Thomas Whitehead:
So, Little Inferno, what can be said about it? Our own review stated that "it's as much a sandbox or digital toy as it is a game", with the simple fact that the experience can basically be summarised as burning stuff. There's money to earn and collect, as well as puzzle combos to figure out, but it's a game defined by the feelings it elicits through its arresting visual style and whimsical, at times sinister, story-telling.
It's not a normal game, as such, so while its appearance on PC will surprise no-one, its arrival on the Wii U eShop is worth deeper inspection. Of course, one glance at the title confirms that the influence of World of Goo, a popular hit on WiiWare from 2D Boy, isn't far away. The team has changed a little and is now a self-proclaimed mega-corporation, in ambition if not size, and is looking to the future with the grand moniker of Tomorrow Corporation. We spoke to two of its powerful executives, Kyle Gabler and and Kyle Gray.
Human Resource Machine is a charming, challenging programming puzzler that manages to avoid causing frustration. The mainline problems are tricky without being intractable, but the optional levels and optimization challenges will keep you facedesking for hours.
"Little Inferno has been a polarizing game, with many loving its send-up of social and mobile time-wasting and rampant consumerism, and others missing the point entirely -- most notably the National Fire Protection Association, which felt that the game, a launch title for the Nintendo Wii U, might give kids the wrong idea about fire safety, since it's all about burning your toys.
Gamasutra speaks here to Kyle Gabler, Allan Blomquist, and Kyle Gray -- who together form Tomorrow Corporation (and separately, are, respectively, two of the developers of World of Goo and, the last, Henry Hatsworth) -- about the multiply IGF nominated game.", writes Gamasutra.
What did it learn from the mistakes of WiiWare, and how can the new eShop win back small studios?
With all the game engine licenses (Unity, Havok, etc.), indie developers have a decent chance of selling software on the Wii U.
It kind of helps that patching your game on a Wii U is free, as oppose the amount Phil Fish claimed he had to pay to fix FEZ on the Xbox Live Arcade. It sounds like the benefits for smaller developers are just nicer with Nintendo's policy. I'm guessing that's why people compared the eShop to Steam.
If Nintendo doesn't even appeal to triple A 3rd party studios, do you really think it will appeal to indie devs? Indie devs have established themselves in the PC and XBL in last couple of years and recently in the PSN. It won't happen by magic in the Wii U, specially when Nintendo never supported or had any interest in the indie market and devs.
You completely ignore the facts that Nintendo allows indie devs to price their own games however they want on Wii U eShop (as opposed to a closed price structure that they had with the Wii's WiiWare), and don't charge them for game patches (as opposed to Microsoft's $40,000 fee per game patch on Live, which is an insane price that many indie devs just can't cover).
So, wanna to rethink what you posted again? Nintendo is actually doing a damn good job with the eShop. Just check the 3DS's one, it has a pretty good amount of quality indie content, and I expect the same to happen with the Wii U one, which is even more dev-friendly.
@OmniSlashPT
Journey and The Walking Dead, two indie titles, walked away with the bulk of the GOTY awards of 2012. If that isn't proof that digitally distributed games are just as important as "AAA-physical" games, I don't know what is.
EDIT: Also if FEZ and Super Meat Boy are anything to go by, for indie devs Steam is a great option but Xbox Live Arcade is a complete joke.
third party support for nintendo is indie developers..which is good but if no one is interested it will be soo bad
Nintendo makes some baffling decisions. Lets go for really strong downloadable content but give half are consumers only enough memory to download like 1 game out of the box (Face Palm) This lack of storage will turn away some indie developers even if Nintendo fixed what was broken last time around. They seem to be going after the causal users more than the hardcore which is the opposite of what they claimed and seem to be kinda failing at booth sadly. I absolutely love Nintendo but they are losing touch with the gaming audience in general in my opinion.
They were loosing touch with gaming audience with the Wii too remember? So how long is this " loosing touch" thing going to drag on? Perhaps into the next 100 generations? Cause people seem to think they are on some entitled stool.
Besides "hardcore gamers" as you like to call actually deal with the fact they have to supply their own storage. This is a non issue.
Most people already have harddisks or SD-cards lying around. It's the "Casual" that might even go so far to think that it's a bit too technical ( no matter how trivial it is).
So how are they going for the "casuals" only and not the hardcore crowd?
The only thing people are out of touch with is the fact that Nintendo ALWAYS catered to these so called "Casuals". You're not special. Get over it.
32GB is a conservative amount of space, but I'd much prefer having less out of the box and being able to provide my own storage over having to shell out $100+ for a Microsoft hard drive that's 1/3 the size of the equivalent generic part.
Even so, 32GB is plenty to work with at a start, even with a chunk consumed by the OS. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 takes up 16GB of that space, but it's bloated with pre-rendered movies that few developers rely on these days. Indie games aren't going to come close to being a space issue.
If you're talking about the 8GB Basic model, well... the low-end Xbox comes with only 4GB of space. Once you allot space for cloud saves, the amount of usable space isn't much larger than what the Basic allows after the OS is installed. The Xbox 360 has the healthiest digital ecosystem of any of the other big players, so maybe Nintendo's decision to skimp on space was a sound one.
Dude your out of touch at interpreting a comment wtf!? Don't get so offended by my opinion and twist my words (never said casuals only) You even renforce one of my statements with what you said in your third paragraph. I realize that storage is a non issue with most gamers but when Nintendo is aggressively persuing simpler downloadable games from indy developers and does not give the (casual) gamers adequate storage out of the box obviously some of these developers might think twice about developing for the console. I completely agree that Nintendo has been losing touch with the core audience since the Wii but it was not before then and the Wii U could have been a fresh start. When Nintendo talks about winning back the hardcore (apparently this is know a bad word to use) and says how easily and cheap it is to port games over but then nearly every big 3rd party game is skipping there console I feel a little dissapointed IMO. I'm not trying to sound pretentious or entitled I'm just trying to state my opinion in an unbiased way. Honestly your the one that needs to get over yourself, did you even read this article or just the comments?
Little Inferno is a stupid waste of a game, but I can't quit playing it. It's like I don't care for it, but I'm addicted. When I burned up a school bus full of people screaming, I thought to myself "Man, this is F#@ked"... then I did it again. I really can't tell if I like the game or not... it's so sadistic and entertaining, and then it's not really a game. It's a pyro simulator.