This article is part of the weekly “This Week in Games” article-series on Nordic Game Bits. The purpose of the series is to collect and wrap-up all the news that we did not cover with a full article on NordicGameBits form the past weeks.
Krillbite Studio Abandons VR Version of Among the Sleep
Norwegian Krillbite Studio, who had previously announced a VR version of their hugely popular horror title Among the Sleep, has now announced that development of the Virtual Reality version will be discontinued.
The decision, as explained on Krillbite’s website, was made because “you really need to design your game for VR from the ground up, not the other way around.”. Elaborating on the decision, Krillbite says that:
“One of the first things we learned when experimenting with VR is that the player needs to be in control. All the time. When a player puts on a headset to play your game he is basically placed inside the game … A very common technique in story driven first person games is to take away the players control of the camera when you want to tell some story … This feels horrible in VR.”
IO-Interactive’s Hitman delayed till 2016
To much sadness among Hitman fans, Danish IO-Interactive announced this week that the newest game, simply named HITMAN, will not be released in December this year, but instead in March 2016. A tough decision, but one that allows for more in-game content on launch-day, IO-Interactive explains:
“These few extra months will mean we can add more to the launch content of the game, more than we had originally planned, and then follow with a tighter frequency of updates, which ultimately will create a better game for everyone. And in the end, that’s what we’re all looking for.”
Cities: Skylines Wins Unity Awards’ Golden Cube at Unite 15
Finnish Colossal Order’s Cities: Skylines won the largest price at the 2015 Unity Awards last week in Boston. The studio’s game, which has been published by Swedish Paradox Interactive, has receive tremendously positive feedback from its players, and can now boast a Unity Golden Cube award too.
Angry Birds Movie Teaser Trailer Released
Coming to a theater near you in summer 2016, Rovio Angry Birds’ movie has released its first teaser trailer, which in only 24 hours has received over 1.1 million views on Youtube. Rovio has been struggling to find financial stability after merchandise sales took a big fall in 2014. The hope is that the Angry Birds Movie, together with the newly-released Angry Birds 2, can help reignite interest in the franchise as a whole.
Press Play Releases Prototype Version of Their New Game
Microsoft-owned Danish studio Press Play recently opened up their development process and allowed fans to vote on which of three games they should start working on next. The game concept that was chosen was called Knoxville. But Press Play has now gone one step further, releasing a free copy of an early paper-prototype of the new concept online.
The prototype is a card game, which simulates some of the mechanics that Press Play is working on in the new game.
NordicEdu Releases New Premium Mobile Title
Finnish mobile studio NordicEdu released a new educational premium mobile title this week called Tile Tales, and explained as being a “charming number puzzle”.
The game sells for $2.99 and includes 50 hand-drawn levels.
Subway Surfers Reaches 1 Billion Downloads
The Danish wonder-child of Kiloo and Sybo games, Subway Surfers, broke through the 1 billion downloads mark this week, announcing that the game now had 27 million daily active users.
The 1 billion downloads means that Subway Surfers is now the fourth most downloaded game over all, just behind Candy Crush Saga, Fruit Ninja, and Angry Birds.