Investigate a murder mystery this weekend with ‘Jenny LeClue’

A young woman with copper hair, thick-framed glasses and a bright blue trench coat sneaks around the edges of shadowy mansion. She’s searching for clues — something about a nefarious man, a ghost ship and science experiments gone awry. Behind a bookcase, shrouded in darkness, lies a secret surveillance lair lit up with live feeds from all around a small, mysterious town. Suddenly, one of the screens flips to present a tiny, trench-coated silhouette in front of a bank of surveillance equipment, and a hulking figure creeping up from behind. This is the free, playable demo for Jenny LeClue, a dark-humor adventure game inspired by choose-your-own adventure stories with roots in sci-fi, horror and mystery. It’s out now for iOS, PC, Mac and Linux, and according to creator Joe Russ, it’s going over extremely well with early players, some of whom assuredly backed the game’s $105,800 Kickstarter.

“It’s very humbling,” Russ says. “We are also getting useful feedback about things we can improve, like some of the controls. And it’s great to see that we are successfully communicating the tone and atmosphere of Jenny LeClue‘s world. People are getting a glimpse at her character, the way she thinks and the choices she makes.”

Jenny LeClue is a coming-of-age, mystery-adventure game with a few different layers: First, there’s Jenny. She’s a plucky, intelligent and fearless investigator who gets sucked into the most important case of her young career when her mother is accused of murder. Second, there’s the narrator-type character, Arthur K. Finklestein. Arthur is the author of the Jenny LeClue choose-your-own-adventure novels, so you’re technically playing as a fictional character inside of a fictional series of books. Arthur and Jenny play off of each other during the game: Sometimes Arthur “writes” one thing and players can choose to do the opposite, altering the story and providing plenty of opportunities for lighthearted humor.

“We are interested in exploring the idea of authorship, allowing the player to influence the author, who then in turn influences Jenny’s world,” Russ says. “The community of players will also have a chance to effect the story as we write future content. A meta-narrative with a kind of crazy infinite loop of influence.”

Aside from meta-narratives, Russ also hopes Jenny LeClue can innovate the traditional “talking heads” mechanic, when a game switches to a static screen where characters speak to each other in text boxes. Russ wants to introduce more dynamic conversation sequences that reward truly curious players. He provides an example:

Jenny may have just been to a crime scene where a victim’s watch was stolen. During a conversation with one of the witnesses, you notice they have a watch, similar to what was described at the crime scene. Upon closer examination, you realize there’s a little bit of blood on the edge of the watch. Suddenly this person seems a lot more interesting and possibly more than just a witness! In addition, you’ve opened new avenues of dialogue and inquiry.

People have started doing “Let’s Play” videos of the playable teaser and even streaming it on Twitch, Russ happily notes. Since the game’s success on Kickstarter — the goal was $65,000 and it received almost double — Russ and his studio, Mografi, have focused on interacting with the community and involving them in Jenny LeClue‘s development.

“After the campaign, we wanted to work smart, and the playable teaser gave us a way to test our concepts in a very tangible way,” Russ says. “One big piece of advice I hear developers repeat: ‘Test early and test often.’ This was our way of testing early. It’s been a great way for us to build the foundation for the main game and communicate the kind of story world we have conceptualized. It’s like building a small boat and making sure it’s sea-worthy before attempting to build a yacht.”

One potential change that Russ is kicking around is splitting the game into two episodes, rather than the originally planned three. “This is mainly due to the fact that we really really want to make the complete overarching story, and we want to best ensure we have the resources to do that,” he says.

The first episode of Jenny LeClue is due to hit PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android in early 2016 for $15. For now, check out the playable teaser here.

“I want players to walk away with a really solid feeling for the kind of dark and whimsical atmosphere that we want to convey,” Russ says. “We tried to focus a lot on creepiness in the playable teaser, and a sense of danger — Jenny is breaking into someone’s house after all.”

Filed under: Gaming, HD

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The one-cable future of gadgets: simpler, but still confusing

For such a quiet tech show, this week’s Computex in Taiwan may have been a watermark moment that will affect nearly every PC, phone and tablet you’ll see in the next few years, if not decade. The new USB Type-C port may have debuted on flagship devices like Apple’s single-port new Macbook and Google’s Chromebook Pixel, but the new, smaller, reversible kind of USB is shaping up to be the connector of the future. This week ASUS joined the USB-C party, and in a reassuring vote of confidence, Intel announced that its newest iteration of Thunderbolt will take the same shape. Thunderbolt 3.0 will, at a minimum, double the data speed found on USB-C cables. It might not work wirelessly just yet, but the single-cable future is coming. However, change isn’t always easy.

Other than a standard headphone jack, the new MacBook has just one USB-C port.

Sure, tech companies adopting yet another kind of port doesn’t send shivers down your spine. But what USB-C can do is worth getting at least a little excited about: a single wire that delivers data, power and display signal all at the same time. It’s all done through a connector that’s roughly a third of the size of the decades-old USB port you’re used to. It’s also reversible, and because power can flow both ways, the host device (say a laptop) can both charge other gadgets or be charged by them.

In short, connecting and charging nearly any gadget is about to get real simple. Like the mid-’90s introduction of USB, which effectively removed serial and parallel ports from the back of PCs and laptops, USB-C could do the same for all things in mobile computing, but to an even larger extent, replacing cables for power, data and video.

Thunderbolt 3: looks like USB-C, but better in a few ways.

But nothing’s ever that simple and not all USB-C is created equal. In fact, USB-C is really only the physical shape of the port and connector. The extent to what the cable can do depends on the hardware you’re connecting it to, and what version of USB it’s using. There are already USB-C devices (like Nokia’s N1 tablet) with “only” USB 2.0 capabilities. Then there’s Apple’s new MacBook and the latest Chromebook Pixel, which use USB 3.1 Gen 1 spec, with data speeds up to 5 Gbps. This part alone is confusing because the first-generation USB 3.1 specification is pretty much exactly the same as USB 3.0. (Ars Technica sums up the confusion well here.) Finally, there’s the full 10 Gbps data-slinging power of second-gen USB 3.1, which will arrive on next-generation machines. Just because it has the tiny USB-C port on the end, it doesn’t mean it’ll be able to charge the device you’re plugging it into, or offer the highest data speeds. There’s a danger that manufacturers could very easily mislead buyers.

When Intel set out to design Thunderbolt 3, it wanted both double the data rate of Thunderbolt 2, while also settling on a smaller form factor. USB-C fit the bill. Better still, it already housed space for “alternate mode.” This is where companies are able to transmit other things besides data and power, making it ideal for the additional tricks Thunderbolt could bring. In short, Intel already had a winner in USB-C; there was no need attempt to create another type of cable.

If you’re doing a lot of data-based heavy lifting, Thunderbolt has usually made sense.

But while Intel’s new Thunderbolt 3 will have a USB-C connector, those accessories and cables won’t work on the existing 12-inch MacBook or the Chromebook Pixel. The chipmaker also has two different types of Thunderbolt 3 cables incoming: a passive one that’ll be cheaper than Thunderbolt cables of past, yet will still offer double the maximum speed of USB 3.1, and an “active” cable that includes signal-boosting chips to double (again) data rates. Even checking to see if a cable does or doesn’t have a lightning bolt emblazoned on it won’t make everything clear.

Isn’t Intel adding to the confusion? “We also think there needs to be identification across these (different kinds of USB-C cables) in general,” explained Intel’s head of Thunderbolt marketing, Jason Ziller. ‘We’re also considering a secondary identifier for our active cables.”

USB-C sockets may not replace everything, however. The original USB port can deliver everything included in the USB 3.1 specification. In TVs, desktops and other devices, where size and reversibility are less of an issue, there’s arguably less impetus to change to USB-C. Also, sometimes smaller isn’t better. MHL President Rob Tobias explained to me that the newer USB-C ports simply aren’t as easy to plug in — when reaching around the back of a TV, an HDMI or older USB port is far easier to find by feel than a less-than-thumbnail-sized USB-C socket.

“The port could be everything to everybody.”

It makes good business sense for Intel to unite around a common standard, if only because of production scale. Apple may have a history of proprietary cables and ports, yet it’s also fallen in love with the slender USB-C form factor. Intel’s Kirk Skaugen mentioned in his Computex keynote that there are around 30 PC designs incoming with Thunderbolt 3 — and that’s not counting devices that merely feature standard USB-C ports. Then there are the smartphones already packing the new USB port in China — expect to see plenty more of those as well. As Intel’s Ziller noted: “The port could be everything to everybody. It has the superset.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Displays, Gaming, Laptops, Tablets, HD, Mobile, Intel

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Gaming hall of fame inducts ‘Pong,’ ‘Tetris’ and other classics

The results are in. After a selection process that lasted nearly four months, the newly created World Video Game Hall of Fame has announced its first class inductees. Doom, Pac-Man, Pong, Super Mario Bros., Tetris and World of Warcraft were chosen by The National Museum of Play for 2015, narrowing down the choices from a list of 15 finalists. So which games, which you helped vote for, were left out? That includes other classics like Space Invaders, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda and The Sims — although the museum did say these will likely be part of next year’s nominee class.

For reference, The National Museum of Play notes it comes down to picking those that “have enjoyed popularity over a sustained period and have exerted influence on the video game industry or on popular culture and society in general.”

[Lede image credit: mbiebusch/Flickr]

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD

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Via: Ars Technica

Source: World Video Game Hall of Fame