If you’ve got a really decent looking indie arcade flight game, a great way not to promote it would be to, say, have the first have of your trailer feature a cartoon cow pratting around for no damn reason. That would be an especially strange idea when your game is about flying small aircraft between slalom poles in a gorgeous engine, because that’s what you’d want to show up from so people got excited. Not a poorly rendered cow making stupid noises for 40 seconds. That’s a useful tip for any indies out there planning such a thing. Including Gugila, creators of the genuinely impressive looking Altitude0.

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So this is interesting. Kickstarter’s new stats page reveals that, despite Kickstarter being the focus of so much attention right now, only 33% of projects actually get funded. If you really want to get something funded, by contrast, you should be operating in the medium of dance, where 69% of projects have found funding. I’m not surprised about the figures for gaming, however, because many gaming kickstarters have been both highly speculative, and for relatively large amounts of cash. (more…)

The never-ending soap opera that is Diablo’s online strategy continues. First there were connectivity issues, then claims of hacking, and, yesterday, new buyers began getting slapped with up-to-72-hour restrictions to Diablo III’s Starter Edition – aka, its demo. Next up, we’ll probably find out that Torchlight’s been Diablo’s son all along, but both of them got amnesia and the paternity test exploded. It turns out, however, that the credits haven’t quite rolled on this week’s episode. Apparently, new players actually aren’t supposed to be thrown into demonic demo dungeons. They are, however, still subject to roughly a gazillion other baffling restrictions.

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If nothing else, I have to say that Run – a self-described “series of interlinking segments twisting text into action into strategy” – is admirably eclectic. It begins as a platformer – except with stages made of unabashedly cryptic prose. But then, after you’ve unfolded a few chunks of the sci-fi-tinged tribal tale, Run enters “dream” segments that take the form of – oddly enough – old-school videogames. Impressively, each stage builds these throwbacks on top of each other – so first, it’s just Snake, but before long, you’ll encounter dreams that begin as Scorched Earth, morph into Space Invaders using debris left over from your tank battle, transition into Snake using the remains of both previous games – with Snake’s trail then forming the pathway for a pixelated platformer. Oh, and there’s also a recurring farming level, because why not? So that’s the cool part. Problem is, none of those thing fit particularly well together.

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I’ve always found it curious that Medal of Honor Warfighter‘s title is singular. Well, OK, first I found it curious that anyone would name a game “Warfighter,” but – based on the numbers these things do – there is an incredibly discerning customer out there somewhere who walks through GameStop treating his Homefronts and Duty Fields Of Honor like fine vintages, considering each with a seasoned palette and meticulously popped collar. Still though, why Warfighter? Why not Warfighters? Seven minutes of new footage, however, finally doused my most burning of questions. Put simply, they only need one.

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We’ve written and spoken about our concerns and frustrations regarding Diablo III’s relationship with the internet, but Kotaku notice that patch 1.0.3 introduces yet another baffling aspect to what I reckon is an increasingly indefensible strategy. People who purchase the game digitally are now being told that their copy of the game will actually be a starter edition for up to 72 hours. Why? A support agent says “…it is a necessary step to combat fraud and other malicious activities that can weaken everyone’s play experience.” What I’m gathering from all of this is that “everyone’s” play experience seems to be a lot more important than anyone’s play experience.

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Familicide is an actual word with a meaning as horrible as you might imagine. A lot of the things that happen in Crusader Kings II are horrible and familicide is just one of them. I’ve misplaced more blood relatives than I’ve had hot dinners, and that’s mostly because heating food takes time and that’s time that could be spent crushing infidels, betraying loyal vassals and hoping for young children to die in a war that I started so that I can inherit everything they own. With a major patch and expansion due, I spoke with project lead Henrik Fåhraeus to learn what horrible history the Sword of Islam DLC will add.

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The only game I’ve actually played today has an ‘@’ where you might expect to see a person, not even bothering to trot down to uncanny avenue, and yet I find myself posting a second video with actual human beings in it, running around and doing things, ambulating and acting. This trailer feels like a call to arms as Heroes & Generals looks to expand its beta community and although live action advertisements for digital playgrounds should rightly be pelted with vials of furious wasps this is an enjoyably silly example. There’s a part when some people pretend to be a tank and that’s always good to see. When I play (soon), it’ll be mostly for the bikes and…well, watch to the very end.

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I vowed solemnly to myself that I would offer my written opinion upon Quantum Conundrum without so much as mentioning Portal. “Alec old bean”, I bellowed at myself while brushing my teeth and drinking a large glass of whiskey in the shower, “it’s not terribly proper to forever perceive someone in the light of their previous achievements. You should treat this new game of physics puzzles from former Portal lead Kim Swift and her current studio Airtight Games as its own entity rather than in regard to how it compares to Valve’s non-combat first-person games. I say, would you like a scotch egg with that?”

When I left the shower to start actually playing Quantum Conundrum, it was near-instantly clear this promise to myself could not in good conscience be met. (more…)

Arty indie types MoaCube – whose lovely Co-Op is worth a look – have just released the beautiful and ominous-sounding visual novel Cinders, which is a lavishly illustrated retelling of the Cinderella story. They reckon it’s a “serious” approach to the famous story, which ditches the original protagonist in favour of a “story about balancing freedom and dreams with circumstance and harsh reality; about growing up and finding out the true meaning of independence.” Yes, you know the sort of thing, I suspect.

It’s got a demo, so you can play a sample of the thing. And a trailer, which you can look at below. (more…)