We’ve discussed adventure game and mysterious existential-’em-up Lioness before but after twenty three days of funding I’m happy to report it has now well over doubled the $7,000 target, with a view to carry on into the crazy wilderness of $20,000 and above.  Developer Zak “mooosh” Ayles, working mostly by his lonesome, describes himself as “interested in exploring the potential of games as a storytelling medium” and with a quick glance at the trailer’s speedy descent into madness, embedded post-cut, he’s assuredly in uncharted territory.

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Paradox have sounded the news bugle to announce that Crusader Kings II, the game that has continued to expand and consume my days throughout 2013, is refusing to abdicate its crown. A polite ruler would step aside to make room for the next in line to the throne, but CK II has never been polite. It’s a devious, murderous omnicidal lord and it will never> die. Today’s grand strategy news is this – Europa Universalis IV will couple with Crusader Kings II via a save-game converter.

Fans of Crusader Kings II will be able to maintain the empires they have established and guide them through the age of exploration in an all-new strategic experience, continuing their personal stories of expansion and conquest.

There’s a very good chance I won’t be playing anything else ever.

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Imagine if you were in some sort of hot makeout session with some lithe babe of your dreams, in my case some skinny nerdy bloke with stubble, low voice, and a weird penchant to hate you immediately after sex, and you were just going to proceed to take all your clothes off and make ‘aaah’ noises when Leisure Suit Larry popped into your head.

I’ve been playing Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded all weekend (sadly not a euphemism), and it’s probably the worst heterosexual pants-droughtener you can ever think of, it even scorched my neuropathways with its un-hotness so that all creative wordening left my brain and flew out of the open door into the Brighton sunlight. Frankly all I could think of was not sex> which is a miracle, if you’re me. It’s funny that Leisure Suit Larry has this titillating tit rep, when you never see it going in and it’s not even funny. So I harkened back to the only Sierra-esque adventure I ever actually thought was naughty: the silly funny parody game, FuckQuest. (THIS IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK THERE ARE TITS AND WILLIES.) (more…)

As you’d expect, there are a bunch of screenshots to accompany the news of BioShock: Infinite’s DLC. There’s an odd, unhelpful and irrelevant shot of Elizabeth for today’s challenge pack, Clash In The Clouds, but more importantly, there’s the first glimpse of a pre-fall Rapture, for the forthcoming Burial At Sea campaign.

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So, as guessed by people paying attention to Ken Levine last night, there’s to be BioShock: Infinite DLC. What a surprise. What’s more of a surprise is that one bit is out today. That is Clash In The Clouds, and is a bunch of challenges. Below you’ve got a trailer for that, and a teaser for something called Burial At Sea, which will be a new campaign set in Rapture!

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OK, maybe not officially, but modders are ensuring that Grand Theft Auto IV continues to sprout bells and whistles like a million retail chains the second> Christmas shopping season starts. It’s become remarkably more attractive, gained entire landmasses, and received the most important upgrade of all: Iron Man. But that’s not enough. It can never be enough. So modders have taken to grandly thieving Grand Theft Auto V’s features and cramming them under GTA IV’s hood. First up: cross-city character-swapping.

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Every year some of the UK’s premier games talent comes straight out of Dare to be Digital, a video games development competition for students at universities and colleges of art. Teams of five assemble at Abertay University for 9 weeks during June to August to develop a prototype video game, receiving mentoring from the industry. The students also receive a weekly stipend of £150 per student, free accommodation at the University’s halls of residence and a team budget of £200.

The results are shown at the UK’s largest independent games festival. Dare ProtoPlay 2013 will be held in Caird Hall, City Centre and Hannah Maclure Centre in Dundee on 8-11 August, and entry is free to play more than forty games. (more…)

The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot is an interesting idea – build up a fortress, invade other people’s increasingly luxurious castles in the sky, and so on – but it’s never been shy about putting microtransactions front-and-center. It was only recently, however, that players rather definitively decided that Ubisoft had taken its mighty quest for players’ loot too far. In a nutshell, the dev/pub powerhouse added the ability to purchase anything> regardless of level (so long as it could also be snatched up with in-game currency), and players immediately took to burning pay-to-win banners and mounting the heads of piggy banks on stakes. Ubisoft, to its credit, has admitted that it made a boo-boo.

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War. War never changes. It just gets bigger and more convoluted and adds space ships and looks kind of like a giant, twinkling star map spreadsheet. And so, in a year that’s already seen some truly colossal EVE Online battles, the biggest ever> just sort of… happened. Admittedly, it was the result of months of conniving and cunning space mischief – as almost everything in the EVE universe is – but it still came as quite a surprise to dirty, non-playing Earth peasants like myself. Numbers so big you can see them from space after the break.

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Well, a> journey is coming to PC. Journey of a Roach, specifically. I’m sorry. I know you hate me now, and I’m fully prepared to accept the shoulder-straining burden of your lodestone of loathing. I just couldn’t help myself. The idea crept into my mind, and I knew it would never die no matter how much I tried to poison, stomp, or nuke it – much like, well, a roach. I had to sweep it out of my brain chambers once and for all. So. Here we are. Anyway, Journey of a Roach. It’s a point-and-click adventure from Swiss developer Koboldgames about two roaches named Jim and Bud. There’s apparently no dialogue whatsoever, which could be quite interesting! There is also no sand surfing, majestically billowing scarves, or profound, wordless heart-to-hearts with other human beings. Again, sorry.

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