Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had a look at a selection of the best games produced by Australian and New Zealand-based developers over the last 30 years. To round off our series of locally focused Warp Pipe content, we’ll be looking at a selection of games that Australian developers are currently working on. It’s not necessarily an exhaustive list – many developers are keeping their cards closely to their chest, but it should give you an insight into what locally produced games will hit shelves in the next twelve months or so.

The upcoming Aussie projects we’ll be looking at include Fuzzyeyes’ Edge of Twilight, Infinite Interactive’s Puzzle Kingdoms and Team Bondi’s LA Noire.

The Future of Australian Games

Australia’s game industry is moving from strength to strength. Despite mass layoffs in many of the big name game developers and publishers overseas coming as a result of the global economic downturn, Australia’s game development industry is continuing to expand, and as we’ll see today, there’s plenty to look forward to coming from our local talent. Keep in mind that this is only a small sample of what’s on the way – there’s games such as Heroes Over Europe, AFL Challenge, Rugby League Challenge, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and more coming over the next few months. Many studios also have games which haven’t yet been revealed, or aren’t in a state to show off just yet.

Infinite Puzzling

Let the minions do all of the hard work

Infinite Interactive has had a pretty stellar run with Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, and now they’re looking to expand their medieval puzzler into something a little more complex with Puzzle Kingdoms.

Driven by a new puzzle system inspired by a mix of Bejewelled and Labyrinth, Puzzle Kingdoms has players managing an entire kingdom, rather than a party of warriors. It’s almost like Puzzle Quest mixed in with a bit of Fire Emblem or Advance Wars. You’ll recruit soldiers and heroes and send them across the land to do battle in your name and expand the reach of your kingdom. Customisation options for your warriors are deep and plentiful, so one can expect many hours to be sunk into this latest adventure. While not Puzzle Quest in name, Puzzle Kingdoms certainly channels its spirit. Puzzle Kingdoms is due to hit US shelves this week for the Wii, PC and Nintendo DS, courtesy of Zoo Digital, and we’ll assume that a local release isn’t too far away.

Puzzle Kingdoms isn’t the only new puzzle game coming from the Melbourne based studio. Also in production is Puzzle Chronicles, which mixes the Puzzle Quest style gameplay with a 2D fighter, not unlike Super Puzzle Fighter. Using a puzzle system inspired by Columns and Lumines, players battle for control of the puzzle space, not unlike a game of tug-o-war. Konami will be publishing Puzzle Chronicles later in the year on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Nintendo DS and PSP.

With Puzzle Quest Galactrix out last month and two more games to come, 2009 is proving to be a busy year for Infinite Interactive. One can’t help but be concerned by the company’s complete reliance on the Puzzle Quest formula, though – it’s good while the concept is fresh and the games are of a good quality, but if that starts to slip it could mean bad things for the developer. Hopefully they’ve got a few more tricks up their sleeve for the future.

In Darkness

Lex needs a lawnmower, stat!

Brisbane-based developer Fuzzyeyes Studio cut their teeth on the PC business sim Hot Dog King: A Fast Food Empire in order to help them produce their dream project, Edge of Twilight. Set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk-inspired fantasy world, Edge of Twilight is a stylish third person action game inspired by the likes of Devil May Cry and God of War.

The game takes place after the Rift, which split the world into separate Night and Day realms. A war over an energy source rampaged between two civilizations, the Atherns and the Litherns. The Atherns gained the upper hand and started a campaign of genocide, leaving no Litherns alive. Players take control of Lex, a half-breed gun/sword slinging bounty hunter with the ability to travel between the Day and Night realms - the only hope to save the world from plunging into darkness. Following in the footsteps of games such as Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, players need to switch between the light and dark worlds to solve puzzles and battle enemies. Unlike those games, the main character Lex changes considerably with the switch; in the light, he is a brutish warrior, while in the dark, he’s agile and fast.

Fuzzyeyes have been keeping mum about Edge of Twilight, but word on the street is that it is still scheduled for a 2009 release. The game surprised a few people at its most recent showing at the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, so hopefully we’ll be able to get our filthy little hands on it later this year. I’d expect to hear more about the game at E3 next month.

Stumped

England sucks, etc.

Codemasters have been putting out cricket games bi-annually for the last couple of years. For this year’s release, they’ve looked to Melbourne developer Transmission Games (better known as IR Gurus), who previously developed the PSP version of Codies’ last cricket outing (Brian Lara/Ricky Pointing Pressure Play). This year’s release is Ashes Cricket 2009, which is exactly as it sounds; a game that ties in with Australia’s tour of England over the northern hemisphere’s summer.

Transmission Games has been hard at work on the game for the past two years. They’ve tossed out the engine used in the last couple of Codemasters cricket games and written a new game from scratch. They’ve got the support of both the English and Australian cricket boards and most of the equipment manufacturers, so you’re going to have the real players using their proper equipment, the proper match types and the English stadiums. It seems like Codemasters are set on introducing the game to markets outside of the Commonwealth with the inclusion of an in-depth tutorial to teach players the ins and outs of cricket. Shane Warne and Sir Ian Botham are on board to provide coaching and commentary.

The last couple of Codemasters cricket games have been solid, but dragged down by a few small design flaws – hopefully Transmission Games can improve on the efforts of their predecessor, Swordfish Studios. Expect to see Ashes Cricket 2009 on shelves before the end of the tour.

Bondi Confidential

After six years, it’d better be bloody good

LA Noire has always been positioned as being one of the ambitious Australian game development projects. It was one of the first projects announced for the PS3, back in a time when we were all still looking forward to games like Halo 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Half-Life 2. Development on the game started in 2003 after Brendan McNamara and a few of his Team Soho buddies left England after wrapping up The Getaway. They started a new studio, Team Bondi, and struck a long term development deal with Sony and started on LA Noire.

As one would assume from the title, LA Noire is a noir-style adventure set in Los Angeles in the 1940s. The game is said to be open-ended, and charges players with the task of solving a series of murders across the city. Team Bondi is claiming to have produced a perfect recreation of Los Angeles as it stood in the late 1940s.

It’s six years since Team Bondi first announced LA Noire; it’s still in development, we don’t really know a whole lot about the game and Sony’s pushed it off onto Rockstar Games. It’s practically on the path to becoming the next Duke Nukem Forever. However, recent reports suggest that the team is on the final stages of the project and has some pretty damn impressive technology. I don’t know if we’ll hear anything about the game at E3, but I think 2010 might be the year we get to see LA Noire in action, and maybe even play it.

The Thing about Football

Big Ant better outdo AFL 99, or there will be trouble

It’s been a couple of years since we’ve seen an AFL game, and I’m sure a couple of you are still suffering from the horror that was the AFL Live series. Melbourne-based developer Big Ant Studios has picked up the rights to do the next AFL game, currently titled Australian Rules Football, which it is intending to release for the start of the 2010 AFL season. It’s going to be the first AFL game to debut on the HD consoles (it’s hitting the PC, too), and will feature online play. Big Ant are holding their cards pretty close to their chest, but they’ve acknowledged that previous AFL games haven’t met fans’ expectations, and will be striving to produce the best video game rendition of the sport.

Whether they can walk the walk remains the biggest issue. Producing a quality AFL game is a monumental challenge, mostly due to the fact the sport is only popular in the southern part of a single country. People want AFL games with a Madden/FIFA-like quality, but smaller budgets and a lack of 20 years of previous development kind of put a dampener on that. Big Ant has the full support of the league, a large team working on the project and plans to release AFL games for the next five years, but it is their first HD generation project, so it could go either way.