Wasteland 2 will partner with publisher Deep Silver to distribute and market the in-progress title, according to a new announcement from the game's developer inXile Entertainment. Currently crowdfunded through Kickstarter, the team behind Wasteland 2 says the new deal gives its studio help with the physical release of the game, still a vital area even in the age of digital distribution.

“This is a perfect opportunity for inXile: it allows us to continue to focus all of our energy and money into the creative aspects of the game while letting Deep Silver take our game outside of the pure digital space," said Brian Fargo, CEO inXile Entertainment in a press release. "This has the added bonus of allowing us to spend more of the Kickstarter funds on development while continue to retain all ownership and control."

The partnership doesn't alter the developer's plans to have a DRM-free release of the game, according to Wasteland 2's Kickstarter page. " For our backers and fans, it assures you that distribution will be handled professionally and quickly, and will assure a smooth experience for getting the game and goodies into your hands," inXile reports. "This deal also allows us to put a retail version on the shelves, so people who discover the game later can still get a physical copy. The digital distribution and sales are still being handled by inXile."

This deal does point to one aspect of crowdfunded game development that could—at times—prove challenging, namely the distribution of all those promised physical goodies to backers and supporters. While not all of Wasteland 2's more than 61,000 backers are set to receive a physical boxed set or T-shirt, many thousands are, and someone has to handle the logistical work to make that happen.

But it's not all business news from the Wasteland today. Check out a new screenshot below of the game's modular HUD which has since been updated after feedback following the release of the first gameplay footage earlier this year. Wasteland 2 is set to release later this year.

Thanks, VG24/7

It's a dirty job, and there's no one left to do it. Except you. Indie South African developer RuneStorm's Viscera Cleanup Detail upends a classic story of alien infestation by giving you an apparently straightforward, but disgusting, task—if you make a mess, be sure to clean up after yourself.

The free alpha release of Viscera, available at IndieDB, presents a series of challenges to the player. You're the lone survivor of an alien attack on a futuristic facility and you've somehow managed to repel the invasion. But what's left over from your glorious victory, all the entrails, body parts, and bio-waste, has to be taken care of somehow. Thankfully this space station janitor sim gives you all the tools you need—a sturdy mop, rubber gloves, and an incinerator for all the alien goo you've created.

I think we have a new genre on our hands. Dead Space plumber? System Shock dentist? What's next?

Viscera Cleanup Detail is also listed on Steam Greenlight where it's currently awaiting approval. Check out a video of the alpha below. Thanks, PCGamesN.

Nothing says “indie” quite like breaking down the walls of copyright and adding a bunch of characters from games you had no hand in making. And wouldn’t you know it, Gaijin Games is doing just that with their cardiovascular improvement simulator, BIT.TRIP Presents: Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien or "Runner 2" for those who need to work on their lung capacity.

Those who drop $3 for the “Good Friends Character Pack” will have access to Psychonauts’ Raz, Cave Story’s Quote, Machinarium’s Josef, Super Meat Boy’s Dr. Fetus, Portal 2’s Atlas (who’s Steam exclusive), Bit.Trip’s invisible Commander Video, and Spelunky's, er, Spelunky Guy.

We’re a little bummed that the DLC doesn’t offer new levels of some kind, but it’s hard to complain about anything when it’s a paltry $3, which, as developer Dant Rambo notes, is less than "a bag of hot dog chips." Still, here’s hoping we get some new levels to break in this new cast somewhere in the near future. In the meantime, why don't you watch these character introductions narrated by none other than Charles Martinet, aka, the voice of Mario. Yes, that Mario.

We last heard about the remake of PC gaming classic The Chaos Engine a couple of weeks ago, and we’re delighted to hear that the game will be making its way to a speedy release later this summer. Gamers of the appropriate age (read: old) may remember The Chaos Engine, a top-down shooter from 1993 for the Amiga. It featured a steampunk setting, two-player gameplay and blazing-fast 16-bit programming. Sixteen whole bits! Imagine.
The good folks at Eurogamer snagged an interview and gameplay footage from developer Devolver Digital, formerly of Hotline Miami. The new remake of the classic cooperative shooter, which will be coming to Steam in early August.



“The idea was just to bring the original game back as it was. We’re not trying to change too much... We just want to bring back that sort of hardcore, top-down shooter, tough game that people remember,” says producer Stuart Martin.

The game features all of the original voicework and gameplay conventions of the original. It will also come bundled with the usual complement of features, including leaderboards and achievements.

Check out the game’s website for more details. Thanks, Eurogamer.

We’re big fans of roguelike adventure games around here, so we’re pretty stoked that the genre is making a big comeback in the indie games universe. A part of that trend is Dungeonmans, a pixel-drawn roguelike with some big ideas and Kickstarter ambitions.


Dungeonmans features classic sprite-style animation and randomly generated dungeons. Permadeath, of course, is a feature not a bug. What sets Dungeonmans apart, though is the Dungeonmans Academy: every artifact your adventurers find before their inevitable, horrible deaths is stored at the academy. Future graduates with a major in Adventuring will gain some of the knowledge and experience passed down by their teachers.

This addition is a great way to bring the hard-won lessons of previous runs beyond the veil of permadeath. I’ve had more than a few adventurers in Dungeons of Dredmor die humiliating deaths in the first few minutes of exploring, shaming the memories of the all-star run that came before them. The academy will keep fresh adventurers from making deadly rookie mistakes so they can grow up to be big, strong adventurers with backpacks full of gold.

Dungeonmans is currently a little under halfway to its funding goal. If you’re eager to dive back into the white-knuckle experience that is the traditional roguelike, go check it out. Dungeonmans is also on Steam Greenlight and has a preview build that is free to download. The game is scheduled for a March 2014 release.

Second Life's big on encouraging players to get creative with the making of stuff. I mean, you totally remember the first time you first entered the grid and randomly got handed a new (and possibly not safe-for-work) body part by some stranger, right? Well, developer Linden Lab has now gone and acquired indie digital distribution site Desura. It may seem like an odd pairing, but when you consider how mod-friendly Desura is, it kind of makes sense that Linden Lab would get behind that buzzing beehive of player-created content.

"We’re looking forward to growing both Desura’s global community of gamers and its fantastic portfolio of thousands of games, mods, and other content," says CEO Rod Humble in Linden Lab's press release. "Our aim is to invest and support the Desura team in making it the most open and developer-friendly platform in the world."

No details were provided on whether Linden Lab had any big changes in mind for Desura's future, so for now, Desura dwellers can continue using the service as usual. Still, it's interesting to note what else is in Linden Lab's portfolio other than Second Life—for instance, last year the beta for world-shaping universe Patterns was released, and it's also got something called Creatorverse tucked away in there. In other words, it's really interested in what players can come up with. And given that Desura's been the birthplace of mods-turned-commercial-games such as Guncraft, it'd be very interesting to see if Linden Lab continues to leverage the Desura community in helping developers bring more super-cool mods to an audience.

As predicted earlier, The Steam Summer Sale is now. From today until July 22nd, daily deals and flash sales will flood the Steam store with prices that are lower than the usual prices. To get the best deals, you may want to be patient and gamble on there being heavier discounts as the sale goes on—a good way to pass the time is to chart prices across a giant blackboard, mixing in the Fibonacci sequence now and then and muttering about "Gabentropy."

Currently, you can get BioShock Infinite for $30/£17.50, Counter-Strike: GO for $5.09/£4.07, Hotline Miami for $2.49/£1.74, and tons of other crazy dumb deals. You can also vote on the Community's Choice sale every eight hours—the currently leading game is something called "Heavy Load."

So, it turns out that Russian Proton-M rocket which crashed a couple of weeks back did so because some of its parts were installed upside down. Anyone out there who has played the awesome Kerbal Space Program (Update 0.21 has finished Q&A and is so close I can taste it!) will be able to sympathise with the poor technician responsible.

When checking out the wreckage of the doomed rocket investigators discovered some angular velocity sensors had been installed upside down. That lead to the vehicle receiving contradictory information as to its orientation and the subsequent efforts to correct it meant it thrashed around violently before smashing into the ground in a mass of pretty ‘splodes. That got me thinking back wistfully on all the simple errors I’d made putting together machines with catastrophic consequences. Whether it was spending a year debugging the first PC I ever built some twenty years ago, mashing the pins on a modern Intel CPU socket or literally blowing up an expensive new solid state drive (the image below is exhibit A, m’lud) they’ve all been pretty catastrophic to some extent.

Though obviously not as expensive as blowing up a whole space rocket.

A bang and some black smoke whisping from the front of my PC let me know something was very, very wrong...

As PC gamers we will all, at some point, feel the need to take the side off our machine and dig around inside. That could be because something has gone wrong or we just fancy taking advantage of the upgradability of our chosen gaming platform.

But lets use this as a cathartic experience; think of this as a safe place. This is somewhere you can exorcise those moments things haven’t quite gone to plan when taking to your PC with screwdriver in hand, knowing you’re surrounded by like-minded folk.

So let’s share; what’s the worst damage you’ve ever done to your PC when you’ve been messing with it? Have you ever tried installing anything the wrong way around?

Doom's just not metal enough; thank goodness for Brutal Doom. Released in March last year, the beloved mod sought to make the classic even more hardcore and real—it introduced new death animations, gave objects shadows, and made headshots a thing. Now Brutal Doom's announced its 19th update, and after watching this trailer, I can say that I am very ready for this. (Though my ears, maybe less so.)



Brutal Doom's ModDB page reveals that the update releases August 9, with various unspecified new features, fixes, and "polishments" to be added. Developer Sgt Mark IV says that this will "probably" be the final version of Brutal Doom. The next game he's keen to focus on uber-gorifying with the Brutal treatment? Hexen. For now, we just wait till August for this. Someone pass me the super-chunky salsa—I want to bite down hard on that tasty, tasty desensitization.

Creative Assembly's Al Bickham and Joey Williams gather up their elephants in an attempt to show you how to tackle Total War: Rome II's historical Battle of the Nile scenario. Watch on to learn how best to organise your units into a suicidal charge up a heavily defended hill. Or, if you're me, how to then wait patiently and subtly alter plans without resorting to ramping up the unit speed and letting the whole thing descend into slapstick chaos.

Total War: Rome II is due out September 3rd.