The chaps over at PCG spotted that there’s now a game-footage trailer out for Futuremark’s forthcoming tower-defence game, Unstoppable Gorg. The orbital pathing makes for an interesting uh spin (sorry) on the usual tower defence doings, but it’s nevertheless a bit of a shame that Futuremark’s next game wasn’t quite as ambitious as the ludicrous astronaut-shooter, Shattered Horizon. Unstoppable Gorg is due to land next year. (more…)

The words, I do not have them. Hatoful Boyfriend is a game about the lives, loves, classes and picnics of young, argumentative pigeons and their pigeon teachers at the world’s only pigeon school. It’s more a visual novel than a game, but you do get to make a few choices and increase your (human, pigeon-fancying) character’s stats and… well, it’s about dating pigeons. And going to a posh school for pigeons. I would imagine that’s reason enough to play it. (more…)

LATEST UPDATE: GSC’s twitter this morning announced there will be an official statement on Monday.

1c Ukraine’s Sergey Galenkin has blogged about the closure of GSC. He states: “GSC is closed, a fact confirmed by all. The team is almost completely dissolved, the state has only a few people.” Galenkin blames the cost of developing a PC only shooter for a European audience, and a failed console publishing deal, for the collapse of the developer.

The rest of the story, as it happened, below. (more…)

Frozenbyte’s magicky puzzler Trine 2 materialised on the internet a couple of days ago, having apparently not received the message that the industry isn’t allowed to release any videogames after the last week of November. I for one am glad of this flagrant rule-breaking, and have spent a while in its world of colour and physics. Here’s what I made of it. Also: group hug!>

I feel good! I feel great>, in fact. Trine 2′s ability to bring about instant tranquility has been oft-documented on this blog, but for once I’m not talking about its pretty colours, dreamy music and general air of goodwill. I’m taking about its puzzles. (more…)

Gosh, did we really not post anything about super-stylish indie puzzler Q.U.B.E. since Lewie’s interview a while back? It looks like we did not. And it’s a game worth keeping an eye on, I think, not just because it’s a neat idea for a first-person game, but also because it’s the first title from the Indie Fund, that cabal of clever indies who have got together to back innovative projects. Q.U.B.E. will be their first game, and it’s an intriguing prospect: a first-person puzzle of escalating complexity, based on the properties of a selection of coloured cubes. You can take a look at the official trailer below for a bit of an illustration of what that means, and remember that the game is out December 16th on Steam. (more…)

Before I serve newly baked word-cakes in The Flare Path tearoom, I like to leave them by an open window to cool for an hour or two. This week I left stories about the Microsoft Flight beta-tester recruitment drive, the Steel Armor: Blaze of War trailer, and the GTR3 teaser site on my usual sill, and when I came to collect them… THEY WERE GONE! I can only assume rascals took them, or possibly it was scallywags or rapscallions. Rapscallions have been getting increasingly bold of late. My neighbour reckons they’re becoming more of a menace than ne’er-do-wells, but he’s a big old racist so I tend to take everything he says with a pinch of salt. The point is: What am I going to witter on about this week? (more…)

Tribes: Ascend is a game about leaping off a cliff, hitting your jetpack at exactly the right moment to build momentum, then skiing across the whole map while hurling explosive discs at equally zippy pursuers. Backwards. It’s also one of Those franchises. You know the ones I mean. The ones with an army of fans fueled by nostalgia and high-explosives, ready to set fire to anything that dares even think about taking the name of their beloved game in vain.

But is Ascend a brave new start for the series, or just so much free-to-play kindling? I pulled my jetpack out of storage and ventured into the Not-Quite-Closed Beta to find out…

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Bioware have put out a video focusing on Shepard’s improved animations in Mass Effect 3, which you can see below. The clip shows off how his reactions when taking cover are more nuanced, and also shows how melee is made a little smoother and more believable with improved animation syncing. It’s quite an interesting insight into the little tweaks that the devs are able to make for the third game, and it shows the designers demonstrating their combat in a test scenario, which makes the improvements on the original character animation really stand out. Skip to 1:20 to get past the “community” blatherings and get to the meat. (more…)

OK, Google’s Chrome browser just officially became scary/magnificent. It’s been able to run a few games – like Plants vs Zombies – in a browser window for a while now, but the excellent Bastion has just been added, marking a serious step up in what’s technologically possible. The game starts playing in less than a minute of clicking the button to add it, it looks just like the standard version as far as I can tell, runs smoothly and scales to your screen/window size. Oh, and you can play a free demo then pay to unlock the full thing right away if you like. (more…)

Christmas, as we all know, is a time for stealing. Wait, taking? Giving? I forget. It’s also a time for building up toward for a ridiculously long time, leading to features that you even have to write on your day off. Not that I’m bitter. I’m not bitter. I’m bitter. So what’s behind the door today, children? Oh, you’ve already clicked, haven’t you?

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