A couple of weeks ago, a roguelike which uses the Banner Saga engine to create a rather attractive post-apocalyptic cocktail of FTL, The Oregon Trail and XCOM popped up on Kickstarter. Bedlam’s around $90k into its $130k goal, with just eight days left on the clock. I’ve had a chat with the devs, who include veterans of Darksiders studio Vigil, about what they’re aiming for with the game, what the Banner Saga engine enables them to do, what they’ve changed about it, and the 80s/90s comics visual influences for this game of desert bandits and desert death-buses. Also – what about that other> game called Bedlam? … [visit site to read more]

Update: Confirmation/statement from Nordic Games below. The short version? “We can and will not settle for second-best solutions in the case of Darksiders.”

Original: Things were not looking so great for, er, Death for a little bit there. THQ had a run-in with its own sort of reaper, and the Darksiders license sat in limbo seemingly unwanted for ages. That is, until Nordic Games scooped it up along with roughly one trillion other pieces of THQ’s flaming wreckage. But it’s not like the Painkiller: Hell & Damnation publisher can just churn out sequels to everything from Red Faction to Supreme Commander. You’d figure, then, that Darksiders is probably stuck on the sidelines – not pushing up daisies, but not pushing blocks or scything occult beasties either. Former series creative director Joe Madureira, however, claims we might not have to wait long to see something new after all.

… [visit site to read more]

Update: Helpfully, reader and probable Prince of Handsomeness The JG Man dug up the court form outlining details (including amounts, back-up bidders, etc) of each sale. You can peruse that here.

Original: Well, I suppose it was inevitable. After THQ’s attempt at averting a Humpty Dumpty sales situation failed miserably, the writing was pretty much on the wall. So now the grim reaper’s scythe has hacked the once-gargantuan publisher into itsy-bitsy pieces and scattered any remaining ashes to the winds. On the upside, pretty much every major THQ franchise and developer (minus Darksiders dev Vigil, sadly) landed safely in less-likely-to-kerplode homes. Also, Relic and Creative Assembly live under the same roof now. Can Company of Shoguns: Total Homeworld or some other dream team RTS be far off? Probably. It’s still kind of a silver lining, though, and anyway SHUT UP I’M SAD.

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THQ, if you didn’t know (hint: you did), is in some rather deep water. Not only has it opted to delay a whole mess of games in the wake of Darksiders II’s not-quite-megaton splash, it’s also in a teensy bit of debt. By which I of course mean $50 million - using “teensy bit” as a term relative to all the money ever printed in the whole of human history. But things may not be quite as dire as they seem. Sure, another high-level exec – this time CFO Paul Pucino – has decided to skedaddle, but apparently someone with a fair deal of monetary sway might very well have THQ’s rapidly breaking back.

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Non-Americans, you can finally play Darksiders II. While we’ve no idea why at least the UK release was mysteriously delayed by a full week, other than THQ’s apparent absolute determination to spew money away at every opportunity, it remains a game that’s absolutely worth your pennies. To read my review of it, head yourself over here. Spoiler: I liked it a lot.

To hear John tell it, Darksiders II is a wondrous thing – a Frankenstein chimera of other games’ best bits, but infused with its own unique spirit and rippling apocalypse biceps. But, shockingly enough, all is not well in the land of War, Death, Strife, and Fury. The PC port’s been decried as incredibly barebones – with nearly non-existent graphics options, lousy menus, and the occasional irritating glitch composing its emaciated frame. To Vigil’s credit, however, it’s incredibly sorry about Death’s wardrobe malfunction at his big bash, and – at the very, very least – it’s trying to patch up the missing bits.

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