DeNA / ngmoco Unveil Ben Cousins' First Game, The Drowning

While a few of the recent games from DeNA's US wing, formerly known as ngmoco have made a crap-ton of money, they have done little to interest core gamers. Just one example, Rage of Bahamut has kept a near constant top five residency in the top grossing list since release. That's meant millions in income, easily, for DeNA.. But for core gamers, it's been a bit... boring.

Well that's about to change. Ben Cousins has reveled the first game from the new DeNA Swedish studio, now known as Scattered Entertainment. The Drowning is a free to play first person shooter, rethought for the touch screen, and looking damn sexy.

The story is that mysterious underworld creatures have forced their way to the surface through a massive, global, catastrophic event. Unexplained oil spills have caused any creature that touches the oil to turn into a lifeless zombie bird-influenced creature.

As you work your what through this world, assumedly to safety, you craft weapons, trade supplies, and fight off countless of these bird-like creatures.

While the graphics look great, the story is interesting, and the anticipation for this game is huge, the really interesting part of this new game are the innovative controls that DeNA has come up with. While this is all possible to change before release, here's what we know so far.

One of the main interface design goals is to be able to play with just two fingers. Using one finger or two, with gestures, you can aim, move, shoot, change weapons, and everything else you need to do in an FPS.

The main control element is the two finger aim/fire. The weapon will fire at the middle point between your two fingers. Stretching you two fingers will zoom, as we would expect. A single finger touch will mark a point in the world and your player will move there. It's innovative, you have to give it that. Virtual sticks just don't work that great, and this looks, at least in the demo, to be viable. It will take hours of gameplay to verify that, and I'm looking forward to it.

The Drowning is still a ways off. We can expect it in early 2013. Hopefully we'll get more info in the coming weeks. It's certainly one to watch.

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