Working in the fast-moving field of electronic gaming journalism can be dangerous. If I’m not watching the latest trailer for Gunface Organ-Splatter: Uncensored Edition, I’m likely to be quivering in a corner because the latest trailer for Gunface Organ-Splatter: Uncensored Edition contained one too many close-ups of quivering viscera. Such things are not ideal viewing through the hazy veil of an insomniac’s hangover. Today, I thought I was safe. Skulls of the Shogun’s launch(ed on an OS people want to use) trailer surely wouldn’t trouble my nerves? Click below for children eating skulls and losing all> of their flesh.

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“When people call Microsoft ‘evil’, it’s kind of an undeserved compliment. To be evil, you have to have vision, you have to have communication, execution…” >

Rewind three years, to the Eurogamer Expo, London, October 2010. The staff of Rock, Paper, Shotgun are discussing which game from the Indie Arcade we would decree to be our game of the show. Messhof’s sadly still-private swordfighting micro-epic Nidhogg ultimately took home the trophy, but we were a hair’s breadth from giving it to Skulls of the Shogun. This colourful and witty turn-based strategy game starred undead Samurai, and deftly condensed and remixed what can be a hoary old genre into something fresh, fast and thoughtful. When I played the game then, it seemed slick and surely not far from completion. I anticipated being able to play it just a few months later. I anticipated it finding itself a great many fans on PC. For many and complicated reasons, I was wrong.

It’s now June 2013, six months after Skulls’ Microsoft-exclusive release on Windows 8, Microsoft Surface and XBLA, and I’m talking to Borut Pfeifer of Plush Apocalypse Productions and veteran of EA, SOE and more. He’s one of a small collective of indie studios who collaborated to make Skulls of the Shogun. He was wrong too. (more…)

I’m going to have a full interview about the strange, sad tale of how/why excellent TBS Skulls of the Shogun so bewilderingly ended up as a Windows 8 exclusive, and how it all went so, so wrong, up on the site tomorrow. Meantime, let’s share the good news – this ace, very funny and tight undead Samurai battler is now free from its Microsoftian chains, and will arrive on Steam & Humble for any PC that can handle it next month. And thank God for that.

It’ll have brand new stuff on its old bones too. (more…)