Edit: added info on the game’s ‘free to play’ model below.

This morning I received an email telling me that the first playable build of StarForge was available. It’s a free first-person game of blocks and building inspired by the usual suspects, Minecraft and Terraria…and Warcraft 3, Borderlands and Halo. Something a little different to what I expected then, so I figured I’d at least watch the video that came with the press pack. Six and a half minutes later I was wondering how to put my excitement into words. Thirty seconds after that I decided to forget words and just share the bloody video. Watch.

(more…)

8-BitMMO is a super lo-fi player-driven sandbox MMO that is playable freely in your browser. We got excited about those facts a while back, but now there’s more: the game of building has upgraded to include a playable zombie plague, player-trading, an ultra-zoom map that allows you to move out and see the entire world, and also a bunch of character customisation options, including the ubiquitous head decorations.

This big update for the game is now available to play. Trailer below! (more…)

I’m incredibly proud to announce that Indie Royale has finally graduated. I haven’t the foggiest idea of what it’s actually graduated from>, but it has one of those fun dangly tassel hats now, so that means it’s probably smarter than me. Before it goes off and writes the next great American novel while aboard a rocket of its own construction made from inferior American novels, however, it’s putting more indie games on sale. Six more of them, in fact – including the debut of retro-themed zombie-blasting RPG Dead Pixels. “But wait,” you might say, tossing around high-level math like some kind of graduate-school-bound indie bundle, “that’s only one> game; where are the other five?” Be educated after the break.

(more…)

Update: Wisecrack are stating, and the same is supported by Steve Ince, that Al Lowe had given this project his blessing, and even approved the Kickstarter content. Which makes these whole affair even more confusing.

Original: Oh, why can’t we all just learn to get along? In the happy-go-lucky world of Kickstarter, everything is meant to be made of flowers and unicorns, but as reported by Venture Beat, Al Lowe and Replay Games are marching in with their knee-high sue-boots and threatening legal action against Wisecrack Games, and their plan to raise half a million for a new Sam Suede game. Oh – they may have a point.

(more…)

Dreams are weird. When you’re in them, everything makes perfect sense: eyeball monsters, people with praying mantis bodies, random celebrities just hanging out in your living room – who are, in turn, also eyeball-coated praying mantis demons. It’s all just so matter-of-fact. And then you wake up, chuckle dryly at the ridiculousness of it all, and drive to your therapy session. That’s more or less the feeling Back To Bed attempts to capture, and it does so shockingly well in the grand scheme of trippy dream sequence games.

You play as the “subconscious protector” of a man named Bob who can’t stop sleepwalking to his untimely demise. And yeah, there are melting clocks everywhere and tophat birds that I wish were real so I could have one as a pet, but the real stars here are the little things. The vaguely unsettling, word-slurring narrator, for instance, won’t be mistaken for Rucks from Bastion any time soon. Puzzles, meanwhile, give your spatial reasoning brain biceps quite a workout – though the perspective caused me to put objects in the wrong places a few times. Beyond minor frustrations, however, it’s a fun, semi-demented little puzzler with a bizarre sense of style. Give it a try hereabouts.

Abstract free running game In Momentum continues to keep up its promise of releasing new free content, this time adding “universal plug and play multiplayer”, as requested by many players. Also in the patch is a slew of new bug fixes and tweaks, again in response to player feedback. That includes improving weapons, targeting and scoring. There’s a walkthrough video below that will explain it all.

(more…)

Edit: Reports are that people are now managing to get back in. John just got an orange drop, for instance.

Have you ever built a house of cards? It takes ages, and then all you can do is pray that the cruel forces of nature don’t send a gentle puff of wind or prancing baby deer in its direction. If anyone so much as enters the same room as it, you reflexively scream “DON’T TOUCH IT.” 6.3 million people touched Blizzard’s latest house of cards. It exploded. So then Blizzard touched it and, well, it double-exploded>. In the wake of patch 1.0.2 going live (which, itself, necessitated many hours of downtime to apply), EU players reported prolonged server outages. Amongst all the rioting in the streets, people on fire, and not-looting, some claim to have seen Errors 37 and 73 creeping through the wreckage, wringing their cold hands maniacally. Now a more than 80-page forum thread is finally seeing claims of successful logins – but with swift disconnects shortly after.

(more…)

Hey, what’s your IQ? Oh, really, mine is 30 points higher. I pity you. I’m bound to be SO much better at Mensa Academy when it comes out at the end of July.

(more…)

Magicka – much like a vampire or reality television – is seemingly incapable of death. Somewhat brilliantly, it’s traversed locations as far flung as Cthulhu’s stomping grounds and, er, Vietnam and lived to tell the incredibly silly tale. And now, it’s letting you play as a villain, because how else do you impress people after exploring the two least likely settings possible? So this time around, you’re Alucart the vampire, and your goal is to make a bunch of fantasy cliches hate each other. “But how>,” you’re probably wondering, probing the deepest dungeons of your brain only to find cobwebs, bats, and repressed memories. Well, er, you know: with magic. Like it says in the title. See for yourself after the break.

(more…)

Hello, Internet. I’ve gathered up all the recent images from Planetside 2 and made a gallery of them for you. Look, there are the new MAX suits! A a tank, and some before-and-after shots showing the original game’s assets compared to now. Click to make large, of course. (more…)