Speaking of that DLC stuff, Duke Nukem is destined to expand for the price of $10, next Tuesday. The DLC, which is called The Doctor Who Cloned me, features a new single player campaign (although presumably it’s only short compared to the main campaign) as well as a bunch of multiplayer maps. Gearbox explain the setting thusly: “Deep in the heart of Area 51, Dr Proton has been hatching his evil plan. Fueled by new ego boosts, Duke is ready to take on evil clones, aliens queens and anything else that comes his way in order to save the world and his babes!”

Mmm!

Supergiant are apparently fully aware that when talking about Bastion over the summer, they say they designed the original game to be complete, and therefore not really requiring of DLC. Needless to say, that stance has changed a little, as they explain: “HOWEVER! In the weeks following the release of the game, we decided to put a little something together for the holidays as a show of thanks to our fans. So, on December 14, we’ll be pleased to bring you the Stranger’s Dream DLC for Bastion, which should give you some good reasons to come back to the game while preserving the core experience just as we intended.” The Stranger’s Dream will be “a new fully narrated Who Knows Where sequence, bigger and more challenging than the others”, and there are two other new game modes, too.

The Stranger’s Dream is out Dec 14th. It’ll be free, too.

From a job advert posted on Gamasutra, it is revealed that PopCap are working on “a stylistic reboot of our Peggle franchise”. Which is a way of saying: NEW PEGGLE! Which pretty much confirms that rumour from last month, after naughty Adam Orth tweeted about needing a new art director for a Peggle project, before promptly deleting it and probably having his knees spanked.

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Recently, I maxed out pickpocketing in Sykrim. The top perk for doing this is that you can even rob items that people have equipped. This includes, for some reason, their clothes. Yep: they do not notice you removing their clothes.> It’s a handy way of making heavily-protected enemies a little less tough before you go in for the kill, which is about the only reason I can think it was included.

It’s also a way of humiliating an NPC populace that has absolutely no idea it’s being humiliated, and would continue to treat me politely even though I could see their nipples. My cause was clear: every single citizen of Whiterun must be stripped to their underpants. It took me one long, strange evening, but I did it. Welcome to the naked city. And they had no idea of their own nudity. Or did they? Talking to them, I started to get the funny sense they knew what was going on after all… (more…)

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…)