Readers! I have a joke for you. What’s green, has four shells, and lives in the sewer with a big rat thing? And also knows ninjutsu and orders pizza? The answer is… wait! This isn’t a joke book. It’s my diary from 1989. I thought all the punchlines were worryingly personal. How did a joke book know about my imaginary butler, Pierce Craigson? It turns out back then I was really into the Turtles, and imagined myself to be the fifth crime-fighting green thing. I was “Indiana Jones Turtle”, used a whip, and had some rather iffy ideas about April O’Neal. I was clearly an unimaginative idiot. Anyway, ten year-old me and thirty something (ahem) me both agree that the footage of the upcoming TMNT: Out Of The Shadows looks surprisingly good. Ooh, we can pretend we’re all going in to the sewers. Follow me down. (more…)

The best sort of source code is available source code. So it’s splendid news to hear that the developers behind Miner Wars 2081, Keen Software House, have made the code for both the full game and the engine available for all purchasers of the game – although for modding only. So that’s all 360,000 lines of code for you to stare at in bewilderment. Or if you’re not me, to start fiddling with.

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The Swapper sounds like a name for either a bang-up cleaning product or a not-very-clean banging product, but I assure you it is (thankfully) neither of those. Instead, it’s an extremely intriguing platforming adventure in which you can clone yourself at will and hop between said soulless vessels to give some mean old brain-teasers what-for. Also, as John pointed out, Penumbra’s Tom Jubert is on writing duties, promising a tale about the nature of our being and whether leaping between countless clones somehow perverts that. It sounds well worth getting into an excitement tizzy over, in other words. One made up of equal parts frothy flailing and existential befuddlement, as all the greatest tizzies are. And the best part? Swapper’s coming to Steam. Fairly soon, in fact.

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While the trailer is from a couple of months back, this is the first time we’ve encountered partly hand-drawn platformer Shu. Scottish indies Secret Lunch are going to reveal more of the game at next week’s GDC, but the footage released so far is too gorgeous not to share.

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I haven’t actually seen a lot of classic Star Trek, but even I know what a Gorn is. To those weened on later versions of the universe, your introduction to the scaly brutes probably came via snippets of the original series’ magnificent >fight choreography. William Shatner fought one tooth and nail (and rock and tree branch and bigger rock and ACTION KICK) in a trial by combat, and then no one mentioned the Gorn again for like a thousand years. But now they get their very own videogame, so it all worked out. In Star Trek: The Game, you’ll be blasting them in all shapes and sizes. Sadly, however, Digital Extremes seems to have oh-so-slightly reined in their fantastic dress sense.

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As well as pointing my tragically non-robotic eyes at robot futuresports / strategy game Frozen Endzone last week, I also had a long natter with Mode 7 founders Ian Hardingham and Paul Taylor about their follow-up to the splendid Frozen Synapse. Read on for its origin story, how it’s not really like American Football, their roguelike-like plans for the game’s singleplayer mode, inevitable comparisons to Blood Bowl and Speedball, and Luigi fanfic.> (more…)

NINETIES CHILDREN ARE OVERTAKING THE EARTH. QUAKE IN FEAR OF THEIR LIBERAL NEW IDEAS AND NOSTALGIA FOR THINGS THAT MAKE YOU FEEL OLD.

For real, though, a new generation’s filtering into the upper reaches of entertainment, and their formative influences are quite different from the cornerstones of even just a decade before. It’s quite interesting to watch, and yet – for all the recent fascination with the oddities of Western ’90s culture – we still haven’t seen a game really embrace it. Gone Home, however, is unabashedly rooted in the decade of X-Files and alternative rock, and it’s not just for cheap giggles, either. Having played a bit of the BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den-borne narrative adventure myself last year, I got this sense that its characters and themes wouldn’t really fit in any other time period. It’s excellent, then, to see that Fullbright’s going the extra mile in realizing the era’s eccentricities. See (and hear) youth in Riot Grrrl-flavored rebellion after the break.

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How do modders mod games without any mod tools? It’s a conundrum I have no intention of finding out the answer to, because in my mind the modders are Timothy Olyphant and Robert Downey Jr. as two mismatched hack cops with 24 hours to hack the game or the terrorists will destroy the concept of Greenwich Mean Time. Tim has played by the rules all his life, but he needs someone who thinks outside the box to help him into Sonic Generation’s twisty code. Tim’s just shouted that he’s ‘cracked the backdoor’ and RDJ responded with a smutty remark and a raised eyebrow that was a little too suggestive. Tim tried to laugh it off, but the sexual tension is now palpable. What’s that, Robert? Why, that’s crazy talk. It would never… oh my god, he’s in! He’s made it. He can now mod Sonic Generations. They just hugged in celebration! But this post isn’t about my entirely appropriate manflesh fantasies (find out in my upcoming feature film, “Sexy Hacks”). No, this is about a Sonic Generations total conversion, bringing the previously non-PC Sonic Unleashed to the master system. (more…)

KING Art Games wrote the Walker-approved adventure Book of Unwritten Tales but they believe that pointing and clicking can be used for more than puzzles and conversation. There’s another genre close to their hearts and that’s where Battle Worlds: Kronos enters:

The time wasn’t right for a resurrection of classic turn-based strategy, but now we believe the world is ready.

Having watched the Kickstarter video, I do believe I am ready and you may find that you are too.

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“Oh boy! I can finally get into prison early!” Oh videogames, don’t ever stop allowing me to create phrases of such ear-perking outlandishness that people could mistake me as ringleader of a merry band of elves. Other gems now possible thanks to Steam’s paid-alpha-centric Early Access program include “Hooray! Frighteningly authentic war’s happening even sooner than I thought” and “I wasn’t planning on being shipwrecked with no hope of escape today, but I certainly can’t complain.” But Prison Architect, Arma 3, and Under The Ocean are only three of the 12 inaugural games on offer. The rest – and perhaps even some freshly baked wordthinks – are after the break.

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