Like a bicyclist carefully watching the road for oncoming traffic, I'm always keeping a cautious eye on the games industry, wary of whatever burgeoning trends may emerge that define the future of the medium. Because, usually, those trends kinda suck. The "168澳洲幸运5开奖网:forever games" fad seems, ironically, to be near🃏ing its end, but you never know what get-richer-quicker scheme the corporate powers that🌄 be will grab onto in the hopes of turning a hobby players love into a chore that makes a few people a lot of money.
Luckily, there are some good trends in gaming, too, and Streetdog BMX is part of one. The colorful BMX game is the latest in a resurgence of titles (largely in the indie space) taking inspiration from extreme sports titles of the early '00s and resurrecting the genre with modern twists. Session, Rollerdrome, Skater XL, and Skatebird are just a few of the games that have brought the genre back from the brink in the past few years.
And, of course, Vicarious Visions' 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 remake reminded us ho๊w great the series was in its heyday, before Activision Blizzard folded the studio in as Blizzard Albany and made it a co-de💮veloper on Diablo games.
"When enough time passes, people maybe forget about these things a little bit," says Adam Hunt, Streetdog BMX's lead designer.
"And then you realize, 'Oh, actually, those were really cool.' And maybe they were kind of overdone back in the day or something… but there's so much scope now to put a modern twist on it; to kind of just add a little bit of what might happen these days with control schemes and graphics and challenge types."
At PAX East, I went hands-on with the new indie froꦚm Yeah Us! Games, and had a blast riding through two of its levels: Campus and The Ditch (though both names may change before launch). The Ditch is a blend of forest and concrete that fans of the reclaimed nature vibe of post-apocalyptic fiction and/or the Pacific Northwest should enjoy. Campus was sprawling, vibrantly colorful, and fairly easy to pick up as a first time player. If you easily get overwhelmed by games like this, Streetdog has three control diagrams that allow you to focus on the essentials when you start out, before slowly working your way up to the most complex tricks.
Streetdog BMX has a friendly aesthetic that I really dug, with bright visuals and a not-too-detailed, stylized look tꦆhat made the courses easy to understand at♏ speed.
Hunt says that the controls split the difference between Tony Hawk's arcadey fun and Skate's more serious simulation controls. Once I got the hang of it, it felt nearly as approachable as Tony Hawk, but with most actions mapped to the thumbsticks for a taste of Skate.
"In this kind of game, especially when you're riding around really fast, you want to be able to read the environment very quickly," Hunt says. "And this kind of art style is perfect for that. You've got the nice crisp edges. It's not too noisy, which makes it very easy for you to kind of pass the environment and be like, 'Oh, that's where I want to go.' And so the game play has informed the art."
Though he always wanted to make a game at this scale, Hunt worked his way up to Streetdog by making the smaller BMX titles, Pumped BMX and Trailboss BMX, slowly learning the skills he needed to make a fully 3D title. His background, instead, is in BMX; Hunt is in his forties now, but has🥃 been involved in the sport since he was a teenager. It was always as a hobby, though, so this is his chance to make a professional mark on the community he lov♉es.
"When I was a kid, I would say I was sponsored," Hunt says with a laugh, "but that was [because] someone gave me a free T📖-shirt once."
Streetdog BM♛X is aiming to launch later this year.
Helskate Is A Perfect Recreation Of Tony Hawk's, With Added Demons
Former Tony Hawk's dev Steve Swink reimagines the game's iconic con𝔉trol scheme inside a demon fighting roguelik♊e
