"Most people think that death is the end, but for me it was only the beginning." So narrates the unlikely named Ronan O'Connor in the latest Murdered: Soul Suspect trailer, proving that cliche exists in the spectral realm too. To recap: you're a dead detective, and you're trying to solve your own murder. You also battle demons because, hey, why not - your day's not likely to get any worse.
E3 might be dead and gone for another year, but its noisy spirit lives on the form of gameplay footage, which has been trickling out ever since. The latest is for Airtight Games' cheery Murdered: Soul Suspect, in which you play a dead cop trying to solve his own murder. It's a bit like Ghost! Only with less Whoopi Goldberg, presumably. The bumper 25-minute video crams in plenty of investigation and exorcism, but I'm most impressed by your ability to walk through walls without the aid of a no_clip cheat.
NORMAL DIMENSION: Yet to try this reality bending puzzler from one of Portal's creators? Now you can, with this new demo on Steam. Now available in all known dimensions. But not on Origin.
FLUFFY DIMENSION: OMG EVERYTHING IS AMAZING! LIKE, YOU PRESS BUTTONS AND STUFF HAPPENS, AND SOMETIMES YOU THROW SAFES AT LASERS, AND THEY SORTA MELT, BUT IT'S OKAY, BECAUSE YOU GET AS MANY OF THEM AS YOU NEED AND SO YAY!
Quantum Conundrum is being developed by Portal creator Kim Swift. It's a first person puzzler in which you play a twelve your old boy lost in his mad scientist uncle's underground laboratory. It's full of safes, switches, lava and vast gaps with no bridges. This would be a serious problem but for the fact that you can switch between five dimensions, each of which affects matter differently. By switching between world on the fly, otherwise immovable objects like safes can be tossed, stacked and even surfed to make it past the mad machines and laserbeams that every mad scientist installs in their homes as standard. It's all demonstrated perfectly in the walkthrough video above from Gametrailers, spotted on RPS. It's out early this year, and looks rather good, don't you think?
Kim Swift, designer of Portal and Left 4 Dead, was just not cut out for working at the swiftly-growing Valve, she explained to Gamasutra last week. The increasing team sizes and tightening deadlines clashed with her preference for a democratic design process that lets everyone "have a say in what they work on" and for small teams with a "fun, almost family-like atmosphere."
The more relaxed atmosphere of her sixteen-person team at Square Enix's Airtight Games is letting Swift and her team find the fun in their upcoming physics platformer Quantum Conundrum.
