Roguelike is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most roguelikes are based on a high fantasy narrative, reflecting the influence of tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.
Video game development is the process of creating a video game. It is a multidisciplinary practice, involving programming, design, art, audio, user interface, and writing. Each of those may be made up of more specialized skills; art includes 3D modeling of objects, character modeling, animation, visual effects, and so on. Development is supported by project management, production, and quality assurance. Teams can be many hundreds of people, a small group, or even a single person.
Introversion Software Limited is a British video game developer based in Walton-on-Thames, England.
Darwinia is a 2005 real-time tactics and real-time strategy video game for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It is the second game developed by Introversion Software, and is set within a computer environment that simulates artificial intelligence. It received favourable reviews and won three awards at the 2006 Independent Games Festival. A multiplayer sequel, Multiwinia, was released for Windows in 2008. Darwinia and Multiwinia were released together as Darwinia+ for the Xbox 360 in 2010.
In video games, artificial intelligence (AI) is used to generate responsive, adaptive or intelligent behaviors primarily in non-playable characters (NPCs) similar to human-like intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of video games since their inception in 1948, first seen in the game Nim. AI in video games is a distinct subfield and differs from academic AI. It serves to improve the game-player experience rather than machine learning or decision making. During the golden age of arcade video games the idea of AI opponents was largely popularized in the form of graduated difficulty levels, distinct movement patterns, and in-game events dependent on the player's input. Modern games often implement existing techniques such as pathfinding and decision trees to guide the actions of NPCs. AI is often used in mechanisms which are not immediately visible to the user, such as data mining and procedural-content generation. One of the most infamous examples of this NPC technology and gradual difficulty levels can be found in the game Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (1987).
Elite Dangerous is an online space flight simulation game developed and published by Frontier Developments. The player commands a spaceship and explores a realistic 1:1 scale, open-world representation of the Milky Way galaxy, with the gameplay being open-ended. The game is the first in the series to attempt massively multiplayer gameplay, with players' actions affecting the narrative story of the game's persistent universe, while also retaining a single-player mode. Elite Dangerous is the fourth game in the Elite video game series. It is the sequel to Frontier: First Encounters, released in 1995, becoming the top selling game for Christmas of that Year.
In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated content and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. In computer graphics, it is commonly used to create textures and 3D models. In video games, it is used to automatically create large amounts of content in a game. Depending on the implementation, advantages of procedural generation can include smaller file sizes, larger amounts of content, and randomness for less predictable gameplay.
Psygnosis Limited was a British video game developer and publisher headquartered at Wavertree Technology Park in Liverpool. Founded in 1984 by Ian Hetherington, Jonathan Ellis, and David Lawson, the company initially became known for well-received games on the Atari ST and Amiga. In 1993, it became a wholly owned subsidiary and first-party developer of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) and began developing games for the original PlayStation. It later became a part of SCE Worldwide Studios. The company was the oldest and second largest development house within the company. The company is best known for creating the Wipeout, Formula One and Colony Wars series as well as games developed by external companies like the Lemmings and Shadow of the Beast series.
GameShadow was a gaming community website and an advertising-supported software utility that kept PC gamers up-to-date with patches, game demos, trailers, mods and other content for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 games. GameShadow identifies the product version of supported games installed on a user's PC, then compares them to its database to locate updates for those games. The site also offers gaming industry news, an industry blog, and a Gaming Network. It is available for Microsoft Windows only. GameShadow is based in Over Norton, Oxfordshire, England.
In video games, an open world is a virtual world in which the player can approach objectives freely, as opposed to a world with more linear and structured gameplay. Notable games in this category include The Legend of Zelda (1986), Grand Theft Auto V (2013), Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) and Minecraft (2011).
RollerCoaster Tycoon World is a theme park construction and management simulation video game developed by Nvizzio Creations and published by Atari for Microsoft Windows. It is the fourth major installment in the RollerCoaster Tycoon series. The game was released on 16 November 2016 to largely negative reviews.
Prison Architect is a private prison construction and management simulation video game developed and published by Introversion Software. It was made available as a crowdfunded paid alpha pre-order on September 25, 2012 with updates that were scheduled every three to four weeks until 2023. With over 2,000,000 copies sold, Prison Architect made over US$10.7 million in pre-order sales for the alpha version. Prison Architect was an entrant in the 2012 Independent Games Festival. The game was available on Steam's Early Access program, and was officially released on October 6, 2015.
Dragon Fin Soup is a role-playing video game created by the independent development studio Grimm Bros. It is the studio's first title and was released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. It is influenced by roguelike games and uses procedural generation. The game has two modes: Story mode follows a story and is more like a typical role-playing game, while Survival mode skips the story and focuses on the surviving within the game and constrains players with permadeath—once the player character dies, the game must be restarted from the beginning.
XCOM 2 is a 2016 turn-based tactics video game developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K. It is the sequel to 2012's reboot of the series, XCOM: Enemy Unknown; it takes place 20 years after the events of Enemy Unknown. XCOM, a military organization trying to fight off an alien invasion, has lost the war and is now a resistance force against the occupation of Earth and the established totalitarian regime and military dictatorship. Gameplay is split between turn-based combat in which players command a squad of soldiers to fight enemies, and strategy elements in which players manage and control the operations of the Avenger, an alien ship that is used as a mobile base for XCOM.
Wild was a cancelled survival game developed by Wild Sheep Studio and Ubisoft Paris and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game was announced in 2014 and had infrequent updates during development, with the game eventually being rumored to be cancelled after game director Michel Ancel retired from the game industry in 2020, making it a vaporware game. As of 2024, the game is no longer in development, as editorial duties were transferred to Ubisoft Paris and never finished.
Crackdown is a series of open world action-adventure video games created by David Jones and published by Xbox Game Studios. The series takes place in a futuristic dystopian city controlled and enforced by a law enforcement organization called the Agency. The games center on the Agency's supersoldiers, known as 'Agents', as they fight threats ranging from various criminal syndicates, a terrorist group known as 'Cell', and zombie-like monsters called 'Freaks'.
Scanner Sombre is a cave exploration video game developed and published by Introversion Software. It was released for macOS and Windows PC on 26 April 2017. The game received mixed reviews upon release.
Prison Architect 2 is an upcoming private prison construction and management simulation video game developed by Double Eleven and Kokku, and published by Paradox Interactive. It is a sequel to Prison Architect, featuring full 3D gameplay. The game has been delayed indefinitely for performance and content improvements.
