huge thanks to John for taking the time to answer our questions and wish everyone at Whisper Game Studios luck with their current projects! I can’t wait to get my hands on Elysia.

With Pie Collect the aim is simple: collect pies and avoid moving obstacles. Controlling a spherical, spaceship-looking character, you must use the right stick to move around and collect pies to bolster your score. Every time you collect one a small orb appears on the screen which bounces vertically or horizontally between the edges of the screen. Hitting one of these ends your game and means you’ll have to start over – this will be a regular occurrence until you get to grips with everything, but thankfully that doesn’t take long. As you progress the play area will eventually transform into a large mass of moving orbs and avoiding them is a real test of both strategy and reflexes.

You’re not completely on your own, however, as there are a few tricks and bonuses to give you a helping hand. First and foremost, the bottom portion of the screen is occupied by a large picnic blanket which you can retreat to without being hit, and is useful for taking refuge whilst planning your next move. Collectible bonuses also randomly appear during gameplay and contain everything from extra points, an orb removal tool and even a deployable picnic blanket to keep you safe out in the field. Unfortunately the arrival of these bonuses is often ill-timed; it’s possible to receive an orb removal tool at the beginning of the game when there are very few to remove. There’s also a speed boost available which allows you to zip around at increased speed – this speed boost depletes over time but can be replenished by collecting pies.

To keep you hooked you’re able to unlock new characters to play as by completing various challenges, and if you fancy collecting pies with friends you’ll be pleased to hear local multiplayer is supported; seeing this included is a nice touch as it is a feature often excluded from titles these days. All of this action takes place to space age synth music, with your character zipping around on various space-themed backdrops (which both change depending on the character you’re currently using). The audiovisual aspect is in keeping with the rest of game: simple, but quirky and a bit of fun.

Pie Collect is a neat little game when all is said and done; no more complicated than it needs to be with some solid gameplay to be had. There’s a fine line between addictive and frustrating play and whilst Pie Collect can sail dangerously close to the frustration side occasionally the experience, on the whole, is a fun and addictive one. At a bargain price of 80 Microsoft Points, Pie Collect is definitely worth a shot.

Pros:

• Simple, addictive gameplay.
• Unique styling.

Cons:

• Frustrating at times.

Publisher: System 3

Ferrari The Race Experience is a new racing game from Eutechnyx and System 3 and, in much the same way as Ferrari Challenge, celebrates all things Ferrari. Included is a decent collection of some of the most famous Ferraris from decades gone, from the newer cars like the Enzo all the way back to classics such as the Ferrari 512. With a full career mode, plenty of other single player modes and multiplayer, it certainly seems like a bargain considering price (£11.99 or £9.99 if you own Ferrari Challenge), but is it?

Anyone who has played Ferrari Challenge or Supercar Challenge will be immediately familiar with the controls and the way the cars drive. They’re easy to control as they stay fairly planted to the track – so not much chance of spinning out of control – unless you turn all the assists off, which can lead to uninteresting races once you get into first place. This doesn’t mean you can just whiz around every corner, though, with very little margin for error given through difficult corners which heats the races up a bit. The handling itself is a bit floaty, as in, it can feel like your car is hovering above the track until you get used to it. Cars can also seem slow to react to your input, which can make those hard corners that bit more challenging. Whilst damage modelling is present, it’s hardly great; the only real way to smash your car up fully (but still in a very drivable state) is through a few very high speed collisions, so the normal damage you will pick up is barely visible.

The game has a good selection of tracks from around the world. Some of these are real tracks, some are made up and some are suspiciously named. There are also few tracks that look identical to real life tracks but are named differently. One disappointment with the tracks is that Fiorano, Ferrari’s private test track, is only playable in the tutorial mode and not playable on time trial runs or races. Most of the tracks, whether they’re real, fake or a bit of both, are fun to race around.

The main mode in Ferrari The Race Experience is, as with most games, Career mode. It is split into three sets of race series – GT Race, Road GT and Classic – which all have their own selection of cars that you can race with, varying in price and giving it some replayability; you can’t just drive the fastest cars straight away. Replaying the career mode, though, may not be an appealing prospect. There are seven race weekends per car, per car type, which consist of a qualifying session and two races. You start the first race in the position that you qualified in, but for the second race you start from where you finished in the previous race. So, finishing in first place in the first race leaves you with five laps around a track unchallenged, unless you crash. Don’t get me wrong, the racing is quite fun for a while, it’s just after a period of time it all becomes too easy (even on the highest difficulty) and that leaves you grinding through races.

Other single player modes include the normal Single Race and Time Trial modes, but there are also Trophy and Arcade modes which offer something a bit different (but sort of the same). Trophy mode has you select one of your cars, and with it you must compete in three races, gaining points for your overall position each race. The racer with the most points after three races wins the trophy. It suffers the same drawback as Career mode, though, as getting from 16th to 1st in the first race leaves you with two races of just drving around with no competition ahead of you.

Arcade mode is definitely the best mode on offer here. There are four difficulty levels which each have three races, and unlocking the next difficulty level requires you to win the previous one. It has the same format as Trophy mode with the points and race system, but somehow it feels a bit less boring, as long as you pick a fast car. Moving up to Expert and Legend difficulties can be a lot more exciting, as you can’t just drive past everyone and get to 1st straight away.

So, Ferrari The Race Experience may not be the bulb that shines brightest in a sea of brilliant racing games, but once you get used to the controls it is quite a decent racer. Some of the race series on offer can be long and tedious but give some enjoyment. It may be worth giving it a go if you’re a fan of racing games and Ferrari Challenge, especially for the price.

Pros:

• Decent racing title.
• Good value for money.

Cons:

• Some dull races.
• Poor overall presentation.

The game controls are simple enough to master. The WiiMote’s D-pad rotates the pieces whilst A and B flips them. The Nunchuk stick is used to align the keydron with the hole. Holding down the Z-trigger gives a speed boost so the keydron goes through the gap quicker. The controls are well thought out and I was instantly at home with them, as most players will be.

The trick with ThruSpace is that some gaps in the wall contain jewels. Putting your keydron through the jeweled spaces will give you a bonus; do it five times in a row or more to really rack up the points. Graphically, well, it’s a shape going through a wall so you don’t exactly need hi-res, mind-blowing graphics. Everything is clear and large.

I’ve always been a puzzle fan and having played the demo I might pick up this WiiWare title.

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Sports Champions is the seemingly obligatory sports title for the Move motion controller which includes 6 different events: Disc Golf, Gladiator Duel, Archery, Volleyball, Bocce and Table Tennis. Each of the events include the Champions Cup mode, where you try to beat 10 other AI opponents to win either the bronze, silver or gold cup, with the difficulty increasing with the cup value. There is also Free Play mode in which you can challenge any of the AI opponents or a friend (with nothing but pride at stake) as well as a challenge mode which tests your accuracy on all of the events to gain a high score.

Disc Golf

This event is one of the few events that truly shows the capabilities of the PlayStation Move controller, as the 1:1 tracking of your hand is perfect. You can throw the disc at any angle, direction and power that you can physically do yourself. The game has a varied selection of holes of different difficulties which have you pulling off some complex throws. Curving the disc around a big tree and getting it near the basket, though, is really satisfying. When playing the Champions Cup you will see a lot of holes over and over again, but it can be relieving to see a familiar hole when getting to the harder stages of the cup. One of the better events.

Gladiator Duel

This event does a decent job at tracking real life movements and swings of the controller. Your opponent only has 5 hit zones: head, left torso, right torso, left leg and right leg. This can lead to some swings to the head registering as body hits, which can be frustrating as hit location is relevant to how much damage you deal. Speed is also a factor in damage, making the extra excursion of swinging hard worthwhile as your opponent will lose more energy. This event will definitely get you working up a sweat.

Archery

Not much to say about Archery, it is what it is. It is probably the best event to have 2 Move controllers for, if you want it to feel closer the the real thing. There are several different game types in Archery, like tic-tac-toe, which is basic tic-tac-toe played with arrows where you don’t have to wait your turn to shoot, making it a frantic contest for points. Most of the game types get crazy on the harder difficulties, where winning or losing is a matter of just a few points.

Volleyball

Like flapping your arms about and then saying you’re playing Volleyball? Well you’re in for a treat. This event really is disappointing, it just seems like all you need to do is swing your arms at the right time and eventually you’ll win. You can control where the ball goes but it seems like you only have 3 different outcomes: left, right or centre. Not much else to say; wave your arms, win, rinse and repeat.

Bocce

Before playing Sports Champions I had no idea what Bocce was, I now know that it is rather good fun! You throw your bocces (balls) at the pallino (a smaller ball) and whoever’s bocce is closes at the end of the round wins points. This event shows the Move hardware off quite nicely as it judges your power and angle well and can even register any back or side spin you apply. The courts that you play on have various obstacles which can be used to hinder your opponent.

Table Tennis

From a technical point of view Table Tennis is the best event on Sports Champions, as it feels as real as is possible with a video game. Power, direction and spin are all applied to the ball perfectly and smash shots feel really nice. Table Tennis is another event, along with Disc Golf and Bocce, that do a really good job at showing what the PlayStation Move can do.

Sports Champions is a good game (probably the best that is currently available for the Move) but falls down with the events. There’s only two that have huge replayability once you’ve completed the Champions Cup: Disc Golf and Table Tennis. It’s also let down by the fact Table Tennis is the best event, as this is probably the most accessible sport to go out and physically play yourself. The compatible events don’t do enough to warrant the purchase of a second Move controller, and the whole game is all together a bit disappointing, with little moments of fun thrown in for good measure.

Pros

• A couple of great events.
• Fun with friends.
  

Cons

• Some poor events.
• Low replayability after Champions Cup.

Now, Blitz 1UP is the indie arm of Blitz Games Studios Ltd., and it aims to give struggling indie games devs a helping hand with PR, QA, development and distribution, so they’re good guys in our eyes.  An experienced and established studio helping out not so experienced and established developers is refreshing to see, and we hope more studios follow Blitz’s example in the future.

So, without further ado, here is the video interview with Neil Holmes:

Much thanks go to Neil, everyone at Dare Protoplay 2010, and everyone at Blitz 1UP.