I've been watching master game-designer Greg Costikyan plan his new gaming startup, Manifesto Games, for some time now. Greg (Paranoia, Toon, Star Wars: the RPG) promises to reinvent video-game publishing with a model that's sustainable, creator-friendly, and fun as hell. It's like an indie label for video games, publishing deserving games that mainstream publishers are too blinkered, risk-averse or stupid to put out.
Manifesto went live today, filled with amazing-looking games, the likes of which I've never seen. Congrats, Greg!
The NOKs
It's Delightful, It's De-Lovely, It's… Pretty Damn Strange
The Noks is about the weirdest game I've seen this year. I'm tempted to call it "indescribable," except we need to describe it, eh?
Partly, it's a game of collectibles. There are several hundred "Noks" in the world at present, and the developers plan to add more over time. You can think of Noks as something like, say, Magic: The Gathering cards, except that they aren't cards. They're animated 3D avatars with backstories. Some of them sing songs or perform music. And most have something to tell you about the game itself, or the backstory of the Noks universe. To understand that universe, you'll need to collect–well maybe not "them all," but lots of them.
(Thanks, Ellie!)
Update: Ellie adds, "This is still in beta, within a couple of weeks the site will be an order of magnitude better."
