stereotypes. Her new game,
Airtight’s upcoming QUANTUM
CONUNDRUM, sees the protagonist
manipulating his environment by
jumping in and out of different
dimensions in a first-person
perspective, to try to reach a series
of exits and advance to the next
room.
If it sounds like PORTAL, Swift
doesn’t disagree with you. As she
tells it, first-person puzzle games
are simply the kinds of games
she wants to play, and so that’s
just what she’s going to make. In
QUAN TUM CONUNDRUM, Swift blends
iterative design and experimental
play with cinematic visual design
to lead players to a goal, even if
they don’t realize it. It turns out that
PORTAL was just the beginning of her
evil scheme.
Edmund McMillen, Florian
Himsl
/// TEAM MEAT, KOMIX GAMES
THE BINDING OF ISAAC is a ZELDA-style roguelike shooter based on a
biblical story
—a curious
combination
to be sure, but
one that has
proved quite
compelling to
players. This
sort of game
genre mashup has become all
the rage lately, and McMillen and
Himsl’s latest proves the concept.
The key is to keep control tight, no
matter what you do, something that
the duo excels at remarkably.
Additionally, McMillen may
be the most outspoken developer
on our list, having gone on public
record about his grievances with
the traditional publisher model
and with distribution contracts.
He has become something of a
spokesperson for the indie designer.
McMillen
Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya
/// STUDIO PIXEL
It’s hard to believe, but we’re about
to hit the seventh anniversary of
Pixel’s 2004 retro-inspired indie
platformer, CAVE S TORY. Despite not
having released a substantial game
since (though he’s working on an
iPhone project), CAVE S TORY still
represents a lot of hope for game
developers. Hope for a return to
simpler times, for Cinderella stories,
and for the ability of one person to
affect many.
Katsura Hashino, Shigenori
Soejima
/// ATLUS
The difficult and possibly sexist
storyline of love and infidelity told
in CATHERINE might be polarizing, but
the effectiveness in which it is told
is worthy of praise. Vincent may
be cheating on his girlfriend, but
this doesn’t happen in a cutscene:
It’s you, the player who gets him
there. It’s you who experiences
his nightmares, who pushes him
toward worse and worse decisions,
and who makes the choices that
ultimately affect his destiny.
Telling story through gameplay,
regardless whether you agree
with the story, should always
be promoted for advancing our
medium in its own way, and that’s
why game director Hashino and
artist Soejima make our list.
CATHERINE
Seth Sivak,
Jesse Kurlancheek
/// ZYNGA BOSTON
ADVEN TURE WORLD is Zynga’s next
step in moving the social game
space toward more traditional
mechanics. With an Indiana Jones-
inspired theme and colorful maps,
the game appeals more to the core
gamer than many past efforts, and
the puzzle-based design makes it
even more of a “real game” than
many other titles on the platform.
ADVEN TURE WORLD may not be the
most core game on social networks,
but Zynga is the industry leader.
Designers Sivak and Kurlancheek at
Zynga Boston’s return to core game
design should make the rest of the
social space sit up and take notice.
Yoshinori Ono
/// CAPCOM
Yoshinori Ono is the curator of the
STREET FIGH TER brand for Capcom,
continually
breathing new
life into the
once-stagnant
fighting genre,
year after
year. Now, as
he works on
STREE T FIGHTER
X TEKKEN, he brings two fighting
systems together in one universe,
essentially making an amalgam of
the two playstyles.
TEKKEN players can’t play the
game as though it were TEKKEN, and
STREET FIGH TER fans will find that
their combo timing and movelists
have changed. But in the fusing
of these worlds, Ono and his team
have found a play style that is at
once both systems and neither,
while remaining fun to play, and
intuitive for both sides. This is no
mean feat.
Eric Chahi
/// UBISOFT
Chahi is not a normal fellow. After
designing ANOTHER WORLD and HEART
OF DARKNESS, he went on a 10-year
jaunt away
from games,
photographing
volcanoes and
painting, before
deciding he
had something
to say in the
digital space
again. He wanted something to
be proud of, he told us during the
game’s creation, and FROM DUST,
which Chahi directed, certainly is
something any designer could take
pride in.
Its organic systems, self-perpetuating natural evolution,
and simple input make emergent
gameplay the only gameplay. Chahi
proves that when your influences
extend beyond games, you can
create something significantly
different that still appeals to a wide
range of people.
MONSTER TALE
Peter Ong
/// DREAMRIFT
DreamRift’s MONSTER TALE for
the Nintendo DS is one of those
extremely rare games where
players care equally about what’s
happening on the top and bottom
screens. On the top screen, you’re
playing a 2D action platformer,
assisted by an evolving monster.
On the bottom screen, when the
monster’s energy is depleted (or
any time, really), you have him eat
different food and interact with
different objects in order to evolve
along a branching skill tree.
This kind of balancing act is
very difficult to achieve, and while
there are stumbling blocks here and
there, Ong’s design finally realized
a slice of the full potential of the
Nintendo DS—and it only took
until 2011!
Julian Gollop
/// UBISOFT
Gollop is well known for his
commitment to turn-based strategy
game design, as mastermind of the
seminal X-COM
series. It should
come as little
surprise that
strategy is
what puts him
on our list, as
his design in
WWW.GDMAG.COM 9
