Hopefully this is happier indie price-experimentation news than the below… What began as really little more than pay what you want for one game – that being Frozen Synapse – has been slowly expanding to be some> games, as appears to be Humble Bundle trends. You’ll be very glad to hear that the very, very good Space Chem is the latest addition, joining Trauma which was bundled in earlier this week. And yes, this works retroactively for people who already bought the FZ bundle. So, whatever you have given or are prepared to give, you’ll end up with FZ, SpaceChem and Trauma – and if you beat the average price you also get a package of Frozenbyte games to boot.

All the games are available in PC, cultist PC and hippy PC flavours, by the way.

If you don’t know what Space Chem is, then boo. BOOOOOO. And also read this.

Gamasutra note that Proun developer Joost van Dongen has taken some time to analyse the success (or lack thereof) of his Pay What You Want scheme for the quirky racing game. While he has made a healthy and pleasing $23,000 so far, he estimates that 40% (200k) of the installs of the game were pirate installs, despite the game being freely available from “official” sources.

Actual sales? 4,400 people paid an average of $5.23 for the game. Gamasutra explain what this means: “The prevalence of free players means the game has averaged just 9 cents of revenue per download, Van Dongen said, well below what he thinks a successful game with a traditional sales model would have made.” My thought? It’s well worth $5, go and buy it right now.

When I saw the announcement for Insane 2, which is out a little later this year, something stirred, deep in the lost vaults of my head. Insane.> Yes. Why do I know that name? A bit of Googling later and I realise that the original insane (which cleverly anticipated the letter-as-numbers-in-sequels thing by being called 1nsane, which surely means this one should be called In2ane) is one of the first games I ever reviewed in anger – a multiplayer offroad racing game from Codemasters released in 2000. 2000!> That’s almost a thousand years ago. Quite why Codies decided to make a sequel to a game that people who played it can barely remember is beyond me, but there it is. Actually, I vaguely suspect it is a rebranded version of a game that has already come out in Russia, but I can’t be sure. There’s a video of the game below. You sure to race about and stuff.

Mmm. I am going to go back to Rage. Where I can also race about and stuff. (more…)

Artful dungeon-crawler Bastion charmed us with its strange world, solid combat mechanics, and elegant narration. John loved it. It even inspired Alec to a big old cleverthink. I decided to have a chat with Greg Kasavin, creative director and writer on the project, to find out a bit more about how Bastion came to be, and what the future holds.> (more…)

I’ve been taking a look at some of the games in the 17th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition and though I’m not going to refer to these as “the cream of the crop”, having not harvested the entire crop yet, they should fulfill a variety of your text-based needs. With storytelling in games high on the agenda today, it’s a particularly interesting moment to look at the different ways narrative can be explored through interactive prose. Far from fetch quests and attempts to second-guess a limited vocabulary, interactive fiction at its best can allow a reader-player to discover stories in all kinds of interesting ways. This way to words about words.

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Here’s an interesting thing that has arrived from a number sources into my inbox (thanks, all! I know you aren’t intentionally supporting World Space Week…) – the possibility of a sequel for much-beloved space combat strategy Nexus: The Jupiter Incident from members of the original team, now called Most Wanted Entertainment. They talk about their plans here, but the upshot of it is that are hoping to crowdfund it via the GamesPlant service. They want to raise quite a lot of cash, and I’m a bit sceptical as to whether that is going to happen. Either way, it’s the first serious effort we’ve seen toward a sequel since a tech demo leak (video below) from six years ago>. I’ve also posted the more recent Nexus 2 concept trailer below. (more…)

(See here for the story so far.)

“We live on the promise that we will not inherit the problems of our fathers in this time of Sengoku but will instead be Lord of the new worlds they have wrought, able to take pride in their works and in turn grant our own children the honour of a name and the produce of rich and stable lands. It is the dream of every generation to improve the lot of the next, to elevate their position in society and their power over the weak and the wanting. We live on the promise that our fathers are not fools and some of us will die on the empty, rotten nature of such a promise. Screw you dad. Screw you with a shinai.”

Nanbu Akifusa, January 1478>

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Videogame storytelling is evolving, and the past few years have seen some fresh approaches to spinning the interactive yarn. Lewis Denby, on a mission to find out a little more about what stories mean to modern games, spoke to Splash Damage’s Ed Stern, who created the huge backstory for Brink, and script writer Tom Jubert, most famous for his work on Penumbra, to find out how we’re telling tales in this modern gaming age.> (more…)

When X Rebirth was announced back in April, there wasn’t a huge amount of information to ponder so it seemed natural to expect something similar to previous games in the series. Turns out that while there will still be a great deal of piloting and trading, some things have indeed changed. The most significant shift is the focus to one ship, The Pride of Albion, which is upgradeable and customisable but cannot be switched out for a different vessel. In a forum post outlining some details about the game, Bernd Lehahn pre-empted the horror of the fanbase: “But before you get upset and complain about the lack of freedom to steer other ships, WAIT”. Are you waiting? Because that command was capitalised>. OK, now click.

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Take On Helicopters Pre-Order Beta access thing is now live. The full game of commercial hovering is released on the 27th, but you can get it now if you are so inclined. For some insight into what the simulator contains you can read Mr Stone’s take on the thing, where he says: “Even if the campaign turns out to be a bug-spattered nightmare, I’ll still be recommending ToH to anyone with even a passing interest in simulated flight.”

Gosh.